City of Everdark (Chronicles of Arcana Book 3)

by Debbie Cassidy

  There’d been barely enough left to bury. But his cloak had been untouched, lying by the remains of his body. Each inhale was a memory. Ten days may not sound like a long time, but here, in the Everdark, it felt like a lifetime. We’d been together pretty much every minute, after all.

  Blinking back the tears, I took a shuddering breath. He’d taught me so much. I’d be dead without him, and now dying wasn’t an option. I needed to make him proud. Get my arse out of here and tell the others about the man made of greenery who’d kept me safe in a barren land of darkness.

  My chest ached with loneliness. What were the others doing now? Was Gilbert making tea? Was Trevor reading the Daily Vine? Had Noir gone back to his Arcana life, given up on ever finding me? And Tay ... he’d given up the knell, for what? Oh, God. Please, by some miracle, let me find Valance on the way back, please let this not have been a wasted journey.

  Sleep had been fitful and brief since Jinx’s death. He’d watched over me while I slept and vice versa, but now I was alone, deep slumber was a luxury, and it had been over a week since I’d dreamt of the guys. My loneliness was complete.

  My eyes drifted closed, but my other senses remained aware and alert. I’d skirted the edges of sleep, just taking enough to recharge, enough to ...

  Burning, I was burning. Oh, God. I cracked my eyes open to see the fire low, too low to ward off predators. It needed kindling. Must get up. But my head was fuzzy and heavy, and my limbs were like lead.

  Nausea rolled up my throat, and I turned my head to the side in time to spew. Fuck. Oh, fuck. The damn denizen. Yellow-striped fucker ... Toxic. Poison. Oh, shit. I threw up again and again until there was nothing but bile. Pain gripped my torso, making me weak.

  An ironic chuckle bubbled up my throat. I’d been killed by a denizen, and all I’d had to do was eat the fucker. Dead. So dead. Sleep. I needed to sleep. Unconsciousness tugged at me.

  “Wila, wake up.”

  I peeled my lids back. “Azren?”

  “Yes, it’s me. You need to stay awake. Stay alert.”

  “Too tired.”

  “I know. I know, Wila. But if you fall asleep, you’ll die. Do you understand me?”

  Death was bad. Death was unwanted. “Poisoned.”

  “Think, Wila. What can you use to purge the poison?”

  Purge it ... Jinx ... Jinx would have had an herb or ... Oh, fuck. Herbs. There were herbs in his pocket. Every moment was agony, an exercise in willpower, but slowly, surely, my fingers found the pocket in the cloak and the pouch of herbs Jinx had ground up for me the day before his demise.

  My head felt like a bowling ball had been strapped to it, but my hand was doing a fine job of teasing open the pouch, pinching some herbs, and then slowly bringing them up to my mouth.

  “That’s it, Wila. You can do this,” Azren said.

  The dry herbs touched my tongue, melting bitter and sharp in my mouth, and then my throat began to tingle.

  Was it working?

  If the fire died, then I’d never get the chance to find out, because the predators would get me first.

  “Deep breaths, Wila. You can do this. Fight it,” Azren ordered.

  I rolled onto my front and reached for the kindling, finger grazing the blackened, dried wood. Just an inch more. There. Okay. With a flick of my wrist, I sent fresh wood into the fire, reviving the flames.

  “You did it.” Azren’s voice was laced with relief.

  My eyelids were much too heavy to stay open. “Will you stay?”

  “Yes, for as long as you need me.”

  Unconsciousness sank its claws into my mind and then there was nothing.

  “You need to drink some water,” Azren urged.

  I was burning up, my body slick with perspiration. Were the herbs working?

  “Your body is sweating out the poison. The herbs are helping, but you need to hydrate,” Azren confirmed.

  The waterskin ... I needed to get it, but it was on the other side of the cave with my provisions. The slightest movement made my head spin, how the heck was I going to get across the cave?

  “Wila, you can do this.”

  “Easy for you to say.” My words slurred. “Crap, I sound pissed.”

  “Take a deep breath, Wila, and then roll onto your front.”

  “Or you could just get the water for me?” I laughed, bitter and harsh, and ended up coughing my guts out for my efforts, because, of course, he wasn’t actually here. He was a figment of my delirious mind. A ghost conjured by my psyche to keep me alive.

  “Wila, you need to move,” mind-ghost Azren said.

  Rolling onto my front, I began to crawl across the floor. The cave swam, my head bloomed with heat, and my stomach churned, but there was no stopping because phantom Azren was right. Water was life, right?

  It took forever, but I made it and collapsed by the pile of dried meat and the pack filled with essentials Jinx had left for me. The skin was half full. Better not drink it all—just a few sips, enough to keep me going. The water was cool and fresh, and—oh, God—I was going to be sick.

  “No. Wila, breathe through it.”

  Breathe, breathe. Shit, my psyche needed to get some new material. But the advice worked and the nausea subsided. There was no way I’d make it back to the fireside, not just yet. Maybe in a little while. Maybe in a moment ...

  14

  AZREN

  Something was wrong. A churning in my gut unrelated to my current predicament, unrelated to the blood pooling out of my abdomen and Elora’s manic cackle bouncing off the walls. The spike of panic wasn’t mine. It was Wila’s. The dark stain of dread wasn’t mine; it was my kindred’s. Suddenly, the shackles binding me mattered. The wounds marring my flesh meant something. They meant I was bound, weak, a slave, and a slave could not protect his kindred.

  My kindred was in danger. It was a visceral conviction that flooded my blood with the heat of adrenaline and pumped my heart faster. Fire danced over my skin as the glamour I’d been holding on to burned away, and my true form—my Shedim form—was revealed.

  “Oh, dear,” Elora said. “Have I broken you?”

  I locked eyes with her, an inferno bubbling up inside me. “Take off the shackles and find out.”

  For the first time since I’d known Elora, doubt flitted across her perfect, cruel features. She covered it quickly enough with a bored heave, and then dropped her whip on the ground.

  “You know what, pet? I think we’re done for today. In fact, we’re done period. The pieces are almost in place. And it’s time to take a trip. A little pilgrimage. And when we get back, if I’m feeling magnanimous, I may let you finally die.” She turned her back on me and began to stride away.

  I couldn’t let her walk away without asking, without finding out for sure the purpose of her cruelty, if there even was a purpose. “If you’re going to end me anyway, then tell me why you killed Ivan? Why squash the Treaty? I deserve that much at least for all my years of loyal service.”

  She turned back to me, and the manic light in her eyes had died a little. “Yes. You have been loyal. A loyal pet.” She sauntered closer, her booted feet clipping on the hard-packed earth. “Sometimes sacrifices must be made for the greater good, for a brighter future.”

  “I don’t understand. How is this a brighter future? How is living a lie better than the truth, better than the peace and equality we could have had?”

  “Tell me, Azren? If you were given a glimpse of the future, an arid, dead world of pain and death, if you were shown this and told that one race alone would be responsible for such an outcome, what would you do? What lengths would you go to in order to protect your people?”

  “What are you saying? You’re saying you saw the future?”

  Her smile was mirthless. “I did more than see it, I felt it. I felt the emptiness and the pain and the horror, and I knew what I had to do. I knew that equality could never be an option between Draconi and Shedim, that the Shedim could never be allowed positions of power, because
it would be the Shedim that would one day end this world.” She lifted her chin. “I made the ultimate sacrifice when I slaughtered my scalemate, and I would do it again in a heartbeat to save my people.”

  A prophecy? A window into the future? How was that possible? And even if it was, how could she be sure her actions hadn’t set us on the path to destruction anyway. “Maybe you did see that Shedim would cause the end of the world, but how can you be certain that you’re not the one who has created the monsters by enslaving us?”

  There was that doubt again, but it was fleeting, hidden too soon, which told me she’d considered this possibility before. “The Shedim are my slaves by their choice.” This time her smile was smug.

  Yes, she’d made sure of that with her memory enchantment. She’d taken us under her thumb by manipulating our minds.

  “Under Draconi rule, the Shedim will remain subservient,” she continued. “The truth will remain hidden, and you will do no harm. Not without my say-so. Now heal, for soon we travel.” She melted into the shadows.

  I sagged against the bloody slabs and focused on healing. I’d been wrong to claim resignation. This would not be my tomb. My kindred deserved better. My kindred deserved to be saved, and the world needed to know what Elora had done.

  It was time to fight.

  “Oh good, finally,” a deep, disembodied voice said. “I was beginning to think you’d given up hope.”

  Where was it coming from? There was nothing here except the screams of the tortured and the insects who crawled in the dark.

  “Well, you’re wrong there,” my invisible companion said. “The pit is built on the home of the unseeing. They listen and they wait.”

  “Who are you?”

  “A prisoner like you.”

  A neighboring cell, maybe? But that didn’t make sense. How could I hear him? “How long have you been here?”

  “Too long.”

  I was going insane, this was the first sign of it. But anything was better than the aching loneliness between Elora’s beatings. If this was a figment of my fractured mind, then so be it. Down in the bowels of the earth my rage was impotent; best to distract myself from all the things I was unable to do, from the conviction that my kindred was in danger and there was not a single action I could take to protect her.

  I leaned my head back against the wall. “What’s your name?”

  “My name is Orion.”

  15

  VALANCE

  They were gathering by the fire, probably debating whether to take another slice or two. Who’d have thought that the prince of Draconi would be relegated to meals on wheels ... or in my case, meals in chains.

  Fuck Mother and the lead cuff she’d welded to my wrist. Lead was dragon kryptonite, and this close up against my skin it meant shifting to dragon form, and crispy frying the fuckers wasn’t an option. But they’d known that when they’d saved me.

  They knew a lot about Draconi territory; they were, after all, the cockroaches of our world. Able to break bone and sinew to slip through cracks, they’d been the thieves of Draconi, and Mother, in her ultimate wisdom, had decreed them banished into the Everdark. Now they wanted out. They wanted to enter Arcana, but from what I’d picked up from stuff they’d said, both to me and each other, the breach allowing them access was a battle zone. Only the strongest made it through. Arcana probably had a bigger Other problem than they realized, because if what these cockroaches were saying was true, only the most powerful Others had made it to Arcana.

  Shit, they’d finished with the talking and were headed over. Yep. Wicked blade in tow.

  I rolled my eyes. “Come on, guys. At this rate, there’ll be nothing left by the time we get to the breach.”

  “Just a taste. One taste,” the guy who I’d pegged as the leader said.

  Fucker went on about how this was the only way, how they were so sorry. But it was in his eyes, in all their eyes—carnivorous hunger that they’d done well to hide while in Draconi territory. They’d developed a taste for flesh. Specifically, mine, and although I healed faster now that I was almost back to full strength, it still hurt like a bitch when they took a chunk.

  He leaned in to slice at my leg. They’d kindly cut away the bottom of my jeans to allow for better access.

  “Did you sterilize that blade, huh?” I raised both brows. “You give me an infection and it’s game over.”

  He hesitated, and then with a harrumph, headed back to the campfire.

  A momentary reprieve, and damn, I could use a bottle of dragon tears about now. Instead I did the only thing that helped when they dug in. I closed my eyes and summoned her face, reaching for the connection between us, testing its strength and knowing that she was okay, alive and well and safe. Except this time the connection was flimsy and weak, a sign that she was sick ... dying.

  My eyes snapped open as the blade cut into my flesh. I’d been holding off on this move, waiting for them to get me to the breach before breaking free, because the chains they’d used to bind me were nothing. Not really. But there was no time. Wila needed me, and common sense was no longer in the driver’s seat. My body acted on instinct, lashing out as the chains snapped. Knocking the others back with a roar, and then I was running into the night, their screams of outrage and horror fading behind me.

  Wila. I needed to find Wila.

  I ran until common sense slipped back behind the wheel, and my feet came to a halt. Shit. Fuck! Where the hell to now? The breach could be anywhere, and now I’d dumped my only way of finding it. I was fucked.

  The silver and black landscape stretched out before me, unremarkable but lethal. There were things out there—awful, hungry things that had been warded off by the Others’ fire. Fire they carried with them always. Even then, two had gone scouting and never returned. I’d heard tales of the creatures that called the Everdark their home and was in no hurry to meet them.

  I’d need to find flint and wood and build a fire. Maybe find a cave to hole up in. There’d been plenty of those, but the Others who’d held me captive had steered clear. They preferred to sleep under the stars.

  Shit, which way?

  My step faltered as darkness pooled at my feet. My shadow? No. Wait, this was moving away, rising up until it formed a humanoid form.

  I backed up. “Hello, strange shadow man.”

  A low chuckle. “I’ve been watching you.”

  “Well that’s ... nice.”

  “I can help you, for a price.”

  Making bargains with strangers wasn’t my thing, but desperate times called for desperate measures. “You know where the breach is?”

  “Yes. I can point you in the right direction.”

  “What do you want?”

  “An answer to a simple question.”

  “My general knowledge isn’t so bad. Go ahead.”

  “Where is the key?”

  The key? Was this some kind of mystical trick question? “Um. The key is within you, my son. Search deep, search long, and you shall find it.”

  The shadow man canted his head and then drifted to the left and to the right. “You really don’t know.”

  I allowed my shoulders to sag. “No clue.”

  “And you are the dragon liege heir?”

  “She burned out my eyes and exiled me. A little extreme in my opinion, a simple cutting me out of the will would have sufficed, but no, she had to make a point.”

  He threw back his head and laughed and laughed and then laughed some more.

  “You know, you’re great for a guy’s self-confidence.”

  His laughter cut off abruptly, and his shadow face glared at me with deep pockets of darkness where the eyes would be. “Your mother is a wily one, a clever one. But we will find it. We will find it, and we will take it, and we will use it for our own.”

  “The key?”

  “Yes. The key that manipulates minds will serve a new purpose. It will open a metaphysical door. It will bring back our commander, and we will rule supreme.”
/>   Attention piqued, I took a step toward the creature. “Tell me what you know about this key.”

  He made a sound of derision. “Everything that you do not, it seems. The key is what divides your people. It is what gives Elora her power. But it does not belong to her. She cannot hide it forever. We will find it.”

  “And you are?”

  “The first. The guardians. We are the shades.”

  My scalp prickled. “The shades? As in the creatures who sealed the Draconi, Shedim, and Others into a supernatural prison?”

  “We served blindly. But not anymore. Now, we will be free.”

  I let out a bark of laughter. “Wait, let me just get this straight. You got locked up too?”

  If a shadow could bristle, he’d be a porcupine. “Not all of us. Many of us escaped, we hid in pockets of darkness, and we waited for his eyes to wander. They did so soon enough. Soon enough, he was gone, and now it is our time to liberate our brothers.”

  “And you think this key will help you do that?”

  “If it can change history in the minds of thousands, then it will open a door.”

  “And what does this key look like?”

  Silence.

  “Well, good luck with that. Sorry I couldn’t help, but you know, in the interests of not being a petty arsehole, you could just point me in the right direction.”

  “It’s a four-day trek.”

  His speech up until now had been succinct and pretty fanatical but lacked passion. It was almost as if he was doing it by rote.

  “You don’t really give a shit about the key, do you?”

  “What? Of course I do. The key is all.” He glanced about.

  I rolled my eyes. “There is no one else within listening distance. Just you and me, pal. So, will you show me the way or not?”

  He sighed. “I’ll take you to the breach on one condition.”

  Here it was, the real reason he’d appeared to me. “Go on.”

  “You take me with you.”

  “Through the breach?”