All the Stars We Buried (A Legacy of Broken Thrones)

Chapter 1

B efore the moon grew thorns, the forest had tried to warn us.

My best friend’s blood slipped through my fingers and soaked into the roots beneath my knees.

I pressed harder against the gash beneath his ribs, but blood continued welling between my knuckles and dripping from the leather straps crossing his side.

“Here.” I caught his wrist and pulled his hand over mine. “Keep pressure on it, and don’t let up.”

Rhian’s mouth twisted into a grimace as beads of sweat slid into the dark curls plastered around the tapered point of his ear. “I know how bleeding works, Verena.”

I shot him a glare. “Then stop doing so much of it.”

The corner of his mouth twitched, but I didn’t miss the way his fingers had begun to tremble. His gaze dropped to Bramble, crouched beside my boot with his tail bristling behind him.

“For the record, I’m pretty sure your cousin started it.”

A sharp hiss burst from my pine marten’s teeth.

“That creature was no kin of his.” I pressed Rhian’s hand more firmly against the wound, and he groaned.

We had reached the Cedarstone clearing only minutes before it attacked. Several paces away stood the old marker, a living cedar rooted through the cracked standing stone my family had been named for. Two ancient oaks rose nearby, their branches stretching over the open ground.

The creature had been perched in one of them, barely larger than Bramble, with mottled gray fur and thin, sharp limbs. We barely gave it a second look.

Then wood cracked overhead.

It dropped onto Rhian’s shoulders with its jaws already open.

Indigo light flooded its eyes, too vivid and too bright against its pale fur. Thin streaks of the same unnatural light flashed beneath the fur around its face, while something silver flickered deeper underneath.

Its claws ripped through the leather over Rhian’s ribs, and its teeth sank into his flesh before I could tear it away.

Rabid animals sometimes lost all sense of fear or recognition, though I had encountered only two in all my years patrolling the Deepwood. And neither had looked anything like this.

“Animals in the Deepwood don’t attack Druids without cause…” My words hung in the air between us.

Rhian’s strained smile disappeared. His gaze shifted toward the trail behind us, and I knew he had reached the same place I had.

“Torren,” he breathed. Then his eyes came back to mine. “Do you think this has something to do with whatever happened to him?”

My fingers closed around his wrist.

Torren had taken the eastern watch, along the same stretch of boundary my family had guarded for generations. He was supposed to meet us before sunrise.

Now dusk was settling between the trees.

We had followed his patrol route for hours, whistling at every marker and checking every place he should have passed. No answer came. No message waited in the roots, and no broken branches, disturbed earth, or tracks showed where he could have gone.

Movement caught my gaze. Beyond Rhian’s shoulder, a luna moth drifted down and settled on the old Cedarstone marker. Its pale green wings opened once against the rain-darkened stone, then folded still.

Bramble noticed it too. He chased nearly anything that flitted within reach, but instead of darting after the moth, he pressed against my boot.

Unease flickered through me.

Then the forest went quiet.

I held my breath as birdsong cut off above us, followed by the insects in the brush. Even the leaves stopped stirring overhead.

A heartbeat later, the ground shuddered beneath us.

The roots beneath my knees pulled taut, and something buried deep within my bones answered. The living vines inked along my forearms twisted beneath my skin, their leaves and stems glowing faintly as the Wild surged through them.

Humans called it magic, as though something so old could be reduced to a word for tricks and spells. Druids knew better. We knew it as the Wild. Raw, ancient power drawn from deep within the Mother Tree and gifted to those bound to her through blood and oath.

A gust tore through the oaks overhead. Fresh yarrow scattered across the trail, leaves and white flowers catching against my bloodied hands.

I breathed a quick thanks to the Mother Tree. Yarrow would help slow the bleeding, so I crushed the leaves and flowers between my palms and packed them beneath Rhian’s hand as fast as I could.

Blood still seeped around our fingers.

I pressed his hand back into place and scanned the forest around the clearing. Every instinct I had screamed at me to run.

The earth trembled again.

Bramble let out a thin chirr and flattened himself against my boot.

The earth trembled again.

Rhian braced himself against the nearest oak. “Verena.”

“I know.”

The ground lurched hard enough to tear my hand from his wound. I caught myself against the nearest trunk as roots burst through the earth a few paces away.

A thin line of silver opened between the two ancient oaks near the Cedarstone marker.

A grating shriek tore through the clearing, like flint dragged across stone, sharp enough to grind against my teeth. The silver split farther through the air as wind rushed from it, snapping my braid across my face.

Bramble scrambled beneath Rhian’s arm, and I threw myself over them both as the tear ripped wider.

When the rush of wind finally weakened, I lifted my head. “Mother, save us.”

A gaping wound hung between the oaks.

Unfamiliar stars burned beyond its fraying edges. Silver trees bowed in a hard wind on the other side, their bare limbs clawing across a nearly empty sky while exposed roots hooked through earth too thin to hold them upright.

Something struck the other side with a heavy thud.

The wound bulged toward us.

My hand closed around the bone hilt of my sword as a narrow skull pushed through the tear. Translucent skin stretched over sharp, shifting bones, indigo light pulsing beneath it with the same strange silver sheen.

This creature was closer to the size of a grizzly, but nothing about the rest of it looked natural. Long, angular limbs unfolded through the opening, the joints jutting hard beneath its skin.

Its jaw cracked open with a wet snap.

A guttural hiss spilled out as hooked forelimbs dug into the ground and began dragging its body through.

Moss blackened beneath its claws, thin smoke curling from the green as it died.

The roots beneath my boots recoiled, and pain shot through the vines along my arms, sharp enough to make my fingers twitch.

I rose into a crouch and drew the short, dark blade from its sheath. Longer than a dagger but shorter than a proper sword, it was roughly forged, with an uneven edge and a bone hilt worn smooth by years of use.

“Keep pressure on that wound.” I shifted between the creature and Rhian. “And don’t make me explain to your father that you had the nerve to bleed out while I was standing three feet away.”

“Duly noted,” he gritted out. “But maybe deal with the nightmare first and lecture me about my excessive bleeding habits later.”

The creature finally tore itself free.

It lunged across the shaking ground on four long legs bent at all the wrong angles. One hooked forelimb swept toward my face, and I ducked beneath it, driving my blade into the softer flesh beneath its jaw.

The impact jarred my wrist.

Dark violet blood spilled across the blade. Silver shimmered through it for half a heartbeat before smoke began curling from the metal.

The putrid scent of rot and scorched metal flooded my mouth and nose, so thick I could taste it. I yanked the blade free and recoiled from the smell.

“Mother below.”

The curse had barely left my mouth before the creature snapped its head sideways and tore the sword from my grip.

The weapon spun across the clearing as the force threw me to the ground. I rolled with the fall, came up on one knee, and slammed my palm into the soil.

Emerald light flared behind my eyes as the Wild surged through me.

Roots burst from the ground and wrapped around the creature’s legs, twisting higher as it thrashed. The vines along my arms lit in answer while I drove my palm deeper into the earth.

Behind it, Rhian pushed himself upright against the nearest oak.

“Stay down!”

Naturally, he ignored me.

He pulled the knife from his thigh and threw it. The blade sank into the creature’s shoulder, and a scream ripped from its throat.

Its head snapped toward him, and it lunged.

The roots caught it short, but the creature fought against them, tearing clumps of earth loose as it clawed its way toward Rhian.

Bramble shot forward before I could stop him.

He raced up one of the creature’s forelegs with every strand of fur standing on end, claws digging into its slick skin until he reached the damaged flesh beneath its jaw. Then his teeth sank in.

The monster reared with a shriek, wrenching against the roots hard enough to shake the ground.

I reached for my Wild again, pulling more of it through me.

The vines inked along my arms peeled away from my skin in glowing emerald strands and plunged into the earth. They wrapped around the nearest root, and I grabbed hold.

The root swelled beneath my hands, bark splitting as it thickened and tore free from the soil. I dragged it toward the creature, my living vines twisting with it, until the heavy wood coiled around its chest and wrenched it sideways.

Bramble released his bite as the creature slammed into the ground. His small body spun through the air and disappeared into the ferns.

My lips barely had time to form his name as a claw ripped across my thigh.

Heat spread beneath the torn leather. My leg folded as the creature surged through the broken roots, and the ground slammed into my spine hard enough to drive the breath from my lungs.

Its mouth opened above my face.

Indigo light pulsed between several rows of narrow teeth. Burning fluid struck my cheek while I jammed my forearm beneath its throat and called on my Wild again.

Roots soared up from the earth and wound around its ribs and neck, but the creature kept inching closer, gnashing its teeth.

Rhian shouted my name.

My arms shook beneath its weight. Tension tore through every vine inked into my skin as I called upon every last drop of Wild I possessed.

The creature’s teeth dipped closer; the stench of sulfur springs and rotting meat oozed from its mouth.

And then bright golden light flooded my vision.

I gasped as a long blade of pure starlight pierced straight through the monster’s chest, the tip stopping just a finger’s width above mine.

Its body seized.

Dark violet blood spilled around the glowing blade, running in thick streams down its ribs. Indigo flared wildly beneath its translucent skin, then flickered low as the creature sagged against the roots.

I tightened my hold until they dragged its weight from my body, rolling onto one hip as I followed the length of the glowing blade toward the rift.

A tall, male stood just beyond the divide.

Wind tore at his white-blond hair and snapped the dark cloak behind him. Blood streaked one side of his face, but he stayed braced against the force of it with one arm extended toward the weapon buried in the monster.

The sharp point of his ear rose through his hair, longer and narrower than any Druid’s.

Then I saw his eyes.

Silver and impossibly bright, like moonlight caught along the edge of a blade.

Nothing in Elderen had eyes like that.

A chill swept over my skin as his gaze locked onto mine.

I had spent my life preparing for threats I understood.

Nothing had prepared me for one that should have been impossible.