Nightborn: Totally addictive fantasy fiction (The Hollow King Book 2)

by Jessica Thorne

  Before they had been attacked and Ellyn had disappeared.

  This time it was stronger.

  She pulled out the knife she had hidden in the length of sea-green material wrapped around her waist. It felt right in her hand, perfectly weighted. She had only one sigil: the small metal disc etched with enchantments which had been masquerading as a pendant, hiding the warrant behind it. She couldn’t afford to activate it without good reason, but she took it in hand anyway.

  With danger so nearby, she felt the absence of Ellyn and Daniel keenly. They ought to be here to back her. And Bastien was busy wooing a princess. Or being wooed. Playing politics with people’s hearts. Her heart.

  She pushed that thought to the rear of her mind. This wasn’t the time for that.

  The thread of magic twisted out across the air and Grace sucked in a resigned breath.

  With her magic restored, tracking mageborn was easier than it once had been, but it still made her head ache and her stomach churn. If she wasn’t careful she’d have a migraine before she found the source.

  All the same, she followed the trail of magic, like a scent, across the balcony, down the steps and into the garden. Roses bloomed all around her, rich and heavy with petals, their perfume thick in the air. In the darkness beneath them things rustled and shifted, furtive, dangerous, moving in shadows.

  Goddess, she hoped Daniel had found Ellyn.

  She forced herself to focus, to put herself in the here and now. Thinking like this could get her killed.

  The garden rustled and moved. The scent of rich earth choked her but Grace pushed on. And in the furthest corner she heard a muffled cry. The trace of magic was stronger now, like too much wine or rich food. Her head pounded.

  This was a bad idea.

  A cry of alarm rang out like the cry of a night bird, sharp and terrible, out of place in this garden.

  Magic flared white-hot, burning through her. Whoever wielded it had let it loose like a wave and it was strong. Far stronger than was safe.

  The Maegen surged up inside her, the fire that was part of her racing through her veins in response. She reached the far end of the garden, where in a tiny bower decked with night-flowering jasmine, she saw the woman who had left the party after her. She stood over a pile of vines and roots. They moved like serpents, winding around a struggling shape. As they moved, she saw a gap, a face… The man the woman had left with.

  A brief cry escaped his lips, quickly silenced as the writhing mass of vegetation squeezed tighter on his prone form.

  The woman smiled and her eyes glowed with an unnatural light, golden in the darkness like twin suns.

  Hollow. She was hollow.

  The most dangerous of the mageborn: those overwhelmed by their magic, lost in that glowing light, unable to control what they were any more. It was the very thing that Bastien, as Lord of Thorns, had struggled to control in Rathlynn. It was the reason that, as the Hollow King, he had first made the pact with Lucien Larelwynn which had ended the Magewar. And led to Bastien and their people being effectively enslaved for centuries.

  Grace didn’t hesitate. She flung herself forward. She couldn’t risk throwing the sigil. It was the only one she had. But before she could reach the edge of the bower, something huge and unyielding burst from the ground in front of her.

  Dirt blinded her as she hit it hard. A root, an enormous root, which threw her up and then wrapped itself around her, dragging her forwards, into full view.

  She was trapped. In seconds she could be dead.

  The woman – a Loam, Grace now realised – her eyes still aglow, studied Grace impassively. The natural world over which the Loam’s branch of the mageborn had power shivered in anticipation, waiting for her command. But she didn’t move. Slowly, she tilted her head towards her shoulder, her eyes blazing.

  ‘Well, you aren’t what I was expecting,’ she said at last. The root shook Grace. She kept her hands clenched around her knife hilt and the sigil. She couldn’t afford to lose either.

  ‘Let him go.’

  The woman glanced towards her victim whose struggles were weaker now, fading fast.

  ‘Him? Shouldn’t you be more concerned about yourself? Do you know what he was intending to do to me? Do you know how many women he has lured out here? Alone? Defenceless?’

  Grace could imagine. Her opinion of the so-called nobility hadn’t improved much since meeting them. The Loam watched her former attacker with a kind of detached interest as his struggles weakened.

  The root tightened around Grace, ready to slowly crush her, and the woman didn’t seem to notice or care.

  Grace was out of time. Her skills learned at the Academy weren’t getting her out of this, not the mundane ones at any rate.

  But she had other skills. Ones that didn’t come from the Academy at all. She closed her eyes and reached for the otherness inside her. Now it was part of her again but she still didn’t really trust it. Being close to Bastien, entering the Maegen, had brought it back. Not to full strength perhaps. Or maybe she had never been as powerful as all that. But it didn’t matter.

  It was all she had.

  Fire roared through her, burning the enchanted vegetation binding her. The Loam screamed, the shock of her power being repelled sending her staggering.

  Grace fell heavily, her handprints seared into the ground. Flames licked the area around her, blackening the earth and devouring the dry grass in hungry, glowing lines. Her hair spilled around her face and, as she looked up through it, she saw the woman backing away, concern suddenly flickering over her beautiful features. Fear.

  ‘You’re a Flint,’ she said and licked her lips nervously. She straightened her clothing and took a step towards Grace. No Loam was going to feel easy around a Flint. Fire burned all living things. ‘Of course… You’re his Flint.’

  ‘I’m my own Flint.’ Grace dragged herself up to her feet and pushed her hair out of her face. She should have tied it back, regardless of balls and dresses and everything else.

  The dress was ruined anyway. Great. This was why she couldn’t have nice things.

  ‘Grace Marchant,’ the noblewoman said as she stepped forwards. ‘You could be so much more. If you just had the courage to reach out and seize it. It’s waiting for you. There’s a sacrifice, of course. But everything worthwhile demands a sacrifice. Especially magic. Oh… it could make you so strong, little Flint. Little broken Flint. It whispers, the voices in the depths. I’ve heard so much about you.’

  Grace didn’t have time for this nonsense. ‘Have you? Because I don’t have a single clue who you are. Let him go.’

  The vines smothering the man retreated. He lay still, unconscious, but breathing, albeit weakly. Would he live? Grace had no way of knowing. But if she didn’t get out of this situation quickly, she wouldn’t.

  And the next moment there was another, greater problem.

  ‘Grace?’ Bastien’s voice broke through the tense silence, fraught with concern. ‘Grace, where are you?’

  The woman started at the sound of his voice. Something flickered over her features; terror. Grace knew it at once. The mageborn woman was terrified of the sound of his voice. She retreated, baring her teeth, and the vegetation all around them recoiled, shivering, trying to draw up around her and protect her. The reek of fear was palpable.

  ‘The Lord of Thorns,’ the Loam whispered and then she froze. Abruptly, her glowing eyes faded to utter darkness, like holes in her head. The still burning patches of grass lit her up with an infernal light. ‘Larelwynn,’ she hissed in a voice like a winter wind. The fear was gone. This was eagerness, and it was terrible. She didn’t sound like herself. She barely sounded human.

  Grace’s skin tightened in alarm. The sense of magic roared through her, not a ripple now. An ocean.

  Bastien burst through the bushes as if they recoiled from his touch, or he commanded them out of the way. Either was possible. The woman straightened still further, but now she smiled, like a jealous lover seeing an old fl
ame in pain.

  ‘Hello, Bastien Larelwynn,’ the voice said from the Loam’s lips and, this time, Grace knew that it definitely wasn’t human. She wasn’t sure what it was. It made her skin tighten around her bones, froze every scrap of moisture in her body. Her heart, trapped in her ribcage, hammered away at the base of her throat.

  She knew it. From somewhere. Somewhere dark and terrible, somewhere she had seen in the depths between life and death…

  She remembered it…

  An answering something in Bastien, that bleak otherness, reared up to confront it.

  ‘Grace, step behind me.’ His voice was calm but empty and the glow that entered his eyes was bright and terrible. He was pulling on all the magic in him.

  But it wasn’t going to be enough. She didn’t know how she knew that, but she did.

  ‘We remember her,’ said the voice. ‘Fascinating. You made her stronger. Much stronger.’ The Loam stretched out a hand and Grace stiffened. Something ghosted over her skin, a breath of air or a cool breeze. ‘How many times have you brought her back? A new sacrifice in the making, it seems. Is she three times dead, Bastien, twice entombed? Is she for us? Oh, Bastien, the things we will do…’

  It happened so quickly, so impossibly quickly. The scent of roses swept around her, through her, perfume so overwhelming that she couldn’t think for a moment. It grew stronger, thicker, turning to the stench of mulch and decay. Grace choked on it, gagging as it smothered her. Bastien’s arms tightened to pull her to safety but he was too late.

  The Loam smiled, a strange, mad twist of her mouth, baring all her teeth, and she reached out and touched the warrant.

  Just one touch, a fingertip. The metal went so cold against Grace’s skin, it burned.

  And the fire inside her was gone. Just… gone… A void nestled there instead, an emptiness.

  Bastien turned on the Loam – or whatever she was now – with a snarl of rage.

  The Loam didn’t recoil this time. She opened her arms to him. ‘We have missed you so much, brother.’

  For a moment she sounded so like Celeste, that same tone, that arrogance and superiority. That insanity. But it wasn’t Celeste. Grace knew that.

  Grace’s eyesight swam as if she was underwater, as if light rippled through the shifting surface far out of reach. Tears burned in the corners of her eyes and the world blurred. There were tentacles, and eyes, and so many teeth…

  She could see them, shadows contorting beneath the woman’s flesh, coiling, writhing.

  ‘What have you done?’ Bastien growled, standing between Grace and the Loam like a dark star. Light surged in him, the power of the Hollow King, all the magic he bottled up inside.

  From somewhere, Grace found her voice.

  ‘Who… who are you?’ she asked, forcing out the words through a tight throat that seemed to be blocked with her racing heart.

  The Loam gave her a condescending smile, ignoring Bastien completely. She wasn’t just a mageborn any more. She was something else.

  ‘Dear little Flint… you’re not dealing with mere temporal royalty now. We are beyond that. And you belong to us…’

  ‘Enough!’ Bastien roared. ‘Leave her alone. Be gone from this place. Now.’

  The Loam laughed. Stood there in the face of his fury and laughed out loud. ‘You never change, do you? Oh, Bastien… it’s so good to be free. Oh, how we will dance. And burn. And break the world apart. All those humans, all those fools… fragile little mayflies… But not her. She has been intimate with the darkness in her world and ours. She knows us. Celeste was right. She is perfect…’

  And then the Loam crumpled up like a rag doll, falling onto the ground with a dull thud.

  Bastien rushed towards her, dropping to his knees beside her and rolling her onto her back.

  ‘Breathe, please. Please breathe.’

  But the woman stared sightlessly up at the night’s sky without seeing a thing.

  Grace’s head swam; it was like she was moving through honey.

  ‘Bastien?’ She felt so strange. The warrant was still like ice and the void inside her had sucked away all feelings.

  He took one look at her and, the next thing she knew, he was holding her, pressing his hands to either side of her head.

  ‘Let me in, Grace. Let me help. Please. Before it’s too late.’ The words were urgent… desperate… and she nodded, too afraid to deny him.

  The light in him rushed through her, golden and glorious, like sunshine, his power strengthening and stabilising her own.

  Except her own wasn’t there any more.

  She was so used to the emptiness of her stolen magic since her childhood that it almost felt normal again to find it missing. It felt like her magic had been sucked right out of her. It wasn’t possible. The woman was a Loam, not a Leech.

  But she’d been Hollow.

  And then… then she had been something else. Something Grace recognised, remembered. From the darkness beneath the Maegen.

  She looked into Bastien’s eyes, finally able to see again. He’d never looked so worried.

  ‘Bastien? What did it do?’ But she knew. Somewhere deep down, instinctively, she knew…

  ‘Show me the warrant,’ he said, his voice grim. Once again, she didn’t dare to argue. It dangled between them, dull in the light from beyond the garden. It wasn’t gold now. The metal looked tarnished, rippled with oily rainbows of light.

  He pulled her into his arms, buried his face in her hair.

  ‘This can’t be happening,’ he murmured.

  She pushed him back, trying to ground him, to make him focus. ‘What?’

  ‘That… that was the voice of my sibling… or siblings… You saw it… aspects of it anyway, in the Maegen. A mind that is many and one, and utterly inhuman. That was the Deep Dark. And I think… Grace, I think it marked you.’

  Chapter 6

  The Maegen swirled, glowing with its own life, and Grace was lost in it. It swamped all her senses, covering her, filling her. There was no Bastien here, no one else. Just her and light and that pulsing warmth, the glow that never died.

  And underneath it…

  The darkness…

  She was lost and empty inside. The ache was deep and endless. She could feel it clearly, a void inside her. Where her magic had been.

  She knew it of old but she had never named it before. When Mother Miranda of the Temple stole her magic and her memories, back in her childhood, that space had been left behind. Hungry and dangerous.

  She’d filled it with study, with the Academy, with her work. With hunting monsters and protecting the innocent. With her friends who had become her family.

  With Bastien Larelwynn and a world of emotion she thought would never be hers. And her magic, although still weak, had come back to her. Because of him.

  Dark threads whispered through the light, like ink in a boiling pool. She didn’t know why but she stretched out her hand towards it. It threaded between her fingers, latched onto her and pulled.

  She sank like a stone, unable to fight, unable to cry out. Darkness coiled around her, surprisingly gentle, each touch a caress.

  It would be so easy to give up. So easy to let herself fall further into its embrace, to let it take her and be one with it. So very easy to pretend that it was Bastien holding her. That she was safe.

  The Deep Dark tightened its grip, greedy and possessive, vicious now, determined to hold onto her this time. Grace dragged herself free, tearing it off her limbs strand by strand. But each time she thought she’d done it, there was more. There was always more, always shadows on her, always dragging her deeper.

  She couldn’t do it alone. They were inside her, in that empty place. Lodged there like parasites.

  She needed Bastien. She needed—

  Laughter shook around her, pulsating through the darkness and the light. ‘He is us, part of us. And we are the same, eternal. You can be too.’

  ‘I don’t want eternity.’

  It paused, as if a
llowing her the time to think about what she just said.

  ‘Don’t you? Not even with him? Beloved…’

  Eternity with him? Yes. She would take eternity with him. She loved him. She hadn’t really fathomed quite how much.

  It gave her strength, strength she desperately needed to pull free.

  But the voice was insidious. ‘We can give him to you, forever, Grace Marchant. We can give you everything. Imagine it. You could rule with him. You could make everything right, care for the weak, seek the truth and mete out justice on wrongdoers. You can punish them. Stop the monsters. You can shine a light on the darkness. Beloved…’

  Its myriad voices cajoled and murmured, rippled around her, caressing her, a choir of temptation. She could feel its desire for her… though whether to possess her or rend her limb from limb she didn’t know. It wasn’t love. It definitely wasn’t love. It was possessive and greedy, determined to dig its grasping hands into every part of her. The Deep Dark wanted her. And it would give her everything she wanted if she just gave up and let it in.

  What was she thinking? Was this her voice, or something else, something darker? Bastien trusted her. How could she betray him now? Join with the Deep Dark, his oldest adversary and let him go… No.

  She reached for him with her body and her soul. The light above was everything and she yearned for it, for him…

  Something vast and endless closed around her, something far greater than she could ever be, bright and blinding, all-encompassing. That power was more than her mind could fully comprehend but she gave herself up to him anyway.

  Bastien enfolded her and pulled her to safety, into the light.

  She gasped as she woke from her nightmare and he was still holding her, cradling her. Even though she was lying in their bed. Safe, warm, the bedclothes twisted around her. She curled around him, their bodies drawn together by gravity and a thousand other things. It was still dark. Bastien didn’t look like he’d slept at all.

  ‘Grace, my love, please… please don’t… It’s just a nightmare.’

  She ignored his protestations and wrapped her arms around him, holding him close.