The Seven Realms & The Teeth of Gods (Bound by Gods and Blood #1)

1. Chapter One

Chapter One

The Weave of Fate was unraveling. I knew it from the moment odd shadows crept between the pines in the First Forest. Where the Old Gods walked before creation. Where even the air tasted holy. Nothing unbound should have been there.

But there I was, chasing unbound shadows when I should have been in front of Anam Lac, stepping into its waters for my pre-ritual cleansing.

The Elders would call it purification, I called it bullshit. Pretty words for chains I never asked to wear. Most nights I draped myself in their vows and silence just to keep them off my back. But not tonight. Tonight something stirred in the woods, and I wasn’t about to ignore it.

A shape flickered in the corner of my eye, silver-eyed and snarling. It ripped through the trees on four legs, then two. My Sight flared and the forest split apart. Realms overlapped, bleeding through each other.

And there, tangled in the Weave’s threads I saw more of the same creatures. Half man, half beast. Things without a name. But only one took form, and I needed to get a better look at it.

The vision snapped away as suddenly as it came leaving my chest hollow.

I stumbled over an overgrown root, cursing under my breath.

I clumsily clawed for the dagger strapped to my thigh beneath my robes.

The ridiculous thing had come from a market mercenary years ago.

Cheap steel, badly balanced I’d heard the merchant say to a man who asked to purchase it.

I'd stolen it from him anyway. Not because I needed it but because I wanted it.

As far as I was concerned, the Seer deserved a weapon.

Whether the Old Gods permitted it or not.

Well it was safe to say I needed it now, even if I didn’t know how to wield the damned thing properly.

I glanced to where the moon lay in the sky and sighed.

You're going to be late Aurenya.

Brannach would have my head if he found me sulking in the trees instead of kneeling in the temple where I ‘belonged’. Gods damn him. He'd scowl, drag me by the ear if he could, and the High Priestess would give me her glassy-eyed stare like she always did.

So I'd let them. There were more important things to do tonight, and I was close enough now that I could make out the beast’s features.

I hid behind an oak tree and watched it break from the trees in a blur of muscle and shadowed sinew.

At first glance it was simply an animal, massive and sleek.

But its gait was wrong. Too upright, too…

human. When it lunged its forelegs stretched into arms. Long-fingered claws raked bark as though it couldn’t decide which shape to keep.

Its hide rippled, part fur, part bare flesh, stitched with tangles of light shimmering in the Weave. Rancid breath steamed from its jaws. When it growled the sound crawled into my ribs and rattled there like an old window in a storm.

I wanted to call it wolf, beast, monster, anything familiar. But the word died on my tongue.

I couldn’t look away. Not even when the creature stopped only a few paces in front of me and sniffed the air around it.

I opened my awareness and invited my Sight to the surface. The creature was surrounded in black threads, a Chthonic bond. Which meant it was sired to the Underworld—Karthmor, the King of Ash’s domain. Whatever it was, it shouldn’t have been here desecrating sacred soil.

The beast’s head snapped toward me. Its eyes locked on mine, pupils narrowing to serpent-like slits. My pulse punched against my throat as its growl deepened, a low thunder that vibrated through the clearing.

“Shit.”

It lunged in a blur of claws and muscle.

Instinct I didn’t know I had hurled me sideways.

My shoulder slammed into a pine tree. The needles bit deep as I tumbled hard into the moss.

I still held the cheap dagger in my hand.

Its hilt felt unnatural in my hand, like it wanted to jump from my grip.

I’d never trained with a weapon before. Seers didn’t fight—they had visions and watched the Weave, acted pious and sacred.

That sort of thing. Training in weaponry was forbidden but I craved it.

With my pulse hammering in my chest and fear coursing through my veins, I was actually feeling something, and I wasn’t about to die in temple robes.

Not today, Karthmor.

I tore the ceremonial fabric over my head and flung it aside. I now stood in my plain smock, dark braid hanging down my back. My bare skin met cold air, prickling gooseflesh.

The beast prowled closer, massive shoulders rolling, drool hissing as it hit the ground.

Think, Aurenya.

A memory clawed its way forward—something I once read off a scroll I’d picked up abandoned on the path outside Caer Anam with a warning scrawled in the margins: Strike beneath the jaw. Through the soft place. Else the Weave will knit them whole again.

The words burned bright in my memory as the beast surged forward.

I swung wildly, my inexperience making itself known.

Steel grazed fur, barely cutting, and the thing roared.

I stumbled back, my feet clumsily slipping on roots.

The dagger was nearly knocked from my hand.

This was hopeless. I had no footing, no skill.

But I had that one line from a scroll, and no time to dwell before the beast closed in again.

I ducked and my knees slammed into dirt, the motion carrying the dagger upward. My blade ripped across its belly in a jagged slice. Hot, dark blood sprayed warm across my face. The thing shrieked, staggering. Threads of the Weave snapped and sparked along its hide.

Terror and something uglier—satisfaction—shook my hands and fueled my bloodlust.

One chance.

When it came again, jaws wide for my throat, I drove the dagger up with both hands in a desperate attempt.

This could be it, the moment I ruined everything the Old Gods demanded of me.

The point rammed into the hollow beneath its jaw, in the exact place the scroll imprinted on my memory.

The impact jolted my arms to the bone as I drew in a deep breath, but the blade sank deep.

The weight of it crashed into me. I staggered under it, teeth bared. I refused to let go until the beast convulsed, went still, and bled into silence.

I stumbled back, dagger still in my hand, chest heaving, ritual robe crumpled in the dirt beside me. My body shook—part terror, part disbelief.

I had done that. Goddess help me, I had actually done that.

My breath sounded too loud in the quiet forest surrounding me. The beast’s body was gone. Threads of the Weave pulled it apart until nothing remained but shadowed blood soaking into the moss. I fell to my knees, eyes wide.

My hands shook so violently I nearly dropped the dagger. Sweat stung my palms. My heart thundered against my ribs as if it meant to escape.

No scroll had prepared me for this—the rush, sick and intoxicating all at once.

Awful and exhilarating. I knelt there longer than I should have, drowning in the storm that broke loose inside me: rage hot as fire, fear sharp as broken glass, and sorrow heavy as stone.

The tears came before I could stop them, burning lines down my cheeks.

I lost track of how long I sat like that.

Eventually, I dragged myself from the forest floor and nearly fell before catching myself on the nearest tree, breathing deep the way the Shaman taught me. Three seconds in, five out.

Damn it, I needed to go. I didn’t have time to drown in these feelings any longer. Emotions leave room for fragility, and that weakness is a stain.

Fucking Brannach and his dreadful quotes, sticking in my head like flies on shit.

I rolled my shoulders and took a few moments to steady my breathing.

My hands were still trembling as I stopped for the discarded robes.

The linen was damp with earth. They weren’t meant for this—consecrated cloth, spun to make me a vessel of purity—but I shoved them back over my shoulders anyway.

The blood splatter vanished beneath the white folds, hidden like every other stain the Elders didn’t want to see.

My face, though—my face was still streaked. I could feel the drying blood caked on my skin. I swiped at my cheek, smearing more than I cleaned and muttered a curse. Anam Lac would have to do.

I started toward its waters, my sandals crunching the needled path, night air heavy in my lungs.

For a moment I heard Saorla’s rasping laugh in my head, the same one she’d loosed when she shoved me into the lake as a child.

If the gods wanted a quiet girl, Aurenya, they should’ve left you in your mother’s arms.

They hadn’t, though. They’d taken me. Torn me from the mortal realm, Morhaven, from a woman I never knew. The Veilwalker carried me across the Threshold and dropped me into Caer Anam. A child not born of divine blood but bound to their rites all the same.

The Seer of the Seven Realms.

The title had been hammered into me with every ritual, every prayer Brannach forced me to recite at his feet.

The one mortal who could see the Weave of Fate—a tapestry even the gods couldn’t look upon, save for the shadow-born brothers who dwelled between realms. The Sight marked me as sacred, as set apart.

I wasn’t meant for blades or battle. I couldn’t wield magic other than the Sight.

I was a witness, not a warrior. Regardless of how I longed to wield daggers and fight.

And yet tonight—my dagger slick with black blood, my smock splattered with it—I'd done just that.

A shiver traced my spine, part pride, part terror. Fate had shown me something unraveling, and I'd answered with blood and steel.

The temple bells tolled distantly, pulling me forward. The soul bonding rite awaited, and just as I suspected, that meant I was late….again.