by Boyce, S. M.
Carden’s smirk faded. He hesitated on the platform, apparently surprised. Without another thought, Kara sprinted toward him.
Her dress pulled on her legs, the slit widening with each step as the fabric ripped from the strain. Her bare feet slapped along the floor—pit pat, pit pat. Loose strands of her hair floated about her as she ran. Air soared through her lungs when she should have been breathless from the exertion. Too much power tore through her. Too much adrenaline. She couldn’t stop.
Any Stelians between her and the invading Blood gasped and shifted out of her way. The smile never left her face.
Carden frowned and stepped over Elana’s now-still body. He walked toward Kara, his body growing with every step. His shoulders stretched. His arms thickened. His eyes burned red. His charcoal-gray skin darkened until he became like a shadow.
All Stelians within a hundred feet buckled and fell to their knees as Carden sucked the energy out of them to dawn his daru—the most powerful form a royal yakona could assume. And according to Braeden, the Stelian daru could even feed off of fear. Kara had never fought a royal’s daru before, though she had seen one—Braeden lost control of himself when she refused to make him a vagabond all those months ago. Back then, she was terrified of his sudden surge of power and hatred. But not now.
With the power-limiting bracelet gone, Kara didn’t fear anything.
Her mind buzzed. She disconnected from the world, from everything. She saw only the evil man walking toward her. Lights faded. Time slowed. Only the patter of her feet on the floor reached her ears, marred of course by the occasional rip in her dress as she pushed the boundaries of what it could endure. Sweat trickled down her neck.
Nearly to Carden, Kara dropped her wrist guard.
“You’re mine,” she said to the king.
“We’ll see,” Carden answered. His voice came out as a growl.
A black mist shot from Carden’s fingers. It sailed toward Kara. She didn’t think. She didn’t slow. She didn’t even react. Instead, a flare of green light hurled away from her on its own, tearing into the smoke. The fog burned away in a green blaze. Dust hung in the air.
Carden ambled toward her, apparently in no rush. Another bolt of smoke shot from his hands. And another. And another. Each met the same fate as the first.
In seconds, she reached him. Her hands moved on their own. Red sparks burst to life in her palms. The flickers hummed, jumping back and forth in arcs that formed bridges between her fingers.
Carden lunged for her neck, his red eyes blazing. He didn’t make it.
She grabbed his wrists. The red sparks burned through him, racing along his arms. He yelled. With an alien strength she didn’t understand, Kara twisted her body and flung him toward the front doors at the far end of the throne room. He sailed through the air like a disc and crashed into the kneeling throng of his people.
The Stelians came to watch their king torture Kirelms. They would get a different show.
Carden pushed himself to his feet, but Kara reached him before he stood. She moved like fire across paper, or water through a brook. She didn’t understand it. She didn’t really care, either.
His eyes widened in surprise a split second before Kara kicked him in the gut. He sailed backward once more, victim to a strength Kara didn’t know she possessed.
Again and again, she knocked him backward. More and more Stelians bent over as he passed, but it didn’t matter how much energy he stole from them. It wouldn’t be enough.
Kara paused. He had to be drawing every last drop of energy from his subjects. Idiot. Sending them after her in one mob would have been smarter. She would have still killed them, sure, but it would have been a more effective means for him to escape. He probably still didn’t realize retreat was the only way he would make it out of this alive.
Arrogant bastard.
A fresh wave of glee burned through her. He wouldn’t make it out of this alive.
She shot a bolt of green light into his gut, expecting it to tear him to pieces like it did the other Stelians. It somehow didn’t. She frowned. Instead, the attack shot Carden back through the main doors and onto the courtyard where Aurora had become the Blood of her people not much earlier.
Kara expected sympathy to tear through her at the thought of the princess’s pain. Worry, perhaps. At a minimum, she expected anger for Carden’s rampage. But only the burning joy of murder kept her company.
She shrugged the thought away.
Carden hunched. His knees shook, despite the raging power that must have come from his daru. Kara stopped barely two feet away.
“What are you?” he asked, his red eyes wide.
“Efficient,” Kara answered.
She shot another bolt of green into his face. He sailed backward through the air and hit the stone wall opposite the castle. It crumbled beneath him. Boulders flew in every direction. Though he broke through the stones, the wire mesh of the great dome above them caught the king and stopped him from flying over the edge. The second dome lay just beyond. Dense clouds appeared past that, shielding a sheer drop to the valley below.
Through a gap in the white fluff, a forest appeared. Sunlight glinted off of silver roofs. A road twisted away, far below. Funny—Kara hadn’t thought there would be a village so close to the kingdom, much less in plain view.
She and Carden had apparently come to the edge of the floating city on which he had declared war. He was inches from freedom, yet he would never be able to tear through the wire dome protecting the city from invaders. How beautifully ironic.
Carden slumped against the cage, his fingers twitching. Smoke radiated from his clothes. Bulges and small domes appeared in his skin, slithering just beneath the surface—likely bones popping back into place.
Time to end this.
Rays of green light blossomed over Kara’s body like solar flares. Another whip of energy attacked the slumping king. It hit him. He yelled in agony. The force shot him backward yet again into the mesh. Black blood coursed down his arms from fresh cuts in his neck, yet the blow still didn’t break him.
Kara knew what would.
She set the heels of her palms together and steadied them against her chest. Without effort, she redirected the green light humming along her skin into her hands. It leaked away and congealed into a hot ore of energy. It pulsed. It burned. It slithered over itself, flares shooting off in every direction.
And with every second, the ball of light in her hands grew. It grew from the size of a baseball to a volleyball. A basketball. It grew bigger and bigger and bigger until Kara knew it would finally be enough to kill Carden. With one attack, she would end him forever.
She should have thought of Braeden. She should have wondered how he would react to becoming Blood. She should have worried about what he would become when the power was his. But she didn’t. Only murder mattered.
She focused on Carden’s twitching body. A cloud passed by. Rooftops from the village below came into view once more. Carden lifted his eyes to watch her, but evidentially couldn’t move. Perhaps he chose not to.
She aimed.
Fire.
But the light continued to grow. It wouldn’t obey.
Kara couldn’t move. She couldn’t release the energy. It pulsed in her fingers, sucking the life out of her.
A pang of dread sank to her toes. The power merely used her as a vessel; she couldn’t control it. Sparks broke out over the ball of light. It sizzled. Smoke drifted into the sky. Something hummed.
Panic sent her pulse racing. The orb of light grew ever larger, blocking out everything else. Flares broke away so quickly she could no longer see the true edge of the glowing ball.
She cursed.
With a jolt, the energy left.
A kick to her chest shot Kara backward. She flew, or perhaps she hovered in the air. She couldn’t really tell.
Her head cracked against a stone wall. Her vision blurred. She gasped.
The world dipped in and out of focus. Numbness
ate away at limbs, inching toward her core. She tried to move her fingers or blink her eyes, maybe, but her body didn’t respond.
Someone screamed. Someone else joined in. In fact, several people joined them. The voices pushed against Kara’s mind, tearing it to bits. She longed to cover her ears, but she still couldn’t move. She whimpered instead.
Pain tore through her right wrist. She flinched. Hands grabbed her, and she pushed against them. They wouldn’t leave. A strap tightened. Sharp spikes dug into her arm.
Her mind cleared.
The world rushed back. A cold wind tore through her hair. She shivered. Her wrist throbbed. She couldn’t see straight. White and silver and dark gray blobs streaked across her vision. Guilt burned through her without her understanding why. Shame.
A silver blur leaned in. White blurs blocked out the world behind it. She blinked until her eyes could focus on it.
Gurien.
He stared at her, mouth a tight line. His wings blocked everything behind him, almost like he had encased her within them. Like a cocoon.
The ground moved beneath her. No—she moved. Her body swung back and forth, as if someone held her.
Bit by bit, the world pieced itself together. Gurien cradled her in his arms. Sconces whizzed by. The stone walls passed too quickly for her to focus on any side passage or doorframe.
“What—?”she asked.
“Not yet,” he said.
Kara closed her eyes. Something hissed. Stone scraped against stone. Fire flickered in a dark hall. Boots slapped against rock. Another door groaned as it opened.
“Is she alive?” a woman asked.
“Barely,” Gurien answered.
A warm cushion pressed into Kara’s neck. She smiled and hummed with pleasure. Something furry brushed her cheek. It purred. The last of Kara’s energy faded away. Her neck relaxed into the soft pillow beneath her, and she slept.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
DISCOVERED
After two days of nothing but Stelians building more guard towers, Braeden raced through the Stelian forests on Iyra’s back, Gavin and his wolf Mastif in tow. Branches whipped by, their dead twigs nothing but gray blurs in Braeden’s peripheral vision. The sun glittered through gaps in the canopy, the occasional beam casting a spotlight on the trail as he led their small party back to Ayavel.
He couldn’t wait to leave. Gavin’s offhanded comment burned in the back of his mind, but Carden couldn’t know about Braeden’s plans. It wasn’t possible. He always kept to the fringes of the kingdom, observing with stealth he acquired from the best Hillsidian trackers. That sort of silence couldn’t be noticed. He’d put so much care and effort into remaining hidden—Carden could never have suspected his presence.
The trail curved to the left. A hundred yards off, the forest ended along the banks of a lake. Sunlight glinted off the water. Mountain tops huddled in the distance, marking the kingdom’s edges with a frame of impassable barriers. The forgotten lichgate Braeden found still lay hidden in a dense patch of bushes beside the lake, far enough from the water for a horde of soldiers to easily access. It would serve his still-developing attack plan well as long as Carden didn’t know it existed.
Without warning, the light dimmed. Braeden blinked to clear his vision, but the forest darkened further. His jaw tensed as the light faded away. A tendril of white smoke curled before him. Fog rolled through the trees.
Gavin gagged. “Braeden, what—?”
“I don’t know. Hurry!”
Iyra grunted and charged forward. Braeden clung to her back, head low to avoid the thickening smog. It had no scent, and though Gavin choked on it, Braeden could still easily breathe. He didn’t know what was going on, but he needed to get out of there.
The smoke condensed. It swirled and churned before him, no end in sight. He couldn’t see the ground or his own feet. He couldn’t even see Iyra, though her quickening breath pushed against his legs as he tensed on her back. Iyra skidded to a halt. Leaves crunched and slid beneath her paws, but Braeden couldn’t see anything.
Gavin cursed somewhere nearby, suggesting he had stopped as well. “I can’t see!”
“Be quiet,” Braeden snapped.
Something rammed into Iyra. They fell. She screamed, the roar like a knife scraping across iron. Ice shot through Braeden’s body. Iyra fell on his leg, trapping him beneath her. Her weight snapped bones in his knee and ankle. He stifled a yell of his own.
He reached for his sword but never made it to the hilt. A fist connected with his cheek. Another shot into his neck. A third hit his chest, and a fourth knocked his head into a rock on the ground. He cursed and examined the thick mist. It hid everything from view, and the fists only appeared seconds before they hit him.
The barrage stopped. A moment of silence set his nerves on fire. A sudden bolt of lightning coursed through the fog, casting exaggerated shadows of his attackers. A stream of energy crashed into his midsection. He curled around himself. Another shocked his back. His skin burned. Smoke hovered along his pores. His body couldn’t heal fast enough.
Iyra still wouldn’t move. She didn’t even breathe. Panic and fear ripped through Braeden’s core. He couldn’t lose her, but he couldn’t let himself die, either. He slid a hand beneath her and lifted in an effort to slide his leg free. She didn’t budge. Another bolt of lightning hit his neck. Agony splintered down his back. He stifled a scream and fell against Iyra’s torso. His body shook. Yet again, he tried to slide free.
The rush of fabric pulling against metal drifted through the fog. A man screamed, but Braeden didn’t recognize the voice. Whimpering followed. A heavy step landed by his head. Braeden twisted, trying to get a solid view of his attacker, but smoke distorted everything.
Braeden conjured a gray flame and shot it toward the footsteps. He summoned another, and another, until a volley of fireballs sailed away from him in every direction.
A green blade cut through the smoke. It sliced Braeden across the chest, the wound only an inch or two deep. Pain blistered from the cut. Black blood coursed down his shirt, boiling as it touched the air. Pressure sank into Braeden’s chest. He couldn’t breathe. For whatever reason, his body wouldn’t heal the wound. With each passing second, the pain worsened. It was as if the wound were getting bigger.
A wave of adrenaline fueled every muscle in Braeden’s body. He pulled on his leg with everything he had. It gave an inch. He sucked in as much of a breath as he could muster and pulled again. This time, his leg slipped free of Iyra’s still body.
He pushed himself to his feet, but agony cracked through his chest. He fell to his knees, reaching for his sword, but he couldn’t even find the hilt. The world spun around him. His breath caught in his throat. More blood poured down his shirt. Small drops of the black liquid fell off into the mist as it thickened.
A gust ripped through the fog. The mist thinned. Shapes came into focus: trees, men, underbrush. The haze dissolved. Gavin stood five feet away. Green stains lined rips in his shirt. He furrowed his brows, focused on whatever he was doing. He’d probably created the gust blowing away the dense smoke.
Five Stelians stood around them in a circle, blocking both the exit and the way they’d come. The soldiers wore black pants and shirts, and each had a black cloth wrapped around his head so that only his eyes and hands showed through the layers of fabric. Black eyes stared at Braeden. Fists tightened. And though Braeden tried to stand, the gaping wound in his chest suffocated him whenever he tried to move. He remained on his knees.
A flash of green caught his eye. His head snapped around. A sixth Stelian crouched nearby, breathing through his teeth in sharp bursts. He lifted a sword into the air, eyes locked on Braeden.
Braeden’s gaze shifted to the sword in the soldier’s hand. The green hilt struck a chord in Braeden’s memory, but it wasn’t until the blade swung down toward his head that he recognized the Hillsidian Sartori.
He didn’t have time to question why the soldier had the sword Carden stole from Gav
in’s mother after he killed her. With what little energy he had left, Braeden pulled the air toward him. Tension burned along his arms. His fingers twitched. The air by his face compressed into the tip of an arrow. He aimed and released the attack. His body shifted, ducking the blade on impulse. The arrowhead sailed toward the soldier and sank into his forehead.
The assassin collapsed in a heap. The Hillsidian Sartori dug into the dirt where Braeden had been an instant earlier.
Pain splintered through Braeden’s chest. He screamed and stretched out on the ground, too exhausted to move. Every breath sent a fresh wave of agony rippling through him. He froze, trying to regain his composure, but even thinking hurt.
A boot crunched nearby leaves. Braeden opened his eyes and tensed. Gavin picked up his Sartori, staring at the green blade. A smirk crept over his face. He swung the sword, testing the weight in his hands, and stepped over Iyra’s body as he returned to the circle of soldiers.
Braeden’s vision blurred. Through the haze of his unfocused eyes, he managed to make out two corpses, apparently victims to Gavin’s years of fighting experience. The remaining three attacked at once, each employing a different technique as they rushed the king. White smoke, lightning, and fire blazed toward the Hillsidian, but he didn’t break his stride. Another gust broke through the trail, likely on Gavin’s command, and he swung the Sartori without hesitation.
Braeden took a deep breath, but pain splintered through his torso. He examined his chest. A two-foot wound split him open at a diagonal from his shoulder to hip. His muscles tensed. He lay back and set his hands on his wound, conjuring what few healing techniques he knew. He’d never had to heal himself before. He didn’t know if anything could heal a Sartori wound, but he had to try.
His palms glowed white as he focused on the blood seeping from him. He channeled what little energy remained into healing himself. The energy slipped from his fingers, but the wound continued to grow. The skin around the edges of the cut dissolved away as though burned by acid. Panic bubbled through him. Another surge of adrenaline rocked him to the core, but he couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t even heal himself—something he had never failed to do.