1. Youngite
The cold stones of the palace steps dig into my knees as I picture the destruction of both the giants and the elves.
The fucking elves.
Theymade this happen. They sent the giants here. They are the reason my mate is gone.
Joso, the hunter, wraps another bandage around Lord Lothar’s bloody stomach. Liana the wise woman and I help situate the stained fabric, trying to clot the brutal stab wound Lothar received while trying to prevent Estela’s abduction.
“How many are dead?” I force myself to ask before they leave.
Joso pauses as he hands the rest of the cloth to Vann, my personal advisor. “My King, the warring crushed four houses, brutally murdered three hunters, and dispatched seven elders to Vidalena from either shock or a crude attempt to evacuate.”
“Who died?”
“Teo, now is not the time,” Vann interjects from behind me.
“Who died?” I insist.
Joso takes a deep breath. “Ma’Flari, Ik’Cia, Kra’Noki, Lif’Suro, Suh’Yaryn, Me’Fyl, and Ti’Vhur.”
“Thank you,” I grit out as he picks up the council member. He gives me a nod before he sets off to the infirmary.
I stay there on the steps and force myself to see each face.
Two elderly women.
Five men.
From two hundred and ninety-one Enduares to two hundred and seventy-nine in the space of four months. Each precious soul that slides through my fingertips is a piece of my own being, torn from my insides and fed to the shadows that follow me from day to day.
Shadows that grow stronger while I crumble.
More features flash before me, of the men and women who remain. There aren’t enough Enduares—not by any stretch of the imagination—to go after my wife.
I seethe, letting the bitter, acidic rage pour through my mind and leak into my thoughts. Slowly—one drip at a time. Intentionally.
Coldhearted bastards.
My fists curl tighter, and the nubs of my fingernails dig into my palms.
Murderous, blood-soaked images flood through my mind. I see elven dwellings burned to the ground, bodies littering the brush—decorating their forests with grotesque vistas as their beloved rivers run red. I’d never warred with the elves, but one day…
Amidst the tumultuous revelations, it’s impossible not to reach out to my mate. The sacred bond nestled in my chest vibrates gently as my crystal wakes up. The mating mark on my neck starts to burn, almost tickling my throat.
My star? I say.
Silence rattles around in my skull. The absence of her response is felt in the chasm of my heart. I strain every sense for some sign of her. The only thing I have is the proof of the bond itself.
The threads connecting us together are unsevered and strong.
For that I should be grateful, I suppose. There are few other comforts, especially with the scalding realization that we cannot leave to go after her. Not with a half-broken city and dozens injured. We need allies, but we are alone.
My left eye clouds, and then my right, and then tears are scalding the rims of my eyes and clinging to my lashes.
I blink once.
Hot splashes of salty liquid spill across my cheeks just as a hand rests on my shoulder.
“Ma’Teo. Stand,” Mother Liana, one of the only remaining Fuegorra readers, says.
It hurts to see her. As a wise woman of our court, she was training my mate to do the same. I suck in a sharp breath at her command and draw up every ounce of courage to obey her words. My tail helps brush off some of the blood and rubble still stuck to my skin and clothing.
Motion merely stirs the ugly, murderous rage and grief brewing within my ribcage.
I feel more animal than Enduar. More demon than king.
Luckily, I am not alone on the steps. Liana and Vann still stand behind me.
“You need to rest, brother,” Vann says.
I look at his grim face. He holds his arm out, almost like a specter of the past. Fifty years ago, he did the very same thing to save my life as my father exploded the continent with his cursed volcano. It was the very day that all four of our great cities sank into the ocean deep.
Unlike that day, I don’t reach out to take his hand.
“No.” My tone is clipped and impossibly low.
The tight line of his lips twists down. “Teo, we will get her back. I will sharpen my cleaver tonight, and we will go hunting tomorrow. But… you don’t look well. You need to sleep first.”
“I said no.” I flex and close my hands.
“Vann,” a soft feminine voice practically sings. Ulla steps into view. Blood is splattered across her cheekbones, and her soft blue eyes are filled with concern. “I know that look.”
“What are you doing here?” I spit. “Lothar is dying.”
Ulla chews on her lip. “There wasn’t much I could do. He is being cared for by Luiz. I wanted to see Estela.”
It’s like a fucking dagger straight through my heart.
Liana steps between me and the others. “Ulla, the queen is gone. I suggest you all leave before something bad happens. Go back to tending to Lord Lothar.”
Vann whips around to look at her, but what he sees causes him and the others to back away.
Blood, vengeance, and cruelty seep out of the surface of my skin as the intrepid wise woman grips both my shoulders.
“Teo’Likh?” she asks bitterly, citing my father’s name and raising her eyebrow.
“What?” I growl at the name, his obnoxious voice laughing in the back of my mind.
My son.
My son.
My son.
“Get off me.”
She is strong and doesn’t budge. “You wear the face of a dead man.”
I snarl and step away, feeling the pulse of the ground below me. A lick of my hot magic scalds my body, reminding me that I had been on fire an hour before I knelt at the steps.
Liana shakes her head. “You are exhausted—mind and body. I know how much the magic must’ve taken this time. If you don’t feel like resting, then I will put you to sleep, but you must not continue to sit in this attitude. You are going to damage your mind and body.”
I take a sharp breath. “I will go by myself.”
She frowns. “I will come?—”
I brush past her and start walking toward my room. The palace is a blur until I open the door to the king’s suite, and a wall of sweet-smelling earth and flowers crashes against me.
Estela.
The whimsical scent brings back a dozen moments with my mate, each pounding against my ribs and drowning my senses in agony. She was here when they took her. I had just laid her down after making the sweetest love I’d ever experienced. My knees hit the ground again as my mind races.
Breathe.
I press my hand to my chest and search for those invisible mating bond threads yet again. They calm me.
She’s alive, but the only way to get her back is to find help.
Exhaustion does tug at me, but I can’t stay here. Standing and stumbling away from my cursed room, I go to the royal library. The scent of stone paper, both fresh and old, fills my nostrils and brings me back to life.
It is hard to choose to be lonely, laying in my bed when the written word provides the ability to find answers, perhaps even solutions. Better yet, I might even find the possibility of peace—of escape.
I walk the rows that I have spent a lifetime memorizing—from contracts to ballads, and both magic and royal journals—and, swiftly, the scenes of bloody death and murder are replaced with stories, morals, and the knowledge of a people.
One particular row calls to me. It gnaws at the back of my mind, telling me that the time has come to visit. I look at the metal plate with the words:
Annals and Official Journals of the Kings
My father’s legacy.
Suddenly, the need to sleep is gone entirely, replaced with the need to unravel this mystery and formulate a plan.
What did my father do to betray the elves so thoroughly that they would seek vengeance against us?
Perhaps if I understand the history with the elves more thoroughly, I can mend our relationship for good and at least gain a couple hundred troops to retrieve my mate.
It’s not hard for me to understand the giants’ betrayal of our peace treaty. All I need to do is think about the meeting Rholker and I had to negotiate our laughable peace treaty. His haunted, shattered expression that came when I told him Estela was dead still plays through my mind. His motives make sense.
Power and desire are some of the most potent motivators known to any being”s existence. Rholker is young, by giant standards. His obsession with Estela will keep her alive. My mate learned much during her time here, not even mentioning the power her Fuegorra has graced her with.
Rholker’s a fool with a target on his back. His days are numbered, and they will end soon after I can find a few extra soldiers.
More rage fuels me and gives me strength to stop and walk into the row.
Phantom spider legs scurry up my spine as I gaze into the gaping maw of a literary beast. Here, in these rows, I will find my father’s final writings before he ended the Enduar world five decades ago, along with part of the elves and giants.
Even invoking that awful day unlocks the memories I actively cage. A few words he spoke sneak through the bindings, and I cease to be in the library.
“Orfka ir asuso, hlumgla estra…”
His voice, incanting above the din of death, slices my heart from tip to point. I struggle against bindings, planning to shake him out of whatever has possessed him. When I break the chains, I lunge at him. Then…
I blink.
It all fades, so I step forward and stack the scrolls I’ve spent a lifetime avoiding in my arms and head back to my table. One row of shelves, with glowing, unearthly songs and glimmering scrolls, calls to me. Sparing a glance at the precariously stacked tower of scrolls, I sigh and dip into the lines of sacred texts. There’s a glittering, bejeweled scroll that my father read often. I can almost see it on his desk when visiting Enduvida in the winter.
Adding it to the pile, I continue my trek. It only takes a few moments for me to sit down and drown in blue-black ink and pearl-gray stone paper.
My mind wanders and flies away to the swirling cosmos, far from the pain pounding in my mind. I study the stories I watched with my own eyes long before the destruction of my people—the skirmish with the swamp ogres, Father’s love for Mother, and their meeting.
It’s surprising to find that his earliest words are a far better comfort to me than facing the nauseating pressure in my chest. If I think too long about Estela, the weight threatens to flatten my lungs and choke the steady beatings of my foolish heart.
Slowly, I pick up my father’s final scroll—one I brought from Iravida myself. It feels different than any of the others. Tainted, somehow, by an oily aura that makes my fingers slip off of its end ribbon—as if it doesn’t want to be opened. Blood roars in my ears as I unroll it.
It hits me at once. The smell of my old home is almost as powerful as Estela’s scent. Old, diamond-spun fabrics—in a time before the diamonds were cursed—millions upon millions of my people and bright fires.
I look at more of my father’s handwriting. So precise and familiar. Each letter is neatly formed. Efficient.
Ma’Teo has returned from the Giant Court. He seems unwell, and I have sent the healers to his room. The information he brings is invaluable, and I doubt that even he knows what it is. The Elvish Artifact is key in all of this, I am sure of it.
Once I find it, I will be one step closer to saving the continent from the darkness that threatens to fall on us all. No more will we be left waiting for the ax to fall, cutting off the beast’s bindings and setting it free from its ancient prison. We will be free from this monster. If what the…
I shut my eyes, blocking out the following words. It stabs at something inside of me to see the way he feigns care for either me or his people. He sent me to lie with an evil woman so that I could break into her vault, steal her personal correspondence, and then kill her.
I had been so convinced that my father asking me to go to Zlosa and seduce the Giant Queen was for the good of my people. Back then, I was so sure that I could serve the troll court well, return home, and then move forward. I was taking too long to recognize a mate. What was it to seduce someone if it meant saving my whole world?
For so long, I kept it far from my mind, thinking I would understand when I was king. Tirin’s face appears in the hazy dark behind my eyelids. He was barely old enough to be a hunter when Rholker came, demanding I kill my own people or risk a war.
See?my father hisses. You are just like me.
I press my lips in a line and whisper aloud. “No, I am not. He offered himself up for something he believed in. You spent years, decades, fashioning me as your blade. You whetted me against cruel orders. I chose none of this—I could never ask someone I loved to make the same choices, pater.”
My father’s voice doesn’t respond. How could it? He’s a figment of my imagination. I do not even know if a shred of his soul continues on in Vidalena.
When I was forced out of Iravida, my mother wasn’t even dead—his brain was just addled with power. With a desire for something.
A part of me wishes that I had told my mother. She died before she knew what I had done.
What was done to me.
A vision of white skin, kept out of the sun to ensure an unblemished complexion, swooping scars around yellow eyes, and intimately bare feet forces its way to the forefront of my thoughts. Lijasa’s pleasant face is framed by carefully arranged red hair and a golden crown of Enduar gems sits atop her head. She sits on her bed, smiling and watching me undress.
I slam the scroll down, and drag a hand over my face. My eyelids are heavy, and a yawn breaks through my defenses. Something deep inside of me nags at me to sleep, but my father’s voice returns and grows in volume.
Weak.
Weak!
WEAK!
“Gods on their stoney thrones,” I growl and pick up another scroll. The words of Ta’Reht dance before my eyes as I search for solace in the divine. Somewhere. Anywhere—for it is in times of calamity that gods take on their truest uses. Divine beings could purify the righteous indignation of their people with terrible power, or to avenge the honor of their own names. Sometimes, they might graciously seal the sorrows of their followers with a thousand salty tears and simply provided hope.
We need some fucking hope right about now.
As my eyes scrutinize each word with careful detail, my father’s voice goes quiet and Lijasa’s slow smile fades. One line in particular directed at the humans sticks out to me.
Which god or goddess begets a race and leaves them without power?
Which god, indeed, I think, continuing my perusal of the scroll. I had nearly forgotten about the swamp ogres, as it had been so long since once had been mentioned.
The story of Nicnevin and Endu feels important, deep in my soul. Awareness pricks at the back of my neck as the words blur together, and understanding takes the forefront. The weaver of my inner consciousness is nearing the satisfying zenith of a thought.
The library clock’s song strikes a gentle tune, marking four in the morning. It shocks my thoughts back to the elves.
I realize that Liana was already serving under my father when he decided to steal this artifact.
My mind lights up, and I stand, delighted to finally have made it somewhere, anywhere. Grabbing my father’s scroll, I push out of my chair, half mad with exhaustion and not caring when the chair crashes to the ground.
When I find Liana and the other council members in the throne room, I lean against the doorframe.
“Why the hell aren’t you asleep?” barks Liana when she sees me.
I feel Ulla, Fira, Salo, Vann, and Svanna’s eyes snap onto me, but I only look at the bejeweled elder.
“What was the Elvish Artifact?” I demand.
Recognition flickers over her face, then her mouth falls open, and her eyes grow wide.