by Cait Spivey
Published by
Table of Contents
Cast of Characters
Dedication
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
Epilogue
Arido at a Glance
About The Author
Acknowledgements
Connect with Cait
Copyright
Cast of Characters
Guerline Hevya, newly appointed Empress of Arido
Evadine Malise, her lover and Chief Adviser
Imperial Council:
Pearce Iszolda, Lord Treasurer
Shon Marke, Lord Justice
Neren Famm, Lord Legislator
Lanyic Eoarn, Lord Merchant
Theodor Warren, Lord Engineer
Jon Wellsly, Lord Historian
The Witches:
Aradia Kavanagh, Heart of Gwanen Clan
Jaela, Hand of Gwanen Clan
Morgana Kavanagh, Heart of Adenen Clan
Aalish, Hand of Adenen Clan
Olivia Kavanagh, Heart of Sitosen Clan
Tesla, Hand of Sitosen Clan
Fiona Kavanagh, Heart of Thiymen Clan
Moira Emile, Hand of Thiymen Clan
Kanika Asenath, Memory of Thiymen Clan
The Guild of Guards:
Bertrand Altec, High Commander of the North
Tragar Madacy, High Commander of the West
Yana Lot, High Commander of the South
Maddox Bolva, High Commander of the East
Josen, Captain of the Palace Guard
Frida, palace guard
Hamish, palace guard
Other humans:
Desmond Kavanagh, son of Olivia
Undine Wellsly, Guerline’s lady-in-waiting
Bridget Camlin, Sitosen deserter and leader of the Del thieves’ guild
Piron, head priest of the Del Temples of the Shifter Gods
Derouk Madacy, governor of Braeden
Other magical beings:
Aasim of Raeha, wizard of the Atithi people
Silas Purvaja, Queen of the Purvaja dragons
Dedication
To the GNs, without whom this book would not exist.
And to Dr. Deborah Vause, who taught me to question what heroism really means.
Chapter One
Guerline held the smooth ceramic poultice jar in her left hand. Her right held a large scoop of greenish goo, which jiggled and betrayed the shaking she fought to control. She stared at it. Vaguely luminescent, yet transparent enough to show a distorted view of her palm, it waited for her to choose.
Her father moaned, and her gaze listed from her hand to his face. He and her mother were laid out before her, their deflated shapes resting on plain linen sheets. Guerline wondered whose decision it had been to stop sacrificing the Sunese silk to her parents’ oozing, wondered if her parents were even aware that their deathbeds had been reduced to roughspun blankets. That cloth was almost worse for the situation than the silk; the linen absorbed all the fluids and odors that hung around her parents in a miasma. In the ten minutes she’d been standing over them, their stench, the smell of rot—sweet, but tangy with metal underneath—had burrowed into her nostrils and permeated her throat.
Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and she could see almost every detail of her disease-ridden parents. Pieces of their scalps peeled back from their skulls and piled wetly on the pillows in grotesque halos. Their hands were so deteriorated they were practically bone, laid on their stomachs and surrounded by little pieces of flesh stubbornly clinging to joints. Their noses were gone, sunken back into their skulls. Their eyes had melted away completely. Their lips were falling off, and their tongues lolled.
It had only taken a week for her parents to decompose, and they weren’t even dead yet.
No one would speak of it. A flesh-eating curse. Such things were unheard of in the center cities. Magic had all but disappeared in the capital and surrounds, crawling back to the borderlands where the witch-lords guarded the empire from any who made it across the cliffs, the mountains, the forests, and the seas that formed natural defenses around Arido.
Magic’s retreat was the reason she had only a poultice at her disposal, rather than the healing powers of a Gwanen witch.
Guerline relented at last and inhaled deeply, blinking past the sting of pungency in the air. The poultice was useless. She knew it, and if her father had his senses at the moment, he’d know it too. He’d slap her and curse her for getting such a fool notion into her head, demand to know why, at nineteen, she couldn’t manage not to be a bother. The poultice wouldn’t save him. She doubted that even a Gwanen witch could, at this point. Their only hope, if such still existed, was with Thiymen clan, for the emperor and empress were certainly more dead than alive.
The poultice might ease some of their pain, though, and it was this mercy Guerline debated. She had come to their sick-chamber with every intention of being a help to them, as much as she could. Yet her hand would not turn over, would not apply the poultice to her father’s flesh. Tears filled her eyes that had nothing to do with the acidic atmosphere in the room. Was her heart so bitter, that she couldn’t exceed her parents in decency?
“Guerline, what are you doing here?”
She jerked to attention, silently cursing the smooth-hinged door. Her brother stood a few feet inside the room. Though she stopped herself from taking a step back, she could not stop her knees from buckling; she leaned against the thick mattresses of her parents’ bed.
Alcander wore his customary glare as he looked at her, squinting at the jar and goo in her hands. He held a white handkerchief over his mouth and nose; a pitiful attempt, she imagined, to block the smell of death. Like her pitiful attempt to ward off the thing itself with her poultice.
She looked back down at her parents, fear like an icy rock in her stomach. Her father’s chest collapsed minutely, an attempt to breathe. Guerline’s own chest tightened as she fully comprehended, for the first time, that when her father died, Alcander would be emperor.
Lisyne save us from the reign of Alcander.
Alcander stomped closer. “Well? Answer me!”
“I was just trying to help,” Guerline whispered.
He was silent for a moment, then said quietly, “Stupid girl. Can’t you see they’re beyond help?”
Guerline’s stomach turned at the softness of his voice. She tried to stand still as he stalked toward her, boots hissing on the stone. “Mother is . . . but if we could just summon a Gwanen witch—”
“Absolutely not.”
She slumped forward, cast her eyes down, and bit her lip, but Alcander stayed where he was. Slowly, she pushed herself away from the bed and stood on her own.
Unable to bear the gelatinous texture of the poultice a moment longer—it felt too much like a stag’s stomach—she dumped her handful back into the jar, dragged her palm along the rim, and set it down, taking up the small towel she’d brought and wiping her hands.
“Summon the Thiymen witch, then,” she said.
“The damned Thiymen witch has no need of a summoning, she will come when she comes,” Alcander spat. “Whether I will it or no.”
He looked away from her, staring into the dark far corner of the room, and Guerline narrowed her eyes at him. Surely even Alcander, who hated magic, wouldn’t prevent the witch from doing her duty. But if he could, if he had that power, would he stop the witch from laying their parents’ souls to rest? Guerline couldn’t fathom why Alcander the favorite, Alcander the firstborn and heir, would deny his parents their final reward, even if it had to come from a witch’s hand.
“Their souls must be taken to Ilys,” she said.
Alcander sneered at her. “The god-denier still believes in Ilys, does she?”
Guerline’s cheeks flamed, but she didn’t look away. It was an old argument among the royal family. Her parents and Alcander were all devout followers of the shifter gods, but Guerline . . . she questioned. Both that the gods existed as anything but stories, and whether such gods as were described should even be worshipped; either question was enough to earn her the hatred of her parents and the derision of her brother. Alcander seemed to delight in reminding her that only her value as a political bargaining chip prevented Emperor Johan from turning her over to the Temple for cloistering and flagellation. As if those threats were meant to teach her to love the gods.
“I have never seen Lisyne. I have witnessed the power of the witches. If they say Ilys exists, I will trust them,” she said.
“You do wrong to rely on the witches, Guerline. They are exalted enough as it is without a member of the royal family setting such a poor example for the rabble. Remember that they were created to serve humanity,” Alcander said.
“At least they are among us,” she retorted before she could stop herself.
Alcander rushed her. She tried to twist away from him but tripped on her gown and fell forward. She flung her hands out; one landed on her father’s stomach and sank into the sticky mass, tacky to the touch and soft beneath his sopping velvet doublet. She could feel hard lumps within his guts that could have once been bones.
She screamed and pushed back, slipping again and reeling into Alcander’s waiting arms. He snapped them shut around her, strong like bands of iron around a barrel. Her fingers went numb with panic and she collapsed, hoping to break his grip with her dead weight. But he was ready for her. He snaked one arm around her waist and used his free hand to grab both of her wrists together.
“Stop your whimpering. Weren’t you paying attention?”
Guerline swallowed hard and stopped breathing. Alcander nuzzled in close to her ear, his smooth cheek scraping the stubble on her shaved scalp.
“Father didn’t make a sound when you struck him. Do you know what that means?”
She gulped again. Yes, she did. Father was dead.
“I am emperor,” Alcander whispered.
He let go of her waist and she spun away from him, ignoring the burn as her wrists twisted in his grip. When she faced him, he stared down at her, his brown face wide and unreadable. For one horrible moment, she thought he might—
He released her.
“Get out,” he said.
She hesitated. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d let her go only so he could chase her.
“I said, get out. Now!”
She barely resisted the impulse to run.
Alcander contained the urge to seize Guerline’s arm as she brushed past him. She must have thought he didn’t notice, but he knew she’d been purposefully avoiding him. He wouldn’t stand for it. But there would be time to deal with her later.
He walked around the sickbed, hardly breathing, watching his father and mother warily. Both lay utterly still. He went to the windows and ripped the curtains back. Sunlight flooded in. Alcander turned from the window to look at them and gasped at the full horror of their decay.
His stomach churned. Coughing and choking, he ran from the room. The door slammed behind him. He leaned against the cool stone wall and sucked clean air into his lungs.
“Alcander?”
The prince jumped and turned. He smiled when he realized it was only Evadine. She looked pristine in her simple linen dress, with her black hair plaited down her back and her cheeks lightly rouged. She was a welcome vision of health and life after the disgusting scene he’d just witnessed. Her face was passive, but her eyes asked the question: what happened?
“My parents are dead,” Alcander said.
Evadine dropped to one knee.
“Your Majesty,” she said demurely.
Alcander smirked and went over to her, hooking a finger under her chin and guiding her up. He looked into her eyes.
“You need never bow before me, Eva.”
She did not respond. Her eyes danced over his face. “You’re so ashen, and sweating. Is it that bad?”
His lip curled. “They were living corpses. Impossibly alive even as their bodies disintegrated. But they are dead now, and that’s all that matters.”
“Thiymen will pay,” Evadine said.
Alcander scowled at the dullness of her voice. She said she supported his cause—he certainly believed the reasons she gave for her begrudging support—but he was not yet sure her commitment was genuine. “Yes. Yes, they will. If only we could prove it was them.”
“We don’t need proof. All we need to do is show the people what happened to your parents. They will know as surely as we do that the disease came from the coven of death,” Eva said.
“You know I can’t do that. It would deeply dishonor my parents to show their subjects how repulsive they have become.”
She pursed her lips. “None of it would fall back on them or their legacy, Alcander. The people will blame Thiymen, as they should. They will be outraged . . . and we will have the momentum we need.”
Alcander clenched his teeth and stood silently. He knew she spoke the truth, but he couldn’t allow his parents to be seen by more people than necessary. The emperor and empress had been proud and healthy a week ago, and now they were utterly destroyed. He was of the same flesh and blood. The people may very well declare that he possessed the same susceptibility to evil magic and depose him. They had done it time and again throughout history. The people of Arido could not be trusted to stand with him if they knew the truth.
“Alcander?”
“Do not ask me again.” He walked away.
“Where are you going?” Eva called after him.
“To the Vale. Go and inform the council of my parents’ death, and get everything ready for the washing and the watch. The witch will come soon.”
“What shall we do when she does?”
He stopped and sighed, and looked back at her over his shoulder. “Nothing. We can do nothing. Yet.”
While he waited for his horse to be saddled, he went to the fountain in the square, just outside the palace gates, and splashed cool water on his face. It refreshed him and relieved some of his nausea. A stable boy came out and handed Alcander his reins. The prince mounted his horse and rode off toward the Orchid Vale, the forest on the edge of the capital city of Del.
It was almost an hour’s brisk ride from the First Neighborhood, where the palace was situated. Luckily it was midday, and since it was coming on summer, many people were spending the next few hours indoors. Lake Duveau kept the city from becoming blistering hot, like some of the Southwest, but its effect didn’t entirely keep Del from getting uncomfortable under the high sun. Alcander was grateful for his timing, though sweat streamed down him as he rode; his path was clear the whole way.
He slowed when he arrived at the tree line, and then halted. Dismounting, he led his horse to the Stone River that ran through the
center of the Vale. He slipped its bridle off and let it drink, then stripped himself of his clothing and waded into the river. The water was still cold, flush with snowmelt from the Zaide Mountains and shaded by the tall trees. Alcander dunked his head under a few times, whipped his braids back from his face, and climbed out of the river. He sprawled on the bank to dry, feeling cleansed of the grossness he’d felt at his parents’ sickbed—their deathbed.
The bodies would have to be burned. Such a blight of the flesh must not be put into the earth. Burning was a dishonor, but he was sure his devout parents would have agreed to it if they had had time to discuss it with him. The trick would be convincing the council, and keeping it from the public. The funeral procession would be closed-casket, unusual but not unheard of. The watch, though . . . he hardly wanted to allow the witch to gloat over the ruination of his parents’ bodies. Could a Thiymen witch collect a soul through a coffin? Would she even come for his parents’ souls? And what would he do if she did? He was a skilled swordsman, but weapons were no match for magic.
He detested Thiymen clan all the more for his dependence on them. Only a Thiymen witch could take his parents’ souls to Ilys, the place of rest they deserved—yet how could he give her care of their souls when he knew that her clan had murdered them? To confront a witch without a plan was certain death. His hands were tied. The watch must take place.
His horse looked up and snorted. Alcander raised himself onto his elbows.
“What is it?” he asked.
The horse’s eyes were wide and white all the way around. It trotted nervously back and forth. Alcander stood up and listened intently, but he couldn’t hear anything over the horse’s stamping and snorting.
“Will you shut up?” he snapped at it.
The horse screamed, reared, and ran, breaking through the underbrush in its haste to get away from whatever it had sensed.
“Hey! Come back here!” Alcander yelled, running a few steps after it.
He could still hear it screaming, but it was long gone. Alcander scowled and gathered his clothing, grumbling about stupid animals and the long walk back to the palace. He pulled his trousers on and laced them up, and had started to pull his shirt over his head when he shivered violently. Had it gotten colder in the forest? He looked up; the summer sun was still shining through the trees as it had been before. He shook his head and laughed. He was not usually prone to paranoia, but the eeriness of his parents’ deaths had clearly followed him to the forest—and cost him his horse! He stood still and listened as hard as he could, wishing he had the beast’s ears or sense of smell.
