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Wraith King
Forbidden Forest
Copyright © 2020 by Amber Argyle
www.amberargyle.com
ISBN-13: 978-0-9976390-5-6
All rights reserved.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products, bands, and/or restaurants referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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Book Cover Design by Melissa Williams Design
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020920387
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
MAP
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Epilogue
CURSE QUEEN
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Dedication
For all my fellow ADHD girls and boys out there,
You are weird. You are wild. You are witty.
And that is what makes you wonderful.
Mirror
Surrounded by ancient, corroded mirrors, Larkin braced herself as her grandmother, Iniya, wrenched a brush through her curls until they resembled a very robust weed. Iniya muttered curses as she pinned down each wayward bit of fluff; Larkin’s head was heavy with pins that poked and pulled and weighted her down.
That finished, Iniya pasted thick makeup on every inch of Larkin’s exposed skin. She dusted her eyes with gold flakes and painted her lips vermilion. It all seemed a bit much for so early in the morning, but they had over three hundred embedding ceremonies to get through today, which would put them finishing late in the night.
Finally, Iniya stepped back. “There. Now you look like a princess instead of a wild thing, though no amount of finery can hide those hideous scars.”
A long, ragged slash across her neck and the pitted scars on her arms were the most noticeable. But there were others. A thin, crooked line on her palm. Numerous sword kisses. Not to mention the ones her father had given her for the sin of being a girl. She also bore a chipped tooth from gritting her teeth too hard the night the wraiths nearly turned her husband into a monster.
Larkin was neither ashamed nor proud of her scars. They just were. And she would not let her grandmother bully her into being self-conscious of them.
“Remind me why I let you help me?” Larkin muttered.
“Because I know what it takes to make you a queen.”
“Do you?” Larkin immediately regretted the bite of her words, but it was too late to take them back.
Iniya stiffened. “I kept my end of the bargain. I got you into the druids’ palace.” Never mind that Larkin had been captured shortly after. “You have yet to keep yours.” To return Iniya’s title as queen of the United Cities of the Idelmarch.
Larkin bit back her groan of frustration. “We’re working on it.”
Iniya gathered up her things. “Work on it faster.” Cane tapping out a steady rhythm, she left in a huff.
To her right, the tiara stared Larkin down from its green silk pillow. With a steadying breath, she reached out, a thousand copies of herself doing the same, and traced the splay of sacred tree branches that wove to a sharp point, where a single emerald had been set.
Larkin had been born and raised in the mud with a drunkard for a father. There had never been enough food, and her clothes had been little better than rags. Now, she wore a fancy Idelmarchian dress, a priceless cream piece with a gold, opal, and emerald belt cinching her waist. Around her neck hung two amulets—one a stylized version of sacred tree and the other a leaf.
And of course the dress was backless to show off her monarch sigil—raised white lines that formed a geometric copy of the White Tree. A sigil she was the only woman in three centuries to bear. A sigil that proclaimed her a princess and gave her more magic than all, save her husband, the prince.
I’m not sure I can do this.
She didn’t have a choice. She’d been hiding for the past two months, ever since she and Denan had returned to the Alamant after the battle that had come to be known as Druids’ Folly.
It was time to stop hiding.
She reached for the reassuring power of her magic. The sigils—including the two on her left arm and one on her left hand—flared opalescent, the edges trimmed in gold. They were all in geometric patterns of leaves or flowers. Her favorite were the wedding sigils—vines that twined up her hands and wrists nearly to her elbows like lacy gloves.
The comforting, somewhat painful buzz reminded her that she was not the helpless girl she’d once been. She took the tiara between her fingertips and centered the emerald on her forehead. Another steadying breath, and she turned to face her reflection.
All that light—all that refinery and beauty—couldn’t disguise the dark circles under her eyes. The paleness that made her thick freckles stand out like a constellation of dark stars against a bright sky.
She’d come to accept herself as Denan’s wife. And then as a warrior. But a princess?
“You look lovely.”
Denan leaned against the doorframe to her left. He was dressed in the simple manner of the pipers. Backlit b
y the rising sun, her husband’s dark gold skin and black hair paired nicely with his forest-green tunic and trousers embroidered all over in gold. A wild crown of branches and opals graced his head. His leather mantle—embossed with a three-headed snake knotted in a circle—had points at the shoulders and front and back, precious cabochon stones hanging from each. On his chest, his monarch sigil gleamed golden through his clothes, a sigil that marked him as prince, as much as hers marked her a princess.
Like her, Denan bore marks of strain. For him, it was in the stiff way he carried himself. The way he sucked in a breath if he moved the wrong way. Though the wound the wraiths had given him had closed, it had never truly healed. And the way he sometimes stared south—toward the fallen city of Valynthia—with a look of hopelessness and dread.
Tonight wasn’t a night for such thoughts.
Larkin forced a smile, crossed the room—a hundred other reflections following suit—and hugged him. “And you, my Piper Prince, look just as lovely.”
He held out a velvet bag. “I brought you something.”
He’d bought her so many things over the last month, including this dress. As if he were trying to make up for the nightmares that kept her up most nights. Nightmares of her friends turning to mulgars. Of men she’d killed. Of living shadows that snatched at her, drawing her into the dark that lives beneath the grave.
Shivering, she took the bag, something clinking delicately inside. She tugged open the drawstring and carefully upended a pair of emerald earrings into her palm. The stones dangled from a geometric pattern of delicately wrought gold vines that perfectly matched her wedding sigils.
“You had these made.” More than once, she’d caught him sketching her. Sketches he would never show her. He’d been capturing her sigils to have a jeweler remake them.
She tipped up on her toes and kissed him. His lips smiled against her mouth. “Do you intend the whole of the Alamant to see me wearing your lipstick?”
She pulled back and gave him a wicked grin. “Maybe.” She slipped the earrings in her ears and admired them in the closest mirror. “They’re beautiful.”
He offered her his arm. “Shall we?”
I can do this. She eased her hand through the crook of his elbow and passed through the magic pane that kept out the weather. There was the cool feeling, like walking through glass, and the taste of stardust on the back of her tongue. Then she stepped from the platform onto a branch of the White Tree. The opalescent white bark hummed with magic that echoed beneath her skin.
They made their way down to the main platform—a curved, bowl-shaped depression where the trunk met the boughs. On the far side was a delicate arch; beyond it, circular stairs led down to the lake, from which a city of enormous hometrees grew.
Almost directly beneath Larkin was a dais. At its center, the font gleamed with the wicked thorns that granted magic. Behind the font, the musicians were almost set up. Servants laid colorful platters of food onto tables that circled the perimeter. Most of the Alamantian dignitaries had arrived. The Idelmarchian delegation—nearly all of them Black Druids—wouldn’t be far behind.
Druids who’d locked her in a dungeon and then sold her to the wraiths in exchange for dark magic. Now those same druids would receive magic from the White Tree.
“Larkin?”
She’d stopped walking to glare down at the party. “You know we can’t trust them, Denan. Especially with something as powerful as our magic.”
He trailed the back of his fingers down her cheek. “Little bird, we do what we must.”
It was an old Alamantian idiom. One the pipers used to justify any number of sins. For instance, stealing Idelmarchian girls—like herself—for wives. She’d hated those words, but over these last months, she’d also learned that fighting the curse that spawned the wraiths justified many lesser evils.
The simple truth of it was that the Alamant was desperate for more fighters, and the druids were their only option.
“We wouldn’t have to rely on them if I had found Eiryss’s amulet.” But the Curse Queen’s tomb had been empty, and they didn’t have any clues where to look next.
Larkin’s thoughts broke apart as a leaf twirled delicately through the air. She caught it, gently holding it in the cup of her palm. The leaf’s normally opalescent white trimmed in gold had turned to yellow, the edges crisp and brown.
In the long centuries of the tree’s existence, it had never shed its leaves. Its magic had never allowed it. But all the magic in the world wouldn’t prevent it from dying. And if the tree died, so would the magic. The same magic that protected them from the wraiths. The same magic that prevented the poisoned wound in Denan’s side from spreading.
And if it spread, a fate far worse than death awaited the man she loved.
The breeze picked up, the branches around her sounding like rushing water. The leaf was ripped from her palm to spin out into the day.
She pressed the amulets into her skin, leaving an imprint that gave her comfort. Denan’s words echoed through her. We do what we must.
Until the Stars Fall
More leaves fell, showering Larkin and Denan with dying gold.
“Larkin?” Denan’s brows were crinkled with concern. He had enough to worry about without adding her to the list.
She gave him a bright smile, and they continued their descent. More Alamantians arrived on the platform. The men outnumbered the women three to one, as the curse had robbed the pipers of the ability to bear daughters.
Just as Larkin and Denan had orchestrated, the men wore the simple piper tunics and robes, over which went the embossed mantles of their family crest and swinging jewels, while the women were all dressed like Larkin, in the Alamantian style, with fancy dresses bedecked with gems.
They’d hoped the differences might make the druids feel more at home and therefore be less likely to commit violence. Though Larkin didn’t really believe anything would stop that, she’d endeavored to try.
Sitting sideways across the bottom step, his elbows on one cocked knee, Tam watched them with spring-blue eyes beneath blond curls. He winked at Larkin and nodded a greeting to Denan. “You’re in trouble.”
Denan frowned. “Why?”
Tam hopped up and tipped his head toward the current king of the Alamant, King Netrish, who stood at the food tables with his wife, Queen Jaslin. Succession in the Alamant was different than the Idelmarch. The White Tree chose the next prince at his embedding ceremony. Once the prince was married and his stolen bride settled, that prince became king. But King Netrish had made no move to step down.
The king had clearly been waiting for them to appear. He stormed over, his wife in tow. A vein stood out on his bald head, as he shook a letter at them. “I’ve already told you; the people aren’t ready.”
Larkin had helped Denan compose the letter the king held, a letter which formally asked the king to step down. She shot Tam a flat look that said, You could have given us a little more warning.
Tam shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged, clearly unconcerned.
“The law is clear, Netrish.” Denan’s tone was almost bored. “When a prince’s wife is settled, he becomes king.”
Netrish pointed his fat finger at Larkin. “She escaped the Alamant—damaging our trees and the barrier in the process. She managed to get herself captured by the druids. Then she managed to get captured a second time. Hundreds of our pipers have died because of her actions. She is as willful and wild as a wraith!”
Jaslin nodded in agreement.
Tam’s nonchalance faded away. His hands came out of his pockets, and he stepped closer, a murderous look on his face.
Denan’s gaze sharpened. “Larkin isn’t the one who will be king.”
King Netrish’s gaze flicked to Denan’s hidden blight mark. “And who do you think will rule when the blight takes you?”
All Larkin’s life, men had insulted and threatened her. They would not insult her husband. Her sigils for her sword and shield flared
bright enough to make the king blink. “This willful and wild woman is about to make you apologize.”
The king’s mouth opened for what she was sure was another insult.
Denan took a step closer to the king, his expression thunderous. “Larkin is the only reason your son survived. The only reason our entire army wasn’t overrun by the Idelmarchians. The only reason those same Idelmarchians aren’t tearing down our defenses while the wraiths wait in the wings to destroy us all.” He swallowed hard. “When the blight finally takes me—”
“If,” Larkin interrupted. She’d contained his blight with her own magic—a barrier in the shape of an orb, which she’d discovered later was called a weir, old magic that the enchantresses were only just beginning to grasp. He was in no danger.
“If,” Denan agreed, “the blight takes me, you’d be lucky to have her.”
In the beat of silence that followed, the king’s guards circled closer. Tam shifted so he was between them and Larkin. The queen glared at her. The powerful of the Alamant stilled to listen. Even Denan’s ever-present pages watched.
What would happen if Netrish refused to cede? The pipers wouldn’t survive a civil war. Would the White Tree itself intervene? Could it?
The king took a deep breath and straightened his fine vest. “Try me if you wish, Denan, but you’ll find most of the council and our people feel the same as I about your wife. Come along, dear.” He turned on his heel and marched off, his wife right beside him.
Larkin watched them go, wishing she could use the magic buzzing under her skin. Wishing she could explain herself to those still watching her. Yes, I made mistakes, but those deaths were not my fault. The fault lay at the feet of the wraiths’ and druids’ foolish alliance.
As if sensing her impulse, Denan wrapped his arm around her waist and held her tight. “Don’t,” he murmured. “It will make you look weak.”
“I’ll make him look weak,” Tam grumbled after the king.
The tinkling of the amethysts in Alorica’s gown announced her arrival. She glared at the king’s back. “May the shadows eat him.” Her lovely, pale purple gown contrasted with her dark skin, eyes, and short black curls.
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