Chapter 1 Samkiel
SAMKIEL
A book slammed down on the table in front of me, startling me awake. I sat up and blinked rapidly at my scowling father.
“I have already made my amends with those affected,” I grumbled and stretched before folding my arms across the council garbs I was still wearing.
The buttons and tassels twisted over one another as I tapped my foot.
He had forced me to sit at council meetings for days, and if I weren’t there, I was here, studying until sleep took me.
I knew most frowned upon setting a god’s temple aflame, but it had truly been a mistake.
Apparently, it was embarrassing for him, and as a result, it earned me a week’s worth of punishment.
My father nodded but folded his arms and continued to glare at me. “Read. Aloud.”
I frowned and sighed deeply, slumping further into my chair.
With a roll of my eyes, I slid the thick red and gold-encrusted history book toward me.
It was tabbed where I had left off yesterday, and I flipped it open.
The illustration spanned two pages, depicting an army of a hundred strong, draped in silver armor, as they lined up for war.
I sighed loudly again, making sure he knew just how much I hated this before I started reciting the text describing the battle.
“You are the gory, blood-soaked land,
I wonder how to make peace with these butchers.”
My head snapped up in surprise, and I stared at them in confusion. The text was not the ancient dissertation I had read the day before. Instead of tactics and weaponry, the words bled, seeping into the worn cream parchment. I watched as they disappeared, only to return, the letters dark and thick.
“Read,” my father insisted.
“But it’s not as before,” I said, and it wasn’t. I gaped, the image melting as if water had been poured over it. It disappeared, and more text formed.
“Read,” he demanded again.
I sat up in my chair and half-turned to face him.
Unir stood just inside the balcony doors, framed by massive columns.
Outside, the clouds grayed at the edges, bubbling in size and mass.
Shadows blanketed the mountains of Rashearim, the darkness beneath them spreading wide like gaping beasts, attempting to swallow the ground below.
“Read.” Unir’s voice had deepened and gained an edge I couldn’t define.
I shook my head but didn’t dare disobey.
I knew he’d keep me in this study until my eyes bled for the devilment Cameron, Logan, and I had gotten into.
So, with a shuddering breath, I clutched the edges of the book and tried to read.
The words continued to change and twist together on the page before spitting out the verse it wished me to recite.
“You decimate the soul of the noble man.
Moving through stars, laying curses upon the land.”
The words kept reforming over and over. I ran my fingers over the lines as if I could keep them still. I recognized this poem, having come across it in a book I’d found in the library. It was one nearly lost to time, originally transcribed by an ancient prophet.
“Repeat it,” my father demanded, standing with his back straight. He was ever the general and less the doting caregiver he perceived himself to be.
I swallowed. “It’s not the same.”
“Keep looking.” His eyes held no amusement or anger.
“The unheard voices, drowned in the cries of the dead.
Men begging, uttered curses and prayers,
Only answered by just and strong hands
Here is our scourge, our salvation, our hope.
Bathed in light with strength and might.
The anguished land sends tremors through all men,
Blood and destruction wear at every soul.
Weapons of horror now familiar.”
My chest heaved as the words all but slammed out of me. I heard his boots against the stone floor, his thick strides changing in both tempo and weight as he moved toward the door.
“Compassion falls before thy destructive force.”
I shook my head as the words started to tremble.
Fear shivered through me, and I glanced up.
The royal, bright room had turned a sullen gray, but that wasn’t what made my heart ice over.
Nismera stood where my father had been, Dianna clutched in her grasp.
My chair toppled to the floor with the force with which I rose.
I struggled to move toward them but found I couldn’t.
Nismera smiled, her lips resting against Dianna’s cheek. She clenched Dianna’s jaw, raising the golden death spear in her other hand to point it at her heart. My heart. Dianna’s eyes stayed on me, unmoving. There was a soft glow within their depths that I could not decipher.
“You didn’t finish the words.” Nismera smiled cruelly at me, her eyes darting to the table and the book behind me.
“I don’t need to,” I responded, my teeth gritting. “I know the poem of Jeremiah.”
“Hmm, do you, Brother?” Nismera said softly, her lips brushing a gentle kiss against Dianna’s cheek as she lifted her head. If I could just move, I could reach Dianna. I could hold her to me, and we could flee, but I dared not fight Nismera with Dianna in her grasp.
“Do you know the true meaning? Shall I finish them for you?”
“Don’t,” I demanded. I didn’t know what would happen if Nismera said those words, but I knew it could be nothing good.
She held someone more precious to me than a throne or a crown or the air I breathed.
Dianna was more precious to me than any world or realm.
I would sacrifice it all for her and not think twice about it.
Her smile was so cold I swore the warm air frosted around her. “You may have returned, but you did so with a weakness, World Ender. All your enemies will know it now. They will know how to break you, and when you break, so will the world.”
“Don’t,” I said. I wasn’t denying the words that made me hate myself, but the threat she posed to what she held. My eyes fell on Dianna before they raked to Nismera. “She’s all I have.”
Her eyes were filled with cruel satisfaction. “I know.” As the last word left her lips, she thrust the spear into Dianna’s chest.
Blinding yellow light exploded from Dianna, her head tilting back as her skin burned, flakes peeling off and rising into the air until only ash was left.
Dianna’s remains. An empty wail tore from my throat, and the sky cracked open.
Lightning flashed like a strobe light, the thunder so loud it sounded like a bomb exploding overhead, the sky echoing my pain.
It wasn’t the building storm that darkened the room nor lightning that sprung from my fingertips.
Oblivion burst from my outstretched hand, ripping from me in waves of darkness that quickly encompassed the room.
It engulfed the spot where Nismera had stood, but somehow, she’d moved fast enough to elude my grasp.
Only her laugh, cruel and malicious, told me she was still in the room.
I did not care. I did not care as I fell to my knees and crawled to those ashes, and I did not care when tears spilled from my eyes.
My fingers pressed to what was left of my love, my akrai.
Nismera’s laugh was victorious as she appeared and crouched before me.
She gathered Dianna’s ashes in her gauntleted hand.
Her smile was a cruel, ugly thing as she blew the remains of my mate toward me.
Massive, twisting tornadoes screamed into existence outside the palace at her callous cruelty.
The wind whipped hard enough to tear flesh from bone, the ceiling crumbling and falling around us.
Nismera looked up, her silver hair whipping around her in waves.
She smiled at the dark violence of the sky and began to speak.
Somehow, I could still hear her, even over the crash of thunder.
“You, therefore, I, tool of gods, decimator of those who walk or slither.
Made of light, made of wind.
Swords so sharp our foes shall bend
For in a war between gods, no one wins.”
My body shook, but not from the raging storm and trembling palace. It was as if I were being pulled and shoved.
“… kiel.”
My head snapped back, and I stared at the roiling purple and black clouds clogging the sky. Lightning struck the ground over and over, punishing and destructive. As the world I kneeled on died.
“… iel.”
A sharp pain ricocheted across my jaw, and I sat up, cupping my face. “Ow.”
Dianna’s eyes were wide and touched with fear.
She pulled back her clenched fist and slammed her hands over her ears.
Her hair danced around her, whipping violently in the wind.
Darkness coated our room, and I realized I had unleashed Oblivion here, not in my death dream.
Tendrils of it curled like serpents around my arms, coiled and ready to face and destroy the threat.
The ceiling groaned, and I saw the pieces I had already released gnawing at the edges of our room.
“Samkiel!” Dianna called over the sound of the building storm.
It had been her calling to me from the beginning, pulling me back from the edge.
She gathered her hair, holding it back from her face as the force of Oblivion grew.
“You have to make it stop, or it will consume this room, the castle, and then the town next.”
My chest heaved. “I don’t know how!” I shouted back, and I didn’t. I had never been able to control my power when it manifested like this.
Dianna winced as a piece of the outside wall ripped away, exposing us to the growing storm.
A massive swirling funnel rotated in the nearest cloud.
It descended, and I knew what devastation would follow once it touched down.
She clamped her hands over her ears, the roar of the wind painful. “What caused it?” she shouted.
Rather than trying to speak, I sent the details of the dream down our bond.
Her eyes flashed, and I felt realization ripple between us.
She had been there for the dreams I’d had back on Onuna and recognized that they were raising their ugly heads again.
Only here, it was Nismera who took her from me, not Kaden.
I did not know what I expected, but her dropping her hands from her ears, gripping my face, and slanting her lips across mine was not it.
“I am here.” Her voice whispered across my subconscious. “I’m with you now and forevermore.”
The world stilled as if a massive hand had wiped away the storm.
The wind ceased to howl, and my skin no longer prickled with dark ancient power.
I may wield Oblivion, but it seemed Dianna controlled it.
It responded readily when she was in danger, and it had since the first time she was taken from me.
Now, it retreated, easing like a compliant beast beneath her touch.
Our bedroom door slammed open, and both of us turned. Cameron stood in the doorway, his sleep pants hanging low on his hips and his hair a disheveled mess.
“What the fuck?” he panted, his eyes roaming the room. He took in the missing ceiling and wall before falling to us. Since we had been in the center of the storm, I assumed we looked just as disheveled as he did. “I thought I heard a fucking hurricane, but it was just you two having sex?”
“Don’t tell him.” My words danced to her. We had more than enough to worry about without this added.
“I won’t,” she replied.
“Think of the children, Dianna,” Cameron scoffed before pointing to himself. “And the sexless.”
A small snort left my lips. I hadn’t thought it possible for me to feel humor right now, but given what he saw when he entered and how Dianna was draped across me, of course, that would be what he thought.
Dianna jumped from the bed. “Go back to bed,” she demanded with a scowl, storming toward him. Fire danced over the tips of her fingers, distracting him from the destruction and ash all around us.
“So violent.” He playfully rolled his eyes before waving to the room right as he left. “And clean up your mess.”
Dianna closed the bedroom door, and I slipped from the bed, righting the walls and ceiling of the room.
Once everything was back in place, I turned toward her.
She leaned against the bedroom door, worry tightening her beautiful features and darkening her eyes.
The destruction I’d created wasn’t the source of her concern.
It was because we both knew Oblivion lived inside me, and I had just become a threat to everyone I loved.