GREAT WAR 324, SIXTH MOON, UNALLIED LANDS
Lunev rode through a darkness so thick that even his vampire eyes couldn’t make out the fanged shadows on his heels. He knew there was no escape from the hellhounds, not with sleet raining down on them and gusts of icy wind buffeting them.
If the hounds don’t take her, the cold will. He clutched his princess’s frigid, limp body closer to his own.
Hot puffs of air scorched him like flames where the hellhounds snipped against his ankles, occasionally grazing his skin with their fangs. How his horse remained unharmed was a mystery to him. Coarse fur rubbed against his bare arm as a one of the accursed creatures leapt for his princess. Letting the reins fall, his sword long abandoned at a battlefield miles behind them, he punched blindly at the creature.
His knuckles cracked when they connected with the hound’s side. Stunned, the creature toppled to the ground. The horse pulled ahead again. Somewhere in the darkness before them, the gates and the drawbridge to his kingdom waited on-guard for his return, but he only held faith as thin as a fine silken thread that they would make it that far.
Despite the odds, he pressed on, pushing his horse harder and harder. His eyes burned, poison oozing from fresh wounds down his face. On the battlefield, before he left with his princess, a hound’s last act was striking him with its venom-covered claws. Thick and bubbling, the poison withstood even the rain.
Clenching the princess closer to him, he forced himself on against the inevitable. For Kierra, all sacrifices were worth making.
The magic on the castle gates will save her, he reminded himself, even if I should fall.
Bucking, his horse cried out and hobbled slightly before picking up the pace again. The acidic burn of new wounds across his shoulder blades took his breath away.
Dear sovereign, he begged silently, take my life—just spare hers.
Horns sounded somewhere in the distance and his heart skipped
Those aren’t Demon horns. They’re ours.
His spirits fell as quickly as they lifted. The horns were far ahead; the calvary who bore them were too far away to reach him before he would be overtaken.
But they can protect her, at least.
A knot formed in his stomach and his throat was thick, but a resolve fell over him. With fumbling fingers, he ran a hand over her perfect face. Her eyes were still closed. The warmth of magic spread from his fingertips into her cold skin as he muttered an incantation he’d never wanted to use again—an incantation his Mother taught him years before in case there was ever a night like this.
He’d sworn to her that he’d never use it without her permission.
He’d promised again and again that he would respect the privacy of her mind.
But as death came to claim him, he could not bear the thought of her sorrow on his behalf.
If I can’t escape with her, she doesn’t need this horror to follow her through her life. She can be free...if she can forget.
Green and red spots freckled his otherwise dark vision as poison seeped down into his eyes. Pulling a rope from the sling pack at his side, he threw it in a loop around her and then forced his fingers to tie it securely around the saddle, praying again for her safety. His shaking hands traced her face one last time.
“You won’t remember me,” his voice cracked as he pressed a kiss against her forehead with trembling lips, “but you’ll be safe. I promise.”
Panting and nipping at his ankles again, mere inches from his right, a hellhound was surely about to pounce. He pulled his feet from the stirrups and leaned forward to pet his horse’s neck.
“Take her home and do not fail me, old friend,” he bid his mount.
He didn’t give himself time to think. Taking a deep breath, he jumped into the waiting clutches of his pursuers with only his magic to fight with. It did not matter, though, not anymore. She would be safe.
CHAPTER ONEGREAT WAR 325, FOURTH MOON, FIRST ALLIED LAND
Princess Kierra’s brush froze mid-stroke as she pondered the vibrant but forbidden landscape beyond the walls of her citadel.
Should she paint the impaled bodies, too?
Beyond her bedroom window, the luscious green plains and deceptively beautiful forests beckoned her to leave the safety of her walls. The temptation was tempered only by the fact that no one who ventured beyond the walls ever returned—not as a Human, anyway.
The remains of six deserters hung suspended just beyond the city gates—a warning from the Demon King and his army of ghouls. These were new kills. The crows sated their gluttony on the fresh flesh, just as the plump nobles within the Castle walls would feast on the crows at dinner. Just the thought of eating crow again turned Kierra’s stomach.
A dull ache throbbed in her head at the thought of the Demon King. Setting down her brush, she massaged her scalp and squeezed her eyes shut in a vain attempt at banishing what few memories she had of her brief time outside the walls.
She couldn’t remember why she was outside in the first place. Her mother said someone kidnapped her.
It had been the dead of night. Sleet mixed with rain—an odd combination for mid-summer—stung her face. Pain... horrific, unceasing, head-splitting pain, drowned out all sound, all thoughts.
Slobbering, savage hellhounds strained against their leashes, occasionally gaining an inch or two’s lead from their monstrous Demon handlers. A single figure—a faceless shadow of swirling black smoke in the shape of a Human—knelt beside her. He whispered something; she felt his warm breath against her ear. And then—
An insistent pounding on her door jerked her out of her fragmented memory and back into the present. After smoothing back her hair, she gasped at the sight of grass-green paint smeared across her hands. Glancing at the mirror confirmed her fears. Streaks of green stood out against her dark locks.
There was no time to do anything about it, though. Without waiting for her response, the door flung open and one of the court’s many heralds entered the room uninvited. A throng of soldiers in full dress uniform stood at attention in the hall, pressing their bodies close to the open door.
“Her Majesty, Queen Luvia of the Ruby Throne,” the herald announced.
Stepping aside, the herald bowed low to make way for the widowed queen. Standing, her face on fire, Kierra slipped into a routinely practiced façade of a nearly perfect princess. True, her smock was paint-stained and her hair was tinged with green, but even the goddesses themselves would not meet mighty Queen Luvia’s rigid standards.
Kierra hung her head. Balling her right hand into a fist, she pressed it over her heart in submission. Queen Luvia’s lavender vanilla p
erfume preceded her into the room, followed by a swishing waterfall of elegant skirts so wide they barely made it through the narrow door.
The queen’s scarlet-red lips pursed into a thin line. Her bright blue eyes, heavily adorned with deep blue eye shadow and miniscule diamonds dusted upon her lashes, narrowed as they flickered from her disheveled daughter to the artwork in progress on the easel. Crossing her arms, the queen said nothing for a moment, the rapid tapping of a single shoe the only sound in the dense silence.
Kierra tried not to think about what the soldiers and herald thought of their only princess, the heir to the throne, dressed thusly on a Feast Day in the presence of the Queen Mother.
“Leave us,” Queen Luvia snapped.
The door closed immediately. Without thinking, Kierra almost broke out of her bow without permission. Her heart pounded more at the thought of facing her mother alone than going back to the heartless hellhounds in her memories. She tried to swallow, but her throat was suddenly parched.
“At ease, Kierra,” Luvia said with an exasperated sigh.
Kierra raised her head, forcing herself to meet her mother’s gaze. Queen Luvia of the Allied Human Lands stood a head taller than her daughter and was a woman of incomparably dazzling beauty. Perfect makeup smoothed out her round face. The ceremonial crown of gold, inset with rubies and trimmed with white fur, sat precariously atop heaped coils of braided, curly black hair.
Returning her attention to the painting, the queen’s fingers entwined in an almost prayerful fist below her chin. Kierra’s heart skipped a beat.
Did her mother like the painting? The queen used to paint once, too. Or did the Queen Mother look at even this pastime—one Kierra was often praised for by servants—as beneath her?
It wouldn’t surprise Kierra if the latter was true. Her mother had not approved of any of her actions since the King died three years ago.
When the weight of the silence in the room could be no heavier, a deep sigh escaped the
queen’s lips. Her eyes fell closed and her shoulders sagged.
Kierra had overheard servants say her mother still looked like a woman in her thirties, but wrinkles and lines more common in those closer to fifty peeked through the queen’s makeup when she showed the level of her exhaustion. A worm of guilt burrowed through Kierra’s stomach.
At twenty years old, she should have wed two years ago, when she was first eligible for marriage. Her marriage would have allowed her to relieve her mother of the throne—a burden the queen was too ill-equipped to bear.
Luvia and the King had been inseparable; perhaps his passing alone was more than the queen should have been expected to endure.
Find something to say! Anything! Kierra urged herself.
The impatient shuffling of boots just outside the closed door drew the princess’s thoughts to the insane number of soldiers packed into the hallway. There were far too many to tote around in the safety of their own walls. Bitterness welled within her heart.
“You needed the whole army just to come to my room, Mother?” The sarcasm in her words left a stone of regret in the pit of her stomach.
“I get enough disrespect from the Elite, Kierra,” Luvia warned her, a glacial glare cutting the princess to her core. “I will not tolerate it from you. Especially not on a Feast Day, and one that falls on a day of court no less.”
Kierra’s frown deepened, but she bit her lip. A day of court explained the overly formal attire, but why had Kierra not been told to attend? The princess attended all Courts in recent months, preparing for the day of her marriage where she would also be crowned Queen of the Fourteen Human Allied Lands.
“My apologies. Based on the jewels and gown you’ve chosen, I’m assuming the entire Allied Elite must be in attendance today?”
“I do not owe you explanations on my security choices,” the queen continued, ignoring the compliment and pointed question.
“Of course not,"
Kierra mumbled.
All signs of fatigue in the queen vanished. Standing tall once more, Queen Luvia adopted the air she maintained whenever diplomacy was involved—a warning that the time for any personal conversation between them had passed. ...
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