In a blink of panic, he fell to his knees and reached out to grab hold of her with his other hand. Then he strengthened his grip by covering it with his other and hauled her up and over the ledge.

He'd not meant to drop her, had only wanted to frighten her. To force her to reveal whatever treacherous plan she'd been harbouring, but the rain had slicked his hold, weakening it.

Pulling her up and over, he took a few steps back before his boot slid in the softened ground and sent him tumbling backwards into the mud. Ismene, in his arms, fell on top of him.

She panted quick, panicked breaths and as they landed, she scrambled off and away from him. Not trusting that he wouldn't try to drag her over the edge again.

He sat up and stared at her, hard. The damp thick hair of deepest black, the eyes which he'd often seen shimmer with a silvery hue, the finely drawn shape of her mouth. He looked for his mother first, then his father, then himself.

'My sister is dead,' he told her.

She lifted her head slightly to meet his eye. 'And I tell you I am she. You have it within you to know the truth of it. You only have to look.'

'The succession,' he scoffed. 'Well, Ismene, you know how thoroughly I enjoy disappointing you. I am more than pleased to say that the Visier's gift has left me unchanged. In fact, I know less than I knew before she gave it.'

'Then you have not yet accepted it.'

'I accepted it!' he snapped.

'With words, perhaps,' she said. 'But not with the mind, the heart or the soul. Only when all three are accepting will The Gift be truly received.'

'You speak as vaguely as the Visier did,' he scowled. 'She trained you well for what she has now foisted upon me. Did she also train you for this lie? Well, I tell you, I have no kin and my sister did not leave my mother's womb alive.'

'Think you I wanted this?!' She asked, angrily. 'I curse that I share even a single drop of blood with you and had resolved to ensure you never found out. But you took that from me too!'

Guilt skulked over him.

'But it is no lie,' she said, quieter.

'And I tell you it is. All who saw her slip from my mother's body said that she was... Unformed.' You are destruction. We are destroyed.

'Then they lied.'

He frowned. 'Who? Who are they?'

'All of them. The nurses who brought us forth from her, your father.' She corrected herself. 'Our father.'

The notion was preposterous. 'You are aware she threw herself from her chamber over the grief of losing her daughter. Why would anyone tell her such a lie as that?'

'That... I do not know,' Ismene admitted. 'But I thought that together we might find out.'

Was that hope gleaming in her jaded black eyes?

He studied her. What would possess her to lie about such a thing? She could have told him anything as he held her over the cliff-edge. Why choose this? How could she know it would convince him?

Was he convinced?

No. But she was. He heard it in the grasping tone of her voice. Could see it too, in her wide eyes. He thought hard about all she had done and said since releasing him from the rock. Protected him. Assisted him. Guided him. Had she done all of this because she believed him to be kin? Or perhaps there was some other reason as yet unspoken.

She looked very young to him then, in possession of some vulnerability she had not previously seemed to him to have. A whisper of compassion moved through him.

'In the grove,' he recalled, 'Paeris insinuated that you and the Isdar had lain together?'

'A lie,' she spat.

'But something transpired between you and Orrin? Something that has weakened his position? That has allowed Paeris to take the cloak?'

'Paeris's avarice is the only reason he wears the cloak.' The vehemence in her tone caused suspicion to crawl over him. She hated Paeris almost as much as he did, it seemed. Then, something like guilt flickered over her face and his suspicions rose once more.

'You will tell me all of it now, Ismene. How you came about this knowledge, and by whom, and what you knew of Paeris' plans. Or I shall assume every word from your tongue to be a lie. I shall strap you to the saddle of a Varveh and send you back across the sea to Leoth where we shall see how merciful the new Isdar is to traitors of the realm. I care very little about what happens to those I do not trust, as you will soon come to learn.'

Her eyes shimmered with dark fury now. He noted fear there too, and it pleased him.

It was some moments before she spoke. She wiped the rain from her face with an impatient swipe.

'The night of your trial. When the Visier expelled him from the chamber, when she let you walk from the court with the princess of Azura, Paeris came to me. He told me it was clear to him now, as it soon would be to others, that The Visier was no longer the voice of Leoth, but the severed tongue of it. If she was not removed with haste, then the realm would suffer eternally for it. She had appointed you commander and look how you had repaid us. She allied us with Zybar and look how they betrayed us, she took us to war and look how we were weakened. He proposed to move against her before the turn of the sun. Orrin, too. As Isdar, he would appoint me Visier and send you to the Gods where you belonged. Leoth would be again as powerful as it had once been.'

Theodan laughed a small bitter laugh. 'A coup? Gods, what a power-hungry fool he truly is. So you refused him and he set out to ruin you.'

'I did not refuse him.' She held her head up, unashamed. 'Not at first.'

'You betrayed the High Visier?' It was a sin so egregious that he should take her head for it here and now. 'Why? You are the Primed. All you needed do was wait; she would have named you her successor?'

'No,' she shook her head. 'For she told me long ago that it was to be you. That I would never succeed. My entire wretched life has been a preparation for something that they had long since decided would be yours.'

A prick of horror settled over him. He'd assumed Thessalynn had given him it to him as it had been her only choice in those last fading moments.

It had always been her plan?

He shook his head, burdened by confusion. 'That cannot be. It makes no sense. Why would she choose me?'

'She did not choose you; He did.'

He. The Dark One. The Dark One had chosen him to receive the succession. Just as the Dark One had sent Leoth to war. Just as He had put Fara in his path. Just as He had tried to take her under the moon. He held in his grip small pieces of a much larger puzzle. All he needed to do was find the others, put them together.

'Long before you were born, before I was born - it was to be you.'

The words dropped like the door of a tomb upon him. The sound of its echo resounding through his entire existence.

When he could find his voice within it, he looked at her. He thought now of how clear her disdain for him had always been, how readily she spoke of his execution, how evidently she had despised him.

'So you sent a shadow assassin to kill her? Because you were to be passed over for that which you believed to be yours?'

'Is that a question or assumption, Theodan? For your arrogance has always meant an overreliance on the latter would you not say?'

'Did you send an assassin to kill the Visier?' He repeated through gritted teeth.

'No.'

'Did you send the shadow assassin to kill me?'

'That was not my doing, either. For Paeris' planned to execute before the court. And that was far more pleasing to me then.'

'And now? Does the thought of my execution still please you, Ismene?'

She looked uncomfortable in her skin suddenly. 'No.'

'Then Paeris sent the shadow assassin? That was his plan to rid the realm of the High One?'

'It was to be an exchange of power, I did not agree to her being harmed.' She urged him with her eyes to believe her. He did not know if he did.

'But she knew,' he said. 'That night she knew she was running out of time. Knew I would be with her at the last and that I would take the gift from her. At any other time I would have refused her.' She knew that too. Just as she knew too the choice he would make to release Fara. To save Azura. To start a rebellion.

Have you the stomach for rebellion, Son of Ishilde?

Yes, Thessalynn. I have the stomach for it. Just not the mind, heart or soul it seems.

'She knew all.'

He looked back at Ismene. 'Then who told you we were kin?'

Ismene lowered her eyes from his, slid her hand into the wet grass and pulled out a clump, then let it fall through her fingers. She closed her eyes, looked up at the moon and whispered. 'The night she left the mortal realm, I went to the Sanctorum. I sat by her body and confessed my sins to Him under the moon. Begged his forgiveness and hers. When I woke again, I knew we shared the same blood. It was simply a truth that existed inside me, as though it had always been there. I believe it was her gift to me. I believe she forgave me.' She opened her eyes and looked at him. 'I knew then that my place was not against you, but beside you. My training, my preparation, had not been to take the gift, but to aid you in receiving it.'

The belief in her voice shook him. To be so certain of one's purpose; what did it feel like?

Behind him he heard footsteps and turned to see Draden come up the incline onto the flat rise where they sat.

'Do you... need anything, commander?' He asked, glancing between him and Ismene. Concern etched his brow.

'I need you to stop calling me commander, commander.' His voice was light.

Draden's mouth flattened into a line, and he nodded once.

'The Primed and I had matters to discuss. We'll return shortly. Ask someone to boil some windroot tea to warm us.' Draden nodded once more, turned and made his way back to the camp.

When he was certain Draden would not overhear him, he turned back to Ismene.

'They bound me to a stone in a cave near the sea. Women in cloaks chanted an ancient tongue,' he told her. 'White lace covered their mouths and their eyes... their eyes were Leothine. Fara - or one who appeared to me as her - sought my seed, while the others opened my skin. My blood seeped onto the rock washed away by a heavy warm rain.' He looked at her. 'What does it mean?'

'The Forsworn,' Ismene whispered.

Slow, like the spill of blood across stone, understanding bled across his mind, feeling spread across his soul. Blackest of grief, sadness and hopelessness. Then fury. The darkest, hottest fury imaginable. The heat of a thousand suns.

The Forsworn were the females not chosen. Not chosen to serve within the Twelve, but too dangerous to release back unto the realm. Left in a misty, barren wilderness to die.

He saw them then, from above, as though he peered down at them from the sky.

A landscape of hardened warrior females. Hunting, building, training. His viewpoint moved north, up through the thick bracket of an unfamiliar species of tree and over its top, skimming the highest point, moving from one to another in giant leaps of thought. A mountain rage sat far in the distance and he only had to think of closing the distance before he moved toward it, iters of distance falling away behind him. Over the grey rock he moved, a bird in quick flight, where a blanket of violent sea thrashed out beyond it, then stopped. Sudden and without warning he plunged downward, grey mountain reaching up on both sides. The scent of the sea grew stronger and thicker the deeper he went until he fell into the cavern he had visited once before. A small Leoth female sat upon the dais dressed in a rough linen gown many sizes too large, palms placed on her crossed thighs, eyes closed. He moved around her so he was facing her and watched her lips move without sound in a silent prayer.

Her eyes opened. She smiled at him. He heard the words she spoke in his mind, for her mouth no longer moved. Her voice was a soft whisper.  We are destruction. You are destroyed.

Suddenly she opened her mouth, tongueless he saw, and screamed. It threw him back into his body with a violence that stole his breath.

Ismene sat across from him, watching him with curiosity. 'What did you see?'

'The Forsworn. She spoke to me...'

'They... saw you?'

He nodded. 'What does it mean?'

'It means the sooner you accept the gift fully, the greater chance you have of understanding all that you must do now.'

'Is this how you plan to aid me, Ismene? With vague words and meaningless suggestions?' He snapped.  'Tell me how to accept the gift fully and I shall do it for I am tired of stumbling around half-blind, believe me!' He pushed himself up from the sodden ground and looked down at his muddied breeches with an irritated sigh.

He strode toward her and reached his hand out to help her up from the grass. She ignored him and lifted herself from the ground. Then began to shake the rain out of her cloak.

He watched her as she did, this female whose blood, she claimed, was lined exactly as his was. Did he believe her now? Trust her now?

How had it felt, he wondered, to wake up and have everything you thought you knew revealed as a lie?

Did this wipe away the guilt he'd carried with him since he was a child? Since he learned the reason for his mother's grief. Or did it merely transform that guilt into something else, into fury at those who'd lied to her; those who had made him a monster in his mother's eyes.

He carried the untold truth within him. Every piece of it. And even if it destroyed all that he thought he was, all that Leoth was, then so be it. For he was resolved to drag it kicking and screaming into the light.

'Let us go back,' he said as he turned from her back toward the path. 'We should try to get some rest before dawn.'

He was some way away before he realised she did not follow. Turning, he found her staring hard at him with an inscrutable black gaze.

'You will not try to kill me again,' she said.

'Is that a question or an assumption, Primed? For your arrogance has always meant an overreliance on the latter, would you not say?' With a smirk, he turned his back on her.

'You would truly kill your own kin?!'

'While you spent your life training to be High Visier, I spent mine repenting the sin of having done just that. It would not take much to reacquaint myself with the notion.'

He heard her hurry after him, footsteps squelching quick across the grass.

'I have never truly understood why so many follow you for you are beyond insufferable,' she huffed.

'And yet suffer me you must, suffer me you must...'

Most in the camp were still awake, but immediately shifted their bodies into resting positions when he and Ismene appeared.

Ismene went immediately to the fireside and removed her cloak, laying it out on the ground to dry. Vala looked up from her weapon-sharpening to gave him a dark look. Standing, he poured some windroot tea into a small wooden cup and took it to Ismene, who received it without thanks. Then he poured some for himself and settled back into his position by the prince of Calate, who slept deeply.

He was certain his eyes had been closed only moments before a foot nudged him softly awake. The sun, a blaze of violet and amber, had begun to creep up past the horizon. Dawn had come.

Draden stood over him. The boy Sander stood by the entrance to the camp leaning against the wall of red rock, one foot tucked up behind him casually. Theodan stood, stretched the sleep from his muscles, and crossed the camp to the boy.

'You have Corryn's answer?' Theodan asked. Sander pushed off the wall and turned to face him. Then nodded. Theodan waited for the boy to speak, glancing at Draden, then back to the boy. 'Well are you of a mind to speak it?' He asked, impatiently.

The boy grinned. 'I think I shall enjoy killing Zybarians by your side, Theodan of Teredia. Your temper is shorter than I am. I look forward to seeing you loose it upon those desert-bred dogs.' The boy looked around the grove at the others. 'Leothine invaders, Corryn Vane of the Sun Kin tribe opens his arms to you all. We have already taken your Varveh, but you are all of you welcome to follow me on foot.'  He spun on his heel and skipped out of the camp.

He was a few steps ahead when Theodan heard him begin to hum that same infernal tune. The one he was sure he'd heard come from the tongueless females of The Forsworn while he'd dreamed.