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Prologue
When the War of the Fallen tore through our realm three hundred years ago, it left a broken world in its wake. Demons, Vampires, Shifters, and Witches all turned on one another, each claiming supremacy over the others, and by the time the Witches had emerged bloody and victorious, the other Factions had been driven near to extinction.
When they crowned the First Witch Queen—her hands still wet with blood from the battlefields—the world was but a fraction of what it once had been. Our realm, splintered and broken, yearned to be united under a single ruler. The Witches may have won and put one of their own on the throne, but even they had suffered. Those Factions who had lost, those we now call the Fallen to reflect their fall from the Goddess’s grace, were even worse off. Among the Vampires, only the strongest families had survived the slaughter, and the remaining Shifters had retreated into hiding out of fear. Entire species of their Faction were gone, lost to the violence—there would be no more Dragon Shifters, no more Hydra. Surely, those remaining thought when they retreated to the edges of the world, this new Queen would hunt them all down one by one, would rid her new realm of all but the Witches, and punish the other Factions who had defied her.
But the First Queen had no such plans. She had seen enough death for a thousand lifetimes and destroying the remaining Fallen would bring about nothing but more suffering to the Witches. She looked around at this newly fractured world and knew it displeased the Goddess. Though she is capable of fathomless destruction, the Goddess is also Mother to all things, equal parts destroyer, and creator. She would want peace, the First Queen reasoned. She would want the realm united once more.
And so, the Eternal City was born—a place for all beings of the realm to live and work in peace, under the common rule of the Witch Queen.
The jewel of the Eternal City was the palace itself, set at the highest point of the city. Visible from miles around, it stood as a beacon of hope for Witches everywhere, and a warning to the Factions who had Fallen. At the base of her palace, the First Queen built four temples—one for each of the four natural elements—to honor the gifts the Goddess had given to her and her daughters. Priestesses were appointed to lead them, and thus the four covens were born: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.
There would be no temple for the fifth element, of course. No Priestesses, no coven. The Goddess had blessed the First Queen with all four pure elements in equal measures, but the power over the fifth element, the power of Blood, was a wicked thing, and it would find no worship in the Eternal City.
At the palace’s back, the Queen built a different sort of temple, dedicated not to the Goddess, but to war. She erected two massive arenas to house her army: Solare and Lunairea. They towered above the palace proper, lest anyone forget the power the Witches held, the power that had allowed their armies to break the other three Factions and emerge victorious.
And beneath the palace and the temples, beyond the twin rivers that flanked the jewel of the Eternal City where she dwelt, the First Queen sectioned off portions of the city for all her subjects, regardless of Faction, and invited the Fallen to return.
And over time, they did.
The Demons came first, opportunists that they are. They had no problem kneeling before the new regime. After all, no Demon truly cares what side they’re on, so long as it is the winning side.
The Shifters came next, though their return took longer, and their story was much sadder. They came in waves, from all corners of the realm. First to arrive were the prey Shifters, their leaders coming to pay homage to the new Queen. They were used to being subjugated by stronger forces, having learned their place in the world at the oftentimes cruel hands of their carnivore brethren. Then, bit by bit, over the course of the following years, the predators made their return. The Wolves, the Bears, the birds of prey, even the Cat Shifters—though pride made their return last, of course. One by one, their leaders bent the knee to the First Queen, and she welcomed them to their new homes.
Finally, only the Vampires remained. In the wake of the War of the Fallen, the patriarch of the strongest remaining Vampire family had crowned himself a King and declared that no Vampire would ever kneel before a Witch and claim fealty.
Still, even he eventually returned to the city with what few of his kind remained, though many years later. And though he did not kneel, it is said that he did bow and offer his counsel, which the First Queen accepted. She allowed him into the city, as her subject, and did not demand he relinquish his fool’s crown.
And thus, the Eternal City was built—with a place for all Factions. It took time for peace to settle fully, of course. But over time, the denizens of the city learned to live with one another, and while the Factions themselves did not entirely trust each other, at least they managed not to kill each other. Not frequently, anyway, and when such things did inevitably arise, the Queen’s justice was swift and merciless. When squabbles broke out among the Factions, the Queen dispatched her Blades to eliminate the guilty. They were four specters of death, terrifying as any storybook monster, and no one survived a visit from the Queen’s Blades.
Over time, the wounds in the realm turned to scars, and even the scars faded. The Shifter population swelled once more, and though there would never again be Dragons, so many of their kind remained thanks in part to the compassion of the First Queen herself. The Queen’s youngest daughter eventually inherited her throne, and her daughter not long thereafter. The lineage of the First Queen continued, and though their magic seemed to lessen, with time, they continued to carry each of the four pure elements—a sign from the Goddess herself that the line was destined to rule. For nearly three hundred years, the Eternal City thrived, and the realm knew peace.
But this isn’t a story about peace, or how the realm was united after the War of the Fallen. This isn’t a story about the past.
This is the story of how the Eternal City fell.
Part One
Chapter 1
The Solare training camps smelled of heat, sweat, and violence. To Fey, it smelled like home. She leaned her head further out the open window, savoring the scent of it. The sharp tang of body odor, the metallic bite of blood, scents as familiar to her as her own body. The gossamer fabric of her mask was thin enough that it did little to filter the smell of violence, and the scents from the soldiers training below were oddly comforting.
This had been her first home, after all. Her first real home. Much of the tall circular building that surrounded the Solare training yard was abandoned now, the dormitory-style rooms empty and gathering dust and spiders. This entire wing was abandoned, but Fey’s old room was still here, tucked away just a few stories above where she and her sisters now waited.
A shame to let such a great building be so empty, Fey thought. A shame a realm in peace had so little use for an army.
“They’re going to see you,” Lilith warned. She sat away from the window, hidden from those training below, dressed in the same uniform as Fey. The uniforms of the Queen’s Blades had changed very little in the last three hundred years—designed with thickened leather patches across the chest and legs, and thin pliable suede at the joints to allow for quick, easy movement. A matching mask covered the bottom of Lilith’s face, and a dark cowl kept her raven black hair hidden so that only her sharp dark eyes were visible. A whetstone sat balanced on her thigh and as she spoke, she sharpened her blade against it.
It was a habit of Lilith’s, sharpening her knives whenever they were idle for too long. Not a nervous habit, not really. Fey doubted Lilith had the capacity to be nervous. Angry, yes. Horny, frequently. But nervous? Never.
Fey snorted in response, making no effort to conceal herself as she gazed down at the chaos below. The sounds of the soldiers fighting hummed like music in her ears. Her muscles craved to join them, to fight.
“Then let them see me,” she answered.
The scrape of Lilith’s blade against the whetstone stopped, and Lilith sighed, annoyed.
“Joy, can you convince our sister to step away from the window?”
Leaning against the dirt and grime-coated wall, her eyes closed, Joy seemed lost in thought. Dust moats swirled, circling her, catching the light and dancing intricately close to her skin as they moved through the air around her. Even without thought or intention, Joy’s power came out like this, the very air around her in constant motion and bending to her will. Fey had never known an Air primary as strong as Joy—it was as though the world itself swayed to the rhythm of her breath.
