1 Chapter 1: How Things Change
The first time Aster Silvercrest held a longbow, he remembered struggling.
At ten years old, his arms still hadn’t yet gained their full strength, so the bowstring proved an incredible challenge. His untrained eye didn’t know how to line up the arrowhead with the target—the first day, he couldn’t even hit it. The arrows went flying every which way, or they fell off the bowstring entirely. He’d stormed off the range and back up to his family’s home in a huff.
The second day, he felt a hand on his shoulder as he drew the string back.
“You’re doing it wrong, dummy.”
The particular sound of the voice itself had faded from his memory, but he remembered the face of the boy it belonged to. A young stablemaster’s apprentice, whose hair resembled soft waves of wheat and eyes that looked like fresh-tilled earth just after rain, ready to grow new life. He stretched several inches taller than Aster as he moved behind him. His hands, though clearly built for strength, were still gentle as they pressed Aster’s slim shoulders and arms into the correct position.
His arms shook from the effort of drawing the string back. He managed to touch his straining fingertips to his freckled cheek, then he looked down the shaft of the arrow to the target… and let it fly. Finally, the arrow buried itself in the target’s outermost ring. Aster laughed in delight and his impromptu instructor snorted in proud satisfaction.
“See? You gotta hold it right.”
“How do you know that?” Aster asked. “Do you know how to shoot?”
“Duh, of course I do.” The boy crossed his arms very matter-of-factly. “I’ve been doing it for two years.”
Aster’s eyes twinkled as he looked up at him. “My mother wouldn’t let me start until I was ten!”
“Well, I’m twelve.”
The younger boy bounced in excitement. “You have to teach me! What’s your name?”
“Just call me Jace.”
“Okay, Jace! I’m—”
“ASTER!”
The memory evaporated as quickly as his arrow soared toward its target.
Aster watched as the shaft stuck out just left of the center, sighing in disappointment at his tainted shot. If Jace were here now, he probably would’ve teased him about it. But Jace wasn’t here, and it had been well over a decade since he last saw him.
He lowered his arm, strong enough now to hold the bow steady. The leather grip, well-worn from fifteen years of use, now held the shape of his hand. Calluses on the fingers of the opposite hand kept the bowstring from cutting into his skin. Sharp blue eyes speckled with the tiniest flecks of golden brown tore their gaze away from the target. A thick, dark eyebrow arched on his forehead as he turned to demand of his youngest sister why she’d interrupted his time on the range.
However, the query died on his lips when he saw her running up. She gripped her skirts in her dainty fists, and her long tresses of dark hair flew out behind her. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and she hiccuped a distressed sob as she rushed up to him. Aster immediately reached out for her, catching her by the arm as she stumbled at the last step.
“Anna?” His voice was laced with concern. “What’s wrong, what happened?”
“I-it’s,” Annalyse stammered, reaching up to wipe her eyes. “It’s mother—”
A brief moment of panic set in. “Mother? Is she hurt?”
“No!” Annalyse exclaimed, throwing out her hands. “She’s just told me I have to marry!”
“Marry?”
As he said it, Annalyse broke into hysterical cries and buried her face in her hands. He pulled the poor girl into an embrace, letting her cry into his shoulder. His baby sister hadn’t yet seen her sixteenth birthday, who in the world could their mother be engaging her to?
“Anna,” he said, resting his hand on the back of her head. “Breathe, baby sister. Tell me what happened. What did mother say?”
Her cries dissolved into sniffles, and she managed to compose herself. “M-mother… She said the engagement proposal came yesterday. She said he noticed me during the Spring Festival last year, and wanted to know if I’d presented yet…”
“Who, Anna?”
Her lip quivered, and she turned dark gray eyes up to meet her brother’s blue. “The King.”
Aster pressed his lips together in an attempt to keep his jaw from going slack. The grip he had on his bow tightened until his knuckles were stark white. Rage boiled in his belly, and before he could stop himself, he stripped his quiver off and set it and his bow aside. He marched back up the grassy hill toward the house, leaving his sister in the yard.
Fury crackled through his chest like lightning. The pounding of his boots on the stone floor of the Silvercrest Manor echoed like thunder. A pair of serving girls bowed their heads and ducked out of the path of his oncoming storm as he hastened through the grand halls and smaller corridors. He didn’t stop until he found his mother in her drawing room, taking tea.
“Mother.” His greeting was a cold one.
The woman who brought him into this world was sturdy, both in visage and in temperament. She barely came up to his shoulder in height, and her nut brown hair—tinged with strands of gray and curled just at the ends—sat pinned in a stylish bundle at the back of her head. Annalyse had inherited her gray eyes, and Aster her generous smattering of freckles and proud nose. Graceful eyebrows quirked into an arch as Diyanna Silvercrest regarded her son’s unexpected entrance.
“Son,” she greeted him, setting her teacup down. “I thought you were practicing your archery, I didn’t expect you back for several hours.”
“I was,” he affirmed. “But Annalyse just interrupted me with the news that you intend to engage her to the King.”
The silence that hung in the air was thicker than fog. The fury peeling off of Aster was palpable, and his mother was in no way surprised. After all, the King of their humble little kingdom was more than twice her daughter’s age. Beyond that, there was no denying that King Darreth Vireilon—called "The Tyrant King of Devali" only in hushed whispers with nervous glances over the shoulder—soaked himself in blood in his quest for power. And Aster’s mother wanted to ship his baby sister off to marry him.
Aster waited for her to offer an explanation for several moments. His scowl grew with every passing second, until his mother finally raised her eyes to meet his.
“Annalyse was issued a royal proposal,” Diyanna explained in a flat tone. “We are honored that His Majesty would even think to visit our humble—”
“Visit?!” Aster demanded. “He’s coming here?!”
“Yes, Aster.” His mother’s jaw tightened. “She’s presented as an Omega. By Devali law, she’s old enough to marry.”
Aster grit his teeth and clenched his fists. “She presented last year!”
The tradition went all the way back to ancient times.
In the dawn of humanity, the early inhabitants of Devali struggled to survive in a harsh environment filled with ravenous beasts. Their small clans of family groups struggled to reproduce at the rate they were all dying out, so the gods of nature gave them a gift: they found themselves able to shift into the forms of giant wolves. With claws that could tear through wood, strength ten times their human form, and teeth that could snap bone, they no longer faced extinction.
Upon their coming of age, clan members presented with one of three secondary sexual genders: Alpha, Beta, or Omega. Once presented, they would be available for courtship and marriage. This ancient tradition, as well as the secondary genders, stood the test of several thousand years, even after the need to shift into full animalian form phased out of Devali bloodlines.
Even though she was a year past her coming of age, Aster was not about to let his baby sister be courted by The Tyrant King. Or, perhaps courted wasn’t the right word. Taken would be more fitting, for since the Tyrant King came to power, the ancient gender statuses were assigned to a new caste system.
“You know how she would be treated if she were to be stolen away by that monster!” Aster hissed. “Annalyse is a delicate blossom, the Tyrant would pluck her petals and leave her broken and unable to escape him!”
“You know as well as I what it would mean to refuse his offer,” Diyanna said, her voice even as she addressed her furious son. “I am a Beta, and you and your sister are both Omegas. To turn King Darreth away from our doorstep would be seen as an act of treason.”
Aster’s stomach roiled. He hated it, but he should have known that arguing was pointless. His mother’s will was solid as a boulder that withstood the raging ocean. There was no riptide, no tsunami, no hurricane he could put forth that would make her budge.
He would have to find a different way to save his sister, no matter what it took. Even if it meant taking her place.
