Prologue

“Alright, everyone, that’s enough, our break is over. Gather up, now. Vensa, if you’d fix the classroom floor for us, please?” Leander moved to the instructor’s stool at the edge of the cliff, the seaside wind fluttering his robes. The deep violet matched the glint of his eyes in the afternoon sunlight, just as the softness of the fabric matched that of his expression. Rambunctious as they were, it was clear he enjoyed his post tutoring the children.

Vensa, a small girl with bright blonde hair and dark brown eyes, looked at their teacher and pouted a little. “It looks better this way, Teacher.” She glanced down at the ground and sideways at her peers before a mischievous smirk appeared.

Ripples in the ground went outward from the small girl wrapped in petite brown robes, and one particular ripple went higher than another to knock a boy on his rear. Vensa giggled uncontrollably as she sat down on the now-smooth spot of earth that her fledgling power had flattened. Behind those brown Earthborn eyes, she was nothing but trouble.

The rest of the class filled in, laughing as the boy righted himself in his space. Leander just shook his head. “When he thinks you look better with vines growing through your hair later, I don’t want to hear about it.” The boy’s green Forestborn eyes sparkled with the thought of eventual revenge, but he kept his place as the class settled. The low grasses around him swayed idly to lie against his legs as he came to rest.

“Now, let’s see if you’ve all been paying attention.” Leander raised a single, dramatic finger, pointing it up at the afternoon clouds at first. “I’m going to point this finger at a spot on the horizon, and the first pup to tell me correctly what’s beyond that horizon gets to run a lap and make one change to the class circle before they take their seat.”

He lowered his arm dramatically and moved it along the horizon to make sure he had the children’s attention before he allowed it to come to rest, pointing almost due east, past the palace rising in the distance.

The Forestborn boy’s arm shot up. “That way’s the Banished Isle! It’s tiny, but it’s there!”

“Very good, Danas. And remember, that’s where they send you if you’re very, very naughty. Try to keep that in mind while you’re plotting your revenge on little Vensa here, will you? I can hear you getting carried away in there.” Leander tapped the side of his head with a knowing smile.

The Forestborn boy went a little pale, viscerally reminded that their Heartborn teacher could read his thoughts. Still, he got up and took his lap around, beckoning thorns up from the ground around Vensa’s space with a gesture, without pushing any of them actually close enough to sting her.

“Who is next?” Leander’s arm rose and fell again, this time pointing due south.

More tiny arms shot up, and Marella, Leander’s Earthborn mate, chuckled from her spot off to the side. She was there mostly to help corral any rowdy children. She nodded toward a small girl with dappled blonde hair, brown streaks through it, and slate grey Stoneborn eyes.

When Leander called on the little girl, Calla, she blushed a little, shy but eager. “The Reef. My mama says her family is from there.”

“More properly known as The Burning Reef, while you’re at your lessons, thank you very much. But very good, Calla, that is right.” Leander looked over the children and put up a hand to his eyes, to warn them to prepare themselves.

As the children closed their eyes, he reached out to each of their minds, images of barren landscapes and bare stone moving from his memories to theirs. There were visions of lava flows cascading down hillsides to pillow out into the ocean. “It’s a beautiful place, in its own way. Just different from here.”

“Very different.” Another little girl spoke up, Millie, her eyes screwed tight, but there was a breeze that whipped around her easily. With her excitement, the wind picked up around her, answering her emotions. “I heard Skyborn can fly from their cliffs! They’re so high. Higher than here.”

“They are, and they can!” Leander whispered back, as if there was some private conspiracy to the conversation in front of the other dozen students. “But only the strongest and bravest are strong and brave enough to try. It’s no small thing to fly. If you try, you’d best know how to land.”

An Earthborn boy in the back still had his hand raised insistently, and he made squeaking noises of urgency to be called on. “The Genvin is that way too, right, Teacher?”

“The Genovin Kingdom,” Leander corrected gently, “is farther than the Reef, yes, but it’s more…” he pointed south toward the Reef again, but moved his indication a bit more southwest, pointing into the clouds as if he could launch a thought and hit the distant kingdom. “Full of Earthborn and Forestborn…it’s supposed to be a huge place, bigger than the Isles or the Reef all together. I’ve never been there, myself. One of you will have to go there someday and tell me if it’s true or not.”

Vensa looked excited by the idea. She looked over at Marella, since she felt a kinship with the Earthborn grownup that was mated with her teacher. Marella smirked at Vensa. “It’s not an easy ride to get there. You’d have to cross through the waters of the Reef, and Lady Asira does not take kindly to strangers passing through. Maybe the fearless Captain Destin could get you there, but it’s an adventure for only the truly brave.”

“I’m brave!” Several of the children piped up at the same time, shouting their confidence. A little boy with black hair and dark blue Oceanborn eyes said he could swim there, and a little girl with dark skin and stark red Fireborn eyes said that Lady Asira would let her through because Lady Asira had a Fireborn brother and would be nice to a Fireborn.

All the children were attempting to one-up each other until Marella quaked the ground a little beneath them to get their attention. “Listen to your teacher. This is a lesson, not a game. Games will come later.”

“She’s right, you know.” Leander looked over the children with a hand out to settle them, their emotions responding to his influence as easily as the earth did to his mate, or the breeze to Millie’s whims. “Games are for later. Now is the time for you all to learn as much as you can about this wide world of ours. That way, when you grow up, and you are no longer pups, but full-grown wolves, you’ll know your way around. Then you can find your place in it, to make it your own.”

Leander got up from his seat and grabbed a stick to draw in the loose earth between his students, a loose collection of blobs above, a long strand of individual threads in the middle, and a large mass far below.

“The Seven Isles. The Burning Reef. The Genovin Kingdom.” He repeated as he stabbed each of the three major regions, then tossed the branch to his Fireborn student to burn. “Don’t forget them. They are the only world we have. It is a broad and empty ocean otherwise.”

He looked up at the approach of a plainly-dressed woman hiking up the hillside toward them. Leander straightened up to step down toward her, while the children made their own doodles in the ground behind him. “Is their dinner ready?”

The woman smiled, even though she was a little dirty, and clearly dressed for hard labor. Her brown hair was braided down her back, and the few children who looked up dismissed the sight of her easily. She held up a basket for Leander to see.

Adriana, a human slave, was of no importance to most wolfkind. Even to the wolf children.

“I brought yours and Marella’s. Snacks for the little ones, if they want it. The meal isn’t quite ready for all of them yet.”

“I’ll have them run themselves tired for a while first, then. Thank you.” He took the basket from her with a nod, even as another of the guards nearby gave him a confused look. What was he doing exchanging pleasantries with a human? Thanking her? Leander didn’t seem interested in explaining himself, and ignored the look as he handed off the basket to Marella.

“Alright, little ones, enough geography for the day. The first one of you to make it three times around the pond will be the first to get treats with dinner. Ready…off with you!”

Before he was even finished speaking, the children were leaping out of their robes and landing on four legs instead of two, rushing and tumbling over each other on their way downhill to the pond that stood between the hilltop and the palace in the distance. They were faster as wolves than they were in their humanlike form, after all.

He walked beside Marella and handed off some of the food with a grin. “There, now we can eat in peace.”

Marella grabbed some dried meat from the basket and gave some to Leander before she popped some into her mouth. She smiled over at Adriana, who hadn’t left yet. “They’re so cute. Someday I’ll convince this mate of mine to make some of our own.” She looked over at her Heartborn mate as lewd thoughts easily slipped from her mind into Leander’s.

“Someday.” Leander agreed, sending a few thoughts of his own back in answer to hers. Neither of them blushed easily, but they did their best to keep each other on their toes regardless. “In a…more peaceful time, maybe.” Leander nodded out to sea, where they could all see ships coming into harbor, sleek hulls and broad sails of ships from the Reef, not commonly seen in port on the Queen’s Isle. “I doubt they’re bringing good news.”

Adriana looked out at the ships, but she kept her voice low as she responded, since guards still stood nearby. “Does a more peaceful time exist?” She glanced down at her calloused hands, a new gash on the back of one of them from her day’s work. Although most wolves thought of her as nothing but a disposable tool, not all of wolfkind hated humans. “Especially after what happened with the rebellion?”

Leander waited until they were far enough away from the other guards set to watch for the safekeeping of the children, his violet eyes still on the ships. “You’re assuming the rebellion is over.”

His eyes shifted to the palace, where some of his oldest friends had died a mere year ago for their plots against the king and queen of the Seven Isles who lived there. Their monarchs thought that by killing the leaders of the rebellion, they had squashed it for good and intimidated the population into quiet servitude again.

The thoughts that Leander heard constantly as he moved through the Isles said otherwise.

“I can assure you, it is only beginning.”