Lichgates: Book One of the Grimoire Saga (an Epic Fantasy Adventure) (6 page)

“Wow. It’s been a pleasure talking to you, too. To think, I was going to take those cuffs off you.” She leaned against the cell wall as they took another bend in the road.

“As kind an offer as that is, only the person who put them on can take them off. And I meant only that you will not want to go where I’m being taken.”

“Oh,” she said. “Sorry.”

He shrugged and stared at the floorboards. “I’ve been running from Carden for a long time. I always wondered when he’d catch up to me.”

“Who’s Carden?”

He glanced past her. “I think you’re about to find out.”

Deidre appeared at the end of the cage. “All right, kiddies, we’re home.”

The prison skidded to a stop. Its back doors swung open on their own, slamming against the metal bars with a bang. Several gray guards climbed in and grabbed her arms and waist with sweaty hands, pulling her to her feet before she even had a chance to stand. Her cellmate stifled several sharp cries of pain from behind her as other soldiers shoved him forward as well.

The guards steered her out of the cage and toward a flight of steps that led to the main doors of a castle. Black spires and spiked battlements soared on either side of the palace, stabbing the overcast sky while mountains and a dark forest crowded the horizon.

The soldiers cleared a path so that Deidre could lead the procession into the castle. Guards hurried Braeden through after the brunette, but he didn’t resist. He watched the floor, furrowed creases distorting the skin around his eyes.

A guard’s grip tightened around Kara’s arm, and his breath tickled her neck, making her shudder. He laughed and forced her through the doorway into a throne room teeming with hooded figures and gray faces.

Black marble layered the walls and floor. Thick, evenly-spaced columns dotted the vast hall and supported a giant stained glass dome above, which cast red and gray light across the throngs of monsters below.

The crowd had been jeering and laughing when the doors opened, but the room hushed when they saw Braeden. Bodies parted to give him a clear path through to the end of the hall, and Kara caught her breath. Hundreds of tall, gray-skinned men and women filled the room, their faces twisted in snarls, but they were outnumbered by creatures that were even more frightening. Centaurs reared to better vantage points, kicking others in the head as they did. Several hairy minotaurs snorted, snot dripping from their noses as they gazed at the procession without blinking. Wolves howled from some unseen place.

Three black marble thrones sat on a raised platform at the end of the room, growing ever-nearer as Kara’s silent convoy walked closer. Another gray-skinned man sat in the center throne but stood as the crowd parted. He was even taller than the soldier who had examined her back in the cave, his skin a deeper charcoal color than the rest. He sneered.

When they were close enough, the soldier’s grip on her arm tightened. He kicked the back of her knee, forcing her to the tile floor. She winced and glared at the man by the thrones, but he was smirking at Braeden and apparently uninterested in her pain.

“It has been too long, son,” he said, beginning down the platform’s steps.

Kara couldn’t place his accent. He drew out his vowels and overly enunciated his consonants, as if pausing to adore the sound of his own voice.

She looked at the gray man and turned back to Braeden. Their jaws were both square, their hair dark, but Braeden’s olive skin tone contrasted starkly from his father’s ashen complexion.

“Now look. The human is confused.” The man turned to Kara, and the edge to his voice made her skin crawl.

“Stop, Carden,” Braeden said, gritting his teeth. Something clicked in her mind, and she thought back to their short conversation in the mobile prison: Braeden had been running from his own father.

Carden crossed his arms. “Why are you not in your natural form, boy? You look hideous.”

“No.” Braeden shook his head. “Never again. Not willingly.”

“Unwillingly, then.”

Carden grabbed the crown of his son’s head. A gray light rippled across Braeden’s skin, and his body convulsed, the skin fading from its olive tone to the same charcoal gray color as his father’s. The green shirt tightened as he grew taller, and smoke poured from the rips in his clothes. Kara gasped.

Carden laughed and released his son’s head, allowing Braeden’s skin to fade back to the olive hue she recognized. Braeden caught her eye with a sharp glare before shaking his head and returning his gaze to the floor.

“Welcome home, boy!” Carden’s voice boomed.

“I don’t want this!” Braeden’s voice echoed over his father’s and commanded the hall’s attention. “All I want is to be left alone. I won’t get in your way. I never have.”

“You haven’t yet, no. But when I couldn’t produce another Heir with the bloodline, I realized you weren’t dead. You have a duty to your people to help me turn the tides of this world. Our banishment will end in my lifetime, and I must have an Heir to follow me. You don’t have a choice.”

Kara glanced from the king to the prince chained at his feet before she turned to look at the plethora of monsters in the towering throne room. Not only was he a prince, but he could change shape to look like the gray-skinned creatures all around her. She shook her head and shivered. She was in deep.

“Why is the human here, isen?” Carden asked.

Icy panic raced through Kara’s chest, but was made worse when she realized exactly what Carden had said. He’d called Deidre an isen, so—according to the letter Kara read back in the library—Deidre could steal souls. She could’ve stolen
Kara’s
soul, but had instead brought her here. Why?

“She’s a present.” Deidre grinned and pulled Kara to her feet.

Carden frowned. “She is too thin.”

The isen chuckled. “Not that sort of present. This is the Vagabond.”

Carden paused, but burst into laughter shortly thereafter. He wiped a gleeful tear from his eye. Kara twisted her arm in the brunette’s grip, but the movement stung the bruises already there from her fall in the dirt room.

The king studied her, and his smile faded. “What is that around her neck?”

She followed his gaze, and a pang of regret made her swallow hard. The completely visible clover pendant hung next to her locket, its diamond still glowing blue.

Without moving from his place on the steps, the king reached for the necklace. The pendant hovered in the air and floated in front of her eyes.

He grinned. “I stand corrected. This is remarkable.”

Carden walked down the final steps by his throne to stand in front of her, and she craned her neck to see his face. He seized the pendant in his thick fingers, but her hands rose to meet his in reflex.

A wave of heat coursed through her at his touch, much like it had when Deidre grabbed her in the library. It shot through her veins, making her fingertips pulse. A spark cracked in the air between them, and Carden flew backward into his chair on the platform.

The hall was silent. Her eyes widened. She couldn’t breathe. After all, throwing an evil king across the room had to be one of the easiest ways to die. A familiar thought tugged at her mind, but she pushed it away again to focus on the moment. The heat still circulated in her veins, though it was quickly dissolving once more into panic.

Carden snickered, his laughter ringing in a higher pitch than before. The bellow coursed through the crowd of monsters as they followed suit.

“Brilliant! A human who can use magic! She is the Vagabond after all. Have a seat, my dear,” he said, gesturing to the throne at his left. “I am afraid that it has been largely unused by the Queen for some time.”

He shot a look to Braeden, who glared back.

“That’s really nice and everything,” she said, her heart pounding too loudly for her to hear her own voice. “But I just want to go home.”

“To your family?”

“Yes.”

“I would rather they join us here, if that is your only reason for leaving. We are quite entertaining. Deidre will even find them for you. Simply tell her where they are.”

The isen smirked. Kara wasn’t getting out of this.

“Now, sit,” Carden commanded.

Kara tried to devise a more eloquent argument, but Deidre grabbed her arm. Before she could resist, or speak, or even look over, the isen dragged her to the throne and flung her into the stone seat. Kara’s back was tender from the impact, a massive bruise no doubt already forming on the space between her shoulder blades.

A quick glance around the room confirmed her fears: each of the monsters in the hall watched her. Everyone knew, now, what she was, despite how the letter had warned her to be careful. Even Braeden studied her with a calculating expression. He glared at her, his stare intense and unbroken until his father commanded his attention again. She took a shaky breath and saw the red lizard from earlier dart through a few soldiers’ legs. It crawled along the floor, squirming and slithering closer to her seat.

She finally let herself listen to the nagging thought which had been floating around the back of her mind since she’d opened the Grimoire.

I’m not going to survive this world.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE STELE

Braeden eyed Kara as she sat in his mother’s old throne, but he winced and looked away when the spikes jostled in his wrists. The poison circulating through his blood had already scarred every vein. Even when he did get the cuffs off, he would not be able to think straight until he healed.

His knees ached from the chilly marble, so he shifted his weight to ease the searing pain. A spike dug deeper and tapped his bone. He bit his cheek to keep from screaming and hunched his shoulders. In the floor’s reflection, Carden flourished his hands and lectured about duty and obligation, but Braeden tuned him out.

A red lizard darted toward Kara. The new Vagabond stared at the crowded hall, her grip tight on the stone and her knuckles white. She didn’t move. He couldn’t even tell if she was breathing.

Another flash of color captured his waning attention span as a second, green lizard scuttled behind Carden’s throne. It slithered around the other side and paused, its beady eyes glistening as it looked out over the room.

“It’s time for you to embrace what you really are!” Carden said, loud enough now to catch Braeden’s attention. “Our kind was eternally banished for a failed coup thousands and thousands of years ago. We are still hunted by the other kingdoms, forbidden to travel through Ourea as they do, out of punishment for an act we did not commit! Did your twelve years with the enemy make you forget your own heritage?”

Braeden could only shake his head.

“I taught you what it means to rule, boy. I built the foundation that made you what you are today. I taught you how to do what must be done to protect your people.”

Braeden glared up at the king. “Is that why you killed Mother?”

“None betray me, not even those I love,” Carden said, so quietly that Braeden had to strain to hear him.

“You—!”

“You have a rare opportunity,” Carden interrupted. “Because you were just a child when she stole you away from me, I will give you a second chance. Don’t repeat your mother’s mistake.”

The king returned to his throne and bellowed his next words so that they reverberated off the walls of the cavernous hall.

“Stand and accept what you were born to be, my son.”

“Never.”

“Like I said, it’s not a choice.”

Carden reached toward him and clenched his hand into a fist. Braeden’s stomach tightened, as if his father had reached into his gut and squeezed. He curled over himself, stifling the agonizing yell in his throat.

The king twisted his hand and opened his palm, where sparks snapped and fizzled. Braeden’s muscles tore at the movement. Popping noises surged along his biceps and neck. His veins chilled and slowed. He unconsciously stood at a twitch of Carden’s finger. Braeden’s grip on his form was slipping. Smoke escaped his pores. Organs shifted. He screamed in pain until a heavy weight fell on his chest and closed his throat.

“Screams are for the weak,” Carden said.

The weight eased off Braeden’s lungs, letting him sink back to the floor as the internal tearing and popping stopped. The staggering numbness returned. His cuffs twisted as he moved, and searing fire coursed through his veins. Tremors pulsed through him.

Carden scowled from his chair, and the green lizard from earlier peered from the shadows beside the throne. Its outline blurred for a moment, but returned to normal so quickly that Braeden questioned what he’d seen.

It flickered again, more prominently this time.

Dark lines melted around its face. It grew taller, its skin stretching and pouring into the space around it. In a matter of seconds, the lizard filled the massive hall as it transformed into a dragon.

Braeden’s mouth went dry.

The dragon reared its head above the stunned hall and roared. The creature’s tail landed squarely on Carden’s chest, sending him flying into a support column by the main entry. The pillar crumbled on top of the king, burying him, and the dome it supported shattered. The dragon thrashed its wings against the walls by the thrones. Chunks of black marble pummeled downward, cracking the polished floor. Glass rained down on the cloaked subjects. A stampede began for the door.