To Rule a Kingdom (The Grail Cycle #4)

Chapter 1

The pain was like knives, slicing and stabbing and cutting through every drop of blood, every muscle and tendon and piece of bone.

He’d forgotten what that felt like.

He was floating in the womb of the primordial sea, from where all life began.

Magic brushed and curled against the surface of him, soothing and painful all at once as the edge of the world peeled back like the skin of a swollen fruit.

Thorns dragged across his flesh, grabbing, ripping, tearing, kissing him with fire.

He was floating in a pool of crimson nectar. Maybe his heart was bleeding.

The stars that wheeled overhead winked, burnt out, and fell. They crashed into the ocean as the moon was extinguished, and the night sky opened its jaw and swallowed that glowing orb whole.

Darkness.

Silence.

The edge of the world was cold and full of shadows.

He smiled through the pain, through the unmaking, the breaking of him, as wings of black flame embraced him.

He slipped beneath the waves.

Dreams became memories became dreams of a man with a crown and a sword that sang the ageless melody of war and destruction. The fruit of dream, or memory, of a thing that had yet to happen, was rotten. Poison coated his tongue. He had drunk from the vial of it.

He blinked.

The world became transparent, and he slipped through its layers. He was naked and bleeding and a girl’s wailing ripped into him, tugging on the part of him that was still anchored to the world.

He knew that voice.

He knew that pain.

‘Come out, little rabbit.’

He was floating.

He emptied his lungs of sea water, rolling onto his back to stare unblinking at an achingly blue sky. His heart still beat, but it was slow, sluggish. The burn in his lungs told him it was not long now.

He closed his eyes.

Footsteps crunched over pebbles, so loud, so brash. The sound hurt his ears.

Something nudged him. He opened his eyes.

A figure in a dark hood. He thought he knew them.

Thin lips curled. Scales flecked the sharp line of a jaw. They stepped away as someone else came close, leaning down. Something snuffled at his feet. A dog?

He shut his eyes.

Teeth closed over his ankle, and he opened his eyes with a gasp.

A skeletal face, soulless eyes stripping what was left from bone. ‘The prodigal son. From the state of you, I don’t think I have to ask what you’re doing here.’

‘Let me die.’

‘Death hasn’t come for you, not today anyway, Jalen Rowe,’ Ankou said.