Tally glanced at Raymond one last time and vanished the same way he had appeared.The helper caught Raymond, moving the wheelchair to his side with the flick of a wrist. “What the hell is going on!” Raymond breathed.Charles cleared his throat, and the young man looked up, his face pale. “For your benefit, young Master, expect the impossible with our Master Esteil. If you can do this, your shocks will be greatly reduced,” he remarked with a twinkle in his eye.Raymond coughed out a laugh, nodding lightly. “I’m sure you are not wrong, Uncle,” he replied hoarsely.==========Tyler left his friends and went to his office in the West Tower. Messages and documents had flooded his room.Tyler sat in the darkness, reading files and reports that were decades old. Going through private communications and contracts that preceded his time on earth, between people he thought he had the measure of, and people he could never have expected.As the light faded, his sight did not diminish. He did not

“I am going to dismantle your House, brother,” Tyler rumbled as both Raymond and Tally began to sweat. “I was going to serve your uncle a small gift for harming you, but now… I am going to ruin his entire clan. Where do you stand on this?”“Tyler! What… Where is this coming from?” Raymond rasped, then snapped. “Ruin them? Why? What about Ash? What’s happened now?” he pressed, his voice trembling as sweat trickled down his forehead.“My father… Your uncle… Edward Kramer… They…” Tyler’s face contorted, then returned to neutral in a split second, as if something inside the man had tried to force its way out but had been contained. “They killed him,” Tyler stated quietly.“What do you mean? Killed him? Killed who? How? Your father is alive! He’s in Ashrone! Or did you –”“That man is not my father. He is a shield. A shield my mother created. My father, my BIRTH father, is…”Two pale, damp faces stared back at Tyler.The Master had turned an ugly shade of grey.“My birth father is…,” he wh

By this time, Charles was pressing Tyler’s arm and leaning five inches from the younger man.“There is no record of his death. He simply went away one day. His sons never spoke of it. They lived long lives as well. It was the tenth generation of Kramers who started to have regular lifespans. By this time, Emperors were few among the nobles. And when they did come, many died young. Very young. They rarely got past forty or fifty years of age.”“And most of them were killed,” Charles stated quickly, his eyes almost feverish.“Why?” Tyler croaked.“Envy. Greed. Hubris. I don’t have the books, my Lord.”Tyler closed his eyes. His head was bursting. His breathing unsteady.Things were hitting him, hard. Realizations were filling his chest, and understanding of some of his mother’s words.“Master Esteil, I watched you grow. I saw things that others would not have recognized. The clearest of which is that mark on your back.”Tyler sta

Then, he commanded her to leave. She refused, and he was driven to keep her mouth shut. The process came to him. He had made the cuts on their tongues with barely a thought or hesitation.As their tongues merged, he spelled her. Blood magic. Old magic. It had not come from her. It was something he had read long ago. Too long ago. Too far away to be counted by days. The blue eyes had shown him, and he had used it.The shadow that had been at the edge of his consciousness pushed to the forefront.Esteil was watching, like a passenger in his own mind, as his body did and said things he could not follow. The shadow wanted her eyes, her throat, her soul, but Esteil pushed back and spoke instead, asking her to get the stones his body needed.Once she pulled out of his arms, the draw to kill her subsided.When he was done with the transference of the heat, it was the shadow that had transported him to the East Tower.Once inside his rooms, with the

Twenty-two years ago, two young nobles had come together to improve their lot in their respective houses.“What do you think? Are you ready for this?”“Of course. The rewards from this sale will continue to flow for the next twenty-five years!”“Then? Do you sign all mining rights to my family?”“Done and done, my friend. Once we seal this, you, and your House, get to move up in the world.”Ashton grinned at Edward.They were seated in a private room in one of Ashrone’s most expensive restaurants. They were alone, discussing business, as they always did every weekend, in that same spot.Master Edward Kramer had found the title to a certain piece of land that a certain group of people were prepared to rent from him for decades. But his family was blocking the trade.Specifically, his older brother.He needed someone reliable, someone who stood as much to lose as he did, to help him handle the matter.He had come to