Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
LYVIA
Pyracantha, Lotrennia.
Six weeks after the Battle of Odessa.
You are not afraid of the dark, the shadow purred. Let me out.
Dulled gray irises darted between me and Ronan, unable to focus on either of us, as I reached my fingers to the milky white skin of the ashen restrained in a black web of vines. He bucked and thrashed as my hand clamped down on his gaunt, clammy shoulder.
Despite the mugginess of Lotrennia, his skin was frigid, like a sweaty body tossed into the winds of winter.
The creature’s stench clogged my throat, a mix of rotting meat, stale blood, and the dry, cold breath of death.
My instincts screamed at me to run, but it was nothing compared to the dangerous new darkness swirling in my veins.
Let me out.
Strong hands gripped either side of the ashen’s pallid face, holding his head in place as he snapped his elongated teeth at my trembling hand.
It was Isla’s idea to use contact. To touch the thing…
the man…in front of me. She stayed behind today, often splitting her time between training me and Drystan, her protégé.
I told myself it didn’t bother me. Drystan needed her guidance to hone his powers and stand ready to face King Saros when we returned to Sultira.
We’d need every human mage we could get.
Yet every attempt I’d made in reversing the transformation of the ashen, undoing what Dark King Daimos had done to them, had been a failure. My gut twisted under the pressure.
A company of Lotrennian soldiers had captured several of the creatures from a horde released on their shores after I’d shared my revelation with Queen Antares, Bayne, and Nerissa’s aunt by marriage.
I believed I could save them with the Transcindiel power hidden deep within me, though it was often lost under waves of darkness.
The Obscura roiled in my veins at the contact, bucking and thrashing as hard as the ashen in front of me, willing, demanding I release it. Isla had warned me about power of this magnitude, the strength it would take to control it. There had been eight Bellators. Eight powers, yet I wielded two.
I took a steadying breath, splitting my focus and strength between subduing the darkness and reaching for that thread of song-like power that allowed its Bellator to transform: Transcindiel.
My eyes closed as I searched, letting my mind’s ear take over as I swam through a tunnel of consciousness, listening for the lilting tune.
A soft melody pricked my attention, and as I reached for it, a gut-curdling shriek pierced the air. My eyes shot open, hair standing on end. I stepped back, my hand clamping over my mouth as two freshly gnawed fingers dropped from the ashen’s bloodstained lips.
“Call for a mender!” Ronan shouted as the elven guard held his bleeding hand against his chest. The elf’s brown eyes were wide in dread and his mouth dropped in shock as he stared at me.
“NOW!” Ronan bellowed, moving toward the elf whose knees crashed to the dirt floor. The ex-queensguard ripped a shred of cloth off his dark blue tunic, tying a tourniquet around the elf’s forearm as scenes from last year on board the Evecta edged into my mind.
Hand. We had to take his hand… The creatures Dark King Daimos created could spread the transforming curse with a single bite.
Ronan grunted as he pinned the guard to the ground, hollering once more for a mender.
Steps shuffled from outside the room. I rushed to the guard’s side, reaching for the other hand when the injured elf turned his face toward me, his brown irises lightening to a near-white as the blood drained from his face and his canines stretched into sharp fangs.
His face tightened as animalistic violence surged into his being.
His pupils constricted as they landed on me, and shadows clouded my veins in preparation.
His lips stretched over pale gums, and as he lurched toward me, Ronan plunged his dagger into the soft flesh beneath his chin.
Guards rushed into the room as Ronan twisted the blade, with the last semblance of life drifting away from the elf’s dulled eyes.
I pulled my gaze away in time to catch the glimmer of a blade slicing through the restrained ashen’s neck so fast that its head sat there for a moment, balancing in place as the last bit of dull light left its once beautiful eyes.
The head rolled forward, and I shuffled back as it fell to the ground with a thud.
Guilt raked at my chest. Another failure, two casualties. The guards knelt next to their dead comrade, examining the eyes and mouth of the newly formed ashen. Their eyes slid to me in hostile accusation as they removed the body.
The guard behind me made a single, long sweep over his blade with a cloth after beheading the ashen.
Purely out of habit, as the ashen had no blood circulating in their veins.
Like so many, the elf avoided my eyes. Others, those who worshipped the Bellators of old, spat and cursed my name as they passed.
Betrayer, they hissed.
They believed Enya, the last Bellator to wield the Obscura, the power I felt so strongly, had nearly destroyed the world and the rest of the Bellators.
“I’m so sorry,” I croaked. “I—”
“They know the risk, Lyvia,” Ronan cut in, offering a curt nod to the guards before turning me toward the exit.
My shoulders sagged as I added another tick to the growing list of bodies that piled around me. Seven failed attempts since arriving in Lotrennia. On top of the thousands I had obliterated on the cliffs of Odessa six weeks ago.
Ronan’s lips drew a hard line as he offered me a quick squeeze on the shoulder. Small, black vines slid out of the knot as the door swung open, shutting and relocking just as fast. The vines somehow knew who was allowed to pass and when.
The inescapable tangle of thorns made up Lotrennia’s prison, Pyracantha.
While the rest of the continent seemed all life and beauty, the prison was a thing of nightmares.
Black and gray branches wound up and around the space so tightly that no light seeped its way into the maze of tunnels.
Needle-like thorns covered every inch of the branches, making any misstep bloody, if not deadly.
Ronan had been wound tight since our arrival the month prior.
He insisted on marching on Aedrialis by the end of spring for reasons he’d shared privately with me in Odessa.
I understood the moment he told me. The need to get back, the fear, the worry.
But he held it together, and the Rising forces still clung to his confidence, his calm determination.
And I’d kept his secret, from everyone except Tiberius, my winged miracle of a horse, who seemed to have almost unlimited access to myself. I could rarely keep him out without his cooperation.
And it had killed me to keep it from Bayne. He had been so busy playing a dangerous game of politics with the queen. I’d barely seen him, even before he left for the Waters of Ascendiel to search for answers on how to defeat the dark king and dethrone Saros.
If it hadn’t been for the strange connection that linked us, I would have struggled to keep it together after everything that had happened in the last year. The loss, the death, the trauma…
I reached down that strange link to Bayne and slowly drew back the curtain, allowing the smallest bit of disappointment to seep through, letting him know the outcome of this most recent attempt.
Was it simply a bond created from our link as Bellators?
Or was there something more there? Moments later, warmth surged in response.
Comfort. Love. Forgiveness. More than I deserved.
We were trapped here. All six hundred of us who arrived from Odessa.
Negotiations with Queen Antares on the timing of our return, how we would even return, were constantly underway.
The Juniper Sea was a death trap. Lotrennian mages had used so much power to get their forces and ours back safely to Lotrennia.
The queen couldn’t justify sending us back until the seas had settled.
The abrupt change in the pattern of Ganmira and Renova, our two blue moons, and the unexpected twin eclipse, left the seas in a wild, unruly state. Nobody knew how long it would take to return to normal, if ever.
And we needed to get back. Needed to remove King Saros from his tainted throne.
Needed to stop the tribute, the vile sacrifice Saros made of his own people, sending them to the dark king, where they lived as slaves or were transformed into undead, mindless killers.
We still didn’t understand why he allowed it.
Some deal struck long ago, the reason for which we had yet to unravel.
The terrified murmurs of the Sultirans on the tribute ship I boarded months ago often echoed in my mind as I stood before the ashen in Pyracantha.
The snap of the soldiers’ whips on Kayj, the dark king’s forsaken island, rang in my ears as the ashen shrieked.
And their faces… The slaves in the Crystal Castle, on the island of Kayj… They were there when I closed my eyes.
We had to get back.
I strode after Ronan through the dark tunnels, shuddering as I passed cell after cell. The moans of their occupants crept through the vines that imprisoned them.
The space behind my eyes ached as we stepped outside Pyracantha and were met with a blinding white light.
I blinked, allowing them a moment to adjust to the bright, green forest. We were several miles southwest of Ayla, the capital of Lotrennia.
Massive trees covered in mossy growth rose hundreds of feet into the air.
The twitter of orange, native songbirds swelled and swooped above.
My shoulders eased as we stepped away from the miles of black thorns.
A flash of bright open sky and hard air gripped my consciousness as Tiberius’s view, his senses, merged with my own.
Casting. That was what Bayne and Nerissa called it.
Their giant seahawk, Aquila, could communicate the same way with the brother and sister Bellators.
The icy breeze of Tiberius’s altitude made me shiver, and the hot burn of muscles working his wings raced down my back, as if they were my own.
I could see the forest in front of me, but also from above as he scanned the trees below, feeling for our bond.
I cast my response, taking in my surroundings, every sense, every thought, every feeling, and sent them down the tight connection.
The bond between Bellator and caeluma was overwhelming. It was like splitting, or rather, sharing consciousness with another being. But Bayne had insisted Aquila wasn’t a caeluma. Or if he was, he lacked some key elements.
Tiberius had become more than a mount. His soul had changed when I’d used the Transcindiel power to save us.
I hadn’t intended on turning him into my caeluma in those last, panicky moments as we hurtled off the cliffs of Odessa.
It had been instinct, a last-ditch effort at self-preservation in the face of certain death. And it worked.
Ti landed nearby in a small clearing. Ebony, velvety wings tucked in tight as the massive horse made his way through the thick trees and ferns, twisting elegantly around the mossy boulders.
The agrippa were enormous, but ever since Ti’s transformation, he had eaten and grown and eaten some more.
My thoughts drifted back to that burial chamber I’d discovered last year.
Tiberius was now as large as Enya’s steed.
I hopped on a boulder as I waited for Ti to approach, Ronan slowing and waiting next to me.
You don’t need a babysitter, Ti grumbled in my mind. If he’d had a human face, it would have been drawn up in a sneer at the Rising commander. Instead, his ears flattened, and he bared his teeth as he approached. Ronan had the good sense to step back.
It had taken a month for Ti’s voice to sound in my head.
The shock of it sent my heart thundering as fast as his hooves.
He sounded exactly as I would have imagined.
Young, fearless. Perhaps a tad reckless.
The friend I’d always had, but one whose intelligence had been shut tight in a box that had slowly unlocked since his transformation.
He was a different being entirely now. And the only one of his kind—a sad, lonely thought, but one that we shared.
You’ll be glad he was here after I fill you in, I replied, my mind’s voice defeated. His hooves clomped on the mossy ground as he placed his velvety nose on my cheek.
“Are you talking about me?” Ronan paused, turning toward us with pinched brows.
“No.”
Tiberius huffed a snort and bobbed his head.
“Don’t worry, I won’t ask for another ride,” Ronan muttered.
Tiberius sent a wave of amusement rolling down our bond as we recalled the one time he’d allowed Ronan atop his back. The ex-queensguard had vomited after our descent.
I made to leap on his broad, inky back when the thunder of horses rose from the forest to the north. I paused, waiting, as a party of elves atop gray Lotrennian steeds broke through the trees.
War Slayers, I realized, noting the fresh black paint that stretched across their faces from temple to temple and the matching inked wolf skulls on their shoulders.
The group split, and my heart stopped as I took in the bloody figure at the center of their party.