by Josie Gold
ROYAL AND RUIN
GIFTS OF THE GODS BOOK ONE
JOSIE GOLD
CONTENTS
Harken, age 11
Fennion, age 13
1. Harken
Fennion
2. Harken
Fennion
Harken
Fennion
3. Fennion
Harken
Fennion
Harken
Fennion
4. Harken
Fennion
Harken
5. Fennion
Harken
Fennion
6. Fennion
Harken
Fennion
7. Harken
Fennion
Harken
Fennion
Harken
Fennion
Harken
8. Harken
Fennion
Harken
Fennion
Harken
9. Harken
Fennion
Harken
Fennion
10. Fennion
Harken
Fennion
11. Harken
Fennion
12. Fennion
Harken
13. Harken
Fennion
Harken
14. Harken
Fennion
15. Harken
Fennion
16. Fennion
Harken
17. Harken
18. Fennion
Harken
Fennion
19. Harken
Fennion
20. Harken
Fennion
Harken
The Story Continues
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HARKEN, AGE 11
Mama made me wear my nicest dress for Larka’s funeral. Larka wouldn’t have cared what I wore. She wouldn’t have cared that the whole village watched her body burn into ash. She never cared about those things.
Larka cared about catching frogs, finding pretend dragons, and me.
At least it was pretty, watching Larka burn up. The whole village came to the meadow just outside the village. Larka’s Da placed her on the pyre of wood and flowers and asked the Old Gods to take care of her. The fire burned her hair first, and Mama got mad at me for gagging at the smell.
I tried to run away this morning, but Mama caught me. She didn’t care about Larka. She only cared that it would look bad if I wasn’t there.
As the fire spread to Larka’s face, I took off running again. My name was called, but I kept running. I ran across the meadow, with the tall blue lilycup flowers smacking me in the face. Bees darted furiously out of my way. I ran toward the thick line of trees beyond the meadow and didn’t stop once I entered the Forest of Fell.
I kept running until I couldn’t smell the smoke anymore. And then kept going.
Eventually, my legs gave out, and I fell to the ground. I felt like crying, but screams came out instead. I felt something clawing at my chest, trying to escape, but I kept it down.
Above me, the canopy of trees blocked the sunlight. The trees swayed and groaned. Even animals hid from my deranged howls.
I screamed until I fell asleep. I don’t know who found me, but I woke up in my Grandmother’s house, tucked in bed beside my little sister, Ivelle. She looked at me with huge brown eyes. Maybe she wanted me to reassure her. Maybe I wanted her to reassure me. Instead, I turned away.
The next morning, Mama let me stay in bed longer than usual.
“I’ll even let you skip lessons today. Just this once,” Mama said.
She did it to be kind. I hated etiquette lessons. But I wished she would hold me instead.
“Not fair!” Ivelle stamped her feet. Ivelle didn’t hate the lessons as much as I did, but at eight summers, she had become very concerned about “fairness.”
Larka being a pile of ashes wasn’t fair.
Mama dragged Ivelle out of the room, leaving me in the blankets and the dark. Downstairs, I could hear Ivelle complaining to my older brother, Mireel. I could imagine him rolling his eyes. He hated the village. He was well on his way to joining the Royal Academy to become a politician like my parents and found little joy in commoner’s ways.
I drowned out the voices of my family, hoping for a sleepless dream. But my dreams were dark, smoky, and fire licked.
When I woke up again, Grandma was sitting by my bed with a bowl of soup. The smell of venison and spices pulled me out of the covers.
Grandma watched me eat with understanding eyes. Grandma was Papa’s Mama, and she raised him here in the village. I liked coming here, but Mama didn’t like to be reminded that Papa wasn’t born into politics like she was.
“If you want to talk,” Grandma’s creaky voice murmured, “I am old and past things like judgment.”
I suddenly hated Grandma for her pitying dark eyes and her kind words. I knocked the soup over on purpose and glared as she cleaned it.
That night, I told my parents that I never wanted to come back to the village. We left the next day. Mama was pleased that I was no longer enamored with the simple life. I didn’t hug Grandma when we left.
The whole way back to the Royal City, that thing in my chest thumped against my ribs, wanting out. But I didn’t let it.
After that, no one ever spoke about Larka again.
I never saw Grandma’s village again. For years, Grandma would write to me. I burned all the letters. When she died two years ago, I refused to go back to the village for the funeral. My papa, a kind but easily distracted man, didn’t fight me. And Mama looked at me strangely, like she hadn’t realized until that moment what an icy, strange creature I had become.
I honed that ice over the years. I froze that swooping chaos that lived inside my chest.
I spent my days like a specter—aimless and full of spite.
FENNION, AGE 13
“Lessons aren’t over, worm!”
I risked a look behind me. Highlar was closing in, waving around a sword. I ran faster. Highlar had already cut me twice on my legs and before I decided to run, he had started aiming for my stomach.
Highlar thought running was for weaklings, but I suspected Highlar hated when
people ran because he wasn’t very fast. Highlar was massive. Taller than what should be allowed and muscled. Burly, I-earned-these-in-battle muscles.
I, however, very much lacked muscle. But I was fast.
It was late, the sun just having disappeared behind the Mountain of Sighs on the horizon. Unfortunately, there were few people around to witness the Princes of Kartheya dash around. And one with a huge sword, no less.
I had already run through most of the city, dodging citizens and vendors. Every time I thought I had found a good hiding space, Highlar would find me. My lungs begged for me to stop, but the throbbing wounds on my legs kept me going.
Highlar had said he wanted to teach me a new sword trick that he learned earlier that day. Highlar had just turned 21 summers and was made Lieutenant. He joined the War Makers—Kartheya’s army—when he was 18 summers old and had risen through the ranks easily. Some may say it was because he was a Prince of Kartheya, but watch him fight and you’d eat your tongue.
I should have known that he didn’t want to help me with my swordplay. As children, he cared little about hiding his cruelties, but a grown man had no business tormenting his little brother. So instead of beating me up for no reason out in the open, he would do it under the guise of “teaching me” how to defend myself.
I felt a tugging in my center, something urging me to take a left. I listened, trusting that feeling.
Around the corner, I spotted the Royal Library. It was huge, even bigger than the Royal Palace. The center of it was perfectly domed, and then it split into five long buildings. Reaching from those five corridors were five looming towers, like five giants’ fingers reaching toward the sky. Even in the dim light, the Library seemed to glow. It wasn’t built from any brick or stone known to mortals as it was smooth and unblemished, despite being older than the mountains of Kartheya. The stone was pearlescent, shifting colors in the light depending on the angle. Like the iridescent shell of a beetle.
Despite its enormous size, despite its primeval presence, it felt welcoming.
“Don’t you dare, coward!” Highlar yelled from behind me.
I dared. I ran up the steep steps to the dome. Ahead of me was an archway, with a wooden door much taller and wider than me. The handles of the door were bronze and covered in words from an ancient language. I grabbed them and threw my weight into opening the door and as the door groaned open, I lunged inside.
The door shut with a bang behind me, but I barely heard it. I was too busy staring at the inside of the Library.
I had visited the Library a few times, reluctantly. Libraries were boring—they were only for scholars. Highlar liked to remind me I wasn’t smart enough to be one of those. The last time I visited the Library, the books and shelves had been lit with green mage-lamps and dust danced in the air.
The shelves were gone now. Instead, there were the long branches of a huge tree, spreading everywhere within the Library. Instead of shelves, the books perched perfectly on the branches. Squirrels scurried about or read books.
Magic.
Awe turned to terror again when I heard the door behind me opening, and Highlar’s ragged, angry breathing.
“Little brother,” he called.
Please, I thought. To the Library, to the impossible magic of this tree.
Help me.
The door was groaning open when one of the branches whipped out, and slammed against it, locking Highlar out. Then several more branches emerged, gliding across the wooden door. Creating a thick barrier of twisted branches. Thorns burst from them, sharp and red. Outside, I could hear Highlar kicking at the door. But the tree—the Library—would not let him in.
I laughed, relief and wonder bubbling up my throat like sparkling wine. I spun around, admiring the great tree, wondering how I never knew that magic like this existed here.
“Thank you,” I said to the Library. The tree seemed to shake as if to say “it’s no bother,” but I felt something warm, like a comforting hand on my shoulder.
For the rest of the night, I wandered around the tree. I picked up books that sounded interesting to me and I lost myself in stories. The Library even gave me tea and cookies.
The Library also kept me safe, and it kept me company. As it would for many years to come.
HARKEN
TWELVE YEARS LATER
The Library changed overnight. When I went to bed last night, it was normal-looking. Low light flickered from the mage-lamps, wooden shelves held books, and the smell of dust was everywhere. Now, as I walked up the stairs to the third floor, everything was covered in a layer of powdery snow. The Library was in a bad mood today. Well, that’s something we have in common.
I had been assigned to reorganize the books on magical animals on the third floor. At least, that’s where Telsey thought the books might be. Who knows in this infernal place?
As if hearing my thoughts, the Library started to snow again. I threw the heavy books I had lugged up the stairs into the snow but none of them became wet. I, on the other hand, was soaked.
I looked around at the snowy third floor and admitted to myself that it looked pretty. Icicles hung from the shelves, gleaming and sharp. White-coated animals, like small foxes and rabbits, darted here and there.
Outside the frost-covered window closest to me, the sun was still shining high in the sky. It wouldn’t be until long after sundown that my shift would be over. Which meant I had to do something to occupy my mind, or else I’d go mad.
I had already come up with several little games and distractions during my three months as a Librarian. Ripping up the books and timing to see how quickly they would stitch themselves back together. Purposely putting books on the wrong shelves. Climbing up the stacks. Leaving out the books on ancient erotica with the most interesting pictures for patrons to stumble across.
Petty things, I knew. But I learned quickly that the Library was petty as well. It was like a competition now, to see who could be more irritating. Snow wasn’t even the worst the Library could do. Scorching heat, drizzling rain, intense gales of wind. Books falling on my head at random, my lunch disappearing, the staircases changing at will.
I picked up the books and started my game of purposely putting them in the wrong place. Putting them back in the right place seemed useless anyway since the Library changed nearly every day, and half of my job was figuring out the new sections and floors.
I was putting the last book back on the shelf (a book about the virtues of war in a section on peacemaking) when I heard someone climbing up the stairs. I didn’t bother to turn. If it was a patron needing help with a book, I would simply point them in the wrong direction. If it was another Librarian, I would ignore them.
“You know, it’s an oasis on the floor I was last on. You must have made it upset. Again.” The person behind me remarked.
I swore under my breath. The Library retaliated by sending a cold wind up my tunic.
It was Telsey, the Assistant Head Librarian. And also my roommate.
“You have lessons after your shift today. Don’t skip them again,” Telsey’s voice became stern. I finally turned toward her with a sneer.
Telsey was one of the Library’s favorites, which is probably why despite being one of the youngest Librarians, she was made Assistant Head Librarian a year ago. I often caught her singing to the Library. In those moments, the ever-changing Library always went still. Listening.
Telsey was everyone’s favorite, with her easy smiles and mothering ways. Mothering ways that seemed absurd for someone who was only 28 summers old.
Telsey even looked good in her Librarian robes. They were thick and bodiless, and an unflattering shade of navy. I refused to wear them. But on Telsey, her already beautiful mahogany skin shone against the navy, and the green flecks in her eyes stood out.
“I was planning on forgetting I had lessons,” I said wryly.
“The Head Librarian won’t let you. Neither will the Library. Remember the last time?” Telsey’s face broke out into an infuri
ating smile.
During my first week as a Librarian, I refused to go to lessons. One night I awoke to what sounded like an explosion. My belongings were tossed around the room, my bed vibrated aggressively beneath me, and as all of this went on, Telsey slept peacefully—her side of the room was totally unaffected. Since then, I went to my lessons.
At the look on my face, Telsey’s expression became more sympathetic.
“Torra is just trying to help you.”
She didn’t add, “Just like me” but it showed on her face.
Telsey thought she could help me adjust to life as a Librarian and help me learn to love my new job. At first, her attempts were aggressive and unending. She told me her whole life story when I moved in—how she grew up an orphan in the Royal City, and how discovering her magic and being made a Librarian saved her life. She wore a necklace, the kind all orphans in the city were forced to wear. It was a diamond encircled by a star, the symbol of the Saved Souls Orphanage. Sometimes I would catch her playing with it, eyes haunted.