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to prove. They might even call him honorable, who did not see just how deep, and how dark, the stains upon his hands could be.

CHAPTER ONE
     
    20th of Misteral, 427 AA
    The Shining Palace
    A NYA decided there should be rabbits.
    This realization came upon her while she stood at the height of the palace wing that housed the human Court. While they huddled inside, in their draping cloaks of flat, shiny fur, she stood just beyond the balcony that opened, wind, snow, or sun, into the Northern Wastes, the flat of her feet against the raw stone of a dragon’s swooping neck. That dragon hunched, wings arched, just past the stone rails of the wide, deep balcony, looking down its serpentine nose across the startling white of the morning snow above—and beyond—the City, as if in mid-breath.
    The stone was cold and rough beneath the pads of her feet; she couldn’t decide whether or not she liked the feeling. But even given that indecision she
knew
this was not the way dragon skin should feel. She knew the old stories; dragons should have
scales.
    And those scales should be larger than a man’s arm, and smooth. Definitely smooth. This old stone thing looked more like a giant worm with wings and teeth.
    She hesitated a moment.
    Since she had moved the throne, Lord Ishavriel had been in a bad mood. And although he never raised his voice, and never tried to hurt her, she didn’t
like
it when he was angry.
    But she did have her throne, now. She could sit in it whenever she wanted, and listen to the colors that glimmered along the shadowed floors, like dangerous old friends, their voices unmuted, their brightness undimmed. She could taste their shades through the tips of her fingers—although admittedly that was rare—and sometimes, when she was very tired, she could speak with them.
    She spoke to them now, but they were distant.
    But that was shadow, and she could think about that anytime. Today she had remembered rabbits.
    She usually hated memory. It was all bad. It took her back to the ugly times, before she had been taught just how special, how powerful, she was. She had considered making a spell that would stop her from remembering anything, ever—but Lord Ishavriel had told her it was a Bad Idea, and she had decided to trust him.
    And the rabbits proved that he was right.
    Today, she had been taken back to a time when colors were something she could see with eyes alone; they had no taste, no voice, no sensation. She could hear conversation as if spoken words had no smells; could touch soft fabrics, hard wood, cold metals, as if they, as they had once been, were once again devoid of taste.
    And when that happened, she treasured the memory and did everything in her power to preserve it.
    Everything.
    She was Anya a’Cooper. There was a lot she could do. But the stone against her bare feet was really starting to bother her, it was just so
wrong.
    Across the grounds of the Shining Palace, from the heights of its towers to the depths of its hidden recesses, its cavernous dungeons, those creatures—human or kin—with a sensitivity to magic, lifted their heads in perfect unison, as if struck by the same blow, no matter how many walls, how much physical distance, separated them.
    It had become thus since the Lord’s ceremony; the investiture of His power into the flawed but inarguably powerful madwoman had not perturbed her in the slightest—but it had had the effect of deepening the range of her careless, whimsical magery.
    Had they not had to endure the results, and the resultant hazards, of the blending of immortal and mortal power, there were men within the walls of the Shining Palace who would have found the entire experiment fascinating. Those men now flinched; they were closest to the balcony upon which Anya had chosen to stand.
    Closest to the roar that crushed conversation, stilled movement, filled silence from one end of the Shining Palace to the other.
    The wall that was flimsy protection from the Northern cold