Page 12 of Immortal Origins (Chronicles of the Immortal Trials #1)

F or the first time in her life, Ambrose didn’t feel any fear.

In fact, she didn’t feel anything at all.

Just blissful peace as darkness held her.

She often wondered what it would be like to die.

No matter how she imagined it, it always gave her a level of peace and comfort knowing that there would be nothing after.

This was almost like nothing.

Why wasn’t she afraid?

If this was death.

Nothing.

Just her.

But…

There wasn’t really nothing.

There was… a buzzing noise?

Yeah. Definitely a buzzing.

And something else…

Someone…screaming?

Who could be screaming?

Everything was so peaceful, who could possibly be making such a disturbed sound…

Ambrose woke to find the source of the horrible cries. Torturous flames licked her skin, burning her from the inside out. She screamed and clawed, unable to get the pain to stop. Channels searing, she thought, this is it .

“ Calm yourself, young mage, ” the voices soothed.

“ What are you doing back in my head? Did you follow me? ” she whimpered.

“ We are always with you ,” they told her. “ Take control, don’t let it control you. ”

“ I can’t ,” she sobbed.

“ Yes. You can, ” they urged. “ You must . ”

She bit down and gathered as much willpower as she could to calm her channels. A seemingly impossible task as her very core was ripping itself to shreds.

Breathe. In. Out. In. Out.

Nails digging into her clenched palms the scorching pain subsided enough for her to think more clearly.

She could feel if her focus slipped, if she let go for one moment, she’d burn up right there, nothing left but a scorch mark to prove she’d ever existed at all.

How many people would mourn her if she died?

Her brother? Ernaline? Ms. Asquith?

Magnus’s broken cry rang in her ears once more, the fragment of memory so fresh.

Thinking of them, she was able to quell the rush of energy inside of her until it flowed properly again, though it took every ounce of focus she had.

The cry that bubbled up from her lips mixed with a relieved laugh as the agony weakened.

She’d experienced more pain than she could quantify, the royals always coming up with new and exciting ways to punish her.

But nothing could’ve prepared her for this.

“How do you feel?”

“Is that a real question?” she bit back.

“How do you feel ?”

Doing her best to block out the pain, Ambrose tried to focus on any other feeling in her body.

She still didn’t understand how she was even alive.

Her heart stopped, she felt it. It was something she was sure she wouldn’t be shaking for a while, but the pounding tempo in her chest told her it was beating once more.

The spirit was right. She did feel different.

Her skin was cleaned of all the blood and her body dressed back into her servant’s gown, most likely by servant hands while she was unconscious. The chest tied in a knot rather than held together with her brooch, which was nowhere in sight.

Her head no longer throbbed from where the guard had struck her.

She stretched her arms and even her rib cage seemed completely healed, bruises and all.

Her muscles didn’t ache from the fight, let alone with the every day groans they usually had.

Even her drowsiness was gone. As though she’d received the best sleep of her life.

Now, with the pain locked out she felt incredible. Better than she had in years.

The bed she laid on poked her, the scratch familiar on her skin, as it was the same type they had in the servant dormitories…

But this wasn’t the servant dorms… The walls around her were rough cut dragonstone, enclosing her in a tiny room where the fourth wall was made from rusted iron bars.

The bed was the only piece of furniture—if you could call a bed of straw that barely covered a stone slab furniture.

Frantically, she looked around for anything else, but the room was a box of iron and stone.

This must be where they stored criminals for trial. She didn’t recognize this area of the palace, but it had to be somewhere deep inside. All criminal trials took place in the Grand Hall so they couldn’t have taken her too far.

“Hello?” Firelights lined the wall extending further than she could see, the hollowed out stone the same rough finish as the hallway she’d found earlier. She thought she’d mapped out most of the palace over the years but was beginning to reevaluate just how big the internal structure might be.

“Silence.” A gruff voice came from further down, but the owner remained hidden, since the bars held her back.

“Who are you?” She pressed her face into them in an attempt to see where the voice was coming from. “Where am I?”

“I said, silence, guard killer,” the voice growled as it took a few steps closer. “Or I’ll make you be quiet.”

Guard killer. So she was.

“Oh I’m sorry,” she smirked. “Buddy of yours?”

If she was fated to die, there wasn’t much point in holding back anymore. Her words bit at her tongue as she allowed them past the recesses of her mind instead of restraining them as she usually did. They felt foreign leaving her lips instead of echoing in her head. Foreign, and oh so delicious.

Heavy footsteps clunked towards her, metal shifting against metal.

“Watch your mouth,” the guard snapped. Pulling his sword from its sheathe he slammed it against her bars. He would’ve broken her nose that had been peaking out between two of them had she not pulled away at just the right moment.

Stacked in traditional armor polished from head to toe, he even wore the helmet they only donned when it was an official instance.

Apparently they weren’t taking ‘guard killer’ lightly.

Silver with fine gold trim, it covered everything but his eyes that shone with pure hatred.

He snarled, cape slung over his shoulder and held in place with a brooch that bore two crossed swords, one pointed up, and one pointed down.

It was the emblem of the Enforcers: the branch of the Imperial Guard that dealt strictly with crime and punishment, handling the execution of criminals, and the traffic of new servants across the empire.

From the polished surface of the guard’s chest plate, Ambrose’s reflection mirrored itself back at her. Except, it couldn’t have possibly been her reflection.

Amber eyes flaked in gold and red replaced her blue ones and stared back at her.

All the auburn tone was stripped from her hair, leaving strands so white, they glowed with the faintest light.

Her skin, which had been decorated with scars over the years of disobedience, no longer had a blemish on it and was smoother than it’d been in a decade.

The bags under her eyes nothing but a memory compared to the face that stared back at her.

She had no words.

“What? Now you’ve got nothing to say?” The guard slammed his sword against the bars again, rattling them as he did so.

Ambrose pulled her attention from the stranger that reflected back at her and shoved the new thoughts and feelings aside.

She tilted her face up to look at the guard.

A burly man. Even though his armor covered almost every inch of him, she could tell he was a beast, his broad chest heaving with each controlled breath.

Only a little Mana poured out of him that she could tell, but that didn’t mean power didn’t still radiate off him.

Whoever he was, he was incredibly strong.

“Your friend deserved what he got. Probably worse if I’m being honest. It’s what you all deserve.”

Though she could only see his eyes through the slit in the metal of his helmet, the fury that raged behind them was unmistakable.

“You’re trying to bait me, and it won’t work.

I won’t end your life in a crime of passion, angered to the point of blind rage.

” He stepped forward, as close to the bars as he could and lifted the visor of his helmet so she could clearly see his face.

Young, but still older than her by more than a few years.

His square jaw was slightly off center as though it had been broken and never healed—at least not with Magick.

His skin was rough for his age, thick brows pulled together in loathing.

“You killed a guard. Never has a servant killed one of us, and I’m going to watch you burn for it.

” He tapped his head with a small spark of his finger.

“I’m going to commit your scream to memory so that I can play it again and again…

whenever I want. The only thing that will be left of you will be the sounds of your final moments. ”

Sound Magick, how poetic.

Ambrose feigned impartiality, her face set into an expression of stone, but behind it, she was terrified. “You mean like your friend? He screamed like a pig when I put his own sword through his chest.”

A growl emanated low in the Enforcer’s chest as he threw a hand between the bars and failed to grab her, his fingers missing her by mere inches and she stuck her tongue out at him with a sneer.

“You missed.”

“ They’re coming for you, young mage. ”

A door at the end of the hall burst open, wood crashing against stone.

“Soldier! What do you think you’re doing?” Magnus rushed towards them, trailed by four of the Draconian Guard and two other Enforcers. Their steps a shuffle as they marched toward them. “Well? Answer me.”

“I don’t report to you, old mage.” The guard replaced his helmet, never taking his eyes off Ambrose. He pulled a key from his belt and unlocked the barred door that separated them. “She’s ready. Take her.”