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how it might have affected any magical talent he might possess. You’re one of the most powerful mages in the Winter Kingdoms, and heir to the magic of Bava K’aa, one of the strongest sorceresses of her time. Kiara has the regent magic, and while it hasn’t manifested strongly in her, the stories tell of powerful battle magic by the kings and queens of Isencroft in dire times. Magic can skip a generation. Your mother had none of her mother’s power. But often, the magic breeds true. We don’t know what the wormroot might have done to Cwynn’s ability to wield magic.”
    “That’s not entirely true.” Everyone turned to look at Beyral. A necklace of charms and runes rattled as Beyral leaned forward. “During the last great Mage War, the Obsidian King experimented on the weaker mages he captured. He wanted to understand the source of power in order to drain magic from his opponents to strengthen himself. When his spirit was bound and his fortress breached, we saw just how far his experiments had gone.” A haunted look came into Beyral’s eyes. “I heard one of the old Sisters speak of it. In his dungeon, he had a score of captured mages, many of them Sisterhood. He’d sired children on them, and then used magic and potions to alter the babes before birth. None of the women or their children survived, although the Sisterhood did its best to save them.”
    “How did they die?” Tris asked quietly, suddenly cold all over.
    Beyral met his eyes. “Some were consumed alive by magic gone wild. Others died birthing babies that weremonsters. We found bodies in the Obsidian King’s dungeon of more women and of babies too grossly deformed to survive. It’s best for all of us that he left no heir.”
    But he did.
Tris felt Fallon’s gaze even as he averted his eyes. Only a few people knew the truth. The Obsidian King had taken the sorceress Bava K’aa prisoner. Her rescue had been one of the only bright spots in the cataclysmic battle. That Bava K’aa had been pregnant with the child of the Obsidian King was a secret that her rescuers took to their graves. That secret was kept for over fifty years, until Tris defeated the new incarnation of the Obsidian King and learned the truth. The child of that forced union had been Serae, Tris’s mother.
There was nothing wrong with mother. She didn’t have any magic at all. Maybe the Obsidian King didn’t try his experiments on Bava K’aa. I know Lemuel’s spirit fought him as best he could.
Tris struggled with the fear that welled inside him.
    “Tris?” The sound of Soterius’s voice roused Tris from his thoughts and he looked up, hoping his expression masked his feelings.
    “I didn’t know about the experiments,” Tris replied. “But do we know whether wormroot was one of the drugs the Obsidian King used? Cwynn looks perfectly normal, even though he had a difficult birth.”
    “The journals of the Obsidian King were recovered after the war,” Beyral said. “Two of them were entrusted to the Library at Westmarch for safekeeping. The third journal was lost. It’s believed to have been destroyed.”
    Tris kept his face impassive. Thanks to a gift from a powerful
vayash moru
, the “missing” journal lay safe inside a locked trunk upstairs in Tris’s rooms.
    “We may have more to deal with than the heir,” Fallonsaid. “For centuries, a loose alliance of mages has kept sentry along Margolan’s borders. They aren’t Sisterhood, but they do represent all of the elemental magics: land, water, air, and fire. Their job has been to be aware of the currents of magic, with the hope that they might spot hostile magic before it reaches Margolan.”
    “Then why didn’t they do something to stop Arontala?” Soterius demanded.
    Fallon turned toward him. “Their role is to watch beyond Margolan’s borders for an invader with strong magic. But to your point, the Sentries did make the Sisterhood aware that two mages of increasing power were in Margolan. One of them