The Warden of House Emberlight
Every salvation becomes a curse.
Leon is his father's bastard, his stepmother's wound, and though no one in House Emberlight will say it aloud, quite possibly the truer of its two sons.
He has spent eighteen years learning to make himself small. Then the Wardens ride into Embertown. The order that has held the breach between the world and the Infernal for a thousand years, warrior-mages who answer when the numbered horrors come through and die in their thousands so the realm wakes the next morning still itself. They are the kingdom's defenders, and the duty that makes them holy is the same one slowly consuming them. They take their recruits from anywhere. For the first time, a door has opened to Leon that does not ask after his mother.
All he has to do is pass the Selection Exam, and prove the one thing his family can never forgive.
But the fire in an Emberlight's blood was never only a gift. It saves, and it consumes, and it has never once let a man choose which. What begins as one bastard's deliverance is the first turn of a longer wheel. Every rescue arrives wedded to its ruin, and every salvation, in the end, becomes a curse.
Danieldrake001 · Fantasy
