King of the Rising

by Kacen Callender

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Kheryn Callender

  Excerpt from The Obsidian Tower copyright © 2020 by Melissa Caruso

  Excerpt from Brother Red copyright © 2020 by Adrian Selby

  Cover design by Lisa Marie Pompilio

  Cover images by Arcangel and Shutterstock

  Cover copyright © 2020 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Map by Charis Loke

  Author photograph by Beth Phelan

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  First Edition: December 2020

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Callender, Kacen, author.

  Title: King of the rising / Kacen Callender.

  Description: First Edition. | New York, NY : Orbit, 2020. | Series: Islands of blood and storm ; book 2

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020014720 | ISBN 9780316454940 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780316454964

  Subjects: GSAFD: Fantasy fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3603.A44624226 K56 2020 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020014720

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-45494-0 (trade paperback), 978-0-316-45495-7 (ebook)

  E3-20201008-JV-NF-ORI

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Acknowledgments

  Discover More

  Extras Meet the Author

  A Preview of The Obsidian Tower

  A Preview of Brother Red

  Also by Kacen Callender

  Praise for Queen of the Conquered

  For those who watch over.

  Explore book giveaways, sneak peeks, deals, and more.

  Tap here to learn more.

  PROLOGUE

  They chased me through the groves. My heart pumped, fear slowing the blood in my legs. Air caught in my throat. Sharp stones cut the undersides of my feet as branches and brush and thorns ripped into my legs and arms and cheeks. Wet dirt sank beneath me, the root of a mangrove tree twisting around my ankle. I fell to the ground hard, rocks digging under the skin of the palms of my hands. I could hear their laughter. I knew that if they caught me, I would die. I’d made the mistake of reminding the boy that we shared blood. This wasn’t something he liked to acknowledge. He didn’t like what I’d implied. That he and I weren’t so different, even if he called himself master, and me slave.

  Their footsteps crunched and paused. I hunched in the thorns of brush, air wheezing from my lungs. I could sense the power that filled my father’s son. His kraft let him see the abilities of others. He could see my ability—could sense me as I sensed him. He felt me hiding. He walked closer.

  “I see him.”

  I didn’t wait for my brother to grab me, to pick me up and tie his rope around my neck. I leapt to my feet. I ran in the only direction I could, through the thorns and weeds and the tangled roots of the mangrove trees. I burst out of the green and into the sloshing water that pulsed onto the rocky shore. I dove into the sea. Salt burned my eyes and the cuts across my skin. I swam as if I meant to swim to the northern empires and to freedom.

  I stopped, because my arms and legs were too heavy and weak. I turned to see my brother and his friend standing on the shore, their hair and clothes and skin pale in the white moonlight. They waited for several minutes, and then they left, bored with the game they played. I should have felt relief, but I knew this wouldn’t be the last time they chased me through the groves of Hans Lollik Helle. It was impossible to feel relief when I knew I would forever have this body and forever have this skin.

  The thought crossed my mind. It’s a thought that often does. The question of whether there’s a point to living this life. I’m going to die, whether it’s by the hands of my brother or by the whip of my father or by the years that always manage to catch up with us, regardless of the color of our skin. Does it matter if I die in a few days or a few years or now, saltwater filling my lungs? The result will be the same. If I were to allow myself to sink beneath the waves, it would be a death that would bring mercy. No more racing through the brush of this island. No more beatings and whippings, layers of scars growing on my back like the rings of bark covering the trees, marking how many years I have survived. And there would be no more nights when I was called from the corner of the wooden floor I slept on, marched through the groves and to the pain that waited, as it always does. Letting myself sink into the sea would bring me peace. It would bring me freedom.

  The thought crossed my mind—but so did the urge to live. My desire for death and life was a contradiction. Both desires constantly battled inside of me. In the end, life always won.

  I began to swim back for shore, but I didn’t notice that the waves of the ocean had already begun to suck me farther away from the island. The tide moved against me as I kicked. Waves became higher, knocking me beneath the surface. Seawater forced its way into my nose and mouth, filling my lungs. I choked with every gasp. Blackness covered my vision.

  When I opened my eyes again, I sat on the sand of a shore. It was powdered white without any sign of seashells or footprints or life. The ocean was as still as glass. The sky was red with fire. Islands grew from the sea. Waves rippled as the hills formed, spreading toward the black clouds. My mother was there with me. She stood in the shallows. I could only see her back and
the thick scars that wove over her skin, but I knew that it was her. This was often how she came to me, in my nightmares and in my dreams. She would tell me stories. Stories forgotten. Stories buried. My mother told me to listen.

  “You’ll want to save them all,” she said.

  I woke coughing, vomiting saltwater that burned my throat. Hot sand stuck to my face and my wet skin and clothes. The sky was blue though I’d been running in the night only moments before, the white sunlight scalding the muscle through my skin. Waves pushed and foamed around my legs. No one was on the shore with me. I couldn’t see anyone who might’ve saved me.

  It wasn’t a surprise, that I hadn’t died.

  It seemed the spirits were never done with me.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Shock vibrates through me and I feel a fear that isn’t my own. It’s a fear I know well—one that betrays the body whenever death is near. My heart begins to work in my chest. Sweat sticks my shirt to my skin. My limbs feel numb when I stand up. I’d been asleep on a hardwood floor, one I’d known as a boy in the room of an empty slave house where no one will sleep. The others take the empty mansions of the dead kongelig, living like they are masters. I prefer the slaves’ quarters only because I’m alone here, with nothing but the shadows and the ghosts. When I look out of the window, I can see the lights—pinpricks of red and orange fire in the night. The flame reminds me of the night of the revolt. The fire that had spread across the island, the screams and pleas for mercy, the metallic taste of blood that mixed with the salt air. The blood sank into the dirt, and for weeks it smelled as though the island of Hans Lollik Helle was rotting.

  It’s not the night of the uprising, and these aren’t people who mean to set the island on fire. I feel their intent. I leave the quarters, shaking as I step down the splintered steps, walking along the dirt that’s filled with rocks and weeds that cut into the bottoms of my feet. The nights are always colder in these islands, but in the time following the storm season, the sun becomes hotter during the day, the dirt capturing the heat that lifts into the air. My legs are weak with sleep, but I force them to run. This fear that fills me doesn’t belong to me. She’s realized that the men are coming for her. She can sense their anger, their hatred. She can see the images of what they plan: to force her legs open, to cut her until she screams for death, to hang her body from a tree. The men are already halfway up the sloping path of the hill. And at the top is the main manor of Herregård Constantjin.

  The manor is white against the black sky, glowing in the light of the full moon. It had once appeared like a castle that the northern empires might have, but it crumbles into ruin now, vines and brush and leaves attempting to swallow the manor and pull the stone into its grave, where its masters lay. It was hard work to put the kongelig with their pale skin into the dirt, but the Fjern of these islands believe they will find paradise if they are burned and buried at sea. We would not give them this.

  I reach the top of the hill, past the garden of wildflowers and weeds, and walk into the courtyard. The stones are cracked and charred. The fountain, which had once shined in the center of the parties of the kongelig, collapses into chunks of rock. The men stand in a circle. They carry torches that gnats and moths follow, wings flickering in the light. One man comes from the front doors. He pushes the former Elskerinde Rose down the steps. She falls, skinning her hands and knees. When she looks up, her gaze lands on me.

  Sigourney Rose could be mistaken for one of us. Her skin is dark enough to hold hues of purple and blue, and her hair is thick with curls. She has the features of an islander. We are known only as islanders because the name we once had was taken by the Fjern, along with our history and our freedom. Our stolen past is what connects our people, yet Sigourney has never been one of us. The proof has always been in the way she looks at us. With fear. Contempt. Longing. She wishes we would accept her, even as she believes she’s our better.

  She stands to her feet in the center of the six men, her hair tangled, her dress of white torn and stained. She has been beaten, her bruises and cuts unhealed. Her face shines with sweat and fear in the torchlight, but she raises her chin. She was already prepared to fight for her life. Sigourney’s kraft has always been powerful. It might be one of the most powerful abilities in all the islands. She can enter the spirit of another. She can hear their thoughts and feel their emotions. She can take control of their body, if she so desires. Sigourney was prepared to take control of any one of these men with their machetes and have him cut all the others down, but she knew the chances of her surviving the fight were slim. She wouldn’t be able to take control of more than one man at a time. Even if she had managed to survive, she couldn’t fight her way to freedom from the entire island. She would be executed for killing guards, no matter that they’d attacked her first. I understand the mix of desperation and relief in her eyes when she sees me.

  My voice echoes in the courtyard. “What’re you doing?”

  The group of men whirl around. They’re surprised. They weren’t expecting to see me here. I recognize them all. I know each of their names. They were once guards that belonged to the Fjern across all the islands—guards who were trained to give their lives for the kongelig. They took the lives of the kongelig instead.

  Sigourney doesn’t want any of these men to see her fear, and she worries I’ll feel her desperation. She takes a deep breath and holds the air in her chest, counting in her head, just as Marieke had once taught her to do when she needed to calm herself.

  “Why have you taken Sigourney Rose from her chamber?” I ask. No one responds. Night birds and crickets and frogs make their noise. It’s almost hard for the men to hear me over the chorus. “Whose orders are you acting on?”

  “Our own,” one of the men says. His name is Georg. He’s young—as young as I am, though taller and more solidly built, with the muscles of a man who had been made to work the fields before he was brought into the guard. He hasn’t been trained as a guard long, only a year and a few months, but he could still best me in a match if he were to attack—especially when I would be reluctant to fight him. I don’t see the point in hurting another islander. We already have too many enemies.

  The other five men are guards trained under Malthe. I can see that they’re afraid that they will be punished for acting without their commander’s consent. All of the men look away from me with a mixture of shame and fear. One man named Frey, older than the rest, curses Georg in his head. It’d been the boy’s idea, and Frey had been stupid enough to follow along. Frey thinks he came only because of the guavaberry rum they’d drunk around the fire at camp. He can’t admit to himself that even without the rum, he might have come here so that he could help kill Sigourney Rose. Frey had belonged to her cousin Bernhand Lund before the man died, and for the last years he had been the property of the former Elskerinde. Frey wanted to see her die. Now, because he’s followed the stupid boy’s idea, he could be tied by his wrists to a tree and whipped by Malthe himself. This would be the lucky option, considering the chance that he could be hung by his neck instead. No one fights Malthe’s methods. These are the ways taught to us by the Fjern. It’s the only way that we know.

  Only Georg holds my gaze. It isn’t that he’s braver than the rest. He has more anger. Rage pulses hot through him. He wants to see Sigourney Rose dead, like she should have died the night of the uprising. No, she is not a Fjern. But she, too, was a kongelig. She had her slaves. She’s had us tied to trees and whipped, myself included. She ordered my whipping and didn’t have the respect to stay and watch as the whip cut into my back and the scars already woven there, rising from my skin. Elskerinde Rose had ordered my execution. She stood and watched as I stood on a chair, a rope around my neck. She was as evil and merciless as any of the kongelig on this island. Georg doesn’t understand why she still lives. He doesn’t understand why I stop him from killing her.

  Sigourney looks from me to Georg and back to me, watching us like someone might watch a game of cards. She learned
from an early age that there’s power in pretending to hold control of herself and her emotions. But she sees that whoever wins this match will decide whether she will live or die.

  “You don’t have the authority to take Sigourney Rose’s life.”

  “Authority? You speak like the Fjern.”

  “We each have our roles. We each have our commands.” I pause, looking from Georg to the other men. They still won’t meet my eye. “If we didn’t have our orders, the revolution would collapse.”

  “And who’s to say we haven’t fallen apart already?” Georg demands. I can feel the frustration in him. The frustration has streaks of anger, but it’s tied to a helplessness and a hopelessness. It’s been nearly a month since the initial uprising, and we haven’t done anything more to force the Fjern and their royal kongelig from our homelands. Georg believes that we stay on this island, waiting for the moment we will be slaughtered by the Fjern. He isn’t the only person who worries that this revolution has been lost before it’s barely begun. At least in this, Georg will feel like he’s doing something of importance. Something that will help the war.

  But he’s wrong. “Killing Sigourney Rose is a mistake.”

  “It’s a mistake that she’s still alive.” He looks to his friends for help, but none will come forward. They fear me. This isn’t something that makes me glad. “You can’t keep her alive with no good reason, when everyone else wants her dead.”

  “We don’t know if we’ll need her,” I say.

  “Why would we ever need her alive?” Georg asks me. He speaks with an exasperated tone. He thinks that I’m lying to him. He thinks I believe him to be a fool. “Do you think the Fjern want her? She isn’t a hostage. We can’t use her in negotiations.”

  I hesitate, but only for a moment. “You’re right.”

  Sigourney sucks in a breath. It’s slight. Only she can hear it, but I feel the surprise in her. Even if this is the truth, there was no need for me to speak it. I could have said that the Fjern have declared a ransom for her, or that they declared they needed her kraft and were willing to negotiate—any lie I could think of in the moment to make these guards leave without attempting to take her life. But I’m not like Sigourney. I do not lie. When she had me as her slave, working as her personal guard, and as I took my steps in the downfall of Elskerinde Rose and the kongelig, I would always tell her the simple truth. I told her that those closest to her wanted her dead. I’ve never seen the point in lies.