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

by Jessica Thorne

  She had lost Bastien. How could she go on without him? Who needed to live forever without the one they loved? Who needed to live at all?

  She screamed, releasing the magic all at once, all that dammed-up power, all the rage, all the darkness, all the agony. The Hollow King roared, throwing back his head as the light within him blazed brighter than the sun. The rock that made his form turned to molten lava and he slid away into the Maegen, into that light.

  But he couldn’t get away from her, not that easily, not that way.

  The cave shook and trembled. The rocks cracked. The water that had not yet transformed to the Maegen boiled. And Grace opened her mouth wide to scream over and over again.

  All she wanted to do was destroy it all, destroy him, end it. All of it.

  And that was when the roof came down.

  The scraping of stone on stone brought her to her senses. All was dark and quiet and as far as she was concerned it could stay that way.

  ‘Grace?’

  Daniel’s voice, far off and desperate. She didn’t care. She couldn’t care. Bastien was dead and she had as good as killed him herself. The Deep Dark had tricked her, manipulated her, and now she had lost him. He was gone.

  ‘Grace, we’re coming. Hang on.’

  Daniel had pulled her out of a pile of rubble before. But Bastien had been with him that time. He’d refused to let her die.

  And now he was gone. If he’d left her in the cave with the Hollow King, he’d still be alive.

  Air came in a rush, and the next thing she knew strong arms were grabbing her, pulling her clear. They dragged her out into the open air. The light was blinding and everything hurt. Daniel and Misha hauled her up with trembling hands.

  But worse was to come.

  ‘Where are Ellyn and Rynn?’ Grace asked.

  Daniel stared at her, his face haggard. Then he shook his head.

  No. They were still in the tunnel? Had she killed them too? Divinities, this couldn’t be happening.

  ‘Grace,’ he whispered, his voice stricken. ‘We aren’t alone.’

  Armed soldiers filled the clearing, surrounding them, too many to count. Lara and Daniel had no weapons, and Misha’s harp was a shattered pile of strings and kindling on the ground. The horses were gone, scattered. Someone had let them loose. Standing over her, back in the uniform of the Royal Guard of Larelwynn, his armour gleaming, was Asher Kane.

  ‘You look surprised, Marchant. I followed you here. This is Bastien’s home, after all. Everyone knows that.’

  Everyone was wrong, Grace thought bitterly. Not his home, but his grave.

  After what she had just done, the earthquake, the fire, the rush of magical power shaking the foundations of Thorndale apart… well, anyone would come looking.

  Asher fixed them with a glare of pure hatred. ‘Keep digging. Find the others,’ he told the soldiers. No Valenti mercenaries now. These were Larelwynn troops.

  ‘Find their bodies,’ Lara told him. ‘That’s all that’s left. They were in the cave when it collapsed. They’re dead – Bastien, Rynn de Valens and Ellyn de Bruyn. Have fun explaining that to the Dowager. All your prizes are gone, Lord Kane.’

  He smiled that terrible smile but ignored Lara and glared right at Grace. ‘Not all of them, Lady Kellen.’ Then he raised his voice in command. ‘Seize everything. Take them back to Rathlynn. The queen can do what she wants with these traitors but Captain Marchant and the rest of Prince Bastien’s leavings are mine, understand?’

  ‘I am still the marshal,’ Lara told him, standing firm. ‘I demand the right to be heard. And these people are under my protection.’

  ‘You failed, Lara,’ he sneered. ‘Don’t you get that yet? And you are not the marshal any more.’ And then he nodded, a clear signal, looking past her shoulder.

  Shadows billowed up around Lara, swirling around her, seizing her. It was quick and it was brutal, a knife appearing for an instant before slamming into her back, up to the hilt.

  Her face froze, her mouth open in something like outrage, but Lara Kellen didn’t even cry out. She fell silently.

  Jehane stood in her place. He looked down on her body for the longest moment. It wasn’t regret on his face. He’d killed his mentor without a moment’s hesitation. Perhaps he’d always wanted to. He waited until she went completely still.

  Grace sucked in a breath and felt the last of her footholds crumble.

  ‘As you will, my Lord Kane,’ Jehane said. ‘I hope I’ve proved my loyalty.’

  ‘Time and again. Keep her under control, Alvaran.’

  Jehane smiled as he met Grace’s devastated gaze. She could no longer see the man who had asked for her friendship. She had trusted him. And look where that had got her. Lara had trusted him too, implicitly. Grace met his eyes for a moment and then dropped her gaze.

  Jehane’s voice was hard, unrecognisable. ‘Oh, that will be easy. She doesn’t have it in her to fight any more. She’s lost everything. Haven’t you?’

  She didn’t deign to give him an answer. He didn’t deserve one. Her eyes burned.

  ‘But just in case,’ Asher said. ‘She has a tendency to get creative. I know her of old. Put this on her.’

  He handed Jehane a collar made of linked sigils, the type they had once used on Bastien. It had contained even his power. It snapped around her throat with a sudden and very final click.

  It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

  They were all disarmed with cursory speed. Daniel was the only one to put up a struggle. When Jehane stepped in, Daniel spat in his face which earned him a backhand across his cheek. The brief struggle was brutal and one-sided. Daniel might be scrappy but he didn’t stand a chance against so many.

  ‘Stop,’ Grace said as a third guard slammed his boot into her friend’s stomach. ‘Stop! We’ll cooperate.’

  What did it matter now? Bastien was dead. So were Ellyn and Rynn. Lara lay still in front of her. Four of her company, all gone now. Her squad, her team, her found family. She had lost everyone else. She couldn’t risk Daniel and Misha. All they could do now was survive. She could keep Daniel and Misha alive, couldn’t she? If she was careful. If she played it right. She had to try.

  ‘Reason? From you, Marchant?’ Asher laughed.

  ‘I can be reasonable.’

  ‘See that you can,’ he growled at her. ‘Tie them up and get the wagon. The queen and our goddess eagerly await you.’

  The wagon jolted and rocked, a slow and torturous trek across Larelwynn lands. Except there were no more Larelwynns. Not even Bastien.

  Grace closed her eyes, trying to shut out the world. The collar was icy cold around her neck. She’d always sworn she’d never wear one.

  The warrant felt cold too, another chunk of ice against her skin, which told her the Deep Dark still lurked inside her, waiting. Letting it out again… well, that wasn’t a good idea. She’d bide her time.

  ‘Grace?’ Daniel said. She opened her eyes. He was watching her closely, his expression grim. ‘Grace, are you okay?’

  It was such a stupid question. ‘No. Of course I am not okay.’

  They had been captured by the man who hated them the most. And Jehane had betrayed them. Did she need to spell it all out for him?

  But Daniel wasn’t the kind to give up. ‘We’ll find a way out. We always find a way out. We’ll improvise, remember?’

  She closed her eyes again, defeated, devastated. There was no point in fighting any more, not even with Daniel. Asher had them. Aurelie would make sure their last few hours were excruciating. But it didn’t matter.

  She was already dead inside.

  The Deep Dark laughed at her, sang to her, taunted her. It would help if she only asked. She could call them to her, the nightborn, it told her. She could make them her servants, use them all. But she’d only done what she had needed to do. She’d defeated the Hollow King. If she hadn’t killed him she had at least trapped him in the Maegen. She’d stolen his magic, sucked it into herself and now it was hers.
It boiled in her veins and writhed beneath her skin.

  That had to count for something, didn’t it?

  Given all that she had lost, it had to.

  She didn’t want to think about what it had done to her, what it might still do, what it might mean.

  She had been willing to die in that cave. She had shaken off the power of the Deep Dark and the Hollow King and she had been ready to die, to protect Bastien, to protect them all.

  Instead, Bastien was dead. Ellyn and Rynn were lost. It wasn’t fair.

  Once, she had taken a vow to protect the people of Rathlynn, mageborn and quotidian alike.

  Now, she could only keep that promise. Back in Rathlynn.

  Grace had always known she would die in Rathlynn. Home. And life, especially her life, had never been fair.

  They travelled through the night and the day again, a slow grinding trail that jerked every bone of her body and jolted her awake again every time she thought she had managed to slip off into her dreams. It was definitely that, waking her up. Not the nightmares.

  Bastien, the knife gutting him, blood and foam on his lips as he fell forwards. The endless black water swallowing him. The Hollow King wearing his face, smiling in his triumph. Her failure, her rage, her anger bringing down the cave around them all.

  Ellyn and Rynn, trapped together underground, crushed, dying. It was her fault. It was all her fault…

  The fourteenth – fifteenth? – time she jerked back into the misery of wakefulness, she could smell it. Familiar scents, as familiar as anything she knew. She’d known them almost all her life. Sea and woodsmoke, spices and foul water, an undercurrent of sewers that never quite went away… Rathlynn. They had finally arrived.

  Not exactly a looked-for homecoming.

  Aurelie would be waiting. And Aurelie was hardly going to welcome Grace warmly. Unless that involved fire. Or maybe some molten iron.

  Celeste too. Celeste, who knew more about the Deep Dark than anyone else. Who might understand what was happening to Grace. If she cared to share her knowledge.

  The power rippled and surged within her, still there, still waiting.

  The streets were quiet, unnaturally so. She knew the sounds as they passed through the main gate. They were stopped by a checkpoint at the Temple Square, but with Asher shouting and cursing, his threats increasingly violent, they were quickly waved through.

  Grace felt the incline of the Royal Promenade as they were hauled up the hill towards the palace complex. Through the bars she could see the statues looking down at her, face after face the same, only their clothes changing, a Larelwynn face, his face. Bastien, carved in stone like the Hollow King.

  She turned away. She couldn’t bear to look at him. Not now.

  It had all been lies anyway, all their history, all the stories built up around him. All lies to keep him in his place and the Hollow King imprisoned, the Deep Dark in check. Now it was loose in her and she was lost and Bastien was really dead. Killed by the only hand that could kill him. His own.

  She wanted to scream, or sob, but she knew if she started either she would never stop.

  When the gates opened and the palace devoured them, she was sure she would never see the sky again.

  The wagon spilled them out into a yard with high walls and one gateway leading down to the dungeons. There was no way out even if any of them had still had the strength to try.

  ‘Grace Marchant,’ a voice rang out and she looked up. Aurelie stood on a walkway overlooking them, straight and tall, clad in scarlet and her long golden hair flowing down her back like an innocent. Grace said nothing. There was nothing to say and nothing Aurelie wanted to hear from her. Not yet. Later she would want screams and begging, no doubt, she’d want to torture her and see her destroyed, but now she just wanted Grace to look at her and know that she had won and Grace had lost. She had no idea how much Grace had lost. ‘I have a gift for you,’ the queen said and threw something down at them.

  The round object smashed into the flagstones, bloody and broken, but still somehow recognisable. Celeste Larelwynn’s face stared back at them. She even looked surprised.

  No one made a sound. If Aurelie was looking for shock or consternation, she was going to be disappointed. All three of them had reason to wish Celeste dead, but this…

  It was Asher Kane who gave a howl of dismay.

  As she walked to the cells, Grace decided to cherish that sound for the rest of her, no doubt very short, days.

  Chapter 29

  He floated between light and dark, suspended there between life and death. The endless nothing surrounded him, and he drifted in it, lost. It was almost peaceful. Certainly better than the pain he had left behind. The panic, the terror, the struggle, the constant suffering.

  In the end, it didn’t matter.

  Nothing mattered.

  ‘You matter,’ whispered a voice. Her voice. He was sure of it. Who else could it be? ‘You will always matter to me. Always.’

  But Grace was gone.

  Bastien opened his eyes, staring into the endless void beneath him. No magic, no power, no will to be one thing or the other. The Deep Dark was not there waiting for him. No creatures lurked there, nothing reached out to drag him down, no countless eyes stared back. It was just darkness, endless and empty.

  It shouldn’t be empty.

  ‘They’re all gone,’ she said. ‘They all went away, with her. There’s nothing left.’

  Bastien had failed. His one task, his only mission, the thing he needed to do above all else – to save Grace, to trap the Deep Dark once more, to protect the mageborn and the world he loved. But now the Deep Dark had lodged itself within her, and it was free.

  ‘Bastien, wake up.’

  He shook his head, his long hair swirling past his face.

  ‘I know it hurts, love, but you have to wake up.’

  Strong arms held him, the touch so gentle.

  ‘Let me stay here, Grace. Let me stay with you.’ His voice shook the water around him and rebounded back to him, so loud, so out of place.

  ‘You can’t. You have to go back. Honour and duty. Remember?’ The voice changed, drifting from hers to someone else’s. A young man, barely more than a boy. ‘You promised me, Bastien. It was your vow. You said we couldn’t have the things we wanted, but we could still protect them. You have to go back and protect Grace. You have to stop them, defend the mageborn, but most of all, you have to save her.’

  Lucien’s hand brushed against his face. He knew the touch though he couldn’t see the body. But the gleaming light that coalesced in front of him was as gentle as Lucien himself had been.

  ‘Remember, Bastien. Remember everything.’

  He hadn’t meant to love the young prince, but he couldn’t help himself. Lucien was so very loveable. It had been easy to lay down his life for him. Much easier than the alternative.

  ‘Much easier than living for me?’ Lucien laughed, but it was a tragic sound, the music made by a broken heart. ‘But you can rectify that now. We love where we love. Sometimes in the same way, sometimes different. I loved my wife too. Lived a life with her. But never forgot you. We loved differently. And now, you can live for her, for your love, for Grace.’

  ‘Lucien… please…’

  Bastien just wanted to rest. It had been so long. He’d lived so many lives, been betrayed so many times, had all his memories wiped out and started again and again. He was tired, so very tired. And now peace beckoned.

  Was this how Grace had felt before he pulled her back to life? Had he dragged her out of a peace like this only to plunge her back into his world of pain and chaos, always running, always hunted, the constant torture of their life together?

  Every day she must live with the interminable pain of loving someone like him.

  ‘Bastien…’ Lucien said, the tone of remonstration almost amused.

  Images of Grace flashed before him, her smile, her kiss, the feeling of her touch, the pleasure of life with her, all those moments,
stolen or otherwise, the sheer joy of being with her. It was overwhelming, more than he could have articulated himself. She lived each day like it was her last and full to the brim. She grabbed every scrap of joy they had together and cherished it. Every time they parted was heartbreak, but every reunion was a glorious roar of affirmation. Just to see her across a room, or thread his fingers with hers, or lie beside her, body to body, each curve and hollow matching the other… it all made him want more.

  ‘Go back. Save her. Bastien, wake up. Do this for me and you will be free. She’ll set you free.’

  ‘Lucien… I can’t leave you here.’

  ‘I’m not here. I’m only here because you are, beloved. Because you need me. Don’t you know that? I was never trapped. You were.’ But Lucien smiled. And it wasn’t Lucien. It was light and movement, it was power. He frowned, staring into the light surrounding him. It was the Maegen.

  ‘Bastien, wake up. Please…’

  And suddenly it wasn’t Lucien’s voice any more. It wasn’t Grace’s either.

  It sounded like Ellyn.

  ‘He’s not breathing. He’s healing but he’s not breathing. Why isn’t he breathing?’

  ‘You have to get his heart started again, and make him breathe.’

  ‘I don’t know how to do that! I’m not a Curer, Rynn.’

  ‘Oh, get out of my way.’

  Hands pressed on his chest, trying to shove his ribs down, the rhythm broken and uneven but still there. And then there were lips on his, air blowing into his mouth and down to his lungs. Rynn was determined, he’d give her that.

  He coughed, bringing up blood and water, unable to stop himself from dragging in another agonising breath. It rasped down his throat and into his lungs, icy and sharp as knives.

  Bastien rolled over, gasping like a beached fish, his whole body shivering with shock and cold as they tried to help him without really knowing what they were doing.

  An eerie glow filled the cave, or what remained of the cave. Half of it was covered in rockfall, including part of the pool underneath it. But the rest of the water glowed, throwing its reflection up onto the roof like a maelstrom of light.