All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the authoress’ imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Any dialog, narrative, or actions are also purely fictional.

Warning, this book contains explicit sexual content, and is intended for mature audiences only. All characters depicted in this book are 18 or older.

Cover design by Angel Black

Photograph by Maksim Toome/BigStock.com

Prologue II

In death they shall find one another, and in death they shall find themselves. One shall find redemption, one shall find loss, and one shall find betrayal. Dark days come, men with wicked hearts circle about, and the beasts gather to the drums of war.

A war our children started on us.

Cursed souls struggle and the fates grow darker as a winter of death blows across the land without care, nor mercy. Numbering three, they come from places outside the world, yet they must become accustomed to it in order to survive.

And like children, they understand nothing.

Wickedness and blood, sacrifice and innocence, pride and foolishness come home as the darkness falls. And somewhere out in the black of night a dragon floats upon the wind like the shadow of death. On black wings he glides through the night, and with razored claws he carves a path in blood across the land.

Righteous blood.

In three, our future lies.

The future dies.

In three, our fates are sealed.

True.

In three, the truth shall be found.

Yet the only truth is death.

For the Frozen Queen awaits her crown, and a dragon’s eye seeks the head upon which it shall rest.

Soon, my children, soon…

Chapter 1:

The End

Time forgets those who die.

It just does, this is why war and genocide are so profitable and appealing for conquerors. Many don’t need a reason, be it a religion, a different nose or face, or maybe the people over there spoke a different language. Death solves every difference. When it’s done, there is no one left to complain, except the haunting memories of a land stolen from the dead.

And victory makes it so easy to forget.

My feet slammed the stone beneath me as I raced to stay a footstep or two ahead of death.

What was once ‘my home’ is now ‘my home’ for another tribe before another moved in and preyed upon the weak of heart and spirit. To die of old age is luck, or some would say a curse in these lands.

I pulled the girl behind me as she cried, placing stone after stone between us and those who would shoot an arrow through our hearts. All I could hear was my heart beating, and all I could feel were my lungs burning.

Dvergr was the father of the long-dead Dwarves, but their ruins still left a mark upon this world. Dwarven cities still stood proud in mountain passes which only brave traders ventured through, and forgotten mines still reached towards the bowels of the world.

On this day, a stone mill lay nestled along a high glacial valley. This was the best place to run to, the only and likely our last refuge. We were probably the first who saw this place since the Dwarves left this world.

We ran down a narrow gully, losing sight of the cold rushing water for a moment, and I thanked the gods for a series of ancient stone columns which broke our pursuers’ vision. Chills went through my spine when I heard the hollow ring of an arrow impact the stone a heartbeat behind us.

Not all of them, apparently.

Perhaps the natural order is why the Dwarves left, or perhaps war? They were as gone as a fallen animal in the woods, torn apart by wolves, rotting meat eaten by ants, and only the inedible bones left to decay as never-ending generations of plants crack and grow through the deepening yellow pulp which was once life.

We must run. We are so weak but we must run. How many steps do I have left in me? How many does my friend? If she drains first, would I stand with her and die? Or run and be haunted by the memory of her life lost for all of mine?

Shouts, men. Our pursuers drew close like a swarm of insects. From all directions they came, both high and low. Ants attack from every direction when they draw near and smell their kill.

The village wasn’t a village by any human standards, but more of a collection of long lost stone mills, workshops cut into cliff faces, and great stone pillars and piers built directly into the river. These were engineering feats long lost and never replicated, as if anyone cared. Stone paths ran along cliff faces just above the river’s surface, and the walls of the canyon shot up straight into the sky on each side. Stairs appeared out of nowhere, blind corners chased the river’s run, and house after house laid empty and lost to this world.

Of everything, the shadows on the walls are the most impressive in this place. The sun fights to shine here, and we darted from shadow to light to shadow again. Hopefully, the archers’ eyes which traced our movements fought to adjust as well.

Another arrow sailed past us. There was no escape from this place of death. We will run until we die.

My friend screamed. I pulled her down a long and twisting trail, scattered with rocks and the dead faces of broken statues. Out of the corner of my eye I dared a look back.

The men who chased us were close.

Very close.

No one knows why the Dwarves left this world, some say they angered the All-Father Othin himself, and yet others say they dug themselves so deep as to never return to the surface. Some say they foresaw an end to this world, split by fire and ice until the world broke into tiny rocks, and they fled to another place far away.

Now, only their bones remained. Bones of the lives they once lived, forever lost to this world now filled with men.

Angry, hateful men.

Ahead laid a bridge, a forced crossing of this mad river, and the trail continued on the river’s opposite bank. Everywhere the long face of time weighed heavily upon this place, undoubtedly once a place of great splendor and bounty, now this is a forgotten remnant of a once-proud race who loved this land and celebrated in its wealth.

The rocks here showed the deep scars of time, the grassy stubble of underbrush, and the forgotten debris of eons passed with no one to care, nor anyone to remember this place.

We scrambled up the stone stairs leading towards the bridge, the blue water racing beside us, as the fires burning in my legs begged me to stop.

Just for a moment.

Stop and die.

I can’t.

Keep running.

I don’t even know this place’s name, nor could I read the strange languages inscribed upon the stones. The long faces of big-nosed dwarves stared with hollow stone eyes upon the two of us as we ran for our lives.

I don’t even know if there was a way out. From what I have seen, I doubted it. There wasn’t one set of stairs leading up, one steep embankment to climb, or any way to get out of this hellish and twisting box.

A coffin?

I don’t even know how this will end.

Did people still wonder what happened to the Dwarves? The people of the North did, feeling the Dwarves were long lost kin that shaped the face of this world. Back then, the people of the North weren’t always eye-to-eye with the ones they so fondly remember now, and the Elves of the North are happier to live in a world without them than they would like to admit.

They are mostly forgotten legends now. Fondly remembered but no one really misses them.

The sounds of the river echoed through the canyon, the hollow rush of water hissing like a winding and angry snake flowing over boulders, between stone columns laid into the riverbed, and smashing into the rocks as the river turned.

Gravel, rocks, and loose dirt fought us every step of the way. The small trail of the river obeyed the river’s wishes, bouncing up and down the banks, crossing flat stone walkways, and darting between gnarled trees fighting to hold onto the river’s sharp banks.

Chloe’s foot slipped on loose rocks and she screamed as her ankle twisted. Both of us were tired, having gone without food for three days, and only getting barely enough water to survive.

My throat was parched and my vision blurred.

Chloe stumbled around a rock, as she limped on her ankle. She hiked up the skirt of her yellow dress to check, the mud and dirt still clinging to the hem. “Brenna, wait!”

“If I have to carry you-”

“I’m fine,” Chloe said, rubbing her ankle, “I just stepped wrong. It’s not broken, just sore.”

I slipped beside her, and looked back down the path. “Can you run?”

“Not for much longer, I am going to drop dead.” She looked at me with a spent expression, her long brown braid frazzled, her face dirty, and her eyes hollow and lost. “Are they still-”

I waited as I looked down the thousand yards of Dwarven ruins and the several bends in the canyon. This was a pretty good place to watch from, as it could see several of the river’s bends as it climbed back up towards the peaks of the jagged ice mountains surrounding this place.

Sure enough, a bandit archer spotted us from two bends back on a stone slab crossing the raging cobalt water and took a shot.

It bounced off the stone near my shoulder with a hollow echo, sending a spray of quarry dust into the air.

“Oh, they are still there,” I said as I pulled her from cover. I knew I had a moment as he reloaded. I watched his eyes shoot a silent curse at us as I used the chance to break and cross the river on our bridge, losing him in the impossible angle between our bank and his. Chloe screamed with each step, and I helped her run down the last few buildings in the narrow canyon-

-across a small plaza-

-before-

-everything fell away.

We stopped on the sheer ledge of a wide cliff cut straight into the face of the mountain. The river fell away to a pool several hundred paces below. I had to stop so quick my feet slid on the stone and my toes overhung the edge. Chloe screamed as she toppled over the edge, and I caught her, pulling her back to her feet next to me.

Mist from the falls shot into the air, and the water roared over the edge next to us in a ceaseless torrent of power and might.

The view was beautiful, a lush green valley I never knew existed up here, surrounded by sweeping ridges and grand glaciers melting away into waterfalls at several places along the grand canyon’s walls.

Trees crowded in from the sweep of the land, and sheer cliffs walled this place in from the snow-locked peaks to each side. Even the clouds above arched over the valley, swirling and tearing themselves apart over one ridge, stretching like long wisps of vapor overhead, and reforming as billowing storms on the other side.

A massive river flowed through the center of this valley, and a lost and overgrown city laid in the middle of this secret place. The city looked different than the dwarven ruins we had just escaped through, they were tall, ancient, almost like buildings surrounded by grand stone columns that looked like something familiar.

Other books

Slow Way Home by Morris, Michael.

Chocolate for Two by Murnane, Maria

Just Between Friends (O'Rourke Family 4) by Julianna Morris

Blaggard's Moon by George Bryan Polivka

The Ultimate Good Luck by Richard Ford

Scars from the Tornado by Turner, Randy

Love Above All by Speer, Flora

Angel Face by Stephen Solomita

The Hungry House by Barrington, Elizabeth Amelia

The Sweet Life by Francine Pascal