by L. L. MacRae
The Iron Crown
L.L. MacRae
First published in Great Britain in 2021.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
The Iron Crown © 2021 L.L. MacRae
Cover by: Psycat Studios
Maps by: Domino44maps
www.llmacrae.com
For Pipkin.
My king, my rock, my soulmate.
Also by L.L. MacRae
DRAGON SPIRITS
The Iron Crown
The Shadow Gate
Also by L.L. MacRae (As L.L. McNeil)
WORLD OF LINARIA
Moroda
Palom
Amarah
Isa
Rise of a Sky Pirate
KOUZLO SAGA
Crimson Eyes
Crimson Bone
Crimson Fang
Crimson Soul
Pandemonium Rift
Contents
Acknowledgments
Part I
1. The Awakening
2. The Beginning
3. The Crossing
4. The Shadow
5. The General
6. The Priestess
7. The Message
8. The Forsaken
9. The Journey
10. The Past
11. The Matriarch
12. The Warning
13. The Funeral
14. The Queen
Part II
15. The Thief
16. The Dream
17. The Exile
18. The Inquisitor
19. The Poison
20. The Shrine
21. The Lost
22. The Memory
23. The Decision
24. The Trap
Part III
25. The Gambler
26. The Chase
27. The Sea
28. The Riddle
29. The Hunt
30. The Dragons
31. The Aftermath
32. The Curse
33. The Key
Epilogue
Note From The Author
Acknowledgments
I cannot thank Olivia enough. If it weren’t for her, this would remain a collection of notes and disparate ideas floating across various documents, never to be woven together into the book you’re reading now. Also everything would be much more rubbish. And probably make no sense. From providing encouragement, brainstorming ideas, or yelling at me to get the next chapter written, she’s been instrumental at every stage of writing.
Thank you also to Eike W., my chief curse writer, who helped define the backbone of this trilogy. Without Eike, the main driving force of the plot would be far weaker. Her ideas, enthusiasm, and positivity helped keep me motivated—especially at the earliest parts of the process where everything seemed insurmountable.
And my eternal gratitude goes out to Ellie, Josephine, Laura, and Maxine, my unflappable beta readers, who gave me critique and confidence in equal measure. From general feedback to specific plot points, adding detail and providing clarity, they helped make this book the best it could be. So many details were caught or expanded on because of them, bringing The Iron Crown to a truly vibrant shine!
To anyone who purchases my book, I am eternally grateful. It would mean the world and more if you would be kind enough to review The Iron Crown.
Part I
What belonged to thyne,
Now stolen as mine.
Memories, once crystal clear,
Are lost, leaving only fear.
The Awakening
FENN
Foul.
Brackish and thick, the putrid sludge pulled Fenn deeper in, filling his nose with its awful stench. He flailed, weak, the strength sucked from his arms. Every movement made it worse and his head pounded in time with his pulse. His chest tightened in panic—both at his critical situation and the suddenness with which he found himself in it. Fenn had no recollection of falling into a bog, or even where he’d been before.
Where was he?
Gulping down lungfuls of air, he cast his gaze about, looking for anything he could use to get himself out of the swampy mud. Enormous trees surrounded the fetid pool on all sides, their vast canopy throwing the small clearing into shades of mottled green. Weak sunlight filtered through the broad leaves, bathing him in dappled shadow. A few vines trailed down the ancient trunks, thorns protruding from their green flesh. Some reached the edge of the pool, their ends disappearing into the brown-black mud—the closest thing he could reach.
He spun in place, squelching as he sunk further in. The mud was up to his waist, and he could hardly feel his legs.
Shit.
What was this place?
How did he get here?
He hadn’t been in a forest, had he? He couldn’t remember, couldn’t think.
Questions for later—if he didn’t get himself out right now, there wouldn’t be a later.
Reaching forward, Fenn stretched his arms out, fingertips just grazing the nearest of the vines where they settled on the pool’s edge. Sweat rolled down his arms and dampened his clammy hands. He managed to grab one vine between his first two fingers, but it slipped out of his grasp.
Fenn groaned with the effort. Bubbles on the surface of the viscous liquid burst and cold mud slapped against his bare arms, coating them in thick, brown ooze. The foul stench made him gag, and he bit down on his instinct to cover his face with his arm—that was only going to make the smell worse. He screwed up his nose, as if that would somehow lessen the intensity of the odour.
He sank deeper, the cold now creeping up his lower back.
‘Help!’ His voice cracked, as if it hadn’t been used for some time. Clearing his throat, Fenn called out again, ‘Can anyone hear me? Can someone help?’ He didn’t like how thin and reedy his voice sounded, small against the dark, foreboding forest. A few birds took flight, their fluttering sending feathers down between the green, leaving an eerie stillness to the humid glade.
With difficulty, he swallowed and reached for the vine again, this time catching his thumb along one of the long thorns and tearing his flesh open. Withdrawing it with a yelp of pain, he shoved his thumb into his mouth, then immediately spat out bloodied mud and retched. Idiot!
Using his shoulder to wipe away the sweat dripping down his temple, he tried to throw himself towards the edge. Cold, wet sludge kept him from taking more than a step and pulled him down more. He squeezed his eyes shut, desperate to hide from the headache that throbbed incessantly at his forehead, and hoped to wake from whatever nightmare his mind had decided to inflict upon him. ‘Hello? Please!’ Fenn called again, volume rising with panic.
There had to be someone nearby. Forests were usually full of people gathering wood, setting traps, picking herbs and flowers.
No-one replied.
Nothing moved, save the few leaves that dropped to the ground in the birds’ wake.
Stomach sinking, he realised there was no-one there. No-one coming to help. He had to get out of this himself, otherwise he’d die. Drowning in muddy sludge had never before crossed his mind as a way his life could end, and he had no intention of letting the possibility become a reality.
There was nothing for it. Grimacing in anticipation of the coming pain, Fenn threw himself forward with all the strength he could muster and grabbed
the closest vine with both hands. His muscles spasmed as he overexerted himself, and he ignored the twinge. Thorns dug into his palms, then his thumbs, as he tightened his grip. He winced as they pierced his skin—better a short, sharp pain now than a slow death later.
Slowly, due to the thick sludge and his own dwindling stamina, Fenn pulled himself along the vine, inching towards the edge of the pool. Every movement pushed the thorns in further, deepening the cuts across his skin. Moving through the mud sapped his strength, but he soldiered through it. One thorn snapped off under his finger, flicking mud at him as it fell. Fenn turned his chin at the last second, the gloop spattering along his right cheek, narrowly avoiding his eye.
One arm over the other, he pulled himself towards safety. He was halfway there, now. Slow and steady.
Another two thorns snapped away, and a deep growl reverberated across the surface of the mud.
‘You’re pulling my thorns out!’
Fenn stilled at the sudden, ferocious voice. Fat chunks of mud dropped from his arm and slapped back into the pool, but he ignored the stench rising from it. His heart thundered in his chest, eyes wide as he gazed around for whoever had shouted at him.
When the voice didn’t speak again, and quite certain he was becoming delirious in the fumes emitted from the muddy swamp, Fenn continued to heave himself along the vine, redoubling his attempts to free himself. A fourth thorn snapped away with a crack.
Just as the edge was within grasping distance, another of the trailing vines rose from the ground and thwacked him across the chest.
Fenn coughed violently, stunned.
Had…had the vine deliberately attacked him? It couldn’t have.
‘Get. Off!’ The vine in his hands shuddered, recoiling from him as if alive, dragging its thorns along his bare arms and leaving a trail of raw scratches.
‘I’m trying!’ Fenn couldn’t believe he was talking to a vine. Arguing with one.
He must be more delirious than he’d realised.
Fenn tightened his hold on the tip of the vine and hurled himself through the last few feet of mud. He pulled harder to speed his approach, and the vine snapped just before he reached safety. Flailing forward, fingers scrabbling against the wet grass that lined the edge of the pool, Fenn heaved himself out of the mud as it tried to suck him back in.
He managed to stay on his hands and knees for a few seconds before collapsing onto the dew-covered grass, panting heavily. Glancing back down at himself, he realised he’d lost a shoe somewhere in the fetid pool. There was no going back for it now. His lower half was completely caked in the stinking, oozing mud, and all his clothes were ruined, anyway. It hardly mattered that he was missing a shoe, too.
Besides, that was the least of his worries.
The vine had spoken to him, hadn’t it? Or had that been part of a headache-induced hallucination? The pain hadn’t left him. And the vine wasn’t speaking now. There were distant sounds in the trees: birds and squirrels chittering, the drip of water somewhere, the rustle of leaves in the breeze.
Nothing here was familiar. And nothing made any sense. He had no idea where he was, how he’d got there, or—more worryingly, now he had time to consider it—no recollection of who he was. Where had he been? Who…who was he?
Fenn.
His name floated up from the darkness of his mind. But other than that? There was…nothing. The more he tried to think, the less he knew. Memories slipped through his grasp like water through his fingers. His mind was a tangle of confusion, as though a dense fog had taken up residence and settled down over everything that made sense.
Several lines of crimson criss-crossed his flushed arms and hands, the stinging intensifying now he was still, especially where the stinking mud touched it. He raised his left arm to his face, wondering if there was poison in the thorns. Perhaps that was causing the hallucinations? The memory issues?
Something moved just outside his peripheral vision. A shadow, shifting along the leaf litter covering the forest floor. Fenn turned, breath held in case it was one of the numerous predators that made the trees their home. After saving himself from drowning, it would be just his luck to be devoured by a bear.
A hiss rippled through the undergrowth.
Fenn froze.
Perhaps it wasn’t a bear. They didn’t hiss.
‘Who…who’s there?’ He staggered to his feet, wet mud dripping from his body, trying to get a better look between the trees. His one bare foot squelched with each step, and he suppressed a shudder. He hadn’t fully recovered from the talking vine—if it really had been talking—and wasn’t sure he could face a new threat quite so soon.
A sudden cold wind snaked through the trees, turning the damp air into freezing mist. The grass wilted away, shrinking down to the ground. Even the trees seemed to sag. Fenn shivered at the drop in temperature and the growing tension that came with it. The hiss sounded again—no more than a few feet away.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood up as the mist crept across the mud pool, frosting the top layer. Fenn saw his breath in the air on his next exhale, and gritted his teeth, expecting to be snatched away and eaten by some frost monster.
‘My, my, my…where have you come from?’
It wasn’t the vine talking. Not this time. The disembodied voice came from the mist itself—across the pool within the shadows, just hidden out of view. Not trusting himself to speak, Fenn kept his mouth shut and eyes wide open, ready to react.
The hiss shifted into a low growl, and the mist coalesced on top of the frozen mud pool. It churned like water over a fall, until solid shapes formed. A sinuous, reptilian body. Scales. Claws. Wings. A tail. Two golden eyes with vertical slit pupils that stared directly at him.
Fenn’s breath caught. Even if he’d wanted to talk, he couldn’t. His voice had left him.
The dragon’s nostrils flared, sending up a plume of smoke that joined the mist wreathing the trees. Its skin was mottled green, like the forest around it, with darker stippling along its back and legs. Its wings were thin and membranous, the pattern on its skin identical to the tree’s leaves. Four large horns protruded from the back of its head, and long, green vines dangled between them. Although easily as large as the bear Fenn feared it had been, it wasn’t as bulky, and it shimmered in the pale sunlight—becoming translucent every few seconds.
Waiting for a response, the dragon flexed its wings.
Memory loss was one thing. A talking plant was another. Now a dragon had appeared out of the mist, Fenn was sure he wasn’t entirely in his right mind. He blinked rapidly, hoping to clear the visual and auditory hallucinations he was most definitely experiencing. But the dragon remained. If anything, it looked mildly irritated at being ignored. Another plume of smoke rose from its nostrils and one long, sharp fang protruded from its upper jaw.
‘What…are you?’ It was a stupid question, but the only one Fenn could come up with. He took a few steps away from the now icy mud pool and the dragon standing atop it.
Lowering its head to the torn vine, the dragon breathed gently over it, and a cloud of thick, green smoke drifted out from its jaws. At the smoke’s touch, the vine’s tendrils lifted, wrapped around one another, and knitted themselves back together, as if Fenn had never ripped it. Even the lost thorns regrew, pushing through the vine’s flesh like new teeth.
The dragon let out another growl, its muscles bunched up as it studied Fenn through bright, golden eyes. In a flash, the dragon charged at him. Fenn leapt back, tripping over a tree root and slamming the back of his head against the trunk. The dragon roared as it leapt into the sky with a beat of its wings, before it shifted into a thousand green scales that burst into fragments of light.
Fenn gasped in shock and watched as overhead, every individual scale shifted from light into countless silver butterflies. Air forced from his lungs, Fenn could do nothing but groan and gaze up in wonder as the thousand butterflies reformed overhead, turning back into the translucent green dragon that soared unde
rneath the canopy, mist wreathing its limbs.
A shaft of sunlight broke through the leaves and cast rainbows of light on the forest floor where it touched the dragon. It arced in the sky, powering on wings of pressed silver, before it dived towards the ground—directly at him.
Fenn covered his head, bracing for impact, for the death he’d escaped prior to finally catch him.
Nothing happened.
Hardly able to believe he’d cheated death again, he cautiously opened one eye to see four enormous talons less than an inch from his face. He quickly pushed himself up to sit.
‘You’re supposed to answer when you are asked a question.’ Disdain was evident in the dragon’s tone.
Fenn blinked stupidly for longer than he wanted to. Was it a dream? Had to be. It was a damned vivid one if so. He’d have to swear off wine forever more. ‘Um. Sorry?’
The dragon snorted, clearly unimpressed.
The headache that had been throbbing at his temples increased. He had a sudden urge to vomit, but he held himself together before he could begin retching. Any earlier dread he’d felt had washed away by the sheer absurdity of it all.