I pulled water into a whip and slashed it at my enemies. My eyes blurred with rain… with tears.
Dead. So many were dead.
Something solid smacked into the back of my head. I fell to the ground—the world turned on its side.
The earth began to rumbled, and a loud CRACK made my ears ring.
Trees collapsed as the ground split through the forest in front of Terra’s wall. Soldiers from both sides disappeared into the gaping maw.
I couldn’t see my brother or Phyra. I didn’t know if they were even still alive.
The world was ending, and Thaimis was gone. I didn’t even try to get up as chaos swirled around me.
“You promised,” I whispered to no one.
I heard a familiar voice. “Come on, Chel! We need to get out of here!” He was yelling, yet he sounded so distant against the pounding rain… against the ringing in my ears. I realized the voice belonged to my brother.
He hoisted me up over his shoulder and the world disappeared.
Something poked my skin through my clothing as I rolled onto my back. I opened my eyes to a wooden beamed ceiling. I grasped a handful of the crunchy stuff I was laying on…straw, it was straw. I was in a—barn? A horse’s nicker verified my assumption.
“I’m so, so sorry, Chel.” I recognized the sweet, feminine voice laced with anguish. “I cannot imagine how you must feel,” Phyra said with sincerity.
I sat straight up, ignoring the throbbing wound on my back. “Thaimis! Where—what—his body?” He needed a proper death ceremony.
“We had to leave it—him behind. I’m sorry! King Zaeden won. We’d be dead if we stayed a moment longer.”
I snarled like a wolf about to jump its prey.
Her face crumpled. “I’m sorry, but I do have a sliver of good news.”
I didn’t respond. I didn’t care. I lay back down in the straw and faced the stall wall.
She was silent for so long, I thought she’d left me alone. But then Phyra said, “I’ve found the earth elemental.”
Those five words gave me the will to survive… because if I wanted revenge, I was going to need all the help I could get. And I vowed to myself, if it was the last thing I did, I would end King Zaeden.
The battle continues in book three.
For Sarah
Even though we are blood, I’d still choose you to be my friend.
Raised to be a torturer, I never imagined I’d one day be called upon to be a hero. I’d been taught to care for nothing and no one. Love meant pain. Love was weakness. Darkness resides in all of us, but the light that drove it back in most people’s hearts had been absent in mine. Or so I thought, until someone showed me even the smallest of sparks can ignite in the dark.
I wasn’t always a good man, and my story’s not for the faint of heart.
Chapter 1
I turned my back on my father and the woman tied to the wheel with a gag in her mouth to fetch the vial of green liquid as ordered.
I still felt pity at the sight of the victim’s pleading eyes. No, not victims I had to remind myself… suspects. Suspects wanted for crimes against the crown.
I clutched the glass vial in my hand. It was as cold and hard as my father’s heart. The woman, whose brown hair was plastered to her forehead with sweat, cried through the gag in her mouth.
My father, keeping his voice low, said into her ear, “Are you ready to confess to your crime?”
The woman nodded frantically, so my father took the gag out of her mouth, but she didn’t confess as she’d promised. They usually didn’t.
“I didn’t do it! I love my king and queen! Please!” Her tears made muddy streaks down her cheeks. Her expensive, lace gown, once the colour of pink roses, was now soiled. She’d been down there for over seven sunrises—in my father’s torture chamber, the place where he earned enough coin to live comfortably.
My father cringed at the woman’s shrill cries and stuffed the wool ball back into her mouth. He held his palm out for me and I placed the glass vial in it. He uncorked the stopper and said to the woman who was one of Queen Nicola’s handmaidens, “You’re making me do this. This is your fault.” He held the vial up to her face and slowly poured the contents down her cheek. The skin the sickly green liquid touched began to bubble and bleed. Her screams were so loud I thought they might make me deaf. The smell of burning flesh was a scent I’d never get used to, would never forget. As her melting cheek filled the chamber with the smell of cooked meat and blood I was thrown into a memory.
Ten springs ago, I was six… six! I watched as my father dragged a sharp blade down a man’s back. The obese man was chained face first, to the wall in the torture chamber. Old blood had stained the wall a dark shade of burgundy. New blood was falling to the floor like a crimson rain shower.
“All right! All right, stop! I did it,” the man confessed, his numerus chins smooshed against the wall as my father flayed his back like a piece of meat. “I killed the mother and her child! Please stop!” he wailed.
I stared at my father with wide eyes… saw the cruel smile on his lips. “There’s a place waiting for you in Mnyama,” he said. He drove the knife into the man’s butchered back, pulling downward so blood poured from the gap between the back of his ribs.
My father handed me the knife he’d just used to kill the murderer. “Find a rag and clean that up while I deal with the body.”
I blinked once at him, but then I took the knife and scrambled to find a rag while he unshackled the body. Blood, endless amounts of blood.
Those, and other similar memories are the first I can recall of my life. My father had brought me along only to watch him work before. But that time, he’d made me help him. It’s funny, the awful things one can get used to when raised around such horrors. “For the good of the kingdom,” my father always said.
I wasn’t so sure this woman was guilty. She certainly didn’t appear so, tied helplessly to that giant, iron wheel. I supposed she could have been the one who inadvertently killed the chef while trying to poison the king. Usually the suspects confessed by now though.
The woman turned her pained gaze on me, her one cheek now ruined. I stared blankly at her. I knew better than to show empathy…to even feel empathy.
I’d once taken a wild rabbit as a pet. It wasn’t afraid of me like an animal should be with a human. So I’d brought it to my room and fed it some left over vegetables from supper. When my father found it, he stuck his dagger through its fluffy, white body. “Everything you love will die,” he’d told me. It was a hard lesson to learn, but I’d learned it that night. After I was done grieving the loss of my new pet, I told myself I could never show care for a living being again. To do so would only cause pain for me and that being.
“I know you did it, filthy wench. A number of others saw you leaving the kitchens that night. Confess!” Spittle sprayed from my father’s lips, which were hidden within his bushy, brown and grey beard. His long brown hair had come loose from its tie at the sides of his face. He never cared about neatness. It made him all the more intimidating… gave him a roughness most knew not to cross.
The woman shook violently as he grabbed an iron spike and a hammer off one of the shelves on the wall.
He placed the spike on her abdomen but paused. He turned to me and held out the spike and hammer. “It’s time you learned, boy.”
I couldn’t speak so I started to shake my head, but my father pressed closer and scowled at me. He was shorter than the average man, but his sturdiness told everyone he wasn’t one to be messed with. His build made up for his lack of height. In his dark brown eyes I saw expectancy... expectancy that I would comply as I always did. I took a deep breath and accepted the items from him.
I stepped up to the woman. Her sad eyes only made me want to wipe the look off her face. She thinks you’re weak. Prove her wrong. It was my father’s voice inside my head.
I placed the spike to her chest. “Not there, you’ll kill her,” my father ordered.
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br /> He didn’t want her dead. The king hadn’t given him leave to end her life as he sometimes did with criminals.
I moved the spike lower. My hands shook uncontrollably. I tried to clear my mind. I wanted… no, I needed to make my father proud.
“We don’t have all day. Move. I’ll do it.” My father shoved me aside with his burly body, taking the spike and hammer from my hands.
I never knew my mother. When I’d asked about her, my father had said she had been some serving wench he’d coupled with a few times. She died giving birth to me, and her friend found my father and gave me to him, his burden to keep.
Cedric Lequerc had never been a loving parent. He did, however, show pride towards me once in a while.
I would succeed the next time a confession waited to be pried from a criminal’s lips.
The woman’s high pitched shriek tore me from my thoughts. My father had removed the gag again, and the spike he’d taken from me poked out of her bare forearm. Sticky, crimson blood wept from the wound and down her arm.
“Forgiiiive me!” she screamed. “I did it! I did it! I was me!” A confession… finally. They almost always confessed.
“And who gave you the poison?” my father asked, his tone bored.
She hesitated, taking quick, loud gulps of air. “Elfron.”
My father’s brows rose. “The healer?”
“Yes.”
“Your confession has been heard. You will be executed at the king’s pleasure,” my father recited the words he spoke after every confession.
The woman was no longer our responsibility. She’d likely be hung in front of the court within a few days.
We left her to seek out one of Terra’s guards. It didn’t take long to find one. Higher numbers of them had been stationed around the kingdom, day and night, since the uprising against the regents had started five springs ago.
The guards all looked the same to me in their uniforms; chainmail with a green tunic over top, and Terra’s symbol of two gold leaves embroidered on the chest.
“The handmaiden confessed. Take her to the dungeon and bring me Elfron the healer.”
“Yes, sir, right away.” The guard wasted no time. All of Terra knew my father worked for King Corbin. Anything he asked for was crown business.
“Let me get his confession,” I pleaded while we waited by the torture chamber not far from the palace. “I can do it.”
My father began to shake his head. He didn’t trust me with the responsibility. And why should he after I’d just failed him?
“I need to start somewhere.”
“You think a sad, old man is the right place to start?” he challenged.
“Maybe not, but it shouldn’t matter who it is if they’re guilty.”
It seemed like he wasn’t going to answer, but then he said, “So be it. I’ll give you one more chance. Remember, this is for the good of the kingdom. Fail and you fail not only me, but all of Terra.”
I wondered if he said those words for my benefit or to ease his own conscience—if he even had one. I didn’t believe he actually did.
We didn’t wait long before the guard brought the old healer to us. The poor man was already trembling. Did I feel sorry for him? I felt sorry he’d made such a dire mistake in selling poison to a stupid woman who’d used it to try to kill our king and queen.
“Do I need to tie you up, or will you tell me it was you who sold poison to one of the queen’s handmaidens?” Sometimes suspects confessed without having to be tortured. Sometimes the sight of the blood stained walls and cruel devices were enough to urge the suspect to spill everything to us.
But this man wasn’t going to be so easy to crack, “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I grabbed one of his twig-like arms. My father grabbed the other. Forcing him down onto the table on one side of the chamber was easy. He struggled as we tied his arms and legs down, but he was no match for our strength and youth. My father and I kept our bodies in good condition. We had to, considering the work we did.
Once he was constricted, I took a sharp dagger and flashed it in front of his face… a tactic to scare him before touching him. “Did you sell poison to a young woman recently?”
Silence.
“Did you know she would use it to try to kill the king and queen?”
Still, he didn’t speak. He just stared at me with hateful, dark brown eyes.
“All right then. I guess we’re doing this the hard way.” I could feel my father’s eyes on me. This was my moment. I couldn’t think, couldn’t hesitate.
I moved closer to the table and placed a dagger between two of the healer’s fingers. Slowly, I made a small slice on the patch of tan skin. It was like cutting into an apple.
The man screamed. I moved on to the next finger.
It took two more cuts before he confessed. “It was me! I sold her the poison.” He said the last part quietly, ashamed to speak the words. His crinkled face was scrunched up in pain. “I didn’t know what she wanted to use it for. I needed the coin.”
“Why do you even have poison? You’re supposed to heal people, not kill them,” my father questioned from behind. I never forgot his presence even for one moment. As he stepped closer to us, the scar bisecting his one eyebrow stood out stark white against his beige skin. He’d received the scar from one of his suspects before I was born. His mistake, he told me.
“I didn’t have it—not at first. I knew how to make it. When she requested it, I told her I could concoct it for her. When I asked who it was meant for, she told me no one of importance. I would’ve never sold it to her if I knew it was meant for King Corbin and Queen Nicola. I’m not stupid.” His eyes dared me to argue the point.
“So you’re not part of the uprising,” I stated.
“As I said, I’m not stupid.” He actually looked offended. I believed him.
“Your confession has been heard. Your sentence will be the king’s decision,” my father said.
We untied the old man with only a wisp of white hair left on his shiny head and took him to the guard to be taken to the dungeon.
“You don’t think King Corbin wishes him executed?” I asked my father.
“Healers are respected. Likely, he’ll live out the rest of his existence in the dungeon, maimed but alive until death comes for him. The people will be happy enough to see the handmaiden hanged.”
He was right. There were few healers and their skills were necessary. King Corbin couldn’t make a habit out of killing them.
I waited for praise from my father, but it never came. All he said was, “You’re lucky. You had it easy with him. Don’t think it’ll always be so.” My father was a hard man to please. Though I was disappointed I had not won his pride that day, I was used to his lack of affection.
After arriving at the simple home we shared in Terra, the kingdom of earth, my father announced he had to meet with King Corbin to discuss the confessions.
I never went with him when he saw the king. I was of no importance to our rulers. I would change that someday soon.
Chapter 2
I was falling through an endless pit of darkness, trying to scream for help, but no sound would come. A bright green vine shot through the darkness and wrapped around my ankle. It glowed against the black nothingness like a lifeline. And then another vine latched onto my wrist. A moment of panic had me thrashing. These vines could rip me apart. I was about to attempt to scream again when more vines appeared. More and more of the green strands appeared until I was cradled by the thick, otherworldly plants and carried up out of the pit… out of the darkness.
I jolted awake with a gasp. I took in the simple room, noting the bare walls and beige curtains. I was in my bedroom. A speck of green on the wooden floor caught my attention. I rolled off the firm mattress to inspect it. Just as I suspected, a small green vine was peeking out from between two floor boards. I plucked the vine out and tossed it under my bed as I’d done many times before. Every time I dreamed of vi
nes, I’d awake to find one growing in my room.
A memory came rushing back to me.
I was still a child when I’d had the nightmare about a wolf with a snake’s head charging for me with wide open jaws. Black venom dripped from its curved yellow fangs. I couldn’t move, paralyzed by my fear. It got so close I could smell its breath when vines wrapped around the creature’s neck and pulled it back.
I woke to a vine with a closed bud growing along my floor.
“Father! Father, look!” I called.
Father’s footsteps stomped across the house. He threw my door open. His body loomed in the space, blocking out the light from the main room. “What is it, boy?”
“Look. When I woke, it was here.” I touched the bud and it opened, revealing a white flower. The flower was like a beacon in my dark room. I stared at it in wonder. “I think—I think I made it… somehow.”
Father frowned and moved closer. I thought he would explain to me what had just happened… would tell me it was a miracle. But he crushed the flower beneath his leather boot and growled, “I hate magic. It’s dangerous and unpredictable. If I ever see you practicing it again, I’ll toss you out on the streets. Understand?”
“But I—”
“Understand?” His tone caused me to recoil.
I was about to tell him I didn’t know how I did it, but he didn’t want to hear anything from me except those two little words he loved. “Yes, Father.”
I didn’t dream about plant life of any kind for a long time after that morning. I told myself it was all one big coincidence… until it happened again a few springs ago. I remembered my father’s words when I saw the vine and ripped it from my floor before he could see it. This was the fourth time I’d hid the truth from my father. What that truth was exactly, I didn’t know. To believe I had magic was lunacy. Someone had to be playing a trick on me. But who? That was the question. I had no friends. The whole kingdom feared my father. I couldn’t think of a single person who would dare break into our small home to play a trick on me.
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