I nearly trip over my own feet. Where the fuck did that thought come from? No way. That shit hasn’t begun yet, and even when it does, there’s no way I’m accepting it that easy.
No. Fucking. Way.
Never him. I think I’d find a way to kill us both before belonging to him.
As the only human allowed free entry here, I’ve been through these maze-like corridors over and over again. Not just in my current lifetime either. In all my lifetimes. Thanks to that, I have the path memorized.
I turn a corner and walk into a large hallway flanked by demonic statues. Usually, when I reach this point in the dimension, I’m choked with pure pity for the fact that my sister is trapped here.
Not because the place isn’t gorgeous in its own right, even though it can be dark and cold as hell, but because Nylicia can’t leave it. At all.
This time, however, I feel nothing. As a matter of fact, for the first time in sixteen-thousand years, I’m fucking glad that my sister is trapped.
It isn’t enough to stop her interfering ass from shoving her nose where it doesn’t belong.
Or from purposely orchestrating a completely fucked-up series of events.
I feel like a monster ready to tear into someone as I walk down the huge hall, going deeper into the Goddess of Rage’s dimension.
Cailyptsia’s fucking lucky she’s off pouting somewhere. If I come face-to-face with her, I’m going to find a way to cause some harm to the female for bringing those annoying sons of hers to the Universe.
Human or not, I’ll lay the smack down on her.
The more I think about it, the more it upsets me. Not only did Cailyptsia give birth to assholes, she forced the mating on Nylicia that ultimately lead to her living in proverbial hell.
A force that bounced back out into the cosmos, insidiously infecting the Universe. A merciless power that strikes at random and unites unwilling beings.
And I was just condemned to a fate almost as horrid.
By my own condemned sister.
How can Nylicia force Cyake on me? What the hell possessed the female into thinking this is okay? After all she’s been put through because of Cailyptsia’s orchestrations, one would think Nylicia would have more common sense than this!
By the time I make it to her chambers, I’m practically frothing at the mouth. My sister resides in the lowest chamber in the dimension. Not only to avoid Cailyptsia as much as possible, but to avoid her first born son if he visits.
After all, he can never know that she still exists, let alone that she’s here of all places.
Not yet, anyway.
I draw closer to the huge entryway leading into Nylicia’s chamber and catch the sound of several voices coming from within my sister’s room. Fucking great. “The Watcher of Destinies” never entertains, but she picked the exact moment that I’m coming to rip her a new one to start.
I stop at the entrance, just in sight of Nylicia’s projection. She’s deep in conversation with another projection.
“You didn’t tell me when you sent me to spy on him that he’s part of M-Kon!” Lizzisi, Goddess of Light, complains with a deep frown on her face.
Oh, lookie there. Someone else my sister is hiding shit from and sending off into the middle of messes.
I’m so not surprised.
“And?” Nylicia asks, with the kind of disregard that only she can pull off.
I clench my fists.
“Does she know he exists?” Lizzisi asks. “Do either of them know that we know where their brothers are now?”
“Nope. Not yet. But I promise you, Liz. You get this done, and the Brahmastra is yours. I would think that the mercenary in you would be more concerned about that then the minor details.”
“Minor details, my ass.” A projection of Lizzisi’s dark-haired twin, Sillizi, comes to life behind Nylicia. The Goddess of Darkness crosses her arms, glaring at Nylicia. “These are big details, Nyl. Their brothers? Nylicia, these are their brothers and they’re working with the enemy.”
“It’s not the first time in history this has happened. We all know why Shakespeare became so famous. The Universe specializes in family drama.”
Only one thought rings out through my head after hearing my sister say that.
Irooonnnyyyy.
“Besides, it’s not a forever-type of situation. You two are supposed to bring them in when the time is right. This is the Brahmastra and the Pashupatastra we’re speaking about, ladies.” Nylicia throws her hands in the air, all melodramatic and shit. “That was the deal. You guys spy on them and then bring them in when I tell you. These are two of the most powerful weapons in the Universe. Helllooo?”
Damn those mercenaries. Instead of staying pissed off at my sister, they’re giving her grudging looks of respect.
“And how did you come by them again?” Sil asks.
“Stole ‘em.”
Of course she did, I think, crossing my arms.
“Of course you did,” Liz drawls.
I smile bitterly.
“You two will have better uses for them than Brahma, Shiva, or Kali ever would. Those three are permanently vacationing on their dimension, anyway.”
Sillizi shakes her head. “When are we bringing them in, then?”
“When I tell you. Until then, keep feeding me the intel. And keep the fact that you know Kaden and Alexis’s locations to yourselves. As far as anyone knows, you are not on this mission. Got it?”
The Exivisi Genelhi actually have the gall to nod their heads before their projections disappear.
Fuck. They might as well have bowed to my sister.
My eyes flicker to the bed in the far corner of the room, where my sister’s actual body lays. In stasis, her eyes are closed, flesh nearly gray from lack of circulation and blood, all of her veins black beneath her skin.
It’s the state she has to usually keep herself in just to survive the Fieren that long ago became worse than a cancer inside her.
This time, I refuse to feel bad. Not with the future I can imagine so clearly before me.
I’ll never let Cyake claim me.
If I mate to him, I’ll be condemned to seeing every single lover that uber-whore has ever taken during his long fucking lifetime.
Nylicia looks at me, follows my line of sight, turning to stare at herself on that bed, then turns back around to face me.
“You knew,” I say, struggling to keep my voice calm. “You knew what would happen when you sent me to that mall.”
Nylicia’s response is as quick as it is nonchalant. “Yes.”
I lose it. “I am not one of your fucking machinations to do with as you please!”
“No one is. It’s all too important,” Nylicia says in that same flat tone.
“To your fucking war!” I storm towards her, pointing in her face. “And you are willing to sacrifice everything for that. Including your own sister.” I hate myself when I feel my eyes water and my throat close up tight. But, damn it, after everything we’ve been through together, Nylicia’s betrayal is almost too much to bear.
You’re not that innocent Spari. You gave him that amulet three-thousand-years ago at Delphi and told him he’d have her back one day.
I ignore my own conscience, too angry to hear the logic or the echo of my own guilt. “You fucking betrayed your own sister!”
My accusation slaps any and all apathy out of her. “I did it because you’re my gods damned sister!”
“Nylicia . . . he’s the reason I was condemned. Because I refused to reap karma on one being—him—once, the Fates punished me. He’s broken millions of hearts, has never paid for it, because I felt a ridiculous compulsion to spare him. And thanks to that, I’ve had one traumatizing life after another—sixteen-thousand fucking times!”
In the silence that follows my declaration, it’s two sisters, eye-to-eye, our heartbreak pulsing loudly between our stares.
“I know that, Karma,” Nylicia whispers, and I almost swear I see tears in her eyes. “I kno
w that. But you can’t handle one more reincarnation. You can’t, baby girl. You’re my little sister, you always will be, no matter how many times you reincarnate. I have to protect you. Your time to leave this life is coming soon. You’re sick down to your very soul from all the memories of all those lifetimes eating at you. I did this because I saw that he would be the thing to save you from this.”
I struggle to take a breath. The guilt whispers inside me again. Did you not see something similar all those years ago? Did you not set Cyake’s brother on a course that she knows nothing about? A course that will inevitably lead her back to him? A course I can’t say anything about. If I do, Nylicia will find a way to alter it, and it’s the only way to save my sister.
I know damn well that when the time comes, my sister is going to fight it all the way down.
Because, just like me, she has every damn reason to do so.
“You really think I want to belong to the being responsible for my punishment? What am I supposed to do? Just forgive him for everything I’ve been through, every pussy he slammed into, and every heart he ever broke, and then lay back and happily spread my legs for him to claim me?”
Nylicia flinches at that.
“I don’t care that he didn’t know until now who I was and that he doesn’t know what I’ve done for him. Never, in sixteen-thousand-freaking-years, did he stop. Not once did he wise up. I suffered because he didn’t. And now you expect me to forgive him? Why would I want to be with a male like him?”
“He can save you. Your soul will not come out of one more lifetime intact. It’s for your own good, Spari. Please.”
I swear to myself that I’ll remember that line forever. And the day the time comes, the gods help my sister, because I’m going to throw that line back in her face.
I know how hypocritical I’m being, but I have to know. “Tell me, Nylicia. If your destiny was to be with the male responsible for you being like this”—I point at the bed, where Nylicia’s barely living body lays—“would you just forgive him? Just like that?”
Nylicia’s projection actually pales, and on the bed, her body twitches. “Spari, no. Don’t go there. It’s not the same thing.”
“I will. Because it is!”
“No! It’s not, and you know it!”
I’m not going to let her side-step that one so easily. “All the same, answer me.” I storm up to my sister’s face, staring her projection in the eye as my heart gives a painful squeeze. “If I told you to forgive Cyake’s brother, would it be so fucking easy for you?”
Exclusive first look at
Blood Drenched Conquest
the third book in the Ryze Series.
Prologue Part 1
13,982 years ago. The day now known as the Final Great Battle.
- Etdir, the Chamber of Creation, Ixalir
ZEXISTR
M y fort’em’s hand spreads open in front of Gilderon’s face. In that single instant, the male’s light green eyes roll back into his head and he collapses.
His skin, an identical color to his eyes, begins to darken within seconds.
Another of Vermylea’s males gone.
The God of Conquest dead, his powers now trapped in Renentr.
As he deserved. He was one of the main gods responsible for all the Aviraji’s successes.
Not that it will matter. She will find another to replace him within moments. There always seems to be males ready to sell their souls over to that female.
Cyake slowly lowers his hand to his side. When he turns to me, my jaw twitches at the sight of those burnished, light-blue eyes.
“Fort’em. You should not be the one doing this. If you speak while exerting your will—”
“They will take over.” Cyake’s arm cuts through the air. “Hence why I do not speak, fort’em.”
No. He simply commands using his mind. A task just as dangerous. “You are exerting a tremendous amount of will, Cyake. It is a matter of time before the powers of Fate take over.”
“And yet it is better than you exerting your will with the power of Zerxis trapped inside you.”
He has a gods damned point. I am the end of all things waiting to happen. While others can begin the process, I alone have the final say. The day everything ceases to exist will be the day I command it to.
No. Not I. Zerxis. The greedy, malevolent, broken bastard inside me.
Clearly aware that he has made his point, Cyake jerks his head. The massive hall before us is scattered with bodies. Some killed by Cyake’s command, others by my hand.
Some of them were immortals of different species, and yet others were gods. Both I and Cyake possess the ability to kill a god without catastrophic consequences to the Universe’s balance. Which is why I cannot believe the nerve of Maivera.
She sends males and females to the slaughter, knowing I will not let them live.
All to stop me.
To prevent me from saving the Universe from this coup.
She is around here, somewhere. I sense her presence whispering through the air around me, a sweet, whispered lie that ghosts across my skin and tempts me.
As always.
I ignore the pull, the same one that had me convinced, once, that she was the one for me. If she is not, why is ignoring her as painful as ripping your own flesh?
Why do you still want her so much?
Grinding my teeth, I ignore all these thoughts. My mind is screaming at me she is the one. Despite her selfishness. Her wrongness.
Yet another feeling deep in my gut is insisting that is not true. A feeling the grows stronger as I stare before me. At the end of the hall is the shimmering quartz surface separating this realm from the Etdir.
The chamber of Creation.
My heart pounds like a war drum at that reminder and a single thought has me before the entrance.
My reflection stares back at me from the smooth surface. It has been millennia since I last allowed myself here. The informational safe house of our kind. Once, it was more than that. The power of Creation had communicated with me through this place.
‘Tis why my mother and the Goddess of Emotions conspired to build it. To help a maddened child reconnect with that energy before I lost myself to the agony.
To Zerxis.
Unfortunately, I ended up there anyway.
Cyake appears next to me, the gold parts of his armor reflecting the prismatic light off the Etdir’s surface. He watches me raise my arm with those glowing blue eyes, expression filled with trepidation. “Everything about this predicament is tempting the precarious Fates.”
I dematerialize both my glove and the heavy armor, exposing my arm. “Forget them. Worry about Father.”
He curses under his breath. “Is this truly the only way? If he senses enough of you to gain even a modicum of coherence . . .”
Illion will take control once more, plunging us all into chaos. An entire Universe back on course for its destruction.
The Illion never wanted any of this to exist. In his madness, he will warp what Creation and I made, until it is so misshapen that I lose control. In the Universe that he will bring about, there is no room for Existence.
There is only room for Zerxis, the end of it all.
I am literally walking a thin line between saving all of this and destroying it. “We have no other choice. Ever since Knowledge disappeared as well, we have lost our omniscience. I tried finding another way to close the Kystms—”
“But without Knowledge, we are all the equivalent of clueless fledglings.” Cyake curses again, scanning over his shoulder.
We are still alone, surrounded by the opulence of the Aviraji’s realm and the death we wrought.
“You have mere moments in there. If I sense you losing yourself or becoming trapped, I am pulling you out. Regardless of consequences.”
I understand his concern, yet I must still remind him, “Cyake. Think of Ianthen. If the battle ends on Earth, Gaea will die.” Ianthen’s mother is the Goddess of Earth. She is the pl
anet and the planet is she. When one dies, the other will die with it.
The battle must be locked in the dimension of the baesams before it migrates back to Earth. It must.
Cyake curses a third time, his entire body vibrating with tension. “Fuck the gods! Fine. Fine. Just go. And be fucking careful!”
I turn away from him. A flick of my wrist and my hand goes right through the quartz stone. It reacts in the blink of an eye, morphing and collapsing around my arm. The symbols within flicker to life as it reads my energy signature, confirming my status as Existence.
Very few of us are powerful enough to be allowed in here.
Considering this chamber was once created specifically for me, I hold status above any and all.
The stone snaps back, releasing my wrist and sliding open right after.
I have made many mistakes throughout my existence here on the physical plane, some of which I am convinced have led to everything that is coming to pass.
Yet I am ready to abuse my powers, if I must, to set things back to right.
Starting with going into the chamber and finding the cipher that will collapse the kystms.
Because no matter what Maivera tries to convince me of, what the Aviraji are doing is wrong. In every Universal sense possible. There is no balance in what they seek, and the Universe cannot survive without it.
Ready, I storm in, determined to betray the mother of my daughter and their family.
I just hope Rivi forgives me one day if her mother ends up dead.
-D’vuirn, Realm of the Baesams.
IANTHEN
Where is Existence?
An indescribable roar tears through the air. Eruptions of power light up the night, one after the other. I rematerialize on a cliff away from the main core of the destruction. Power flares once more from the valley below.
Hissing, I jerk my head to the side and squeeze my lids shut, absorbing the sensation of the burn as my eyes start to heal and adjust. Again, I have to wonder: What in the fuck is Zexistr doing?
The battle should not have lasted this long. It should not have spread from Earth to here, the home of the baesams. This is the fourth time in three days that the fight has migrated to a new dimension.
Ryze Series: Books 1 & 2 Page 61