Page 89 of Reign of Stars and Fire

Chapter28

The Golden King

My body was thrashedabout like a feather on the wind. Limbs and joints scrapped over unseen surfaces. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. All I could do was fall.

For what seemed like a thousand heartbeats, Davorin and I tumbled into oblivion until all at once, we slammed into a wooden floor, covered in a roughly spun rug. Wet, sticky heat clung to my cheeks. Blood and from the smell—vomit.

Davorin kicked at me, trying to shove me away. I made a move to tighten my grip around his neck but froze at the onslaught of screams.

“Find him!” Riot’s rough voice shook the corridor. “Bring him to me, alive!”

Davorin froze. “What is this?”

I rolled to the side before the door to a chamber slammed open and Riot Ode stormed from the room, blood on his hands, hardened venom in his gaze. The Rave guards I’d witnessed from the study, Annon included, followed their king, a naked, bloody man between them.

What was this, indeed? More past moments? Where was Wraith?

“Find out how many of these traitors he’s forced upon her. Rack them up, flay them, then I take their spines piece by piece.” The king kicked the man in the jaw. He let out a long groan. “When they scream, the process slows, the knife deepens.”

“It’ll be our pleasure to find them all,” Annon promised.

My body was weightless when realization hit. Saga was in that room. The sobs, those were from the queen, no mistake, wailing over her sister’s broken body.

Davorin laughed with a bit of wickedness as he realized where we’d been dropped. “She was delectable to so many.”

My inhibitions slackened, and all I saw was the tint of red. I throttled his neck and slammed his head into the floor. On his back, Davorin rammed his thumbs into the soft sockets of my eyes.

I cursed him, digging my fingernails into his flesh, until a whisper filled the room. An unintelligible sound, then a burst of light ignited the small space, flinging the two of us apart.

The space shifted and quivered, cracking at the seams. I scrambled back when a tangle of gilded light coiled into a shimmering rope and split into dozens of golden ribbons that slithered down the hallway and out of the palace.

Not a hairsbreadth behind the gilded skeins, inky coils followed. Darkness chasing light, like the moon reached for the sun.

The beginning of a new story, Ari. A tale of fated paths and the hate desperate to destroy them. Find them, find the bonds, and find those who are still missing.

The whisper fluttered through my mind. A voice like Wraith’s, yet my phantom guide was absent.

Did it mean these ropes of light were fated paths of a new world? The ones Riot foretold when he snapped his kingdom at the seams? The shadows, those would be the promised hate that fought to destroy the last song of the fate king, the destiny of his sister, and the ones who’d restore the power a cruel enemy desperately desired.

Davorin avoided the ropes, then narrowed his eyes and lunged for me.

We tumbled, hand over foot as the scene shattered amidst the toiling golden ropes and murky shadows. We fell into a maelstrom, thrashing at each other, desire to end the other more powerful than fear of wherever this spell was taking us.

Moments in time flooded my vision. Every moment brought a flicker of the speeding ropes of fate, searching for their targets, shadows close behind.

I blinked as the time right after I was brought to days in Ruskig came into view. After my family had been killed. Days and long nights spent training with stolen Timoran blades and old Ettan shields. Hatred was written on my face, a shackle of dark shadows around my ankles, but on my wrists, a beam of light pulled me forward, gave me a drive to keep living.

The vision of a younger, broken version of me was fleeting before the suction pulled both me and Davorin away, deeper and deeper.

I landed on shattered ground without a groan, but scrambled for some notch, anything to grip. My pause offered enough time to take in the new scene. New faces, new pain.

Ten paces from me, a woman rammed a knife through the throat of a sloppy looking fool.

“Princess Herja?”

“Another weak princess whose body I stole away.” Davorin sneered, clinging to a broken ledge over the oblivion of the dark storm around us. His hair beat across his features, but his wolfish grin brightened as the Silent Valkyrie screamed soundlessly at the dead man’s face.

Wind pounded at our back. I lost my grip and was tossed away until cold stone caught me again. My skull smacked an uneven lip. Davorin fell beside me. No time for rest before we clawed at each other. I took hold of his hair, but stiffened when the shadows engulfed a new victim.