Page 62

Xerxes

D eath permeated the landscape, suffocating in its grip on the underground city of Valerius. The surface world, covered in a thick layer of heavy snow, assaulted by a storm that never ended, only held a fraction of what Valerius hid.

When I first saw the Queen with her mates surrounding the pile of bodies, I’d thought the other army had only found them: the few who used the ruins of the old city as a breath of fresh air away from their home below.

But when I found the entrance to the real city, the passageway leading into the underground network of tunnels, my hopes had turned to ash.

The Queen and her mates had no idea just how much destruction their presence had brought .

Valerius was in ruin, not just above, but below, too.

There were more bodies strewn carelessly below, the stench of blood thickening the air.

Their rotting flesh burned my eyes, so overpowering it almost had me on my knees.

The cold didn’t reach this far down, and so the bodies that were abandoned in the tunnels and city decayed like the rest of my world.

I had to cover my face with my hand and turn back to the passage.

There was no telling if any had survived the attack.

It wouldn’t be the first time something nefarious had infiltrated one of our homes and slaughtered everyone.

The deadly creatures the Queen had faced were a scrounge we constantly battled, a living death we could not trace.

It was why most of our people were either underground, where they could not sense us, or high in the sky.

But this enemy…

I choked on my breath as I stumbled into the calm evening.

Snow fell slowly, dancing across the sky.

My vision blurred as I fell to my knees, but the contents of my stomach didn’t spill from my lips, as much as my entire body heaved.

It was not the first sight of death I’d encountered, and I knew it would not be the last.

My chest tightened painfully, and I heaved one last time before climbing to my feet. I could barely sense the Queen and her mates, their scents almost carried away entirely by the snow. The pyre they’d left behind had long since stopped burning, the ash now reclaimed by the last storm.

In the distance, another was fast approaching, dark clouds coming in quickly. But that was the way of these lands. Stories claimed this had once been a land that belonged to the witches of Nyx. There had been magic and schools and more .

Now, it was barren, and completely lifeless.

One of Phaedra’s other trackers would find this place. Would tell her what had been done here. She would blame the Queen, and some blame definitely fell on her shoulders. She should have stopped her adversary before they could come here, before he could slaughter our people.

But he was the one who sent his army into the tunnels. Had them kill everyone.

That was not something she could have foretold.

I doubted she expected any of this to happen. And it sounded like she had no idea there were creatures living on this land, anyway. I supposed her enemy hadn’t expected us, either.

But once word got out to the other clans, there was a chance the Queen and her mates wouldn’t have to stop her enemy.

The clans would do it for her.

I caught the scent of the intruders easily.

Not even the snow could hide them from me; rotten and wrong, the stench was unlike what the Queen and her mates emitted.

Where her scent was sweet, and her power a comforting energy that radiated from within her, like sunlight fuelled by her realms, what I followed was the opposite. Dark. Wrong .

She had not lied to Phaedra when she’d claimed there was a terrible threat coming for us. The city proved her right, the deaths of the Valerius clan a clear act of war. But this magic…it spoke to the darkness of the enemy. He would not spare us, and in fact, if he wanted to, he could wipe us out .

The scent carried me not towards the moving army, but to the coast where his ship had sailed into. There was a dock that was maintained primarily by the ocean dwelling Primals, though as I neared, the stench of death thickened the air, turning my stomach once more.

I slowed from a run to a walk, keeping my Primal form as I hid in the shadows of a smoking shack. Within, there would have been fish dried for distribution between the nearby city, and trading with other villages. But the smoky scent was gone, instead replaced with rot.

It took all my strength not to rush the ship bobbing in the water nearby.

It was large, much bigger than the ships we still used from time to time, and different to the ones left behind by the creatures of Nyx.

It had metal wrapped around the hull, and from it, there was a hum of magic and something else.

Soldiers walked the top deck, carrying weapons I couldn’t identify. They were black, long, and were responsible for the deaths of the Primals in the underground city.

My jaw clenched as I watched cages appear and disappear upon the deck. Some were filled with beasts, others emptied. Soldiers came and went in a flash of magic that rippled across my skin and felt wrong.

It wasn’t like how the Queen disappeared within the shadows. There were stories about demons who could move through the darkness and use the shadows to travel between worlds. But there was nothing in our history about an army that could just disappear the way this one did.

Pressure built in my skull as I looked away. Each breath I took reminded me that there was something wron g with them. The soldiers, the beasts, the magic.

“ Psst ,” someone hissed. “You. ”

I growled as I swung my head around, searching for the source of the voice. It had been feminine, and with it came a scent of…flowers? There was nothing wrong with the scent, either. It was natural, right.

I stepped away from the smoking shack, keeping to all fours.

If I rose to my full height, then I would be caught by the soldiers on the ship, and their weapons would rip through me.

And I could not shift, because my healing came from being in my Primal form, not human.

So, I remained low to the ground, seeking out the source of the smell.

Flowers, wild and untameable, filled my lungs as I crawled through the reeds that lined the shore. There was no beach here, just rocks and water and the shacks. Five of them dotted the clearing leading to the dock, and then there were trees.

I followed the scent into the bushes, where the trees grew close together, waterlogged by the tides during certain times of the day. It made the earth muddy and soft, but despite that, there were no other footsteps in the marsh.

I used the earth and my connection to it to test whether I was alone out here, or if I was walking myself into a trap set by the enemy.

But there was only one other life walking these woods.

Their footsteps were light, their presence hidden by their own magic, but I could see her through the dirt and roots.

She remained far enough away from the army to remain hidden and unseen, but close enough that she was still within walking distance of the ship.

But why? She was not Primal; I could tell as much from the way she walked, her scent. She was a creature of Nyx, similar to the ones mated to the Queen. But still…di fferent. Untouched by the wrong magic that bled from the army.

When I spotted her through the trees, I stopped. She had long red hair that fell in loose curls down to her waist, and wore a flowing dress darkened at the hem by mud.

Her eyes, an unusual shade of violet, lifted to meet mine.

She was older than the creatures with the Queen, though not the demon.

Her short stature almost made her appear child-like, but she was an older female, though of how many years, I could not tell.

In appearance, she could have been younger than Phaedra, but Primals aged similarly to humans when in their human form, though those years stretched longer the more time you spent as a Primal.

The female in the forest was old regardless.

“You see me, I see you,” she said, her voice even. “Let’s cut the crap. I need something from you.”

I growled. “Why would I help you?”

A smile tipped her lips, and she clapped. “Oh, I’d heard whispers from the Goddess that you could speak in this form!” Her eyes widened as she walked towards me without a care. “What an interesting evolution of magic.”

I moved to take a step back when she finally stopped in front of me, but she raised a hand. “I mean you no harm, and I know you won’t hurt me. That would mean hurting a certain female with Goddess-level magic, and you and I both know, you don’t want to hurt her.”

But there was no desire for the Queen. She’d been intriguing, but nothing more.

Phaedra considered her a threat, and out of loyalty to her—as much as I disliked admitting it—I had to do the same.

I had no intention of handing the Queen over, but I would keep an eye on her while she was here and ensure that the war she foretold wasn’t fought on this land .

I growled again, and this time, I did move back a step. “You have no idea what I will do.”

“Not hurt me, I know that much!” She snickered as she raised a hand between us, summoning something as she did.

A wave of magic brushed over me, unfamiliar yet not threatening.

In her hand appeared a rock, carved with some sort of rune.

“I’ve seen things, and you, unfortunately, have to play a part.

When the time comes, you’re going to have to pretend.

” The amusement disappeared from her eyes as she lifted the rock.

“I need to do something with this, and you’re going to let me. ”

“Why would I do that?” I asked, though even I could admit, there was something about her that made me want to listen to whatever it was she had to say. “Who are you?”

“Who I am means nothing right now,” she replied.

“But who you are does. There’s a war coming—you and I both know it.

And you know your people are about to get involved.

All the realms will. This isn’t just about a Queen against a mad man.

This is about the very magic of Nyx’s Domain.

Everything will be destroyed if he succeeds, and it doesn’t matter how many times I tell him that, he won’t listen.

So—” She brought the rune stone to my chest before I could move back.

“This is going to protect you against what’s coming.

The others have layers upon layers of protections on them, but you don’t. You’re a charm virgin.”

I bit down on another growl as the stone burned. It was brief, but before I could utter a word, she pulled back, and the stone disappeared. “What was that?”

“Like I said: protection.” Her eyes darkened, flashing with something else. “Play the part when the time comes. You’ll know it when it happens. I’ve been playing this game on the Goddess’s behalf for a long time, Xerxes. And you’re a new player on the board. You’ll do well.”

Before I could ask her how she knew my name, the female disappeared in a wisp of smoke, the smell of flowers drifting away with her.

My clawed hand went to my chest, feeling for whatever she branded me with, but there was nothing there. Not under the fur, or against the skin.

I didn’t try shifting, instead turning away from the space she once occupied. Part of me was tempted to return to the ship, but the bulk of the army wasn’t there. They were moving towards something, and I had to find out what—her warning be damned.

I had no intention of figuring out what it was she meant, and I certainly didn’t care for the wellbeing of the Queen.

My loyalty had to be to the clans, who would not survive a war.

And I would do anything to protect them.