The Blood Crown (The Blood Folk #2)

1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

C haos surrounded her on all sides.

The stench of sulfur was thick in the air. The short-lived relief Aurelia felt passing through the mirror emptied out of her chest.

A flash of black hair caught her eye and Ven’s profile was sharp against the moonlight of the Grey Wood. He and Karro fought back-to-back in the horde of demons that surrounded them, more of those ghastly creatures that looked nearly human. But deeper into the pines, where even her eyes couldn’t pierce the darkness, there were unearthly sounds that made her blood turn to ice in her veins.

The two Wraiths were hacking away at the demons circling them with their black blades, but Ven’s black flame and Karro’s shadows were nowhere to be found. They must have been fighting like this for hours if their magick was already depleted.

Aurelia let the thought push her frozen feet into the fray. Ven’s head whipped toward her, his nostrils flaring before his crimson eyes widened in shock, his bronzed skin paling slightly as his expression gave way to naked terror. He shouted something to Karro, who spared a glance in her direction before they began fighting their way toward her.

She brandished the jeweled dagger, the weight of it familiar in her hand. The remainder of her power rippled beneath her skin, begging to be unleashed, as if the lightning she had summoned to turn the First Brother into ash had only awakened the true depth of her magick.

A cluster of demons had noticed her appearance, seeming to smell the fresh blood that still trickled from her forehead; a souvenir from when the First Brother had attacked her in the library.

She reached for the heat simmering beneath her skin, feeling it flood down her arms, pooling into her fingertips—

It guttered out as the demons shambled forward, the crackling white light nowhere to be found.

Blind panic seized her as she tried to command her magick again, willing it to obey her.

The sensation. The block on her power that she’d felt in the library when she’d been trapped in that ring of dark powder—that’s what was happening to her again.

She hesitated for a second too long, and claws ripped through the sleeve of her shadowskin gear.

Instinct took over as she struck the creature in the chest with her dagger, watching it scatter into a plume of ash as another set of claws sunk deep into her calf.

Pain cut through her senses as she was dragged across the ground, coming to a sudden halt as an inhuman shriek severed the stagnant air around her. An iron grip pulled her back to her feet. A hard chest pressed behind her, hauling her up a boulder as she fought to regain her footing.

“I’ve got you,” Ven’s deep voice rumbled.

Demons crowded below them as she scrambled for purchase on the rock, trying to take the weight off her left leg. “My magick—”

“Ours, too,” Ven answered, not taking his eyes from the mass of bodies and lumbering shadows in the distance slowly surrounding them.

“What are you still doing here?” she demanded, anger clipping her words as she fought to keep her balance. Pain lanced up her leg and she glanced down to see the tear in her gear, but below that, a set of claw marks in her skin, soaking the shadowskin with blood.

“We’re trapped. Our magick was stifled by some spell after Lanthius sealed the wards.”

That was the rift she’d felt in the library, when she'd been trapped in that ring of dark powder by some ancient magick the First Brother had wielded with the ring. That awful feeling of wrongness . It hadn’t been a spell to shatter the wards and let demons pass through—it had been a spell to keep them here. Trapped in the space between the realms. Far from the protective wards of the Blood Kingdom and the thick black tourmaline walls of Ravenstone.

Karro took up the space beside her, brandishing the large broadsword that he was so fond of. Ven was on her other side with a wickedly curved blade. She gripped the hilt of her dagger tighter, swallowing back a wince of pain as she shifted her weight. And then she looked out at the expanse of demons before them—too many for them to fight their way through.

Her hand reached toward the hidden pocket of her shadowskin, fingertips finding the circle of metal tucked away. Dropping it once more, her fingers brushed against the small pouch still tied to her belt and hope flared in her chest for a bright moment.

The thought barely formed before she was untying the satchel Seth had handed her in the armory, pouring out the contents around the boulder.

Demons hissed as the grains made contact with their skin, flinching back from the stone. She sent up a silent thanks to the quiet Wraith in case she didn’t have the chance to tell him in person.

Karro looked toward the mountains, reading the sky as he said “We’re still a few hours off from dawn.”

Would the salt ring hold that long? They might be able to outrun the shambling corpses of the drugar, but it was the vast numbers of them that gave her pause.

A wet splatter hit Aurelia’s face. And dread iced over her veins as she looked to the ground, the narrow ring of salt protecting them threatening to dissolve into the black dirt of the Shades.

Ven scanned the forest. “There,” he nodded toward a narrow opening, “we cut a path that way, and we might be able to outrun them.”

No sooner had the words left his mouth than an eerie quiet passed through the wood, a hush falling over the demons surrounding them, as if they were waiting for something . . . or someone.

In the distance, a pale green glow cut through the night.

Aurelia glanced toward Ven, his dark hair damp with rain, running in rivulets down the side of his face and falling off the sharp line of his jaw. His eyes searched the deep black of the pines for whatever moved toward them.

He met Karro’s eyes over her head and uttered a single word.

“Maloch.”

A tall figure emerged, slicing a path through the horde of demons. The green glow illuminating the darkened forest seemed to radiate from his eyes, the sliver of iris nearly swallowed whole by his black pupils. The male glistened like onyx in the rain, every drop hissing as it evaporated against his dark skin.

A demon prince.

Her blood froze as her gaze fell to the lower half of his face.

Where his mouth had once been, vulgar stitches sewed it shut into a severe slash across his otherwise flawless face. There was nothing but cold determination lining his dark brow. Muscles rippled across his bare chest, looking like they’d been carved from granite as the rain seemed to flinch from him. And dragging through the ground in his left hand was a massive scythe, the heavy blade cutting into the frozen dirt as his slow, methodical steps shook the mountainside.

“Do you still have your coin?” Ven asked, casting a glance toward Karro.

Karro brandished the heavy iron disk between his fingers, his mouth a grim line.

If even Karro couldn’t crack a joke, she knew this was bad.

Give her up, and I will spare your meaningless lives this night.

The voice came from nowhere and everywhere, reverberating between the pines and rattling through her chest. She hadn’t realized when she walked back through the mirror tonight that she’d be walking into death’s embrace. But even if she’d known, it wouldn’t have changed anything. She would die beside them. Her friends. Her family.

They should have left when the others did—they shouldn’t have been here at all.

A single caw broke the deathly silence enveloping the forest, and Aurelia risked glancing above their heads. The moonlight that had been trickling through the canopy of branches above them was blotted out entirely by a swirling black mass.

Wings.

The gleam of onyx talons descended suddenly on the demons around them, blocking them from the depthless eyes of the demon prince.

Ven wrapped his arm around Aurelia’s waist, throwing her down onto the surface of the rock as Karro crouched beside them. The rising cacophony of shrieks and guttural howls became deafening.

“Now!” Ven shouted, dragging her off the boulder as they jumped down onto the brittle pine needles littering the forest floor. The pain in her calf was so jarring that it knocked the breath from her, but Ven’s arm was a vice around her ribs as he hauled her through the forest, her feet barely finding purchase on the ground.

The ravens battled the creatures around them, splattering black blood across the Grey Wood as their sharp beaks ripped out eyes and throats, their dagger-like talons making a ruin of the already grotesque demons.

Aurelia choked on the putrid stench of demon blood as they kept low to the ground, searching for small openings between the writhing bodies.

The blade in Karro’s hand seemed to thrum with a current of power she’d never noticed before. The ravenstone rippled with threads of scarlet and amber light as he cut a path before them. “Maloch will have brought worse things than drugar with him,” he grunted, his sword slicing through a demon and turning it into ash.

“We should make for the river,” Ven called back as they forged their way through the pines.

Ven bore most of her weight as they sprinted from tree to tree, catching their breath for only moments at a time before moving onto the next cover. The mass of bodies around them began to thin out, the shrieks less jarring now that they were on the fringes of the melee, but still too close for comfort.

The signs of exhaustion were creeping in, kept at bay by sheer will. And Aurelia was reminded that Ven and Karro had spent many nights like this over the long centuries, dredging strength from empty reserves. Adrenaline kept her reflexes quick—maybe it was the stifled magick prowling under her skin looking for any outlet, but it was only a matter of time before that gave out, too.

She glanced to where Ven crouched next to her behind the husk of a fallen pine, Karro beside him. She’d never meant for either of them to be caught in the middle of this with her.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she uttered, trying to keep the grief from her voice.

The King of the Void wanted her —the truth that the First Brother had revealed to her shortly before she’d killed him. He’d been tracking her for months now, though she hadn’t realized it. Sending his death hounds into the Capitol to find her—and her father had paid the price. And now Asher, too . . . Wherever she went, she would bring destruction with her.

Gripping Ven’s sleeve, she forced him to meet her eyes. “Leave me.” Ignoring the incensed look that flared across his stare, she plowed on. “He’s tracking me —I can draw the demons and the prince far enough away from this place that you and Karro can escape.”

She was slowing them down. But with her as a distraction, they might escape back to Ravenstone and take the ring where it would remain safely out of the King’s reach.

Ven shouldn’t have been here. He was supposed to tell Lanthius to seal the wards and leave . Leave all of it behind—her included.

His eyes hardened with resolve. “I am exactly where I’m meant to be.” The words were barely above a whisper, but the knife-like edge in his voice left no room for negotiation.

Rage and fear and despair roiled through her chest. He never should have been here.

She fumbled for the small pocket sewn into her gear, until the cold metal stung her fingertips. “Take it and let this be done!” she hissed, holding the heavy ruby ring out to him.

The King of the Void would find her no matter where she ran, but at least he wouldn’t have his ring as well. At least then, he wouldn’t be a threat to the human realm anymore—at least she wouldn’t be a threat to the human realm anymore.

The Dark King had already taken too much from her. And it ended here. Now.

Dark flame burned behind Ven’s eyes as he covered her hand in his own, his fingers enclosing her fist around the ring.

“I will die at your side before I leave you,” he uttered.

She ground her teeth, blinking away unshed tears and biting back her protest as Karro crouched beside them.

“Look,” He breathed, nodding to the violet peaks of the Shades to the east as the faintest haze of lavender broke above the mountains. “Dawn is not far off.”

Demons could not survive the sunlight.

It was the thread that kept Aurelia tethered as she, Ven, and Karro made their way toward the western edge of the Grey Wood. Her amber eyes were trained on the glowing dawn bursting over the mountain peaks and creeping over the valley floor.

The shrieking was enough to grind her nerves raw. The sounds of death and killing made her blood freeze and her skin slick with cold sweat throughout the night, but she didn’t dare look back. Despair was threatening to overtake her, but there was no place for it now. There was only survival.

They’d had a handful of close calls, mostly drugar that had straggled further into the forest and caught their scent. But it was nothing compared to the frenzy that they’d somehow walked out of alive. Whatever spell had smothered their magick seemed to have also suppressed the demon prince’s ability to track her.

The ravens had saved them. Not only a distraction so that she and the Wraiths could slip away from the horde that outnumbered them, but a force to be reckoned with. Some ancient race of beasts that claimed no masters and were not found unless they chose to be. And for whatever reason, they had chosen to come to their aid.

Ven’s gaze trailed after hers as she marked the iridescent feathers that littered the floor of the Grey Wood, hoping that she wouldn’t find the scarred face of Cog amongst the broken bodies they stepped over.

“The beast is older than most creatures that walk this world. He didn’t survive this many centuries without being cunning,” Ven uttered from beside her as if reading her thoughts, his voice husky with disuse as his crimson eyes scanned the muted gray forest around them. “He will find us again.”