The Unremembered Prince of the Phantom Sky

Prologue

Larissa

Running for her life, Larissa’s feet pounded the barren earth as she straddled two worlds, their forces pressuring to cleave her in half.

Branches snared at her clothes, threatening to entrap her as he neared.

Her sharp ears pricked at his footfalls against the damp soil, their heavy thuds creating crevices in her hearing.

“I know you’re out there, little witch.” His lisp mumbled his words, and a flash of black loomed within the shadows. Darker than the night. Darker than death. Broken by glowing green rivers that caused her stomach to roil.

Crack.

She froze.

She shouldn’t be here. Her pulse slowed as her skin heated, the barrier she straddled a cool glisten against her legs, enveloping her body in its protection.

Invisible to humans, but to Larissa, it appeared as a shimmering diamond layer that’d been dropped from the heavens.

A wall so tall not even the gods could strike it down.

“I can smell you,” the hunter leered from the dark. “Do you know what you smell like?”

Larissa swallowed her snarl, clutching her cloak to hide her glaring auburn hair.

Damn Igniso and his infamous fiery hair.

She was a beacon in this barren wasteland.

To her left, obscured by the barrier, was her homeland.

Just a couple feet over and she’d be safe, hidden behind the wall that repelled all.

Temptation ensnared Larissa, coaxing her, whispering to her that, in three little steps, she could return home. The hunter never able to find her again.

But she would never be safe again. Not anymore.

Witches were going missing. And she would find out why. Against the Great Mother’s wishes, Larissa had fled her coven, following clues towards her sisters’ disappearances. And it had led her here to the barrier . . . and this wretched male hunting her.

“You smell sweet and ripe. Ready for the taking, for me to ruin.” His footsteps neared but she couldn’t see him. Shadows swarmed the dead, broken trees, and beyond the rotted forest loomed the rocky wasteland leading to the black pit the humans called Ironwharf Outpost.

Shafts of moonlight faded as they filtered through the blanket of the night.

Larissa thumbed the weapon in her holster, a flicker of heat connecting her to its switch.

She crouched, one foot still connected to the precious barrier, and peered into the fathomless darkness.

Even with her heightened perception, she couldn’t see further than her milky-white, freckled hands.

“There’s something in your scent that gives you away, little witch.” His lisp curled, growing stronger. Larissa suppressed her shudder as the heat enveloping her skin threatened to combust. Tiny beads of burning sweat trickled down her neck, soaking into her brown leather jerkin.

“You smell like fire.” His voice appeared behind her, followed by a mangled hand of flesh reaching round, breaking the darkness apart.

Larissa rolled, flinging her hand at the assailant. Embers licked up her fingers, flying through the air and—

They sputtered out.

Her jaw slackened as the masked male laughed, his eyes barely visible through the slit of his helmet. She spun on her heel, darting into the thick of the forest, away from the barrier.

She had to protect her sisters. She had to keep the humans away from her home.

Forgive me, Great Mother. Light my way, Igniso.

“Elemental on the run!” a new voice cried out.

Multitudes of footsteps chased Larissa, the symphony of a hunt swarming her. Her pulse quickened, and she opened the door to her well of power, allowing the heat to singe her skin, turning her pale complexion into soot-stained, charred flesh.

Flames smothered her feet and twirled between her fingers as she decided to burn this rotten place to the ground.

The roar of fire filled her ears like a sweet melody, raging along with her thundering heart.

Each step, the earth rumbled along with her, pushing her forward into the blackened heart of the enemy.

“Fire! Contain her!”

Husky shouts echoed in a ring as she stumbled into a small rocky clearing.

By Igniso’s wrath, she was trapped. Larissa spun, but was met with a prison of twisted roots and burning bark.

A chuckle emanated from the forest and her hand whipped to her holster once again.

The metal presence attached to her hip steadied her nerves.

“Your magic won’t work on us.” The hunter emerged from the shadows.

He towered over her, his shoulders broad, and all packaged inside the hideous armour that threatened to blind her senses.

It was ungodly. The shards of malachite running through it were purely decorative, but something underneath the glistening green permeated her magic, taunting it, smothering it.

“You have broken the Shannara Accord Treaty.” Larissa lifted her chin, her fingers curling over her weapon. “You have started a war with my coven.”

“Oh, we’re looking forward to it.” His marred hands grasped the hood of her dark cloak, wrenching it down. “Come on out, lads. We found ourselves a prize.”

Seven armoured males stepped into the clearing, all hidden behind their masks of black and green.

Her magically-infused fire raged behind them, the flames dancing around their invisible protection.

Larissa’s lip curled as she tried to force her magic to burn them all to cinders, but it bounced back.

Her veins pulsed as her endurance waned, alighting with an age-old pain causing her to hiss.

“I said your magic won’t work!” The male’s hand circled her throat, choking her. “What have you done to your pretty face?” His finger ran down her charred skin, following her scorched cheeks before fisting her bright hair, twirling her red locks in his equally red hand.

“What did . . . you do to your . . . hands?” she choked out.

Something flashed within the slit of his helmet, and his hand squeezed with impossible strength. Her throat closed, windpipe crushing, Haizea’s blessed air torn from her lungs.

Larissa kicked out, using the solidity of his armour to propel from his grip. As she spun, she clasped her flintlock pistol and channelled her power into the runes etched into the shining metal. The gun fired, rounds of flaming bullets soaring as she directed them with a sweep of her arm.

“What was that!”

“It sounded like a cannon!”

“Run! Run now!”

She cackled as the males cowered beneath the flaming lead soaring through the sky, spearing for their hearts. The mystery hunter before her roared and charged. Larissa diverted a single bullet for his head, her heart hammering as her eyes tunnelled on a break in the dead forest.

An escape.

She twirled and leapt, but his hand closed around her ankle, dragging her down.

Larissa cried as her body slammed into rocks and debris littering the ground, and the pain wiped out the light of her fire within a second.

Mangled hands crawled up her legs, followed by laboured breathing.

He flipped her onto her back, pinning her arms on either side.

The side of his helmet was dented, the once-flaming bullet lodged into the black armour. It was impossible.

“No . . .” Larissa moaned as the stars of the night sky swirled. She had failed. Her magic had failed. Her sisters were being hunted, and she was the latest in a long line of missing names.

The male wheezed, followed by a spluttering laugh. “You’re mine now.”

His fist was the last thing she saw as the stars faded into the void.

Shackles bit Larissa’s wrists as they hauled her up the steps of some unfavourable altar. Biting numbness smothered her body. An unfamiliar sensation that caused her limbs to stiffen and her teeth to chatter.

She had never experienced the cold before.

Her legs trembled as she tried summoning her blessed gift, but was met with icy pain consuming her chest, spreading into her extremities despite the late summer wind circling the small mountain. Her head pounded, a bruise forming around her eye.

“Keep moving, little witch.”

Larissa’s knees quaked with each rising step, her boots slamming against the stone until they reached the top.

She was unsure how much time had passed, or how far she was from home.

Were her sisters now looking for her? Braving the barrier as she had?

Her heart clenched. She had no way of warning them of the humans watching the barrier, waiting for their prey to pounce upon.

Flicking her long hair from her eyes, she absorbed her new prison. To the west, the barren cliffs ended in a sheer drop to the murky Lifeless Waters. The sea roiled, waves crashing against the land, nature screaming at what lay at the base of the mountain.

The wind tore her cry from her throat at the war camp stretching for miles, all the way to the rotted forest bordering the Shannara Territory—her home.

It was too far, the forest too complex to navigate.

Without the shimmering beacon of the barrier, she was lost. Larissa spun, and was met with the same fate, expanding north to the human’s tainted outpost.

Kaiah had truly abandoned this earth.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” that lisp boasted, his thick hand tightening around her arm. “We are the new world!”

“You will kill us all,” Larissa whispered, blood draining from her face.

Her power had withered within, along with her strength and fortitude.

Witches had been going missing for weeks, always last seen near the barrier to Shannara.

She’d planned to investigate, to find them and return them home to the Great Mother, restoring the rapidly dwindling covens.

Haizea had not blessed them for decades, and witches were a dying breed.

Larissa had been their last gift, handed to them on the rays of the sun over seventy years ago. But now all she saw was cold darkness.

“Witches have had their time,” an oil-like voice slithered across her back and she stiffened. “I have seen the future, witchling. The fates are on our side.”

She knew that voice. Larissa’s charred skin calmed as the final dregs of her magic were snuffed out by whatever greater power lurked here. Her smooth skin plumped back, regaining its moisture as she felt the familiar tingle of her sisterhood mark reappearing across her brow.

“Callan,” the dark voice behind her commanded. “Turn her around.”

The hunter—Callan—blocked her view. She could tell he was grinning beneath that helmet, the outline of his soiled eyes crinkling.

She gagged at his odour, permeating the air from the rivers of decay woven into his armour.

A similar stench encased her wrists, the shackles not of the standard iron she’d come to recognise in the human’s world.

A light glisten shone from the black and heavy metal, reminding her of sickening swamp tar.

“I knew you were a pretty lassie,” Callan crooned. “Try not to look down, we wouldn’t want you to fall.”

As he shoved Larissa, her gaze immediately dropped to the base of the altar, as if a puppeteer had forced her eyeballs downwards. A sob wracked from her throat, gurgling up as she collapsed to her knees. “No . . . no, you didn’t! No!”

A throne erected from stone dominated the cavernous space built into the side of the low mountain.

Torches lined the blackened walls, their red hue skittering across the skulls woven into the base of the altar.

Their sockets were filled with glistening malachite stones, and their browbones shone with the Silver Sisters mark.

An eight-pointed star, banded together by an embellished ring of twining roots that flicked out around their brows. Each compass point represented the elemental gods, with death and life in the centre, so intricately detailed it always caused Larissa’s chest to swell.

But now she was horrified. She was broken. She was wrathful.

Tears streamed down Larissa’s cheeks, her shackled hands reaching out to her sisters’ bones, used as a foundation to support this false throne. She screamed, her anguish echoing into the cave, vibrating down into the earth that mourned along with her.

She was too late.

“You murderer!”

She had sacrificed her life for a throne of death. Her sisters had been slaughtered, their precious blood spilled in the name of decay and horror. It was an insult to witches, to the gods. Igniso’s ire burned in her veins, her teeth grinding with invisible fire as her power failed to manifest.

The dark male lounged in the throne, clad in a black suit that matched his sheet of midnight hair. Larissa froze when her gaze met his. No . . . it couldn’t be.

“Larissa Vespertine,” he purred, his stormy eyes lighting up as they flickered to her matching marked browbone.

The mark of prestige witches, of the royal line descended directly from the gods.

Except hers was entirely flames, dedicated to her signet from Igniso.

“We meet again.” His sharp smile flashed and he flicked his wrist, summoning his ungodly power.

Thick tendrils of tar seeped from the hard ground, bubbling up and latching onto her hands.

She cried out as it circled up her arms, probing her clothes, yanking her down until her cheek kissed the hard earth, forcing her into a bow.

The click of her holster followed, her pistol dropping to the floor.

“Callan, take that to Reginald, see if he can figure out what the vermin have been up to,” he instructed, eyeing her weapon curiously.

As Callan scarpered off, carrying her precious pistol in his mangled hands, Larissa’s eyes shuttered. Humans hadn’t discovered guns yet, something witches had ensured remained hidden, and she’d just handed over the witches’ entire advantage on them in this war.

The Dark One stood and clicked his fingers. “Rommier!” A blonde male appeared from behind the altar. Fraying braids had been woven throughout his hair, and shadows lined his faded eyes, resting above gaunt cheeks. Unlike the others, he didn’t wear a helmet.

“Aye, master?” His voice was devoid, lifeless.

Rommier’s grey eyes landed on Larissa, but nothing sparked within them. He was clad in the same sickening armour, with a shining sword strapped to his back. A swirl of a tattoo peeked from his wrists, but not enough for Larissa to discern anything.

“Put her in my personal quarters.” The Dark One smiled, followed by a wink. Absolute recognition speared through Larissa and she nearly spewed at his feet. “I want to keep her close. You’re to watch her, and make sure she doesn’t get into any trouble.”

“Aye, master,” Rommier responded like a walking phantom. He mindlessly moved, his body stiff and awkward, dragging Larissa to her feet and towards the steps as though she were light as a feather.

“No!” she cried. “I watched you die! You cannot be here!”

The Dark One laughed. “You cannot kill a god.”