by Terah Edun
Blades of Destiny: Crown Service #4
Terah Edun
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
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
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
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About the Author
Copyright © 2018 by Terah Edun
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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1
Sara Fairchild took a deep breath; one that was intended to be calming. Because calming herself down was about the only thing she could do at the moment to prevent her hands from wrapping around Matteas Hillan’s throat.
Again.
Face slack with disbelief as her emotions slid into disgust, Sara looked at the mercenary her father had entrusted with the very secrets that had cost him his life. It was hard to believe this was his choice. As she stared at the man she could barely believe was a mercenary, let alone a competent one, there was nothing she could say that wouldn’t turn this situation from bad to worse, so Sara elected for silence.
Ezekiel Crane, however, was done with silence.
As they all kept wary ears perked for signs of close fighting outside her tent entrance, he questioned Matteas with rapid-fire intensity.
“What do you remember about the layout of the building?” the scholar asked in a tightly controlled voice. Sara approved. The tension in his tone gave her pause, but by keeping his face clear and his hands from doing anything physical, the scholar was showing them both that he had control.
Control that she lacked. Control of her emotions. Control of her actions.
It wasn’t just the darkness rising that she feared. It was the subtle whispers, the pushes that made her think the transition to becoming a Berserker wasn’t just a sudden change…but rather a series of cracks in the glass. Too many cracks and the entire panel holding back her darkness would shatter, and with it, she would lose more than her own control. Instead, Sara feared that she would lose the thing that made her who she was as she fell—she would lose her psyche.
As she thought of that, it sent a mild shiver down her spine.
Back to focusing outwardly on what was important, Sara watched as her friend stepped forward and took control of the situation when she could not. That was what friends were for, after all—threatening others when you were close to doing something that would only dig you deeper into the hole you had made.
Though to be honest, it was more of a hole that she had inherited.
She’d only begun this quest due to familial obligation. They’d killed both of her parents after all, and the least she could do was find out why. Whether it was the imperial representatives of the court or the unsanctioned actions of the Mercenary’s Guild was left to be determined, and Sara had the feeling that this journal had all the answers. That her father had all the answers.
Her fist bunched at her side as she thought of all he’d accomplished in his sterling career as an imperial officer lastly, and as a brilliant gladiator at the beginning. To see it all stripped down to one heinous word, treason, made her feel like her whole life had been a lie. Her father was darkness and she was too, and their gifts were merely a manifestation of that darkness in their psyche brought to life.
She wished she could brush away those thoughts; the perception that she was more worthless than even those who had spit at her feet in the streets of Sandrin, but it was hard to do when the entire empire knew what your bloodline had done.
So she waited and quietly hoped the man Ezekiel was calmly trying to coax answers out of had some for her. Answers that would silence the ache in her soul and finally allow her to push back the darkness once and for all. Because Sara might have been most combative against the darkness while on the battlefield, but she knew it was always there. Waiting. Watching. Lurking.
And it always had been.
Turning her head slightly from the distant point of the tent corner that had held her gaze, Sara flicked her eyes over to meet the man who was watching her intensely. So intensely that her hand flexed on the hilt of her weapon, its blade she had managed to start cleaning methodically as they waited in these tense confines.
There wasn’t much else to do, and besides…if there were Kades out there, and they were coming for her, a weapon at her side would do more good than anything else she could get her hands on.
She snapped out of her reverie to find Ezekiel looking back at her with concern in his eyes. Sara had the feeling he didn’t see a warrior preparing for another battle, as much as a friend in dire need of some help.
Not used to that—not used to anyone coddling her—Sara did what she did best.
She raised an eyebrow and barked at the scholar, “What? Has he finally said something of use?”
She wasn’t really upset at Ezekiel. It was this whole scenario, her whole life, really. Starting with the memories that kept appearing like grim flashes in her mind—her abrupt but necessary beating of the Kade invasion leader into a pulp, not even an hour before foremost among them, but she couldn’t tell him that.
However, judging by the concerned way Ezekiel was looking her up and down, he could tell that while she had washed away the blood, the wounds that had been left behind—emotional, this time—lingered.
Still, he knew better than to bring it up…especially now, in front of a stranger.
Sara had always been one to internalize her emotions and feelings, first. Muddle them around a bit and only then speak her mind. Her hot springs bath, post-execution of the Kade invasion leader, had been the first step in that process, but it wasn’t the only step. The other part of the process had involved her getting some shut-eye…even if only briefly before Captain Simon Barthis came looking for her, or she had been forced to go to him.
In any case, it was a moot point now, as the captain certainly had his hands full, and as she looked at Matteas, who gazed back at her with a piteous expression…she had her hands full, too.
He didn’t want her to turn him over to the people who had been chasing him.
Which was fair; she didn’t want him going over to them. That, however, didn’t mean she was going to protect him without getting some needed answers, first.
“What have you given us except the runaround?” she finally spat out, furious, as she took a step toward the man she finally knew as her father’s confidant and the camp’s, particularly the Red Lion Guard’s, logistics aide.
He didn’t answer, and Ezekiel stood to shield him a bit with his body as he walked over to her and said in a soothing voice, “He can’t give us anything if we don’t make him at ease first.”
Sara looked at the scholar with her jaw agape. “Do you see the arrows buried in our floor? Do you hear the sounds of pe
ople dying outside? We don’t have time to coddle him!”
“Fine, but snapping at him gives us very few results,” Ezekiel said while gesturing at the man behind them. “And he’s…”
“He’s not simple, and he doesn’t need your protection,” Sara argued with a snarl.
“That’s true,” Ezekiel replied. “But your pacing isn’t helping either. Maybe you should lie down.”
Sara shot him a look. She knew what he was doing.
“To get me out of the way or to get me to calm down?” Sara said slowly while twirling her sword. Not in a threatening manner, more like a habit that was so ingrained that sometimes she didn’t even know she was doing it.
“Now would I ever say that?” he said with a flash of his teeth—even as he flinched at the sound of weapons clashing grew closer.
Sara shifted her feet and prepared to move.
Recognizing an imminent battle was on its way, Ezekiel said glumly, “I don’t know what you were doing earlier today or with whom, Sara Fairchild, but you’re too tired to do this now.”
Sara didn’t disagree with him—she felt her very bones aching with the weariness of a woman who had won her fight but at the cost of her own soul, and all she wanted to do was sleep. But she wasn’t wired that way. She couldn’t just back down when it was clear they were in danger. Besides, who could sleep over the ringing of shields and clashing of swords? Not her.
“Not now, Ezekiel Crane. We can’t afford to falter. Get the information. Get ready to move.”
He didn’t protest. Instead, he sighed as he shot a dark look at the tent entrance. They were both like caged animals waiting for an enemy to tumble through the vulnerable flap doors. There was nothing they could do about that; however, none of the furniture present was enough to properly blockade a tent entrance, and besides, Sara didn’t want to get stuck inside if a smart opponent decided to burn the damned fabric walls down around them.
So she waited and paced as she watched Ezekiel do what he did best. Question. Discern. Analyze. And even if the answers were more evasive than useful, he at least could keep his anger from showing through when all Sara wanted to do was light up the small tent space with blistering threats.
Threats that would do no good.
The man who was three times as wide as she was, while somehow still being a mercenary, would only quiver and quail as he withdrew into himself more. Though she did note that he managed to be as evasive as a snake while doing so. The only other reason she hadn’t gone over there to shake some sense into him was…she saw something in his eyes, and it wasn’t cunning. It was fear.
As her hand stilled the sword that she’d been using to put herself through her formalized paces in the small space, Sara thought she recognized that fear. It was the fear of doing the wrong thing, saying the wrong thing. It was the fear of scaring them off.
While it was true that Matteas didn’t fear losing the bonds of friendship, as she often did, she did see that it was clear he feared for his life, and although his eyes jerked toward her every so often, it wasn’t her sword his gaze landed on, but her face.
He wanted her protection. He might even beg for it. But Sara had never been known to back down from a challenge, and this man certainly was one. Not necessarily one she needed, but he had fallen into her lap nevertheless. Thinking of how he’d managed to connive his way into the service of the Red Lions—one of the most elite mercenary companies in the empire—she had to admit that what he lacked in courage he most assuredly made up in his ability to be the person everyone needed.
From her father to her father’s enemies, and now…her father’s daughter.
Briefly amused as she eyed him askance and Ezekiel continued to question him, Sara had a thought: Matteas must be damned good at his position.
She was very firm in her belief that there was no other way that someone who was both a close ally of her father’s—accused of treason and executed—as well as a quivering lump of flesh, useless on the battlefield would be here otherwise.
Still, he seemed to have answers. Answers to questions that Ezekiel was patiently pulling out of him strand by strand. Questions she would have asked herself, had she not been so caught up in her desire to kill the man slumped before them.
To be fair, he deserved her recrimination. There was no worse place on land or at sea right now for a member of the vaunted Imperial Armed Forces to go, let alone the empress’s Mercenary’s Guild, and that was the Madrassa. Fabled as the greatest school for mages ever built in this empire, it only accepted the highest candidates for magical instruction. Those like the weather warden who had died getting their impromptu projectile through Kade defenses, and those like the line mage, Arcnus, who had given up his life force alongside him.
The Madrassa didn’t accept fools gladly, nor did it take on anything less than the best.
Which was why Ezekiel and Sara were staring at the cringing logistics officer on the floor so balefully.
He’d put those journals in a place no one could reach. No one on their side, anyway.
Because the Madrassa was more than just an educational institution for mages, by dint of being the best gathering places for magical practice, it also was the home of the Kade’s first uprising.
Although the imperial family had not condemned the whole of the institution for the infractions of one—in their eyes—minor uprising, they had made sure the entire empire was aware that treachery had been first fomented within those hallowed halls.
But just because it was minor didn’t mean it stayed inconsequential forever, as the entire empire was learning now. And even if it had, the immediate repercussions of the uprising weren’t easy to forget.
Not for anyone Sara knew or for Sara herself. Especially because of what had happened after the edict from the imperial family had come down.
An edict that no one spoke of. Not because they didn’t know this time, but because they all knew too much. After several terse confrontations, the Kades had taken over the institution that had formerly belonged to the empire and was a shining example of the exalted progress the former backwater colony of Sahalia had made.
Sara had to admit, losing the Madrassa and all it represented was like a black eye upon the empress herself. She had to think the Kades knew that, and they also had to know that, as such, the ruling family wouldn’t rest until it was returned to them.
But that was neither here nor there for Sara.
She wasn’t a part of the deployment force assigned to camp outside the Madrassa’s mage-enforced walls night and day, waiting for an opening in her defenses.
She was a desperate mercenary who needed to get through those defenses when even the Imperial Armed Forces had failed.
2
Eyes shut as she rubbed her forehead in deep thought, Sara groaned as she imagined the impossibility of getting through her own forces, here and there, past Kade defenses, and to the journal.
When she opened her eyes, even Ezekiel looked glum.
The scholar was crouched down clearly trying to think of a simple solution to their problem, and she saw him discard each idea that he came up with as he searched for another. He had either given up on questioning Matteas directly or was taking a breather.
Either way, Sara knew what Matteas was requiring of them would be impossible. They had to retrieve the journals from inside the Madrassa’s hallowed halls. It just couldn’t be done now that the Madrassa was trapped behind Kade protection spells, the likes of which the world had never seen. That was on top of the fact that it was supposedly where the eight foremost mages of the Kade rebellion—the ones who had actually caused this civil war—planned their assaults from, which meant there were even more people to be watchful of.
Maybe they would have had a chance when the school had been just that…a school. But not now when it was the lair of an uprising.
He might as well have just given those journals to the Red Lions, Sara thought.
Their only goal had been to keep them ou
t of her possession, which this did just as well as burning them.
With a deep sigh, Sara rubbed agitated hands through her head of tangled curls and paced—for once thinking as deeply as Ezekiel. This, after all, wasn’t a situation she could fight her way out of with swinging swords. Not yet, anyway. As she turned on the thinly carpeted floor of the tent, Sara thought about what she knew and what she didn’t know…which was a lot.
A boom sounded not too far off, and her entire body tensed at the sound of the blast and the screams that followed. But it was a single boom, not multiple, so she unstuck her feet from their stiff stance in the rug on the tent floor and resumed pacing.
The Kades obviously had specific targets in mind, and running outside like a hen with her head chopped off would be foolish. After all, if they wanted to attack the commander’s tents further, after the hail of arrows, they would have done so. No, for now, they were finished here, which gave Sara the few minutes she needed to sort out the strands of deception running through her mind.
She couldn’t prove that the journals were what the Red Lions had been after when they’d slaughtered her mother, but they hadn’t come over for tea, and Sara and her mother had owned nothing of value otherwise. For them to kill an innocent woman and use a necromancer to raise her body from the dead in her own kitchen was just overkill…or a sign of desperation.
So, thinking of those journals sitting right under Kade noses was just irony. But only so much. Because she’d much rather they’d be in her eager hands. She’d fought so hard for them and shed so much blood.
Which was why she wasn’t giving up. Not yet, anyway.
Pushing away her thoughts, Sara tuned her inner turmoil out and struggled to focus on Ezekiel’s words.
“When you say you left the journals at the Madrassa,” she heard Ezekiel say quietly, “are you sure you meant the Madrassa?”
Matteas peeked up from where he crouched on the floor, trying to make himself as small as possible. A poor attempt, considering there was so much of him and so little floor space to disappear into. If the arrows came through the tent walls again, they’d find their target easily, and Sara wasn’t feeling charitable enough to drag him to safety again.
