Prologue

I could feel the energy floating through the air, brushing past my skin like leaves in the wind. I could hear the air leaving the unfortunate souls that littered the ground at my feet. I could see the blood and carnage and destruction that seemed to be spreading around me like wildfire. I could taste the metallic traces of my own blood from a cut on my swollen lip. My fingers clenching around the hilt of my sword at my waist and for the first time since my world was taken from me, I finally felt in control of everything. I did this. Me. this isn't a story in a book of a far away land with a magnificent heroine to save the day. Because I am no heroine. But right now, surrounded by my own destruction, I feel alive.
And when I see him marching through my mess I made, my beautiful mess, I know he is coming to kill me. But unlike my father, I'm ready. I will avenge him. Because I am Iris Brooke Pesaro, daughter of Natalie and Nikolai Pesaro, the best and the worst this land has seen in it's time. And let me tell you, I'm more like my father than I am my mother. And i will destroy everything in my way.