The Legends of Regia Box Set: The Complete Series. Books 1-7

by Tenaya Jayne

  Her displeasure at seeing him was carefully veiled, but he detected it nonetheless.

  "Why are you here? What is that noise?"

  "That noise is the sound of preparation for the little love nest Leramiun plans to build for you and him. Shadow sand from Halussis, placed around this little area to protect against enemies. I'm surprised Leramiun didn't tell you about it."

  She regarded him with open irritation. "Why isn't he here?"

  Quinn smiled and pulled out his brother's letter.

  "Leramiun is busy right now, but he sent you this."

  He held it out, but as she reached for it, he snatched it back.

  "Just teasing you. Here." He held it out again, but closer to his body this time.

  When she reached for it again and he snapped it back, she stumbled forward, right into his trap, and his arms.

  "Ah, yes. That's better," he said quietly, pressing himself tightly against her. "Don't I get a kiss for delivering the message?"

  He thought she might scream or fight. He hoped she would. It would make everything so much better, but she looked directly into his eyes. It was as if she had jammed her hands into his brain. She saw everything and mirrored the darkness back for him to see clearly.

  "You disgust me," she said evenly.

  He would have attacked her had she screamed it, but her plain statement of fact removed something from him. She was right. He was disgusting. He shoved her roughly away from him.

  "Stay away from me, bitch. If I get you alone again, you're going to be a whole lot more than just disgusted. Understand?"

  Quinn turned on his heel and marched back the way he'd come. He'd make her pay. He was in her head all right, not the way he'd wanted to be, but he'd make it count. So he wouldn't ever be her fantasy, he could live with being her nightmare. He made it back to where the workers were and leaned against a tree trunk, staying out of their way. The storm inside him churned. He wanted to go back to the castle and do to Helena what he wished he could do to Shi. He could close his eyes and imagine it was her.

  He was just about to do just that when a Dryad climbed out of a tree near him. The man stumbled drunkenly and braced his hand against the trunk he'd just emerged from. Quinn walked over to him. Sweat poured on the man's face and his eyes practically spun in their sockets. Quinn recognized the cause immediately. The Dryad had come in contact with the sand and was deep in hallucination.

  Quinn grabbed the man by the arm. "Hey."

  The man tried to focus his gaze on Quinn. "What's happening to me?"

  "You're reacting to the sand, pretty badly, too, looks like. Tell me, are you in ecstasy or agony? A dream or a nightmare?"

  The man began to gasp for breath. "Nightmare…agony," he hissed.

  "Good. Very good," Quinn crooned. "Come here, out of sight."

  Quinn directed the man away from the line of workers and set him down behind some thick shrubs. The man began convulsing. This was too good to be true.

  Quinn rushed over to the workers. "Okay, you are all doing a good job, but you're not putting the sand in the right place. Move it forward into this dense area, as much of it as you can. Put it around the bases of the trees."

  "But sire, we were told to keep it to the edges."

  "I'm telling you what you need to do now! I'm the prince. Obey!"

  "Yes, Majesty."

  ****

  Shi opened the letter with trembling fingers. Her encounter with Quinn had shaken her and made her feel dirty under the surface, where she couldn't wash it away. She exhaled as she read the letter, the words were a balm.

  Shi,

  I love you. I just realized I haven't really told you that yet.

  -Ler

  She read the letter a few times. Her exhaustion came back, weighing her down. Shi climbed back into her trunk and fell asleep. She didn't sleep for long. Cries of pain and terror filled the wood. Even before she left her trunk to investigate, a terrible knowledge solidified in her head. Before she even knew what was wrong, the fantasy she had built in her mind, of her future, blew away like leaves in a storm.

  Shi climbed out, transfixed in horror. All around her, her people stumbled around, blind, screaming and moaning. Some thrashed on the ground, others lay still…dead. Poison penetrated the ground and floated on the air. Shi ran as fast as she could.

  "Shea!"

  Hands grasped at her as she ran, bodies on the ground tripped her. "Shea!"

  Then Shi saw her. Shea stood against Hul's trunk. Her back arched, her head thrown back, her hands clasped on her belly. Shi ran to her and grabbed her by the shoulders.

  "Shea! Shea, look at me!"

  Shea's head flopped forward as though her neck was broken, her eyes rolled back sickeningly. Her breathing jolted in and out of her and she began to wail, her hands moving furiously on her belly. "NOOOOOO!" she cried.

  Shi placed her hands on Shea's belly, and she felt the baby die. The healthy roundness pulled inward like a dried husk. Then Shea fell backward. Shi caught her and lowered her to the ground. Shea opened her eyes and looked at Shi for one moment. Her hand squeezed Shi's arm, then fell limp. Shi screamed in agony and held her sister's dead body against her.

  ****

  The door to the rune room banged open, startling both Leramiun and Kracel. The expression on the face of the person at the door startled Leramiun further.

  "Sire, something awful has happened."

  Leramiun found himself grasping the arm of the messenger. "What?!"

  "The Dryads…they're all dying."

  Chapter 11

  He ran. He knew he couldn't save her. But he ran. It was happening. Shi was dying, and he couldn't do anything to stop it. He'd never been so afraid. He couldn't think of the pain that would come, only that he must get there in time, and terrified he wouldn't. He must get there in time. He ran. He ran through the portal and hit the ground running. All the workers were gone. Their carts of sand abandoned. He ran into the woods, straight into the choking stillness of death that hung in the air like a haze. Only then did he hear his heart thundering in his ears.

  "Shi!" His voice tore through the air. "Shi!"

  He turned in a circle, bodies all around his feet.

  "Ler! I'm here! I'm here!"

  He ran again toward her voice, and then he saw her. She was running to him, but she was still a distance away. He ran faster. Her steps faltered. He ran faster. Her arms stretched out to him. He caught her as she fell and went down on his knees. He cradled her head against his chest, and she looked up into his face.

  "I held on. I waited for you."

  He had so much to say and no time to say it. She was slipping away.

  "Shi, don't go…" he whispered. "Don't go."

  "Can't... hold…on." Each word struggled out of her. "Got… your… letter…"

  She brought her hand up. His hasty, inadequate letter was clasped in her fist.

  "Thank…you…Ler. Thank you for your love."

  "No, Shi. Thank you for yours."

  She drew in a rattling breath, her eyes clearing for a mere second, reaching down into him like a caress. "Goodbye."

  It broke him. He couldn't say it back. He couldn't. Goodbye was final. Never would he say it. Her eyes closed. She was gone.

  ****

  A few soldiers found him hours later, lying on the ground, holding on to her body. They tried to rouse him to no avail. They made to lift him, but still he hung on to her. They pulled, using their considerable strength, and still, his hold wouldn't slacken. They had to break his fingers. He didn't respond to the pain. Only after they carried him back through the portal and closed it behind them did he stir. His eyes were blank, but the agony began to rise up out of his lungs.

  No one who heard his cries walked away unaffected.

  Leramiun appeared mentally catatonic for an entire year. He looked at no one, spoke to no one, his spirit crippled by grief. The workings of the Onyx Castle fell into confusion and then into a lull. Quinn would have taken t
he throne, had it not been for the staggering evidence against him brought to light by the many workers who followed his orders and became instruments of death to the Dryads.

  Kracel Murint took up residence in the castle, on the approval of Leramiun's advisors, moving into a growing position of power, until he had all but taken up stewardship of the throne. No one knew how to stand up to him, and after a while, no one cared to, as he proved to be mild and just.

  He imprisoned Quinn, withholding the death penalty, insistent that Leramiun would surface, and it would be his call as to what to do with his murderous younger brother.

  Leramiun shuffled the halls like an old man, his eyes open but unseeing. He wandered without destination. Everyone skirted around him. It was the sound of arguing and mocking voices that first jabbed a hole in his opaque mental barricade. Then the sound of a woman weeping, a woman whose voice he recognized, broke him free, and he looked at what was around him.

  He was standing in the middle of the harem. Women moved around him as though he were a stone statue, giving him no notice at all. Two women stood over another on the floor, hunched against the wall. They shouted hurtful words at the one cowering, and then one kicked her.

  "Give me that ring, hag! I'll tear your hand off to get it if I have to!"

  "Stop it!" he yelled, the words croaking out of his unused vocal chords.

  The two abusers jumped and looked at him. All the women in the room fanned out, staring at him with wide eyes.

  He looked down at the woman on the floor, her face turned to the wall. He knew her. A blue stone ring glinted on her hand. His ring.

  She looked up at him through tearing, bloodshot eyes. Helena. Her gaze hit him in the heart like hammer. She looked broken. Her hair hung in greasy strands, except where it had been pulled out by the fistful. One of her shoulders pulled in wrong as though the bones had been shattered and healed back incorrectly. And her once beautiful face was terribly scarred.

  Strength breathed back into him as he strode over and lifted her off the floor. She didn't fight him; she just looked at him in disbelief as he carried her through the castle back to his room. He set her on the bed and left the room. A few minutes later, Leramiun came back with his personal physician.

  "Treat her the way you would treat me," Leramiun said to the doctor. "Do everything you can."

  The deft hands of the doctor examined her. He spoke quietly with Leramiun before leaving the room.

  After that, Leramiun took care of her himself. He drew her a bath, washed and gently combed her hair, and fed her from his own veins. And still neither one of them spoke to each other.

  She fell asleep quickly. He tucked her in and sat in the chair next to the bed, watching over her. Every scar on her face convicted him. He would make amends. He swore to himself that night, never again would anyone come to harm because of him. Never.

  Chapter 12

  There was time that was lost. Only an embrace of darkness. But then her spirit awakened. Her consciousness remained. She was dead, but she was still there, and she was alone. None of her kinsmen were there with her. Their souls had flown and hers had stayed. Why? Did she choose to stay? She couldn't remember.

  At first, there was just awareness, thoughts. Then came the pain. It began in the feet. Shi looked down where her feet used to be, there was a swirl of what looked like green cloud, twisting upward. It moved up and over her, leaving an oddity behind. She had a new form. Neither woman nor tree, both, merged into one. She had lost all variation of color as well, and was now monochromatic. She didn't think it a pretty green. Not a living vibrant color, but the hue of death. Shi held out her hands and examined them. Her fingers were thin, elongated, and gnarled. Her arms were likewise thin and twiggy. She drifted over the ground, over the dead, and examined the change that had so quickly come over the wood. The whole area was poisoned.

  The water now had a purple tinge to the silver. She looked at it, oddly detached, and thankful she wasn't really experiencing her emotions. The Heart called to her. She drifted to it. The manifestation burned high and wide, enveloping the dead trees of the Verdant in dark purple flames. She felt a small flicker of hope that if the flames consumed her tree, she could go to where the other Dryads had gone. But then the flame pulled back and shrank to its usual size. The Verdant had burned to clear. Crystalized.

  An unfortunate truth came to her then. She thought she had died steeped in love, and indeed she had, but behind that beautiful tapestry were the other emotions she had died in: rage, hate, and guilt. She was a ghost, stuck forever in the throes of those feelings. She had lost the living's ability to move past something and change.

  Years passed. No one set foot in the cursed wood. Shi's existence was solitary. She learned about her limitations and tested what she figured was possible. She found she could set her feet on the ground and walk if she wanted to. She could drift in the top of the canopy but not go past it. With great concentration, she could lift physical objects and hold them momentarily, even things impossibly heavy. After she learned that, she set to work creating a graveyard.

  The bodies on the ground turned to piles, like mounds of dried leaves. Shi gathered them and buried them all together. When a tree would fall, she would lift it and take it to the graveyard where it could petrify and become a monument. Shi was impatient for Shea's tree to fall; she had designated a very special place for it.

  The day Shea's tree finally fell was marked by another event: her first visitor, and he was most unwelcome.

  Shi had just finished moving Shea to her place of honor, when she felt him enter the wood. Quinn.

  She watched him from overhead. She was gratified he looked thin and unhealthy at least. He took his time walking around. She could leave him alone if he left after satisfying his untoward curiosity. Shi discovered another unfortunate truth that day. She could hear his thoughts. She could see the fabric of his soul, and it was dark and repulsive. He'd just escaped from prison, and he blamed her for everything that had gone wrong for him.

  He found the graveyard. A hateful smile broke over his face as he recognized it for what it was.

  "I thought you might still exist," he shouted. "I hoped for it. I have a message for you."

  He took a step back, fear plain in his eyes as she came down and materialized in front of him. He tried to cover his cowardly reaction with weak bravado and gave her a contemptuous sneer.

  "It is you, isn't it? Yes, I recognize you. Wow, death was unkind. You're hideous."

  His mind revealed things she had wondered about for years, ever since she died. He was the real murderer of her people. The introduction of the sand was Ler's stupid mistake that Quinn used as a weapon.

  "Why are you here?" It was the first time Shi had spoken since she died, and her voice sounded foreign to her own hearing.

  His mind answered her question before his mouth could. Killing her hadn't been enough for him. Now he was free from prison, he'd come to hurt her again. The images in his head staggered her. Images of Ler.

  "I came to tell you that he never really loved you. He has mated again, and they are expecting their first child. The whole kingdom eagerly awaits the birth."

  Flashes of images in Quinn's mind seemed to confirm his words. Shi looked impassive, but internally she was raging.

  "You ruined everything for me, Shi. Your death should have broken my brother beyond repair, the fact that it didn't is further proof he didn't love you. Sure, he moped around for a while, but then, just as it was time for me to take the throne, he snapped out of it and became the best king Regia has ever seen." He said the last bit in a singsong. Clearly quoting what others were saying about Ler.

  The rage was building.

  "And you, you were so easily replaced… Why won't you speak?" His rage at getting no response almost matched her own. He shrugged and touched one of her monuments. "I guess you must not have loved him either. Too bad, you obviously loved your own kind. Too bad you killed them all for a man you didn't even love."


  Shi's scream shot out from her like a shockwave. The energy ripped through everything around her, breaking the monuments she'd lovingly created. Quinn was thrown backward against her sister's tree, his bones shattering throughout his whole body. She moved and bent over him, his heart thundering in her ears.

  "Look at me," she ordered.

  He did, his eyes the only parts of his body that still worked.

  "All these years, your desires to use me as a rag went unfulfilled. Now, I'm the one who's going to penetrate you."

  Shi reached her hand through his chest and grabbed his heart. She held it tight, constricting her fist tighter and tighter until her fingers punctured the fleshy outer membrane, deeper and deeper until it stopped beating, the aberrant organ skewered on her hand.

  Shi wept as she surveyed the damage to the graveyard. She couldn't fix it. She tore Quinn's body to small pieces, scattering them evenly on the ground in the center of the graveyard. She offered the guilty blood to the ground where she had laid the dead to rest. The offering wasn't enough, but it was something.

  Shi left the graveyard and abandoned her efforts there. She buried herself in her old trunk. For decades she slept. Time meant nothing. Sometimes she would awaken suddenly, a sense of someone just beyond the boundary. Whenever this happened, it was accompanied by the faint sounds of weeping. Ler would come to the edge, but he never crossed into her space. Then he would be gone again, before she could move toward him.

  She stayed numb. She went back to sleep. Time meant nothing.

  ****

  Tentative steps woke her. The woman's thoughts whispered through the woods to Shi, as quiet and gentle as the rustling of her skirt along the ground. Shi jolted as she realized who the vampire woman was: Ler's queen. Shi's knee-jerk ire faded away as soon as she examined the woman's intentions and character. She wasn't there looking for Shi. She was curious about the place and the terrible incident she'd heard about for so many years, and she wondered about the Dryad woman who had captured Leramiun's heart.