Ashes (The Divided Kingdom)

by Sophie H. Morgan

  Secrets can burn.

  The Divided Kingdom, Book 1

  Reared from birth to rule the Phoenix territory, Ana fled her future and her past when her parents were murdered. Now she secretly leads a rebellion to stop the human ruler, Edward, from experimenting on supernaturals.

  When she finds herself cornered by an assassin, she knows just what to do: Roast him and toast him. Then recognition sends blue-tipped flames licking through her veins. It’s Cade, the royal bodyguard who once rejected her youthful confession of love.

  When Cade regains consciousness from the force of Ana’s punch, he’s still reeling from shock—and fury. He’d loved the princess, and for ten years he thought her dead. Though his inner jackal growls with desire for her, she is the key to completing his mission for Edward—hunt down the rebel known as Liberty.

  Ana can’t believe Cade doesn’t know the truth about Edward. If she can convince him of it, his blade could turn the tide of the rebellion. But first they must get beyond their past, or the whole kingdom could go up in smoke.

  Warning: Contains incendiary sex between a phoenix princess with a secret identity, and a jackal shifter who can take a lot of heat. Boys from the “hood”, a king jacked up on enhanced DNA, and killer heels. Anybody got a match?

  Ashes

  Sophie H. Morgan

  Dedication

  To my family, friends and the wonderful women I work with for the gifts of belief, laughter, encouragement—and the box of fifty celebratory Snickers. You sure know how to motivate a girl!

  To Brenda for always diving into my worlds with enthusiasm and for the honesty to tell me what works and what doesn’t. This book would have never made it this far without you.

  To my editor, Jessica, for making a dream come true, for answering so many questions, and for polishing this book until it shone.

  And to anybody else in my life who has helped me get where I am. You’re all rock stars.

  Chapter One

  Edan, Southlands

  She was going to die.

  Ana squawked as she threw herself backward, twisting her spine to avoid the laboratory stools crowding the room. The demon’s blade sliced past her chest in a blur of metal. She swung her own dagger in reflex, slashing his cheek and drawing blood the color of rich yolk.

  Too close.

  She adjusted the grip on her blade. Her heart thudded with the thrill of the near miss, her blood simmering with pleasure. Each breath scraped her throat.

  Everything else remained still, ready.

  Ana swept keen eyes over the guard as she crouched on the white tile. The old warehouse her gang had chosen to invade was guarded by ten demons, handpicked by the human high ruler, Edward the Bloody. This was one.

  The other nine were being dealt with.

  Staccato breathing punctuated the demon’s frustration, broad chest jerking. He was big and bulky, with blood-drenched eyes that tracked her when she rose to her feet. Heavy black facial hair hung down to his collarbones, tied with three ruby beads. Like all demons, he was physically similar to a human except for the horns arming the top of his head. Only three, like all flame demons, the mud-brown horns focused his power to create fire. But against a phoenix, his fire was as useless as a man with a period.

  “Hey, little dick.” Ana wiggled eyebrows as fiery as her hair. “You missed.”

  His voice emerged as a growl. “You’ll die, Maze scum.”

  “Well, that’s rude.”

  When he lunged, she whirled behind him, ballerina dainty. Lifting her right boot, she landed a solid kick to his back. He stumbled to his knees.

  The clash of swords from beyond the whitewashed room sounded at the rear of her mind. Roars, grunts.

  Cries for help a floor below.

  With a traitorous twitch, the demon surged up from the tiled floor, slicing his sword toward her stomach.

  Ana’s dagger met it, the force of the blow singing up her arm into bone. Sweat beaded at her nape, where the ends of her hair were beginning to curl with perspiration. Heat embraced her, charged her, whispered to her.

  With a low screech, she shoved his sword away. He staggered, balance unsteady for a fractured second.

  Ana launched upward, spinning in midair, foot outstretched. Her biker boot smacked into his horns with a resounding crack, echoed by his grunt of pain as he crashed against the wall.

  The minute Ana touched down onto tile, she drove her dagger forward.

  It speared through sturdy cloth and sank into the demon’s back-heart. His roar smashed in on itself, resonating around the ten-by-ten room. His meaty fist swung into the side of her head.

  She spiraled to the floor, skidding like a raft on ice, slapping against the metal legs of a stool. Breath seized in her throat. The quiver of handmade arrows she wore over her shoulder jabbed into her right kidney.

  Wheezing, Ana raised her head, hands splayed. Visions of three demons danced around, hazy and mocking. They all barked a laugh.

  She pushed to all fours, clutching the hilt of her dagger. A vague pain in her thigh was ignored. No distractions now.

  The demon snarled in his throat. He began to stride forward. “The high ruler will thank me.” He lifted his sword for the death blow. Edward’s silver-threaded emblem glinted as light from the room’s single lightstrip slanted across the demon’s chest.

  “No. He won’t.” Ana played her fingers over the dagger’s hilt. “But he’ll see you in hell.”

  Channeling from the embers at her core, Ana released her fire. Orange glory burst onto the silver dagger, shrieking, spinning, dancing with exuberant freedom. Elation flowed. Heat licked her insides, giddy and intoxicating.

  For her, the command of flames was natural, an extension of her being, like her love of sweets or sharpened claws. The same as a witch’s magic, an incubus’s sexuality, a human’s smarts. Without fire, there was no freedom.

  The heat of her summoned flames glowed like triumph, their shadows smudging the demon’s face.

  “The Hand of Liberty.” His voice was a rasp.

  Her reputation had preceded her.

  “Vive la révolution.” Ana pounced, dagger slicing into the demon’s front-heart with enough force to make them both stumble. Their gazes locked in that vulnerable moment between life and death, the demon gurgling in his throat. One hand clawed at her arm, fading to limpness. Red filmed to misty pink as the guard slipped away. He dropped with a hollow thump, cracking the tile. Chest ablaze, the phoenix fire ate at his heart until crumbling ash remained.

  Long live the revolution.

  Ana focused on the flames that leaped and spat across the five-inch blade she held. She recalled them, body humming as fire returned via the pores of her skin. A pleasured tremble crested at her head when the flames extinguished. It took maybe three seconds. She slid the dagger into its thigh sheath.

  Adjusting the quiver of arrows she wore, along with the bow she’d slung across her body, Ana left the guard on the floor. She shoved open the plastic door, hovering in the frame to assess the remaining threats.

  Most had been eliminated, bodies strewn over the white-on-white hallway like discarded sweets wrappers. The others had presumably run from the warehouse, back to the crystal palace in the outskirts of the capital city. Named Edan, the city was as close to paradise as hell’s residents were to wearing sweaters. Hence the spelling alteration, made seventy years previous. The bastard of a ruler, Edward the Bloody, was certainly more devil than god—despite his wish to be the latter.

  A demon stalked toward her, capturing her attention. His dua
l horns gleamed red, a clawed hand gripping a sword blood-coated in sticky patches. His eyes could have been chiseled from the great icebergs in the far north, a haunting blue. Long, thick hair, the color of bitter chocolate, exploded down to his shoulders. He wore no armor, only faded brown pants, with a thin pale-blue shirt that stretched over the large muscles in his shoulders.

  “You got no right callin’ a man ‘little dick’,” he complained without pause. His lips twisted. “Damn it, Ana. It ain’t right.”

  She didn’t question how he’d heard; demons from the Battle caste had impeccable hearing.

  Snorting, Ana readjusted the quiver. “It’s not like I called you it, Faer.”

  “A demon is a demon is a demon.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “A man’s got pride, y’know. His dick is his…” He struggled for words, one eye darkening to its habitual brown as the heat of battle began to cool.

  “Brain?” Ana suggested through a sugary smile. “Compass? Only friend?”

  Faer’s eyebrows were as thick and shaggy as his hair, and they drew down low over his bicolored eyes. Although the demon towered over her more petite five foot six, Ana watched with amusement as he leveled a glower on her that would’ve frightened small children.

  “You got somethin’ wrong with you,” he accused.

  One side of Ana’s mouth edged up.

  She swiveled to watch the last guard face off against one of her gang. Her comrade’s name was Vander, a human with the attitude of a blithe prince and the sword skill of a master. As she watched, he threw back his head and laughed, sword slashing in a pattern of moves that sparked through the air like an electric current. Hazel eyes too pretty for a man glittered as he backed his demon down the stretch of hallway, slicing and dicing with as happy an air as if he were seducing a woman.

  Something else, reputedly, he was good at.

  “Sapphy and Trick in the cells?” Ana rolled her shoulders to work out a kink. She moved one hand to massage the left, ignoring the twang of bruised flesh.

  “Mm.” Faer hooted, cupping his hands around his mouth to heckle the demon. “You hit like a girl!”

  Ana thinned her eyes into slits and swung.

  “Fuck me.” Faer’s breath exploded out. He groaned, bent double. “Fuck, Ana. Whose side you on?” He breathed out through his nose, one coarse hand balling at his belly. “Worse than Trick.”

  “Hm.” Ana arched a brow. She returned her fist to her hip. “Speaking of, you got any clue why the vampire’s pissed at me?” The crash of metal swords made it so she had to raise her voice.

  “He’s always pissed.” Unconcerned, Faer snuffled with gruff laughter as Vander cut the loops on the guard’s belt. The demon guard tripped over his falling pants, flipping ass over head to land on his three horns.

  “True.” Ana ignored the action and flicked her dagger around her fingers, playful sparks of fire arcing around skin. “But he was like a ’crat on a diet when he was giving out orders this morning. You know, real snippy.”

  “Dunno. Could be that merc what’s running ’round lookin’ for Liberty.” Faer’s brawny shoulders rose and fell. He clucked his tongue as Vander took a punch, eyes glued to the fight. “Shade, I think Trick said.”

  Ana’s temper roused like a cat disturbed from a nap, hissing and spitting. The fire she’d been sparking flared for one uncontrolled moment before she yanked it back.

  “The justice assassin is after Liberty? You didn’t think to share?” She fought the urge to roast him, pent-up heat undulating throughout her body.

  Faer stared at her as though she’d grown a tail. “It’s some dick assassin lookin’ to make quick coin. What? It ain’t like he’s gonna find her.” His words resonated with pointed meaning.

  Ana screwed up her face, exhaling shortly.

  In Edan, a single neighborhood threatened the ruler’s vision of perfect humanity. Nicknamed after its treacherous labyrinth-like structure, the Maze was riddled with man-made tunnels, traps and hidden passageways. Although it encompassed two hundred acres of the capital, population was below four hundred and limited to the desperate.

  Liberty meant more to those people than a simple concept. The general of a revolution, waging war on the high ruler for five years, she was a figure of hope for many who’d forgotten the word. Somebody needed to kill Edward’s obsession if the Treaty wouldn’t step in to do their duty. All because of the fact that Edward was a ’crat.

  Ana curled her lip. Government, my ass.

  Naturally, death threats went with rebellion like cake and frosting, but it was the first time a professional of Shade’s caliber had been hired. The justice assassin was known for his stance on criminals—and for the body parts he left behind.

  “No wonder Trick’s pissed.” She chewed on her lower lip. A breath hissed from her. “By the holy fires, quit playing with him, Vander.”

  There was a final flurry of clashing steel, then a guttural sound of pain before the demon crashed to the floor like a ship’s anchor.

  Vander wandered over, tall and lean, bending to wipe his sword clean on the clothes of a dead soldier. Ana wondered why he bothered; the camel-colored trousers and black linen shirt Vander wore were already splattered with gore.

  “You rather I play with you?” He wiggled eyebrows the same shade of strawberry blond as his cropped hair. His blade flashed as he twirled it in a reckless yet impressive display.

  Ana sniffed. “Go play with yourself.”

  “I do. All the time.”

  Ana rolled her eyes upward as she marched toward the stairs at the far end of the hallway. Faer and Vander fell in behind, bickering good-naturedly. A window she passed revealed that the dark dawn they’d invaded with had surrendered to a murky morning, the streets of the Maze shrouded like mourners following a coffin.

  Plas-wood stretched out in front of her, cracked in some places. Whitewashed walls, now decorated with ruby splatters, gave the building a sterile feel. Clinical.

  Ana shivered. Give her their HQ, more shabby-shabby than shabby-chic, than this clean, cursed place.

  Sapphy met them at the top of the metal staircase, the fae’s eyes hollow with frustrated anger and restrained violence. Her willowy frame was encased in black, a jersey and skintight leggings emphasizing her slender body. Patches of dust and smears of blood marked her clothes as well as her chin.

  Her hair, in actuality a natural blue, had been dyed jet. Against the paleness of her skin and jewel-blue eyes, it made her appear as harmless as a china doll. More fool anyone who believed the image. Ana had seen Sapphy take out three men with a fork.

  Questions hovered on Ana’s lips as Trick came up behind the fae.

  Sapphy’s jaw was tight, the blood a ghostly hint. “He’d already been through them.”

  Trick took over. “Vander, I want you and Sapphy to take the survivors to the Hotel. Tell Adelaide some of them will need extra attention. Joel”—one of their trusted runners, or errand boys—“has gone to tell the parents.” Trick’s eyes, a gleaming bullion gold, narrowed. Fangs crept over his lips as his body thrummed with sealed ferocity. “There’re more children.”

  Ana cursed, echoing Vander and Faer’s harsher words. Children would always be her weakness.

  Fire crackled in her belly, a torch she didn’t allow to flame. She might have had trouble when she was younger, restraining the fire that flared with her emotions, but the streets had changed that. They’d taught her the control that’d been lacking in a childhood echoing with disappointed sighs.

  Ana pushed away the past with seasoned ease. “How many dead, Trick?”

  His eyes were so bright it almost hurt to look. “Enough. Torch it.”

  Trick entered six numbers on the keypad to his quarters. The violet light flipped on to scan both of them, feet to head. A husky female voice, a man’s wet dream, welcomed them both
in. The thick metal door slid to the side.

  “You ever gonna change that?” Ana wanted to know, as he strode through the opening gap.

  Trick commanded the lights on full power, ignoring her.

  Pissy mood, she realized. Still. And not because of the search and rescue. At least, not fully.

  He’d been fine with her when she’d followed routine, waiting for the other Hoods to leave before igniting the building. He’d watched it burn in silence, lingering on the leaping flames, before turning on his heel and slinking off toward their hidden HQ in the western field. He’d been moody with her ever since.

  Like that was out of character. When she’d first met him—his sophisticated three hundred to her sheltered eighteen—she’d thought him the pinnacle of brooding deliciousness. Like bitter chocolate, to be consumed in small bites.

  Now she knew. It was like plucking spines out of the soles of your feet trying to get Trick to talk. Moody was not sexy.

  Ana released a silent breath and walked across the patterned rug that lay on Trick’s plas-wooden floor. She sank into her self-designated chair. A plush purple velvet, it was as far from the peeling leather armchair in the gang’s common area as she was from her former life.

  She curled her legs underneath her, raising her arms in a catlike stretch. “Tell me, Daddy, have I been a bad girl?”

  The muscles in Trick’s back tensed. He didn’t speak.

  Ana prayed for patience. Save her from sulky vampires with their moody vamp caves. No wonder they were assumed extinct after the Kingdom Wars. Fires, no wonder they were among the ones who’d started the countrywide conflict. She was only surprised that when the humans had risen up to exterminate the vampires a century ago, the vampires had had allies to call upon.

  If all vampires had been like Trick, some blackmail had to have been involved.

  Releasing a gusty sigh, Ana dropped her head back. She knew Trick better than anyone. If he wanted to build up to what was pissing him off, nobody could force him to speak.

  She flicked her eyes around the room as the vampire placed a hand on the time-sensitive blinds that kept out the dim light of Edan.