Page 14 of A Queen Of Broken Realms
Clanking metal. Shouting. Rippling fire. Urtur’s sharp whine. And Ashen’s voice, insistent and panicked. The feeling of a shirt slipping over my skin. I see a flash of him standing at the edge of the Bay of Souls, looking toward the islands in the distance. I see the eyes of the crawler from that night atBit Akalum, right before Ashen cleaved it in two.
“Lu, wake up.Lu…” Ashen smacks my cheek and I startle, blinking into reality. He’s afraid. I feel it pulling at the skin around my mark, seeping between my bones. There’s a hint of relief in his face as my eyes find focus on his. “Thank the realms. I’ve been trying to wake you for the last five minutes.”
“What’s happening?” I ask as I look around. My thoughts feel murky as I try to unravel my unfamiliar surroundings and the sounds of fighting that echo across the stone cliffs surrounding us. The noise is coming from just outside the building. I glance to the entrance of the orangery where Urtur paces on the other side of the open door.
Ashen hooks his hands beneath my arms and drags my body from the bed, setting me on my unsteady feet. He starts working on the buttons of a black shirt that he’s wrangled me into. “I don’t know, but whatever it is, it can’t be good.”
“Reapers loyal to the Council?”
“Maybe. But something feels off. More off than that.”
The brain fog lifts with every breath I take, and I start growing antsy on my bare soles. A nervous, metronomic bounce starts in my knees and climbs my body. “I thought my first day as Queen would involve more confetti and booze. This kind of sucks.”
Ashen tries to smile but it’s so fleeting it might as well have been imagined. “I will make it up to you,” he says as he closes a button over the mark on my chest, letting his fingers graze the lapis and gold. He leaves the last few buttons open and I look down at the shirt that engulfs me, hitting my mid-thigh.
“Not really royal attire, but at least there’s no jizz this time. I guess that’s an improvement.”
Ashen steps back and retrieves his sword from the floor, eyeing me with a worried look as the nearby shouting grows louder. I sense the fragmented thoughts of crawlers approaching in the distance, but they’re far away in the mist. The faint trace of blood wafts into the room, rolling in on the fog. I swallow a swell of fear and venom. Every horrible memory of the Shadow Realm seems burnt into my bones.
The flame ripples to life across Ashen’s blade. “You will not like what I’m about to say.”
“Color me shocked, Reaper.”
“You must run.”
“Hard pass. Next.”
Ashen’s jaw clenches in an effort to keep back an exasperated sigh. It comes out as a slow and measured breath. “Lu, I don’t have any other weapons. I have nothing to give you to defend yourself.”
“I don’t need a weapon. Iamone,” I argue. My expression hardens into a resolute glare, but it softens at the edges when Ashen comes closer and tilts my chin up with a gentle hand. The sounds of chaos grow closer. His look of desperation grows brighter.
“Your power is new to you, Lu. We don’t even fully understand what you are capable of or how it works. I know you need to touch someone to throw their mind into darkness or capture their thoughts, but you have no sword with which to defend yourself. One clean strike from an enemy and you could lose your hands, or worse.” Ashen leans in close, his eyes never leaving mine. Smoke fills the space behind him as his wings unfurl in a blaze of sparks. Ashen pulls the necklace that once laid around Eshkar’s neck from his pocket and presses the gold square into my hand. “This fits in a pedestal in the Throne Room. If you can get to the Kur, you can open the corridors and let the hybrids in. You can summon them right to you.”
“Ashen—”
“Please, Lu.” The flame in Ashen’s eyes turns black. His distress flows into me. It’s so powerful and urgent that it envelops me like a thick blanket. “I am not strong enough to watch them kill you. But you are strong enough and brave enough to run. I will beg on my knees if I have to, if that’s what it will take.”
As I look at him, that flash from his distant past dances in my mind. The way he pleaded with Davina for her to run. His anger when she refused. The sickening grief when he felt her slip away with the secret she carried in her womb. And I know in that instant I can’t refuse his request.
I nod, swallowing back the gathering tears.
Ashen leans down and steals one swift, searing kiss before he pushes himself away. Just as his hand slips from my skin, there’s a crash downstairs. I hear the sound of boots running on the dirt path, the clank of weapons. The swell of desperation from Ashen mixes with my own fear and nearly knocks me down. “Back door, Lu.Run. I will find you.”
“I know. And bring me clothes, for fucksakes. I’m tired of wearing castoff hot pants and torn robes and shirts that are fifty times my size when you look all…reapery perfect,” I say with grin and a dramatic flourish of my hand in his direction. But my smile fades as quickly as his does in reply. “I love you, Ashen.”
“I love you too, my Lu.Go.”
With one last look between us, we turn away from one another, running in opposite directions.
I pass quickly along a narrow, winding stone path that leads through the ferns to the other end of the orangery. I toss the chain of the necklace over my head before I push the door open just enough to listen for anyone who could have made it to the other side, but the night air is silent. My bare feet make hardly a sound as I dart down a path leading out of the garden and toward a crumbling retaining wall.
The sounds of fighting are climbing up the building, growing closer to the room I just left. I hear shouting but can’t make out Ashen’s voice, though I strain to listen for his familiar, deep timbre as I start climbing the wall where vines eke out a shadowed existence among the stone.
I’m nearly to the top of the wall when I hear Urtur’s haunting howl. It fills every crevice around me. It rattles my pulse. I pause, turning my head toward the sound. There’s a moment of silence. I hold my breath and listen, clutching the wall as I try to still my heart. There’s a sound of metal scraping against metal. There’s a shout. And then a whine, a crash. Breaking glass. A fist squeezes around my chest as I smell blood on the wind.
“Shit,” I whisper. The sound of my voice is punctuated by a whistle and a thwack against the stone, right next to my hand.
A silver arrow.
