Coren promised herself the sky would always be open. Any moment the palace or Riata became too much, or the call of darkness in her blood became too much, she would leave.
Just a few months before, she’d been trapped on Weshen Isle, with no way to leave, and every reason to stay.
Coren careened in a wide circle and resumed her flight to the palace, each beat of her wings and heart a promise to herself that the opposite was now true.
Chapter 2
NIK STEPPED INTO THE morning sun reluctantly, scanning the MagiSea sparkling on the horizon. Part of his heart warmed and opened at its beauty, but a much larger, more permanent piece was too busy watching for potential danger on every side.
An island was no refuge for someone with his history.
Nik knew he should be happy for his life, for his freedom, and for the care shown him by Lorenya and many of the women on Weshen Isle.
But he’d had a taste of something more with Sy - a flavor of happiness unknown in his few years.
He’d also breathed the ashes of the dead all too recently. It had been only a handful of days since he’d had to choke out the story of the slaughter of Weshen City. Perhaps prisoners had been taken, but Nik had seen none alive. The women still openly mourned, raging against the loss of their men and their people’s hopes.
None of it made for happy dreams or restful nights.
More than anything, Nik wished for the simple, impossible promise Sy had made him. The note remained crumpled in his pocket, still and always. His fingers traced its folds even now, though he’d had the words memorized since the morning he found the paper beside him on the pillow instead of Sy’s beautiful face.
Sy’s promise echoed in his mind: Young or old...I’ll come back for you...
“Nik?” One of Lorenya’s tiny, frail children was calling for him. No, frail wasn’t quite the word. They were hardy. Brave, even.
But so, so mortal. So easily wounded, both their hearts and their smooth-skinned knees.
Nik feared for them. They had no idea what sort of monster slept in the village with them each night.
He turned, forcing a smile for the girl skipping down the beach.
“Mummy has breakfast!”
“Thank you,” he said, pulling at the water lapping at his bare feet. He fashioned its sources into a delicate, sparkling flower and placed it in her expectant hands. She giggled and turned, sprinting toward the village. Nik was careful to maintain the flower’s shape in his mind for as long as he knew it would take to show her siblings her treasure.
It wouldn’t stay a flower forever.
Nothing he shifted stayed forever.
Still, he turned toward Lorenya’s house. Despite the tragedies of life beyond its walls, it was a joyful place, full of giggles and shrieks as the young Weshen chased and played. He was nearly to the door when another voice reached him.
“Good morning, Nikesh.”
He turned, his head instinctively ducking under the commanding gaze of Matron Behrenna.
When he met her gaze, her eyes held a glint of curiosity, but the set of her shoulders was all business.
“How can I help you, Matron?” Nik said bluntly. It had seemed to please her before, when he asked to stay in the women’s village. He had been honest that he needed to heal.
She allowed the corner of a smile, nodding. “I want you to begin teaching magic again.”
Nik’s heart pulsed with fear, and a trickle of sweat gathered between his shoulder blades, sliding down his spine. “I want to help. But that...”
“You can. You will. There are whispers in the air of great change. Weshen needs to be ready to face the world, for the world is coming for us.”
Nik nodded, unable to form words. His mind was too full of the screams of the Weshen as they had scrambled to escape his teaching before. He saw the broken body of Ashemon’s oldest friend. He remembered the curses in their eyes and on their lips as they understood what he was capable of.
Behrenna touched his shoulder, bringing him back to the present morning. “Simple lessons are all we need at first, Nikesh. Teach them to close their eyes and feel the sources in their blood. The sources in the sand and sea around them. Begin now, or you never will.”
She turned and walked away, and Lorenya’s door burst open. A child tumbled out and grasped his limp hand, pulling him inside.
Nik ate mechanically, smiling at the childish stories and jokes provided with each bite. He wiped a spill, caught a spoon before it hit the floor, and blocked the littlest one from pulling the pan into his lap.
Soon, Lorenya shooed the children out the door to wash, trusting the oldest to watch the others. Nik knew they couldn’t all be hers, but he’d hesitated to ask, knowing many of the women cared for the children of a dead sister or cousin. He didn’t want any more conversations about losing loved ones.
“What did Behrenna want?” Lorenya asked as Nik blinked around at the sudden stillness.
He opened his mouth, but fear blocked the words. Lorenya sighed and leaned into his side, draping an arm around his shoulders.
“Nik, it will be okay. I trust you not to hurt us. This fear you have will keep you paralyzed forever if you don’t just begin.”
He hesitated, but as the silence grew between them, he forced himself to nod. “I’ll try.”
She smiled and dropped a kiss on the top of his head, as though he were one of her own young children. “I’ll spread the word.”
SY WATCHED THE SKY where Coren had disappeared, quite a while before. All their things had been packed away, and the boat stored beneath the canopy of a large oaken tree.
He and Resh had dragged Jyesh from the boat and fashioned a sort of litter to slide him across the grass. As much as he dreaded hauling the boy, he was glad the former Lord of Witches was unconscious. He had a mouth on him, and Sy trusted his loyalty to Coren about as much as a Brujok’s.
“I don’t want to wait any longer,” Resh remarked, though there was no true impatience in his tone. In fact, Sy noted a sort of lazy expectation of good things to come.
“This one will challenge her for the throne. You know that.” Sy nudged his foot toward the unconscious former Lord of Witches.
“And I’ll be there to slit his throat,” Resh answered lightly, yet the glint in his narrowed eyes told Sy the truth. Sy hoped it never came to that, but redemption for Coren’s twin brother seemed unlikely. Jyesh had been only eight when he had first killed a man, and it had been no accident. Then he was banished by his own people, left for dead, and raised by Brujok, of all things.
“He’s known nothing but cruelty, yet he’s so different from Nik,” Sy murmured.
“No - Jyesh was loved as a boy. He only found cruelty after everyone abandoned him. Nik is just now finding love,” Resh countered. Sy stared at his brother as the truth opened before him.
“I’m glad you found him,” Resh added, his eyes fixed on the distant towers of Starshelm Palace.
Sy nodded. So was he - and by all that was sacred, he’d find Nik again.
The smile had just begun to cross his lips when pain radiated through his chest, fissuring out until every finger curled in agony. Sy gasped and cried out, and Resh hurried to him.
Whispers filled the air, burrowing into his ears like sparks of fire.
You think to love another while we are in your presence? The voice echoed in the chambers of his skull. We are jealous masters, young Weshen. There will be no room for anything but us.
Sy tore at his skull, realizing too late he had shifted to claws and fur. Blood coursed down his cheeks as he flickered between the shapes of man and creature. Releasing a savage roar that ended on a hoarse human note, he collapsed to the ground with faint laughter echoing in his ears.
“The curse,” he managed to whisper to Resh before his eyes rolled back in his head and his eyelids slid closed.
RESH SOAKED A SHIRT in the channel water, wrung it out, and dabbed it against Sy’s ragged temple. Sy had been uncons
cious for too many long minutes now. Resh needed medicine, and he had none. He cursed in fluid sentences as he dug in the remaining packs with shaking hands. By all that was blessed by the Magi, could he not even find the lemondrine liquor?
He had no idea how to help his brother, and the helplessness churned into worry and fury.
Politics he could handle. If Riata accepted the ring, then Resh knew he could help Coren navigate the courts.
But magic? Curses? He understood none of that. Wiping the sweat from Sy’s forehead again, Resh vowed that they would find a way to break this infernal curse and save Sy from these specters.
A moan snapped him to attention, but it hadn’t come from his brother’s throat.
Instead, the Lord of Witches was blinking groggily at the early morning sky. “You,” he growled, catching sight of Resh.
“Yes, I slipped you a potion. You’ll recover, though. No harm done.”
“No harm? Oh, there will be harm, Weshen.”
Resh watched without concern as Jyesh struggled to sit. He recoiled as the former Lord leaned to the side and retched acid from his empty stomach.
“Weshen is hardly an insult coming from someone with the exact same blood in their veins,” Resh pointed out.
“That is our only similarity.” Jyesh spat on the ground, wiping his mouth against his torn silken sleeve.
“Thank the Magi,” Resh muttered.
“What’s wrong with him?” Jyesh gestured toward where Sy slumped against the tree trunk where Resh had propped him. His face was pale and still, but the bleeding had stopped, at least.
“He has the King’s curse now. The brothers torment him, I guess.” Resh wondered if anyone really knew much about this curse. Perhaps once they reached the palace, he could begin to research its origins and possible ways to break it.
“I can feel them. Their sources are here, but not here.” Jyesh’s voice was laced with an aggravated curiosity. “I can sense them, but not latch onto them like other sources.”
“You can’t dissipate them?”
Jyesh looked sharply at Resh, as though determining if he joked. He shook his head. “My power is weakened right now, but I don’t think even I could reach these spirits.”
“Could a SoulShifter?” Resh asked, suddenly remembering what Mara had been searching for in Coren and Jyesh.
“It’s possible, but since one of those hasn’t existed in generations, no one would know, now would they?”
“Is Coren the SoulShifter?” Resh asked, his voice low. He wasn’t even sure he wanted an answer for that.
Jyesh narrowed his eyes. “Not if I figure out the power first. It is no fated thing, just a skill to learn, and I plan to learn it before she does.”
The two faced each other in a showdown that Resh knew was pointless. But by the Magi, he wouldn’t be the first to back down.
Jyesh broke into a taunting grin after several long seconds. “So you’re the one bedding my sister?”
Resh raised an eyebrow but stayed quiet. He’d let Coren speak of whatever they had shared if she chose. He glanced at the sun, willing himself not to grow restless. They had already been here too long.
Anything could have happened to Coren by now.
Sy groaned beside them, and Resh scooted closer, pressing a skin of water to his brother’s lips. The water dribbled onto his tongue, and Sy coughed, his eyelids fluttering. A rare curse slipped from his mouth with a heavy breath.
“How do you feel?” Resh asked.
Sy muttered something incomprehensible, which could have been another curse. Resh smiled to himself, thanking the Magi his brother was so tough.
“Can you sit up? Can you walk to the palace?” Jyesh asked, staggering to his own feet. “Because I’m not carrying you.”
Resh eyed him, calculating the possibilities for knocking the idiot out again. But there was no way he could drag both of them to StarsHelm.
Sy rolled to his hands and knees, pushing up a little at a time. He shared a long look with Resh, in which they agreed that no matter how slow their progress, it would be better to move forward than to linger in the Riatan countryside.
“What do you know of StarsHelm?” Sy asked Jyesh as they turned toward the palace.
“Little. I’ve never been here. Mara visited me. Kept me like a pet in the towers of Rurok.”
Resh ignored the boy’s self-pity. “If even one of those barbarians hurts Coren, I will tear that palace apart from the inside out.”
Sy nodded in agreement. “She has friends there, though. Giddon and her father’s men. And she’s the most powerful of all of us.”
Jyesh snorted. “Debatable.”
Resh just smiled. “If Mara had what she needed in you, she wouldn’t have bothered to seek out Coren. Now keep up. I let her go alone because I trust her not to be stupid. But the longer we take, the greater chance we have of someone else being stupid.” Resh broke into a light jog, glancing back to make sure Sy was able to keep up.
Sy gave him a knowing look, but Resh threw it right back. Coren had always been the type to fight her own battles, but neither of them was the least bit okay with the idea of her alone in that palace.
Chapter 3
HIGH ABOVE THE TREES, Coren circled the farmland on the outskirts of the palace in the warming morning light, hoping for inspiration on how to begin.
Every plan she’d had up to now, from the day she’d bargained with Sy to hide her magic and trick his father, had failed.
So, maybe winging it was better. She grinned at her own joke, and it felt good. She was still scared, uncertain, and impatient. But this had to be done. She whispered a prayer to the Mirror Magi for guidance and flew closer.
The vast green maze writhed beneath her, enclosing the palace and grounds from all sides, even keeping StarsHelm city at bay. Though she could trace a hundred twisted paths from here, she knew that on the ground, magic would move the living walls, making it impossible to breach. The spelled maze was the only barrier needed for Riata’s known enemies.
But maybe they hadn’t known an enemy like her before. With her Vespa wings, she would never need to traverse those enchanted green walls again.
She couldn’t just drop into the throne room and have a seat, though. There could be all manner of Brujok guards and spelled traps.
What she needed was a guide. Someone on her side.
She wondered where Kashar’s men were, or Giddon. Any of them might help her, but the chances of finding them from this height seemed slim. Thoughts of her father also carried with it tight tendrils of fear for her brother and sister - hidden somewhere in the heart of Sulit with a witch she prayed she could trust. There was no time to dwell on that now, and so Coren shut down hopes of locating a familiar face.
Besides, Giddon would kill her himself if she exposed his careful cover.
Beyond the edge of the maze, the towering palace gates were tightly drawn, unguarded from here, but slick and smooth, several feet thick and impossible to scale or open from the outside. They weren’t doors you could walk up to and knock on.
Coren glimpsed movement in the narrow windows of the turrets and across the battlements of the towers. She was used to the glare of the sun across the open sea, but here the pale sun melted into the palace stone and the green grass around it. Her keen Vespa eyes spied the glint of metal arrowheads, and she knew they could shoot her from the sky if she wheeled too close.
Servants trotted in and out of side doors, scattering into various gardens, chicken houses, and stables. One might help her out of fear, but she knew they would have no way to reach anyone of importance inside.
No, she needed someone people listened to. Surely, there was a hierarchy of leadership, even though the King and Queen were absent and had no heirs to watch the throne. Perhaps a line of haughty nobles somewhere, or a collection of crusty old Generals, too battle-scarred to bother with riding out anymore.
Sweeping to the north, Coren made sure to stay high enough that she’d be taken f
or a large bird. Then she spotted troops gathered in a vast, green training yard.
Some might be her father’s men. Even if not, they would have a Commander or General in charge of them. A military leader might be more dangerous at first, but she’d rather deal with someone sworn to the King and Queen than a pompous Lord.
Resh had taught her as much. The Lords would be concerned with the money made from their positions and the gluttony that filled their bellies, rather than any plan to help Riata’s people.
Yes, a General would be her best bet, if she could convince one she was the rightful ruler and therefore worthy of royal protection. Her heart settled, and she hoped this meant the Magi had blessed her plan.
Choosing an empty side garden near the training yard, she dropped to the ground, folding her wings back inside her body with a calming chant of Still, Vespa.
The Vespa was content to withdraw now, supremely uninterested in the plight of tiny men on the hard ground.
Taking a deep breath, Coren stepped between the hedges of the garden and began to walk proudly and calmly toward the ranks of men and women. They seemed to be completing morning drills, practicing sword exercises she had no name for. A few cast her curious looks, but none stopped her.
She walked unchallenged to the front of the training ground, where a young man stood alone, clad in a smartly-buttoned burgundy coat. A polished sword was slung at his waist, and he surveyed the soldiers intently, making neat notes in a leather-bound journal.
She opened her mouth to speak, but the man held up a finger to silence her.
“I am General Dain Watersend, head of StarsHelm’s Northern Army. I have held this post under King Zorander Graeme for two years and seen many odd things, but never have I seen such intrusive gall from a strange, blood-crusted girl with the coloring of a conquered nation.”
Coren swallowed, blinking back an instant rage at his final words.
She drew herself taller, squaring her shoulders and looking him in the eye.
He cut her off before she could even start, eying the blood on her tunic. “You are obviously not a spy or an assassin. I allowed you to walk this far unhindered because you appear to be no threat, but I’d rather hear it from your mouth. What business do you have here?”
Dream of Darkness and Dominion Page 2