Wicked Crown (Shattered Kingdom Book 2)
Page 1
Wicked Crown
Angelina J. Steffort
MK
Wicked Crown
Also in this Series:
Shattered Kingdom
First published 2020
Copyright © by Angelina J. Steffort 2020
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead,
is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Ebook: ASIN B088XW7CVN
Print: ISBN 978-3-903357-03-7
MK
www.ajsteffort.com
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Contents
Map
I. The Prince of Sives
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
II. A Path of Darkness
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
About the Author
Also by Angelina J. Steffort
Map
Part I
The Prince of Sives
Chapter One
Gandrett felt them—the tears searching their way into her eyes. She hadn’t believed, not once in all those years, that she might see them again, her family, whom she hadn’t even been allowed to send a message to in over ten years at the priory. She had hoped, yes, but never fully believed. After fulfilling her task in the service of Lord Tyrem Brenheran and bringing Joshua back to Ackwood, she was finally allowed to make that journey she had been dreaming to make all these cold, dark, and lonely days of her childhood at the priory of Vala.
Now that Alencourt was only a heartbeat away, the brooding presence of the Fae male who had been riding beside her for the past two days became less of a dragging weight.
“Don’t expect me to cry,” Nehelon commented, the mocking tone she was used to dancing on his deep timbre.
Gandrett shrugged and nudged her horse into a walk, unable to contain her happiness one more second. The airiness in her chest was enough to drive out all the brooding glances that had followed her on every step in Ackwood and on the ride back from Eedwood after she had saved Joshua Brenheran from his fate. There was nothing now for her than the village before her, the comforting smell of beginning summer, and the first cut of grass.
Home. She was home.
Nehelon followed on his black mare, once more enveloped in silence the way he had been the entire ride from Ackwood palace.
Gandrett didn’t care. No void, no matter how dark, could suck away the joy that was filling her chest as they rode between the first houses of the farm village which had been the shelter of her unbothered childhood—the childhood before Lord Brenheran’s men had taken her away.
Dusk was sloping through the settlement of worn stables and barns and houses as villagers hurried along, some carrying goods, some leading donkeys, which were pulling their carts. Lights flickered to life in the small windows of the scattered houses, all of which were familiar—and yet, not. Ten years had taken their toll on the wood and stone of their walls as had something else, something more than just the tooth of time.
Gandrett stopped her horse as they neared the small square at the center of the village where, usually, merchants stopped by and traded metals for grains, where the blacksmith had his small forge, drawing in travelers when their belongings needed fixing.
Everything was so familiar as if she hadn’t left at all—and yet, there was something different as she let her gaze swish over the scenery. She noticed it on the walls nearest to her first. There was soot staining the facades in long dark stripes as if a fire had recently raged in the open space and flames had licked at the houses in angry lashes. A surge of unease at the sight settled in her chest, letting her tears of joy halt on the rim of her eyes. Something had happened here.
In reflex, Gandrett’s head whipped around to that small road which led to her parents’ farm. She kicked Lim’s flanks, sending the horse into a gallop. She didn’t glance over her shoulder to see if Nehelon was still following or pay attention to the curses and vulgar gestures she earned from the villagers who were leaping out of her path as she aimed for that one place that contained any happy memory of her life.
Building after building she passed, watching as the blackened walls darkened with the vanishing daylight as much as the soot, which seemed to become denser as she came closer to her parents’ farm.
Then, the first broken roofs appeared along with cracked walls, missing doors, and shattered windows.
Sweat plastered Gandrett’s braid against her neck as she noticed the burnt grass along the road, the lack of people in this part of the village, the missing noise of cows and sheep and goats, which used to make up the sound tapestry of childhood memories.
And when she saw it in the distance, Gandrett’s hopes started sinking. It was the distorted outline of her parents’ farmhouse, the way the arc of the roof was all wrong. Lim raced them down the narrow street, making Gandrett hold onto his mane as he wound out of the settlement to where the sight on the horizon was clear. Too clear.
A stinging pain had settled in Gandrett’s chest as she beheld what awaited her where once her home had been. She sucked in a gust of air, hoping she was wrong, that she was having a nightmare and Nehelon would wake her up with one of his annoying reminders for exercise in the ungodly hours of the early morning.
But he didn’t.
At the northernmost end of Alencourt, her parents’ farm lay in rubble and ashes, little more than the back wall of the stables erect. Her chest tightened, making any breath harder than the one before.
Lim skidded to a halt at the edge of the scorched meadow as Gandrett pulled on the reins. She blinked away the moisture in her eyes and stared. It was all she could do not to scream at the sight of destruction.
Someone had burned down her home. Not just a small fire, but it had been wrecked in its entirety.
A sob escaped Gandrett as she struggled to grasp what she beheld, and her strength, the years of training, of sharpening her mind, steeling her heart, they faile
d her as she slithered down the side of the horse and ran, stumbling toward what was left of the house.
Her feet slipped on the unstable heaps of rubble as she climbed into what used to be the kitchen, scenting the air full of the smell of burnt wood and ashes… and flesh…
The stinging odor of burnt flesh—
Gandrett’s stomach lurched. She knew that stench from when they branded the livestock at the order. But this was much, much worse.
As she searched her way across the loose, blackened stones, she no longer cared if she was alone or if Nehelon or the world would see her on her knees. She didn’t hear or see anything but the destruction before her, hands already moving over layers of rubble and eyes scanning every inch of the covered ground for a sign that she wasn’t right about the smell. That her family hadn’t been home when the fire had struck.
There were bits and pieces of furniture mixed between the stones and broken roof-tiles that had once sheltered her and her family from rain and snow.
Gandrett didn’t notice how her kneecaps bruised on the stone, how her palms and fingers sliced open as she slithered forward. She simply kept turning over rock after rock, pulling on fractured, blackened wood with clammy hands. Her eyes darted through what was left of the rooms, the small living room where her mother used to read stories to her and her brother during the winter months, where now, no sign of the simple wooden shelves, or the books that used to sit there, was left. The brown carpet that ran along the narrow hallway—the walls no longer upright, the stain right before her parents’ bedroom where she had spilled ink when she was little. None of it was there. Just blackened, caved-in gravel.
It was an endless sea of sharp edges, promising countless small cuts and pain. But that was minor. She had endured worse pain during her training at the priory—even during the past weeks in Eedwood.
Yet, any pain paled compared to the throbbing in her chest as her gaze fell on the half-incinerated hand in a corner where once the broom cupboard had been. Gandrett’s breath caught as she dove toward it, her own, bleeding fingers reaching for the blackened bone that was left of a long-fingered hand—her mother’s hand.
Silence filled Gandrett—the type of silence which was deafening for its absence of meaning—and she bent over, digging, freeing the hand that had once cradled her against her mother’s chest.
She knew by the slim silver band on the ring-finger that it was her. And no matter how hard Gandrett was shaking her head as she lifted one rock after the other, no matter how much she feared seeing that lovely face burned beyond recognition, she kept at it, lifting stone after stone until her mother’s scorched skull lay before her, her expression an echo of the pain she must have felt as she had been dying.
The silence grew. Enveloped her like a predator waiting for its moment to leap for the kill.
But Gandrett’s heart was already throbbing, dying, a lump as black as the burnt body beneath her.
“Mom,” she whispered, and it was swallowed by the layer of thick air that was threatening to suffocate her. It was pushing down on her, making her chest cave in. Her father, her brother…
She wheeled around, frantic now, fighting for breath, and turned over the rubble with bleeding hands, her knees and shins bruised from the hard edges they kept hitting as she crept away from her mother’s corpse further to the back of the house where her brother and she had slept as kids.
A sigh of relief escaped her as she found the floor there clear of stone, the wall behind it, windows leading to the equally destroyed barn, intact, and no sign of her father or brother—dead or alive.
It was there that Gandrett halted, every hope, every dream of returning to the home she had been forced to leave behind burst like a soap-bubble.
She couldn’t tell if she was crying or screaming, how long she had been cowering on the ground, when Nehelon finally came to her side, his knee brushing her shoulder as he halted and said with a husky voice, “I am sorry.”
Her father and Andrew hadn’t been beneath the rubble.
Under the cover of night, Nehelon had taken it upon himself to let his powers snake through the debris of the barn and the house and had found no sign of life—or death for that matter—besides Gandrett’s mother, whose partially incinerated face would haunt Gandrett’s sleep, he was certain.
He had left her shivering and sobbing behind the single remaining wall of her former home. Gods, the fire couldn’t have been raging more than two or three days ago. With his sensitive Fae senses, he could still pick up the heat the lower layers of rubble were containing. Had he acted sooner, had he let her go straight to Alencourt instead of forcing her to return to Ackwood with him, she might have gotten here in time to see them. Had he rushed more on the way back from Eedwood, they both might have been here to prevent the fire from happening at all. But now, it was his fault once more that she no longer had a home. The home he had torn her from a little over ten years ago—and she didn’t even know it had been him. She could never know, or she would never forgive him. Not that he deserved forgiveness. Forgiveness was for those with redeeming qualities…
He hadn’t bothered to double-check his glamour. It was unlikely anyone would notice they were even here with only fields beyond the farm, and as for the houses behind him… They were in little better shape than the one where he was standing on caved-in walls and roof. Something had happened here. Something more than a mere fire.
Another sob carried on the early-summer wind from where Gandrett was sitting in the dead grass, out of sight, and Nehelon’s power coiled as if it was readying itself to leap across that wall and fight. Wanting to protect her, those instincts he had been burying so thoroughly over hundreds of years, yet again, began creeping through the cracks Gandrett caused in his perfect control. But what would he fight?
The truth was Nehelon’s power—his magic—wouldn’t help with consoling her. When it came to that, he was utterly helpless.
So he raised his palm across the rubble and let it rise from the dead woman from whose corpse emanated the stench of fire and rot, and when she was freed, he jogged back to where he had tied the horses to a tree that had suffered one mild burn and retrieved a blanket to cover the body.
Once wrapped in the gray, soft fabric, he reached under the broken woman—what was left of her, twisted and burnt beyond recognition—then gently lifted her and carried her out of the ruins of Gandrett’s childhood.
Gandrett looked up as he stepped over what was left of the threshold, questions in her eyes, her features tight from the answers she feared he’d bring.
“They aren’t in the house.” He laid down her mother on the blackened grass, far away enough from Gandrett to spare her the stinging odor of death, then stepped closer, words failing him.
“I’d like to bury her,” she said, voice hitching at the sight of the bundle he had lowered.
“Here?” was all he could think of to ask. But she nodded, her jaw set.
“She is… was… part of this land.”
Nehelon didn’t need an explanation. All he needed was to see how the girl he had retrieved from Everrun merely two months ago had gone from radiantly happy to crushed within a matter of minutes. How that devastation had lingered since she had found her home in rubble and how his own chest seemed to be too tight to take a solid breath.
Wordless, Nehelon raised one hand, his gaze lingering on the shaking form that was Vala’s Blade now. How she was spiraling into a bottomless pit. His power responded, a familiar rush through his veins, collecting at his fingertips, and the earth before his feet began moving. Small gaps opened up, widening, dry earth shifting, lifting until it had created a hole long and wide and deep enough—a grave.
Gandrett didn’t look at him. Her gaze rested on her mother… on the bundle of broken bones and scorched flesh, and as he was about to bend down and lift the corpse into the pit, Gandrett heaved a breath and stumbled to her feet.
She came closer with unsteady steps, her frame, clad in that simple brown gow
n she’d been wearing since they had left the palace, covered in dust and dirt. For her human eyes, it had to be hard to see more than outlines in that starless night, but she found her way and knelt beside the hole, in front of her mother. She placed one hand on the blanket, right where the woman’s heart had once beaten. “May the gods cradle her soul.” Her words were a breath so soft the wind had carried them away the instant she’d spoken them. No human ears could have picked them up. Even Nehelon’s Fae ears had strained to hear.
“May the gods cradle her soul,” Nehelon repeated loud enough for Gandrett to hear.
The girl didn’t seem to notice but pressed a kiss on the covered forehead of her mother before she got back to her feet and stared down at the long, gray shape before her.
And Nehelon remained like a shadow, the way he’d learned and done for hundreds of years. Until she looked up, her face as pale as the moon hiding behind a cover of clouds, the sight making him want to say something to make it easier for her. But nothing he could say would change the fact that her mother was dead. So Nehelon didn’t speak. He waited until she gave a nod—one simple nod to tell him that she was ready—and under the veil of darkness, her tears continued falling even when her sobs had ebbed.