Page 2 of A Reign of Storm and Madness

Caedmon sighs and holds up a flat palm, facing me, to stop my words from reaching fruition. “Dolos is just like Axlan,” he states. “It is perhaps a God's most powerful weakness to be so attached to the source of our abilities, but not all beings are as perfect as they like to believe.” That doesn’t sound like a God talking. He clicks his tongue. “Should you bow before Dolos and offer him that which he cannot live without, he will not refuse.” Those cool soil rich eyes land on me once more and I swear that they’re peering right through my very soul. My hands itch to close into fists, to fight that uncanny feeling he evokes. I suppress the urge. “All you need to know is that if you wish to make up for your error in some way, a bargain must be struck.”

One hundred lashes. Enough to kill a mortal—no matter how mouthy or brave or damned intelligent they are. And yes, I know Kiera to be all of those things. It had been proven again and again from the moment she’d first arrived. How she’d looked each of us in the face without flinching. How she’d outsmarted Theos’ little game with Malachi. How she’d figured out that it was I who’d turned her in and that I’d used my own abilities to sneak into Dolos’ office to watch her sentence.

If a bargain must be struck then I will do it.

“I have to go.” The words are out of my mouth before I even realize I’m moving, sliding past Caedmon.

“Be smart, Ruen,” Caedmon calls over his shoulder as I start jogging down the pathway that led me here, the stones laid beneath my feet flattened over years of trekkers coming to this point. Some for silence and solitude and some … for a different kind of silence and solitude. The latter half of those visitors the reason this spot now bears the name The Point of No Return.

The fresh wounds hidden beneath my tunic burn with pain, a bastard’s way of repenting. My footsteps pick up speed and soon enough I’m full-on sprinting. Back towards the towering spires of the Academy’s rooftops, like shards of gray and black eyes reaching for the quickly blossoming skies.

I’d blamed her. A miscalculation on my part. I blamed the starlight-haired beastly beauty of the Terra assigned to my brothers and me. The truth sits in the pit of my stomach.

I have to make it right.

The space between my brain and skull throbs with a dull, ever-present ache.

“Fuck.” The curse slips free as I sprint around the corner, clipping a massive boulder so fast that it rips a tear into the side of my jacket’s arm. The leathery material splits and I feel blood ooze from the fresh cut. It doesn’t matter.

Faster, I urge my legs. Faster. Before the sun fully rises, before the Academy wakes, before the arena fills. Before it’s too late.

Chapter 2

Kiera

Three days stuck in the dark. Three days in absolute silence and isolation. If I hadn’t done this exact thing as another one of Ophelia’s training tests, I’d have gone insane by now. By the skies, I probably already am insane. After all, I’m sitting here thinking of what I’m going to do to the Darkhaven brothers when I get out of here and my punishment is finished. Specifically to Ruen Darkhaven.

One hundred lashes. I scratch out the final line on the wall with my fingernail, counting down my sentence just to give myself something to fucking do as I wait and wait and wait. I’ll have to make it through one hundred lashes if I’m to get my revenge on him. Ruen was right, as much as I hate to admit it, that much for a human is … impossible. Just surviving without giving my identity away will be a feat in itself.

My bones still feel achy and stiff from how little I’ve moved in the last seventy-two hours. My stomach rumbles with hunger, aching and empty. Just as I’d suspected, there’d been no mice or rats down here during my stay. No snakes. No … anything to try and kill and eat. Even raw, anything in my belly would have been better than this void that threatens to turn its biting teeth on me. Cold puffs of transparent air waft in front of my face with each breath. I cup a hand over my stomach and sigh before using my other to withdraw the little leather band that I’ve kept hidden under my tunic and cloak and hold it up in front of my face.

The Belladonna swirls in dark purple droplets, clinging to the inside of the glass vial Regis had given me. I bet he didn’t think I’d need to use it so soon. I’m so hungry that I’m almost ready to drink it right now, but I know I need to wait until just before the lashing begins. I drop the vial, letting the leather band clutch it, and swing it towards my chest right between my breasts.

With my back to the stone wall and the hard ground beneath my ass, I groan and stretch my sore and tired muscles. There’s hardly enough room to stand up in this cell, much less try and move around it. I’m not used to being so stationary. I get to my shaking feet, using the wall as leverage.

I stagger over to the far wall, the corner where the scent of mist and salt is strongest. It’s so dark down here, practically pitch black save for the cracked sconce of fire on the wall outside my cell. It took me several hours before I realized the liquid sluicing through the single fracture in that upper corner wasn’t sewage or urine. It smelled clean, nothing like the stench permeating through the rest of these dungeons. When I’d finally given in and tried it, the taste on my tongue had been cold more than anything else and though sometimes there was a hint of salt that suggested ocean water, after the last three days of drinking it, I determine that it must be rain with a hint of the sea because the salt doesn’t make me even more dehydrated than I already am from lack of other sustenance.

Pausing in front of the corner, with my back to the cell bars, I watch as a fresh stream of water comes pouring out of that crack and the one alongside it. One is rain and one is ocean water—someone who’d stayed here before must have cast some sort of Divinity magic over it to separate the liquids because it doesn’t happen naturally. I don’t know how they’d had any Divinity with the underlying buzz of brimstone reverberating in these walls or how they’d managed to use it, but I don’t care. All I know is that one of those cracks has drinkable water and I fucking need it.

Salty sea water will do nothing but curdle in my stomach, dehydrating me and making me that much thirstier. Pressing my cupped hands flush to the cold stone, I watch with barely repressed longing as the water fills my palms. I wait until it’s at least half full before I yank my hands away and set my lips to the liquid pooling there. I slurp it up, drinking it down in long gulps before repeating the process once, twice, three more times.

My stomach sloshes and rebels, not wanting more water, demanding something with more sustenance. Food. Gods, I’d kill for some food right now. Three days might seem like nothing, but when all you have to do is think down here in the dark, the constant hunger takes over the mind and it’s all I can focus on.

Too damn bad, I think to myself. This is all we’ve got. The lone sconce outside my cell flutters like a pathetically weak little flame that might go out at any moment.

Once I’ve filled myself to the brim with as much water as I can stomach, I release my now freezing hands from the stone wall and collapse back into my own little corner, breathing heavily. Damn Dolos. The sick sadistic prick. I assumed he’d merely get his high from imprisoning me here, but with the lashings he’s got planned after three days of starvation still to go, he must be a bastard that gets his rocks off by weakening an already trapped prey as well.

I hope it’s him, I think to myself. If he’s my target, I will relish in killing him. In making him suffer before I end it. That is … if I can get close enough to his weirdly shrouded form without feeling like I’m being locked up and chained down all over again.

The sound of shrieking rusted hinges pours into the near silent darkness of the dungeons. I flinch as light pours from the staircase. Fuck, I hadn’t realized how dark it was down here until fresh light was let in. Footsteps echo up the gray, cracked dungeon walls, rebounding throughout the mostly empty underground space, getting louder and louder as the person grows closer before stopping entirely just outside my cell.

I peer out from beneath the hood of my cloak, finding a guard standing there with a disinterested expression on his face and a ring of keys hanging from one finger. His face is unfamiliar, but I know for certain he’s not one of the same two guards who brought me here the first time. He’s a Mortal God though. That much I do know. I can sense the pale eeriness of his weak Divinity wafting off him. Were my own Divinity not hidden beneath the power of the brimstone embedded in the back of my neck, he would be able to sense mine too.

The guard is a male in what appears to be his mid to late forties, his age revealed by the streaks of gray through his otherwise dark hair. I can’t be entirely sure since Mortal Gods age differently from humans, but we do age. His frame is large, bulky even, and covered in the form-fitting armor that all guards wear—black leather tunics and trousers, the fabric thick to ward off chill especially as winter grows ever closer. He bends and slides a key into the cell lock. The clang of the key turning and the mechanism opening rings throughout the otherwise quiet interior of the dungeons.

I scan down to the pair of iron cuffs that dangle from his belt. Those are for me. Wholly unnecessary, not that he would know. His Divinity is so feeble, barely resonating out of him at all that he must be of a much lower Tier than the Darkhavens. Third Tier maybe. I wonder if documented Mortal Gods ever manage to grow out of the system the Gods put them in when they’re in the academies. If not, then perhaps that’s why he has a job like this, guard and prisoner retriever.

I crawl to my feet, knowing what’s about to happen now as I shore up my breath and strength. A bite of nervousness that I thought I’d long since repressed edges up my throat. Even if I can handle pain, that doesn’t mean I like it. Self-preservation has me hesitating before I emerge from the cell.

---