arcknight chronicles - books 1 & 2

by Alexia Purdy

  Etan called his guards off, and I knelt down to scoop her up, pushing her long hair aside to examine the wound. The bullet was most likely still embedded in her flesh, and the entry wound was dribbling blood. I felt for a pulse. It was weak, but it was there. I had to do something or she’d die in my arms.

  “Ephrem, are you okay?” Etan asked. His breathing was hard, but he wasn’t seriously hurt. His face was already swollen on one side where his eye was completely shut. Blood drizzled from his nose and mouth, and I’d knocked out one of his bottom teeth.

  I nodded. “I don’t think Lilliana is, though.”

  “What?” His eyes widened as he stared down at Lily. “As in Princess Lilliana?”

  “Yes.”

  “Holy shit, what’s she doing here? I heard what Elise said about the talismans. I thought she was being attacked…I—I really liked her. I was going to marry her, you know.” He turned and looked at the guards who were picking Elise up off the ground. One of them met his eye and shook his head. As they set her back down on the floor, I saw that she was perfectly still and deathly pale.

  Etan walked over to her and knelt down. “She’s dead.” His voice was low and hollow.

  “But Lily’s not! Do you have any healers nearby?” I desperately looked around. I grabbed a thin blanket from one of the destroyed sofas and pressed it down on Lily’s gushing wound.

  “I’ll send for one.” Etan stumbled to his feet, still stark white from shock and ran right into one of his guards. The guard pointed behind him, and Queen Rafaela stepped in followed by her lieutenant Alec and a couple of ArcKnight guards.

  “What’s going on here?” Rafaela asked as she rushed into the room. She dropped onto the floor next to Lily and checked her injuries. “What happened to my sister? Lily!” She shook her, tears already staining her face. She was dressed in the dark clothes of a guard. In disguise. I wondered who’d let her in, but the more pressing issue shoved that thought out of my mind.

  Rafaela jerked her eyes toward me, hatred and fear mixed in a violent cocktail within them.

  “Do something!”

  I bent down near her, feeling her weakened pulse as a mess of blood bloomed around her. She paled before my eyes, and I felt a heavy weight hit me in my chest. We were still betrothed, and it meant a lot more than just a promise. Magic was involved, and unless something was done, this wouldn’t end well for either of us. If she died, it could kill me too. I peered up toward Etan, who had sent a guard for the healer and was again kneeling near Elise. He looked stunned as it dawned on him that the ArcKnight queen was in his palace and his love was dead. Lily’s talisman, along with the others that had been stolen, dangled from his fingers. They must have fallen off during the struggle.

  “Etan! Give me the pendants. Now!” I waved him over, and it took a moment for it to register, but he finally made his way over toward me.

  “They’re not Elise’s. I don’t know who they belong to.” He held them out, still looking shocked and confused.

  “I know. One of them is Lily’s, which was mine since we exchanged them at our betrothal years ago. I fear the owners of the other two are already long dead.”

  “But they still hum with magic. How?” Etan flicked his eyes between Lily and me. He truly had been clueless about Elise. The shock of it was still preventing him from thinking straight. In spite of what he’d done to Lily, I felt sorry for him.

  Elise was dead. She’d hidden her treachery from him, but he had loved her. I could see that. I shook off my pity. I’d make him accountable for hurting Lily, but right now I had work to do. There was still one hope. A talisman began to lose its magic after its wearer’s death, but this was a long, slow process unless it was intentionally drained in the process of killing the wearer. If the talismans of the dead ArcKnight and MarkTier wolves still held fragments of magic, it meant that Elise had never used them against their owners and they had died of natural causes. This gave me a chance to save Lily. One talisman alone wouldn’t be enough, but four? That might work.

  But one of the talismans was mine. I could die trying to use it to save her life, but it was a risk I was more than willing to take.

  Inhaling deeply, I swallowed down the fear blossoming in my stomach. “I can save her.”

  I laid the first two of the three of the talismans around her neck, lifting her head with gentle control and avoiding the area Rafaela was pressing down on to slow the bleeding. She threw me a concerned look but didn’t stop what she was doing. I tried to reassure her with a curt nod, but I could tell her patience was wearing thin.

  “Okay. You’ll have to let go for me to do this, Your Highness. It could be… damaging.”

  Rafaela nodded, her tears still sliding down her cheeks as she backed away and stood. Her delicate hands were stained with Lily’s blood. Etan also retreated to the door of the apartment. He looked less pale, donning an unreadable expression as he pulled Rafaela away to give us room.

  At least he had finally regained his wits.

  I slipped the last of the three talismans―my own, hers, and one from a dead ArcKnight―around her neck and held onto her shoulders. Closing my eyes, I tried to remember what my grandmother had told me about Ardent talismans and how they worked. She’d taught me the lesson so long ago, on the day of mine and Lily’s betrothal, actually. My grandmother Julia had visited me the morning before I made the trip to the ArcKnight stronghold when I was thirteen. She’d been so proud of my accomplishments and my hard work. Even though I was so young at the time, she treated me like an adult, with respect and love.

  Her warm words of encouragement were a stark contrast to my mother’s less affectionate demeanor and gave me the drive to do better than anyone else. Even my brother Etan. I was a second-born, so Etan got all the attention, but she believed I’d become a high commander of the MarkTier army with proper direction.

  My parents hadn’t been so optimistic, but they’d never told my grandmother otherwise. She’d been a woman to fear. I was glad she’d had the foresight to tell me what I’d need to do to save my equal, my future bride, when the time came to marry and bind both packs together forever. Without her intuitive lesson, I wouldn’t have known what to do.

  Her words echoed in my head now, clear as a bell, while I caressed Lily’s soft hair.

  “Remember, Ephrem, if a time ever comes when you have to heal your mate, you have to offer your power freely to her. Place your talisman around her neck and whisper these words. They are full of ancient power, passed down through our packs across centuries: Curáre spiritus meus anima. Say it like that while touching your mate, and you both will heal. Don’t forget. It could save both your lives.”

  I closed my eyes and whispered the words aloud. A roaring buzz rose up from the talismans, growing louder with each passing second. It vibrated through my fingers as the power made its way through Lily and then up my arms and into my chest. My head began to spin as the magic flowed through me and then back into Lily. Her body began to glow softly under my hands, and she started to tremble. Light shined from the gunshot wound as the silver bullet melted and dripped out of the wound and onto the floor where it solidified into a tiny ball, clinking as it hit the floor and rolled harmlessly away.

  I groaned in agony with the worst pain I’d ever felt in my entire life. It had me fighting to stay conscious as it siphoned my energy and traded it with Lily’s injured life-force. The mixing of energies was excruciating. I couldn’t breathe, and the world felt like it was collapsing in on me.

  The wound hissed as it stitched itself closed, and the light seeping through her skin began to fade. I could feel every little pull and tug of skin and muscle as her injuries closed up. I felt the magic return to the talismans, calming the stinging buzz that had filled me moments before. The moment the light died, my hands fell away and I collapsed to the ground next to Lily.

  Fighting to stay awake, I peered into Lily’s eyes as they fluttered and opened. Beautiful brown irises connected with mine, and I tried t
o smile, but my muscles refused to move. All I felt was an overwhelming urge to sleep. My magic was depleted, and I hoped that when I woke up again, it would be those same beautiful eyes staring back at me.

  Lily….

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ephrem

  “The Elders of the ArcKnight and MarkTier packs have convened, and we have come to a settlement on the matter of Lilliana ArcKnight and Ephrem MarkTier. Under each pack’s laws, both parties are to be executed for espionage and traitorous actions that have endangered the leaders of both packs.”

  The crowded room echoed with a rush of whispers and gasps. Lily refused to look at them and focused on a faraway wall with her chin held high. Her recovery had taken days, and I hadn’t seen her since the night Etan had shot her. She couldn’t even look at me now, for she wasn’t allowed to turn to get a glimpse of my face. Her face burned scarlet as she listened to the words the magistrate spoke. She didn’t seem aware of it at all. At least I’d gotten to meet her before we died. That was all that mattered.

  We would die together, like lovers should. There was something poetic about it.

  “However….” the Elder magistrate cleared his throat as he stood at the podium, looking older than dirt and quite possibly giving his last speech. His wrinkled face looked punched in, which scrunched up his eyes and nose into little holes on his wide face. Lily hated him. He was the one who’d advised Gil to banish her.

  After making sure his dramatic pause had made the appropriate impression, he continued. “Given the malicious nature of the deceased, Elise ValKot, whose plan to dominate both packs with stolen royal talismans, both parties have been pardoned and must return to their previous states of servitude or banishment as detailed in previous judgements. That is all.”

  Relief poured into me, but neither I nor Lily could celebrate the verdict. The crowd appeared pleased, but hushed whispers still echoed, leaving the mood somber. Dismissed, Lily turned toward me where our eyes met. Mine had never left her the entire time the court was in session, despite being told not to look at her.

  It wasn’t the verdict we’d wanted, but we’d been spared and could move forward with our lives. Still, I couldn’t feel too overjoyed. Lily was still banished. She would never be able to return home now. There was no overturning the Elder’s wishes.

  Lily lowered her gaze from mine.

  She can never go home….

  The room felt stifling, and I could see tears already filling her eyes, yet she refused to cry. As soon as most of the crowd had left the room, she stepped down from the platform and rushed out the doors, avoiding everyone, including her sister Rafaela, who called desperately after her.

  I hurried to follow but ran right into Etan, who held me at arm’s length and shook his head. “Let her go.”

  “Get out of the way. I have to find her.”

  “She’s banished. You can never marry her now.”

  I stopped struggling and gave my brother an icy glare. “It doesn’t matter to me. I love her. You’d never understand, anyway. You don’t know what love is.”

  Etan frowned and let me pass. I felt his eyes on me as I raced toward the door, shoving past the stragglers until I stepped out into Paladin Square. It was the only place where both wolf packs were allowed to mingle, to hold dual councils such as what had just occurred. Even so, both packs remained divided, ArcKnights on one side of the square, MarkTiers on the other. Some things never changed.

  I ran, overtaking Rafaela, who had given up chasing her sister, and made my way into the Outlands of the City of Temple. There I scanned the streets and alleyways, trying to find the girl who owned my soul. She was the only one I’d fight for, the only one I’d never let go.

  “Lily?” I found her sitting in the middle of the busy diner we’d eaten at. She sat staring at the polished veneer of the table, tears dripping down her flushed cheeks. She was immune to MarkTier and ArcKnight rule now, so therefore safe from any harm from either side. No one would hunt her. She would be a standard citizen of Temple. Nothing more.

  It was bittersweet. She’d never be able to return home now.

  I slid in next to her, my lungs burning from the long chase. I exhaled and waited, letting her collect her thoughts.

  “You can stay with me,” I offered.

  “We could never marry.” Her voice shook.

  I took her hands into mine and held them to chest.

  “I don’t care. Feel that? My heart is yours. We are one. We don’t have to marry. That doesn’t matter to me. All I want is to be with you. Say you want that too.”

  She shook her head and peered up at me. Her sadness broke my heart, but I couldn’t let her go through it alone. I wanted her to know she was safe with me. Always.

  “I love you,” I whispered and placed my talisman into her palm. She stared down at the stone, and it shone like moonlight and shuddered with a tiny jolt of power as it touched her skin. She smiled and curled her fingers over it.

  “I love you too.” She pulled off her talisman and placed it in my hands. “Forever. You and me. Okay?”

  Those words were all I needed to hear, and I couldn’t have smiled any wider. “Yes. Forever.”

  Book II

  MarkTier

  Chapter Seventeen

  Ephrem

  The night was unforgiving. I wiped the blood blurring my vision and staining my sweat a crimson red. I was losing my edge. It had been a busy evening, beginning at sunset, and had continued well into the night. My muscles strained as I picked up another weapon that had been tossed to me from the sidelines by the pit master’s assistants. The Pit was nonstop commotion until the last of the fighters were worn out and spent and the reigning champions were paid to the last dime. I wouldn’t be getting paid. This was my indentured servitude, paying for dues already owed; I was a slave until I’d met the requirements for freedom. I was six fights away from it, and every minute elated my soul with thoughts of the endless possibilities for the future.

  I wanted to return home. To see the streets of the MarkTier palace once more felt like a distant memory, a dream I kept repeating in my mind. It was the only thing keeping me going. It was my fuel on nights like these when all the amateurs took their turns attempting to take me down and make me bleed. I was the top champion, of course. Undefeated and unyielding. A prized gladiator to parade about the city streets before a night of hellish fighting.

  Just a pawn. A trophy prince.

  When the last duel was over and I held my foot over the last fighter’s neck, ready to press down with a lethal pressure, I would finally return from the place my conscience fled during these fights. The call to end the fight had been given, and I’d let the fighter go, which was fortunate for them as I had killed countless many before this one. It was second nature to kill without remorse, without a thought to who the fighter was. I didn’t care. Their blood was the currency for the freedom I desired.

  My brother had left me here to rot. It was a bitter truth, and I remembered it with each passing of the sun across the sky and through the eternal nights when things were quiet and there were only my thoughts to keep me company. That, and the spray of stars in the heavens. It was the only time I felt like myself.

  I wasn’t lost. I knew who I was and what I had to do to keep going. It was keeping the poisonous rage from tainting my soul with its hate.

  It was nights like these I remembered the reason I had to go on. Thoughts of her would flit through my mind, reminding me of what could have been. The girl was my betrothed, Princess Lilliana, and I’d watched her grow up from afar on the rare occasions her face would flash on the screens above which constantly played the world’s affairs and kept me awake at night. It was her face I’d search for when I glanced toward the bright rectangles displaying the chaos of the world.

  The fighters all slept in the same common room full of uncomfortable cots, but the pit masters saw no harm in allowing us this one outside pleasure. Maybe they thought it was better that the fighters didn’t rema
in ignorant and should know what was going on in the world. I didn’t know if it was to keep us docile or to keep our heads filled with the horror of life outside these walls. It was baffling. Not all the fighters that fought in the pits were slaves; some did it to gain a better life and earn money.

  Not me. I was once a prince. A lowly second born prince who’d never rule the wolf shifter pack I’d grown up in, but I was a prince nonetheless. Instead of living in the lap of luxury, I was stuck here paying a blood debt owed by my brother, Etan, the future ruler of the MarkTier pack.

  In his place, I fought. In his place, I spent blood, sweat, and tears. Enslaved until I’d fulfilled my quota of contracted matches. Only then would I be free to leave and maybe, just maybe, seek my betrothed. My brother had broken a sacred rule of the Pit. Fights weren’t to be interfered with. If it was, the fighter becomes the property of the Pit Master. I’d intervened to save my brother’s life. If he died, he’d never become Alpha of the MarkTier wolf pack.

  But he would never serve a day of his life in the Pit. Instead, I had served and bled his penance.

  Things were never simple when it came to the royals of the wolf packs living in the city of Temple. Nothing ever was in this supernatural hell. Little had I known that once I completed my term here in the Pit, I’d never return to live as the pampered prince I once was. Instead, I was assigned a high-ranking position within the MarkTier Outlands Legion and never truly live as a royal again. My future was marked null and void, with a large black streak across it, and replaced with the destiny of an outsider; a castaway.

  Nevertheless, I was still me. Still Ephrem, second born of the MarkTier wolf pack’s royal stronghold, and I would persevere.

  Why? Because she was out there, and I was destined to find her again.