Royal & Ruin (Gifts of the Gods Book 1)

by Josie Gold

  Sexual assault still happened in Kartheya, but since Queen Cheyla took the throne, the rates were extremely low. Queen Cheyla installed harsher punishments for sexual assault and domestic abuse which included public humiliation, decades of jail time, and in the worst cases, castration.

  But I had no idea what the laws and morals were in Vestan. So while I was prepared to obey, for now, I was also ready to fight with everything in me if anyone tried to touch me.

  The Vestians led us to their camp. Their sleeping areas were hammocks high in the trees, designed to blend in with the wood and the shadows. In the fire pit, there was a fire made of darkness. It gave off heat but no light or smoke.

  Only one man was still in the camp, waiting for us. He sat by the black flame, meticulously cleaning a curved blade. The blade sparked blue and indigo lights as he drew the stone down it. He was older than the rest of the Vestians, probably about 60 summers old, and based on the reverent way the Vestian soldiers greeted him, he was their leader. The leader’s brown hair was silver-streaked and he had blue-green eyes that were luminous in his golden face.

  The Vestians forced us to our knees in front of the leader. He didn’t look up from the blade as one of the soldiers spoke in Vestian. The language was melodious, with rolling ‘r’s and the ‘s’s sibilant.

  I snuck a glance at Fennion. His eyes were darting around in a calculating way, and his jaw was working back and forth. He was trying to come up with a plan. Most likely a reckless one.

  The Leader stood with a sigh and finally looked down at us. I met his gaze impassively. The Leader appeared vaguely interested in the way my hair floated around my face, but his gaze quickly moved to Fennion. Fennion glared at him as they studied each other. The Leader lifted his blade and I tensed. My magic roiled inside me.

  He put the tip of the blade under Fennion’s chin, tilting his head up.

  The leader inclined his head politely and then in accented Kartheyan he said, “Prince Fennion.”

  FENNION

  I smiled politely back at the Leader.

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said through gritted teeth.

  The leader’s smile stayed on his face. He kept eye contact with me as he spoke to a soldier in his language. Then, a female soldier with ash brown braids grabbed Harken roughly and dragged her to her feet.

  I tried to get to my feet, but one of the soldiers behind me kicked me in the back, sending me onto my stomach. But I kept fighting as Harken was dragged away deeper into the forest.

  “Peace,” the Leader said, “she will not be harmed.”

  Yet, went unspoken.

  Right before Harken disappeared behind a tree, she looked over her shoulder at me. Her eyes were tawny and wide in the low light, but she didn’t look afraid. She nodded at me, a small reassuring gesture that just made me fight harder. The soldier struck me across the back of my head, so hard my vision blackened for a moment. The leader spoke in harsh tones to the soldier, as if chastising him.

  “Apologies,” he said. “My name is Merdrick. I am the High Priest’s second in command.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything to me,” I shrugged, feigning an apologetic smile.

  In school, we only learned about Vestians in terms of battles won and lost. We learned very little about their culture, other than that they were war-hungry and used dark magic.

  Merdrick nodded in understanding before going on, “You seem like a smart boy. You must know what we want.”

  “Oh numbers and plans and such,” I drawled. “How many in our armies, weak spots in the infrastructure, etcetera.”

  Merdrick smiled widely, showing shiny teeth.

  “Ideally,” he agreed congenially, “but I can tell you won’t give it easy.”

  “Of course not,” I said cheerfully. Merdrick seemed truly aggrieved.

  “I do not like violence,” he shook his head, crouching in front of me so we were eye-to-eye. I scoffed.

  “You invaded our shores and attacked our squadrons. You shot my companion and me out of the air. Vestians only know violence.”

  Merdrick’s vivid eyes were sympathetic. The other soldiers listening all jeered and spat on the ground.

  “What lies the Kartheyans tell themselves,” he said.

  “You deny it?” I growled.

  “No. No, we did those things. But only because Kartheya struck first.”

  For a moment I was speechless. At my expression of disbelief, Merdrick went on.

  “For months, Kartheya has raided our shores. Sabotaging our watchtowers and protection walls. We retaliated, yes. We have launched reconnaissance missions, yes. But we did not start the violence.”

  My mind reeled. It couldn’t be true. The War Makers hadn’t mentioned any raids. But in my mind, I could see my mother pacing, the constant worry on her face. I could suddenly understand why she didn’t have time to help the Librarians, why there were no resources. And why she always kept that sword strapped to her.

  Warrior Queen they called her. I always thought the title was heroic. But what if all this time, it was a clue that she and Highlar had more in common than I had thought? What if behind Karsea’s back, the two of them were plotting and making war?

  “Even if that’s true,” I said, “I won’t tell you anything.”

  Merdrick sighed again. He said something to the soldiers. I was dragged to my feet in front of Merdrick. He studied my face, then pressed the tip of the blade to my cheek. A single teardrop of blood ran down my face.

  “We value beautiful things in Vestan,” he said regretfully, “it seems a shame to damage such a handsome face.”

  I batted my eyes at him flirtatiously. Merdrick smiled in genuine amusement.

  “I don’t like violence,” Merdrick said again, tossing the blade aside, “but I am good at it.”

  He reached to his left, and with the tip of his finger, he touched a red leaf on one of the trees. The leaf shuddered and started to brown along its edges. As if it was rapidly aging and dying. Merdrick took his hand away and then in the palm of his hand he conjured blue-green flames. The exact shade of his eyes.

  He held the flickering, scorching flame close to my face.

  “I’m going to avoid places that will impede your ability to speak,” he said pragmatically.

  “Makes sense,” I hissed.

  “And if you still won’t talk,” Merdrick went on, “We’ll call back that lovely lady to join us.”

  The threat was clear. They would hurt Harken to make me talk. I bared my teeth at him, snapping like a cornered dog.

  With the hand not holding the flame, Merdrick reached out and patted my cheek. He paused. He pressed his hand to my face, eyes widening. He made a swirling motion and the blue-green fire flickered out. He cupped my face in his hands. Lightning seemed to pass from his palms and into my skin. It didn’t hurt. It felt heady, like what Misery Ender felt like in my hands.

  He spoke a few words in his language that sent the other soldiers into hysterics. Shouting and fighting broke out, but Merdrick’s eyes stayed on mine.

  “Kartheya is a land of thieves,” Merdrick breathed.

  “Are you talking about the Gloves?” I asked, but he no longer appeared to be listening.

  “You’re Vestian,” Merdrick said, his palms still pressing into my face.

  I blinked.

  “Bullshit,” I laughed, a little hysterically, “Bullshit. This is just some tactic to make me talk.”

  “Poor boy,” Merdrick sighed, finally taking his hands from me.

  He started to circle me. Looking at me from every angle. I turned my head to follow him.

  “Have you ever been able to find something that was hidden? Are maps unnecessary because you always know where to go?” he asked. I was shaking my head, trying not to listen to this madness.

  “Do you have perfect aim? Have you known things you shouldn’t, or overpowered an opponent much bigger than you with ease?”

  No. No, he is tricking me.

  “Do
you ever get a feeling deep inside? Like something building inside you.”

  I thought back to what I felt when I beat the swampling. How I seemed to grow stronger as it became weaker.

  “You’re lying,” I said quietly, but I was staring at the other soldiers. Their eyes were light, their hair in varying shades of brown. My skin was darker than theirs, but still golden.

  I thought about my siblings. My mother. The portrait of my father. How I tried so hard as a child to see myself in his portrait. How little I looked like the rest of them.

  And then Highlar’s words came back to me, the words he’d said to me over and over since I could remember.

  You should never have been born.

  You don’t belong here.

  “Your magic is untrained, but it’s there,” Merdrick faced me again, touching my face again. I wrenched away.

  “Half-Vestian,” he seemed to decide for himself, “but strong in our magic. You’ve been lied to, boy.”

  I was shaking my head back and forth, breathing raggedly.

  “We can teach you how to use magic,” Merdrick said, “but first you need to tell us about Prince Highlar’s plans—”

  “I will never use domination!” I snarled, yanking at the binding behind my back, “your magic is evil. It drains life forces! Hurts people!”

  “You’ve been using magic all your life,” Merdrick finally sounded irritated, “you just didn’t know it.”

  I thought back and realized he was right. I had always assumed it was luck. My ability to know things, find things, my perfect aim. But have I been dominating all this time, draining living things around me without even knowing?

  Merdrick opened his mouth to say more, but then the camp seemed to explode. I was thrown on my back as pandemonium ensued. Soldiers were blown away, flung against trees. The black fire was put out. A tornado, small but powerful, manifested in the middle of the camp. And at its center, the wind refusing to touch her—was Harken.

  Her eyes were ablaze and her mouth was set in a snarl. She gestured at me and suddenly the wind no longer kept me pinned to the ground. It didn’t touch me at all. Merdrick planted his feet and grabbed for his blade, but the tornado came closer and knocked him back.

  Above us, the sky darkened and thunder cracked. Rain started to fall in heavy pelts.

  Soon, all the soldiers were pinned to the ground or trees. Harken stood beside me and with one palm still raised to the tornado, she raised the other hand to clutch the back of my neck.

  “Are you alright?” her voice was eerily calm. I nodded, unable to speak from the shock. She kissed my cheek, then turned back to the Vestians.

  “We can’t let them follow us,” she said. Tendrils of wind drifted toward the Vestians and down their throats. Merdrick and the soldiers began to convulse and gag. She was stealing their air.

  “Don’t kill them,” I muttered, detached. She eyed me, expression neutral, but she reeled back the tendrils of wind. The Vestians all slumped, eyes closed. But their chests rose and fell.

  The tornado shrunk into nothing but the storm continued above us. Harken grabbed Merdrick’s curved blade and used it to cut the ropes holding my wrists. In silence, we gathered our things quickly. My fingers trembled. Harken noticed.

  “Aren’t you going to ask how I got away?” she asked lightly, clearly trying to distract me.

  “I never doubted you could,” I said, distracted. “Please tell me.”

  Still watching me closely, Harken told her story as we hurried through the forest to find Fluffy.

  “They were too busy eavesdropping on your conversation with the leader to notice me rubbing the ropes against the tree behind my back,” Harken was saying. Her voice sounded like it was coming from underwater.

  Half-Vestian

  That voice, the one I had heard all my life, kept saying in my mind. I replayed every moment of luck and fortune in my life. Every strange look from my mother. Every word of hatred from Highlar. My features, my skin, my eyes.

  Miracle Prince, I was called.

  Imposter Prince. Enemy Prince. Evil Prince.

  Finally, we found Fluffy. He cried and crooned at us as we hacked off the ropes. Although we were all exhausted, we needed to get into the sky before the Vestians woke. I settled behind Harken, holding her tight, and Fluffy launched into the air. For a long while, the only sounds were Fluffy’s wing beats and the wind. Harken turned toward me and pushed a hand through my hair. I wanted to lean into the touch, but I was frozen.

  “What’s wrong?” she whispered.

  I didn’t want to say the words. I didn’t want to make them true by saying them. But they came out anyway.

  “I’m half-Vestian.”

  15

  HARKEN

  Fennion told me what the leader of the Vestians said in panicky, gulping sentences. I turned in my seat and watched his wide green eyes and ashen face.

  Half-Vestian, the leader had said. I didn’t believe it. He was just trying to trick Fennion, to make Fennion talk. I was sure of that. But by the way Fennion trembled and wheezed, Fennion believed it.

  “Fennion,” I said with as much tenderness as I could muster, but he didn’t hear me.

  “It all makes sense,” he was saying, “all of it. Highlar, the Queen. It all makes sense.”

  Fluffy turned his long neck to look at us. He snorted, and I nodded to the dragon.

  “Let’s land,” I said to Fluffy. Fluffy obeyed instantly. But Fennion clutched at the reins, shaking hard.

  “We need to get back,” he stuttered, his eyes so wide I could see the veins in the whites of his eyes.

  “We have time,” I soothed, prying the reins from his hands.

  His fingers went slack and he allowed me to steer us into a flower meadow overrun by indigo lilycups and fire-red glarebells. Dirt and petals blew around us as Fluffy landed. Nearby there was a gentle stream. Fluffy drank deeply and I refilled our waterskins.

  Fennion sat in the long grass, yanking it out over and over, eyes unseeing. I sat behind him and started weaving tiny braids into his dark hair. As children, when Ivelle was upset, braiding her hair calmed her. I hoped it would have the same effect on Fennion.

  At the feeling of my fingers in his hair, Fennion stopped ripping at the grass. But he was breathing hard and was sweating profusely.

  “It makes sense, Harken,” Fennion said again.

  “He was messing with your mind. Maybe he was using dark magic to—”

  “No, he wasn’t,” Fennion interrupted with a hard shake of his head, causing my fingers to pull a few strands of his hair out.

  I studied the color of his hair. Dark chestnut, with hints of red and amber sewn through. The Vestian’s hair had been darker, shades that varied from nut brown to the deepest russet. But there were so few full-blooded Kartheyans with dark hair. Or light eyes…

  No, I can’t let doubt creep up on me too.

  “We’re so close, Fennion,” I murmured. “So close to saving the Library. Don’t let those savages get to you when we are so close.”

  “Savages,” he parroted ruefully, “wouldn’t it be convenient for them to be savages?”

  I didn’t understand. I continued to braid, willing him to feel my compassion. But the sun was dipping lower in the sky. We planned to arrive in the Royal City before dark. Every day we were gone, the murderer may be closer to finding the Gloves. And every day, more Librarians may have been killed.

  “All my life I wanted to be a mage. I got my wish. But my magic is monstrous,” he held up his palms, staring at the lines hatefully. I leaned over his back and took his hand in mine, kissing his fingers.

  “So much makes sense now. How I could always find the book I was looking for.”

  “That was the Library. She likes you, remember?”

  “No, that’s not it. I’ve always been able to find things. Did I once have to look at the map to find the Sinking Swamps?”

  My stomach flipped inside me. He was right. He’d always had an u
ncanny sense of direction. He always knew where to find me when I worked in the Library, despite the fact the Library changed every day.

  “And, there was no way I could have beat the swampling with my skill alone,” he laughed a little, the sound was harsh and humorless.

  He suddenly grabbed my hands and twisted around to look at me.

  “I’ve probably been taking from you all this time without even knowing. Doing magic through domination all my life, unaware of how I hurt the people around me.”

  “That’s not possible,” I insisted, “I’ve never felt drained around you.”

  An ironic smile twitched at the corner of his lips.

  “Well, we won’t know for sure unless I try, do we?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Fennion just closed his eyes and held my hands tighter. Not enough to hurt, but firmly enough that I couldn’t yank them away if I tried. But I didn’t try. I waited patiently as he frowned, his mouth pulled into a thin, pained line.

  For a long while, I felt nothing. But then, my hands began to tingle. My hair seemed to deflate, slowly losing its buoyancy. A pain started behind my left eye and my muscles felt loose and useless.

  “Fennion,” the words came out slurred and afraid.

  My eyes were shutting, but before they did, I saw the flowers around us growing rapidly. Higher and higher they grew, sprouting and bursting. They reached above our heads and continued upward into the sky until they were as tall as trees.

  My last thought before unconsciousness dragged me under was how lovely the flowers looked as they loomed above us.

  FENNION

  Harken’s energy tasted like flying into a storm, like wind and rain and dange—

  Harken’s hands went slack in my own. I opened my eyes in time to see her fall backward into the tall grass. She landed softly, thank the Gods. But her skin was waxy and dull. Her hair fell limp around her. It was like I sucked all the vibrancy out of her.