A Reign So Ruinous (Fates So Fatal #2)

Chapter 1

Chapter

One

June tells me someone must keep a record. That if I do not, the true story will be forgotten. I do not want to remember, but I cannot forget either. I fear the sound of their screams will forever echo in my mind.

—Lady Anabeth, Royal Scribe’s Apprentice, D’anna

Every single city bell in D’anna clanged insistently, the shrill echoes a clear warning to the mountain capital’s residents: take cover, hide, and gather any weapons you have.

The bells only rang in dire circumstances.

In the year she had been living at the Sisters of Arcane’s newest temple outpost perched on a mountainside at the edge of the city, Nya Evva hadn’t heard them. In fact, she had been told many times by the sisters that they hadn’t rang once in her lifetime.

The capital, ruled by the aged mortal queen, Cion Livii, had been a center of trade and knowledge for many years now.

The queen was beloved, the Kingdom of Aren a peaceful place, though Nya understood it hadn’t always been that way.

Her parents had foregone telling her the details of just what the cost of that peace had been, but she filled in some of the blanks from others since arriving here.

“We need to go below,” Sister Jada insisted, tugging on Nya’s hand. The priestess’ hazel-gold eyes were wide, shining with a terror that contrasted sharply with her typical calm, no-nonsense demeanor. “Hurry.”

“But how do we even know if—”

“Nya, it’s for your safety.” Jada’s complexion, though usually fair, was now completely devoid of color. “We need to run now.”

“What about the others? There isn’t room for all the sisters and apprentices below. And what of the citizens, especially the ones without magic? I could help—”

“No,” Jada said sharply, her gaze swinging around the airy meditation room, as if afraid danger was already lurking nearby.

It was empty, aside from the two of them, but Nya could hear footsteps pounding on the roof garden above, in the hallways beyond. Past the smooth, bone-white pillars, open to the cool mountain air, she heard screams echoing from the city. The fine hairs on the back of her neck rose.

Dark hair had come loose from Jada’s intricate braids, framing her flushed, frenzied face as she scanned the horizon. “Nya, I promised your mother I would keep you safe. And if this is what I fear it is…” She trailed off, her hand tightening around Nya’s. “You cannot be seen.”

“What do you fear it is?”

Jada’s throat bobbed, and she looked back at Nya as she whispered, “Rumors have begun to drift from Arcadia of a new god. Someone the principals were unaware of. Someone who would be very interested in you.”

“Why?” Nya asked, her jaw trembling, just as the roar of a dragon echoed through the slopes. The sound rattled down to her bones, striking a chord deep within the frantic pounding of her blood.

Jada shook her head and a tear fell down her cheek. “Gods forgive me. I thought the rumors were just that.”

“What do you—”

Jada leapt in front of Nya abruptly, and the entire temple trembled and shook.

They both crashed to the ground as stone and debris rained down around them.

Pain lanced up Nya’s left leg, but she could not see what had happened, could not understand how one moment, they had been standing in the untouched study room and now were buried under rubble, screams echoing somewhere nearby.

“J–Jada?”

The priestess had covered Nya’s body with her own, protecting her from the worst of the sudden blow.

The dust cleared just enough to see again, and a choked gasp escaped Nya as she saw Jada’s empty, wide eyes above her.

Something was impaled in her abdomen, warm blood leaking from the wound and covering the turquoise wrap dress Nya wore, staining the fabric a deep crimson.

The dragon roared again, much closer this time—maybe even directly above her.

Nya reached blindly for a thread of the web connecting her parents, their dragons, and her.

Her mother had always insisted she work harder at strengthening her ability to reach them down their mental pathway, but she had never taken it seriously.

All three of the mortal kingdoms and Arcadia, the land of the gods, were at peace and had been since before her birth.

Besides, she knew her parent’s dragons only ever let her in as a courtesy.

She was not truly bound to that place, and it often felt odd to intrude.

Still, she tried, gasping for air under the crushing press of the wreckage and the weight of Jada’s still body.

Heles. Thessilnn.

The dragons did not respond.

Mamma. Papa. Please.

Nothing.

She started to sob in broken, hitching gasps, wishing she had listened to their warnings to be careful and aware, wishing she had hugged them one last time before leaving the safety of her childhood home.

Her parents had not stopped her, but she’d seen the fear in her father’s eyes when she had left astride Heles all those months ago.

She had been so insistent she needed to go, claiming she was sick of the cloistered embrace of the quiet forest in Mise where she was raised.

Her true reasons for leaving them behind, for apprenticing with the sisters in order to take their sacred vows of chastity and service, were her own secret—her own shame.

She supposed it did not matter now.

She had bluffed to Jada. She had heard the rumors slipping over the border these past months but had willfully cast them aside as gossip. People grew bored in times of peace, and what the whispers claimed was impossible. It had to be. She needed it to be.

There had been a slew of horrible storms sweeping across Aren this past year, brought over on howling winds from Arcadia and leaving destruction in their wake.

An unusual number of earthquakes had caused widespread avalanches in the more remote mountain districts to the east, some of them large enough to level entire small villages.

Nya had reasoned with herself again and again that the strange weather was not caused by what everyone said it was.

That somehow, there was still a piece of the once-mighty god king, Kronos, out there.

Not his own soul, of course. That had been destroyed in dragon fire decades before her birth, marked and banished forever with the same symbol Nya had once seen flicker across her father’s forehead on an unusually cold winter night, the same day Nya’s little brother had been born still and quiet.

The mark of a goddess.

Two moon cycles ago, she had finally asked for the truth.

According to Jada, the mark that destroyed Kronos was that of the Nyx’s heir, a goddess reborn twice over, who had been killed by Kronos and returned the favor in her second life.

The one who had fallen for a demi-god, the lost heir to the fire god, Vulcan, who himself had paid a steep price for taking a god king’s promised bride.

It made sense, she supposed, as hot tears streamed down her blood-stained cheeks where she lay beneath the rubble, that he would seek her.

Maybe it was for the best that she died here before they could find her.

That way, her parents would be safe—forever broken by her death, but safe.

Then again, maybe they didn’t fear the void that came after this world, but rather lives that offered much worse fates.

“I’m sorry,” she mouthed silently, her eyes landing on the slate-hued sky above her.

Her chest was beginning to cave under the stone and debris above Jada’s body. She closed her eyes, her body still trying to fight for oxygen, for life. But her mind was made up. She would let herself fade. Within some small, dark place in her mind, letting herself die felt right.

“There, underneath the rubble.”

The voice was deep and masculine, a little grating at the end of each word, almost as if it hurt to force them out. She knew it was familiar, but for a moment, lost in the haze of pain and looming death, she did not understand why.

“Are you sure, Morgen? No mortal could survive beneath all that pressure, much less live past the initial blow. Which was a bit dramatic, if you ask me. Varax is too damn big for this place.”

“We are not looking for a mortal.”

She did not recognize the other voice, but…

Morgen.

Morgen.

She hardly had the ability to draw air now, between the pressure of Jada’s body and the debris covering them, so when she gasped the words, they were nearly soundless.

“No. Please, no.”

She willed her body to give in faster. Now, before they found her. She would rather die than realize the undeniable truth she had long suspected. She did not want to see his face when he realized it too.

In the end, her body’s will to survive betrayed her. The broken chunks of the temple and debris above her was cleared, and she saw two towering male forms, backlit in the stark light of the cloudy afternoon.

“Move the body, will you, Carus?”

She reached for Jada a moment too late. The priestess’ limp form was already being tossed aside like it was nothing more than a sack of grain. A whimper slipped past Nya’s lips, and the taller of the two men sighed as he kneeled.

She saw it, the moment he truly understood what was happening. She knew he was aware of who she was, so perhaps it was just the shock of seeing her after a year of utter silence.

His entire body froze, his golden-tan complexion paling.

Long, dark hair—not black, but a deep shade of brick-red—fell down his back, half of it carelessly knotted into a bun.

His jaw flexed, tugging on the faded scar that ran across his slightly hooked nose and down to the top of his upper lip.

Their eyes met, and she wanted to scream as the truth she had so naively denied to herself was made painfully obvious.

She had always known he was not mortal, so it was no surprise to see the silver flickers of ether cutting through the brown of his irises. But the bright gold veins lighting them up, the ones she had tried again and again to tell herself were just a deep amber…