by Eve Langlais
Contents
Introduction
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
Copyright © 2019/2020 Eve Langlais
Yocla Designs © 2019
Produced in Canada
Published by Eve Langlais ~ www.EveLanglais.com
eBook ISBN: 978 177 384 113 7
Print ISBN: 978 177 384 114 4
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
This is a work of fiction and the characters, events and dialogue found within the story are of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, either living or deceased, is completely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced or shared in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including but not limited to digital copying, file sharing, audio recording, email, photocopying, and printing without permission in writing from the author.
Introduction
She is the queen he’s been waiting for.
Roark wasn’t content with the way the world worked, so he made himself king and set about changing it. In the process, he acquired enemies who would stoop to anything, even attacking his daughter, to destroy him.
They’ll have to kill him first.
However, he’s just one man against an unknown enemy. Until he ends up with unexpected help in Casey, a woman who can slip into shadows with an ease that is uncanny—but more frightening is how well she fits into his life.
A king might not be able to win her heart, but what if she got to know the man?
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Prologue
For every government that rises, one falls by the wayside…
There were many abandoned places scattered about New Earth. A few from the time when Ancient humans—numbering in the impossible billions—ruled the world. Those relics of another era gave glimpses of an opulent, less dangerous life.
A past long gone.
Since the Fall, New Earth was all about survival, and many failed in the harsh climate that emerged. Those that lived to count gray hairs had learned many valuable lessons. Never lower your guard. Never forget.
And another thing they learned young: recycle. Given the difficulties in building and the rarity of safe spots, new cities were often built with the stone of the old, meshed into a motley pattern held together with rebar and concrete. When complete, some covered their constructions in domes built to withstand even the harshest storms. Although that kind of fierce destructive weather happened more rarely outside the barren areas.
In these modern times, more than a few places allowed humans to survive outside a dome-controlled area. People could make anything into a home. The transient opted for collapsible tents. Those tending gardens learned to mortar stone for a more solid structure. Others without a steady supply of rocks got innovative. Mud mixed with foliage to provide stability for mud huts, treehouses created by branches woven in a pattern, old dwellings repurposed, and there were those who even lived on the deadly waters in iron beasts.
But that was now. To understand how humanity returned to surface living, you had to rewind a little to the dark years when the winds ravaged the surface and humanity went underground into caves and bunkers. In those burrows, a new type of society emerged. A stricter society because, after the Fall, humanity imploded. Violence erupted. Suicide, too. Desperation bred horrible acts.
It also forged certain individuals. Made some into leaders whose sole focus was survival. Harsh times called for harsh measures. From it was born the Enclave, and under their rule, humanity thrived underground.
When they emerged onto the surface, decades after they first went under, it was to find a new reality; toxic air and dirt, beasts changed by the radiation and harshness of the climate, and survivors who bore little resemblance to the humans underground. The Enclave’s tight fist on its citizens only tightened.
Fast forward through some lean years of building and learning to live with the land and fiefdoms began to appear all over, each with its own set of rules. When those fiefdoms collaborated, like the many kingdoms on the continent known as Ozz, or in the case of those ruled by the Enclave, a situation arose ripe for the abuse of power.
Quite literally. It turned out the Enclave wasn’t just the strongest of the humans, or the bossiest, they were those exhibiting the strongest psionic powers, a result of human evolution—and a deviancy in their genes. These Enclave elite were chosen because of their ability to do mental tricks, kinetics, even manipulation of the elements.
Worthiness had to be proven to join the Enclave ranks. Children were tested at birth and then again for the first few years of their life. Those with the strongest talents were given to Enclave families to be raised. The rest went to Academies, where they were sorted into careers depending on what the kingdom needed.
Leading each domain on the divided continent of Ozz, a queen or king, with a full court that ranged in rank. There was no leader over the Enclave. Each kingdom ruled itself, and the only contact between them was for trade. They had no need of alliance. Power decided rank.
Ordinary citizens, those who didn’t show a psionic ability—and didn’t display signs of the Deviant gene—obeyed the Enclave. At least, they did if they wanted to remain safe and coddled in a dome or behind protected walls. The Enclave citizens were taught from birth that everything on the outside could kill them. Even the very air.
But not everyone believed that. Political dissent emerged from those who questioned the status quo. In the Emerald Kingdom, the Wasteland Rats—also known as “those damned raiding bastards”—weren’t willing to live by Enclave laws. On the contrary, they wanted to bring the Enclave down. Yet when the queen died, there was a fight over who would rule the Wastelands.
And they still weren’t safe. They needed a home. A place they could live free.
Emerald wasn’t the only domain to struggle. In the Sapphire Kingdom, tired of the oppression, a man who could have been a highly ranked Enclave member emerged from the squalor of the marshes.
A nobody.
A water rat who decided he wouldn’t allow someone else to tell him what to do. And as he fought back against a system that treated people like vermin, he found himself an unlikely leader.
Then a ruler.
It was only a small step after that to declare himself king.
Chapter 1
The nudge of a cold nose woke him.
“Sachi,” he grumbled, turning away from the cat.
His feline had no concept of boundaries, or time. If she wanted a scratch, it happened now. Forget the fact Roark might be sleeping. If Sachi decided her ears required a good scrub, she had no problem waking him up. As a matter of fact, the first time he met her, she’d burrowed her way under his blanket in the marsh and almost got stabbed for it.
Imagine his surprise to find a kitten snuggled close. She’d seemed so sweet and innocent with her big eyes. As she grew into a sleek feline, she also turned out to be bossy.
The odd thing wa
s she didn’t keep nudging at him. Usually Sachi kept poking at Roark until he yelled or scratched her damned belly. Not this time. With his attention on her, she walked away, jumping lightly from the bed to the floor. He might have fallen back asleep except for one thing. The pure silence. A home was never completely quiet. A castle even less so.
Roark waited in his bed, listening for any kind of sound. The usual hum of the electricity running through the batteries of the various appliances in his room was missing. Not uncommon at night when items were shut down to preserve power sources, but on top of the quiet of the machines, there was an absence of people. No shuffling of the guards in the halls who insisted on standing watch outside his door. It could be they slept. Could be they were being super quiet.
Not likely. Men in armor tended to creak. Since he didn’t sense anyone in his room, he got to his feet and padded across the floor, noticing the heaviness in the air, the thickness of it stifling and dulling his senses.
He reached the door and paused for a listen. Not even a huff of breath or a gentle snore. He eased it open and peered outside. The guards watching his room were slumped to the floor, chins slack, drooling away as they slept. Their captain would take issue even though he’d wager they didn’t sleep naturally.
He eyed the stairs that wound one floor higher in the tower and cast out his senses only to run into that thick cloak of silence. The mere fact it existed meant he had to check.
He didn’t bother putting on shoes or even a shirt. Nor did he grab a weapon. He had no need of one. He mounted the steps quickly, and the moment he made the final turn, his gaze settled on the door. Flanking it, two more sleeping guards. The portal was slightly open, which shouldn’t be the case. Not this time of night. Not that room.
Panic clutched him, and he ran, his feet slapping the floor. He managed to deflect the sound lest he give warning. The unnatural state of the guards became glaringly obvious, as they didn’t move despite the fact he toppled one in passing.
He reached the doorway knowing his advisors would yell at him for not requesting assistance. But he wasn’t a king who relied on others to act for him. He also wasn’t a coward. He took a breath and charged in.
Roark halted so abruptly he almost teetered. He froze at the sight of the stranger cradling his sleeping daughter in their arms.
Oh, like fuck. The room filled with an ominous shadow that pushed against the miasma that demanded he sleep. That kind of mind trick didn’t work on him.
“Put her down,” he said with deadly softness.
The kidnapper—a faceless, sexless thing—turned a masked gaze toward him. They clutched Charlotte tighter, obviously not intending to comply.
“You really don’t want to fuck with me.” Smart people usually listened when he threatened. Couldn’t the kidnapper sense the menace surrounding them? He couldn’t tell what they were thinking given their eyes remained hidden behind goggles.
It didn’t matter what kind of armor they wore. Or the kind of lulling ability they wielded. They left their mind wide open. He seized it.
Roark didn’t so much slide into the intruder’s mind as shove into their thoughts and seize control. She—yes, she—had no protection against him. He knew everything about her instantly. She was originally from the islands dotting the seas. She’d come through the Sapphire Port City looking for work, and to avoid a sizeable debt she left behind. The tavern by the wharf she chose to hang in was where she heard about the first offer; a lot of fluff—the slang for the drug made from Toxic Dust—in return for Roark’s death. A bounty on the upstart Marshland rat who called himself king. Enough to pay off those she owed.
Liandra, who remained frozen as he sorted through her memories, wasn’t the first one to think it would be easy to kill him. They all learned a harsh lesson.
More chilling than the prize on his head was the second bounty she’d learned of. The one demanding the capture of his daughter. The princess.
An even poorer decision than coming after Roark himself. No one threatened his daughter.
Roark glanced at Charlotte. His little girl, who’d just barely survived a bout of the Marsh sickness, who was the sum of his existence, the thing he loved most in this world, and that woman thought she could take her?
“Some people just never learn. You should have paid attention to the rumors about me,” Roark murmured as he snared his little Charlie from the kidnapper’s arms.
The would-be abductor didn’t stop him. She couldn’t. With only the slightest effort, Roark held tightly to Liandra’s mind and wasn’t about to let go until he got every single answer he wanted, and then some.
“Don’t move. We’re not done,” he warned. “We’re going to have a chat, you and I. Right after I tuck Charlie in.” He set his daughter gently in her bed, pulled the covers over her, and snuggled them around her body to keep her warm. He kissed her forehead.
She didn’t stir. Because she’d been drugged with Liandra’s sleeping power.
His daughter attacked in his castle. His fortress. His sweet baby girl almost kidnapped under his nose.
It was one thing to go after him. He was a big man. He could handle it. But a child?
My child.
The rage burned in him, and he wanted to hurt. He crooked a finger at Liandra, whose eyes held a note of panic. Good.
She whimpered as he forced her, stumbling, to follow him. Entering the hall, he sent a mental wakeup to the sleeping guards.
Do your fucking job!
The two minds in the bodies slumped on the floor snapped awake.
Guard the princess. There was an attack.
As one, their heads turned toward their king with Liandra, an obvious intruder dressed all in black. Even her face was masked. The eyes on the guards widened as they realized she’d been in the princess’s suite.
Roark didn’t say another word after that. He didn’t have to. The security detail tasked with his daughter’s protection was mortified. They’d fallen asleep, never mind if they were drugged. They’d failed and took it personally. No punishment could equal their shame nor the lengths to which they’d work hard to atone.
Down the stairs Roark strode, still barefoot but not really feeling the chill in the stone. This time of the year, the humidity had already begun, making everything a little bit warmer and damper.
As he headed deeper underground—because prisoners didn’t get the cushy rooms in the above-ground levels—it got wetter. Much wetter. Those who inspected the cracks peppering the old tunnels and rooms underneath the castle said they weren’t anything to worry about. Then again, they’d said that about the network under the marsh itself, which had collapsed a few months back. It might be time to do something a little more concrete about the problem, because, while Roark wasn’t particularly worried about drowning, not everyone had his gifts.
It took a few flights of stairs and more than a couple locked doors before he reached the chamber he liked to use for these kinds of special situations. He stopped in front of a plain metal door with no window. He didn’t need to look to feel the fear from the woman at his back.
The fear gave him grim satisfaction. She’d attacked his daughter. The rage inside him bubbled, but he held it in a tight ball. Liandra better hope he didn’t lose his grasp on that anger, or it wouldn’t bode well for her.
The room he marched her into didn’t have chains or whips. No manacles or drying blood stains on the floor, which tended to surprise prisoners when they first entered.
The only object? A chair. It was all he needed.
“Sit.” He didn’t make it a mental command. On the contrary, he’d released her mind for the moment.
When she didn’t listen, he reached and ripped the hood from her head. She glared at him, a woman past her prime and looking it, mostly because she’d not cared for herself. Debauchery tended to age a person. As did consistently making the wrong choices in life.
“You really don’t want to test me, Liandra.” He liked using her name because she
winced each time.
“Go ahead. Hit me, swamp rat.” She spat it as an insult and yet where he came from remained a badge of honor with him. He wasn’t ashamed of his roots.
“Hit you?” He laughed. “Perhaps in the islands the big prey on the weak. But not here.”
“I am not weak.”
“You are pathetic.”
The insult hit Liandra hard, mostly because, deep down, she thought it to be the truth. “Play the big king all you want. You’re a walking dead man. Assassins are coming for you.”
“Apparently, and they’ll suffer the same fate as those who came before. But you didn’t come here to kill me. You were hired to go after my daughter. Tell me who sent you.” He pushed at her mind but came up against a shield around that information. Just more proof of the plotting against him.
“No one.”
“Maybe you’re a liar who has forgotten what I can do.” He teased his darkness over the edges of her mind.
She trembled, fear widening her eyes. “The rumors are true. You’re a demon.”
“Demon, is it?” He glanced down at himself. “Looks pretty human to me.”
“A real man wouldn’t torture a woman half his size.”
“Such exaggeration. Really, Liandra, and here I haven’t done a thing to you. Not because I don’t want to, I should add. You crossed a line.”
“I wasn’t going to hurt her,” Liandra exclaimed.
“The fact is you laid hands on my daughter. And I’m not the only one who won’t be happy about it. The princess is well loved. Especially by her personal guard, whom you also put to sleep. Anita is quite angry with you.” He crossed his arms. “You’ll be meeting her in just a moment.”
