by Della Roth
…Summary…
A Conflicted Soul... Rahda Plesti, a scientist turned assassin, descends upon the capital city of Skyscraper City with one goal in mind: kill the Dark Prince and end the monarchy. Taught to hate everything about Prince Roland Rexus and the Rexus family, Rahda conceals a ten-year secret that threatens her success: she's in love with him. Already conflicted about why he summoned her, everything unravels when she discovers what the Dark Prince keeps hidden.
A Dark Prince... Roland Rexus, the mysteriously absent and secretive dark prince has his hands full ruling a post-royal revolutionized land inhabited with half-humans, beasts, and robots. The Dark Prince has his reasons for summoning Rahda Plesti. The Continent is on the brink of war, one with consequences that not only impact Skyscraper City, the Dark Prince, and Rahda herself, but the entire continent as well. He needs Rahda more than she could ever imagine, but convincing her to go along with his plan may be his hardest job yet.
A Dark Stain... The Continent is a place where a dark stain spreads, the sun no longer shines, where the rain is black, icy, and laced with metal shrapnel, and where souls are collected and owned like prized possessions. Together, Rahda and Roland must join forces and learn to trust each other... or everything and everyone they hold dear will be lost forever.
[1. Fiction. 2. Fantasy—Fiction. 3. Science Fiction—Fiction.
4. Romance—Fiction. 5. Deities—Fiction. 6. Alternate Earth—Fiction.]
Smashwords Edition | License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to my Author Page and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. The characters and events portrayed in this ebook are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2013 K.A. Shire
All rights reserved.
Cover Design by K.A. Shire
Cover Image: “Fairy” Copyright © cokacoka]
[Previous versions of this ebook have been published with different covers]
[Previous Cover Image: “Dark Beauty” Copyright © GrenouilleFilms
[Previous Cover Image: “Cosmogony Fantasy” Copyright © YaroslavGerzhedovich]
Table of Contents
Before - The Goddess
Preface - Fernley Sevradan
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
About the Author
Bonus Material
Before
“I wait for the Queen who will restore, who will reclaim, who will make me whole. Come, I breathe life into you, but first, I must take it all away.”
Goddess
Preface
“Prophecy says the last daughter of the last high priestess will reclaim the continent. I both fear and pray for this truth.”
Fernley Sevradan
ONE
SKYSCRAPER CITY IS NOT USUALLY THIS empty. It’s a little too eerie for what I expected this evening, which is a busy, bustling city inhabited with the odd mixture of royalty, vagabonds, personal pleasure servants, half-humans, and mechanized robots weaving in and out of the dirty crowds.
“But not today, Rahda,” I say to myself, clutching my meager belongings even closer to my body as I look around. Darkness moves in as the daylight fades.
Nothing feels right, not since I left my mentor yesterday and journeyed here. Turning in the direction I just came from, I observe the tall trees that lie south and the mountain range that naturally divides the continent in half. I can almost see, in the distance, where the Old City sits in relation to the rest of the mountain range.
A pang thumps my heart. I want to go back, but I know what’s expected of me, and I must continue on.
I briefly hesitate before I enter through the metal gates, the doors of which have long been removed, that separate the Dark Prince’s Skyscraper City and his Palace from everything else.
I glance up at half-built silver buildings. Even though their surfaces are coated with dried charcoal dust, the glinty material still reflects the gloomy, ashy-gray sky and the weak yellow sun-rays that barely break through the dense and permanent gray clouds.
It’s been a while since I’ve entered Skyscraper City, and even though the name is fitting, I’ve always thought of the place as Gray City. Dreary, rainy, and savage.
A fierce wind picks up, whipping my wool and metal fabriskin robe angrily at the black boots laced up over my calves. I jog left, out of the dry, dusty street, and duck under a shabby, pockmarked awning. I inspect the bright green signs that, in the Patroxi half-alien language, along with detailed pictures, advertise food, clothes, sexual favors, and drugs.
Ah… a Patroxi convenience store.
The wind picks up again and this time, a clap of thunder crashes overhead. Stepping out from the awning, I glance up and see the swirling gray-black clouds. Any second now, it’s going to pour.
Commotion in the Patroxi convenience store distracts me from the coming storm. The patroness, a tall, thin Patroxi half-alien, with thick black and orange braids and attired in a sheer fabriskin robe that leaves nothing to the imagination, shoos me away from underneath her awning.
“But the storm!” I shout at her in her own tongue and point skyward. Dear Goddess, I think. I don’t want to be caught in it when it comes down.
“No human step inside,” the patroness says in broken English as she looks me up and down with a scathing, black sneer. Her slim, gleaming fingers pluck something from the belt underneath her thick robe: an amber-colored blade. Without much of a warning—though I sort of expected it—her long arm swings at me and I easily jump back, away from the awning and into the street.
The Patroxi business owner looks up, and I watch as her features darken. Her face shifts, uncoagulates, turns translucent, and then hardens into some sort of mask-like shell, almost like a battle helmet.
Overhead, another crack of thunder vibrates my insides, and I attempt to reason with the patroness.
“Be gone,” she hisses at me in her own language, waving her small weapon around.
She sheaths her blade, unhooks the awning, and brings it flush against the metal wall. I hear a series of locking sounds coming from the inside just as the first acidic drop hits my shoulder. Then another. The black droplets scatter in front of me, splashing into the dust. Bits of black ice smack, smack, smack the ground. The wool and metal fabriskin robe should protect me against the rain.
Goddess, I hope so.
An electric charge fills the air around me, and I pull the robe’s hood over my head. Looking into the city, I can see the topmost part of the Palace Skyscraper blending into those dark clouds. I’m nowhere near my destination. Even if I sprint, I won’t make
it before I’m drenched. Waiting may not work, either, since storms around here can last days.
I don’t want to meet him looking like a pathetic dog.
Who am I kidding? It’s rumored that the Dark Prince has returned to the continent, and even though he’s the reason I came back to Skyscraper City, I doubt I’ll see him.
Without much choice, I run deeper into the Gray City as rain strikes me, thunder rumbles, and silver ribbons of lightning flash overhead like a trifecta of ominous warnings.
TWO
KEEPING TO THE SIDES OF BUILDINGS, I skirt around the streets, sprint down alleyways—including the notorious Widow’s Lane—and make my way through Skyscraper City.
After several knocks at an old friend’s shoppe, a place I had planned to stop off at before going to the Palace Skyscraper, I’ve come to realize everyone, including my old friend Dorni, is gone.
And I have a feeling it’s nothing to do with the storm. As if on cue, a ripple of lightning crashes several blocks away from me, and it nearly makes me jump out of my own skin.
Where is everyone?
Pulling my hood further down my face and cinching my wet fabriskin robe closer to my body, I attempt to shake off the black feeling of being watched as I leave Dorni’s silent shoppe, turning corner after corner, but not encountering one soul.
Up ahead, through the black rain and in the dark shadows, I see the stone arch like a beacon of hope. Main street. The Palace is so close. Almost there, I think with a grin. Nervous excitement dances in my veins at the thought of seeing him.
I slip under the stone arch, which is larger than I remember, and spot the plain, unadorned Palace Skyscraper door. If I dared look up—no one would be stupid enough to do so in a black ice rain storm—I would see crooked windows scattered unevenly around the metallic walls, as if the designer wasn’t a fan of straight lines or couldn’t be troubled to make the windows match.
In an odd way, I like how it looks. I’ve never been a fan of perfection.
I watch the door intently from across the street. Should I just knock? Even though the city is empty, it never occurs to me to suspect that the Palace Skyscraper might also be deserted. Otherwise who would have sent the invitation?
A dim yellow streetlight flickers as thicker bits of black rain hit it. A tinny sound rings out every couple of seconds. I think I see a shadow dart under one of the windows, but it disappears before I can get a good look.
Finally, I march across the cobblestone street, my boots splash in a puddle, and I pound firmly on the solid bronze door.
***
A fat, dull-silver-colored robot, about half my size, opens the door. Its tube-like arms block my entrance, but it hasn’t said anything, either.
I stare mutely before I realize it’s waiting for me to say something. Honestly, Rahda, this isn’t your first time looking at a robot. You’ve made dozens of them yourself over the years.
“Rahda Plesti,” I tell the little robot servant. “I received an invitation.”
The robot makes a series of clicking noises, like maybe it’s receiving orders, and, in its eye socket hole, a thin laser tip comes out and scans my entire body. After a brief moment it backs up and its arm gestures for me to enter. The door shuts loudly behind us.
I follow the robot through a pale blue door that leads us through a long yellow hallway that, eventually, ends at a wooden bridge that arches over a large crack in the floor.
It’s like the floor ruptured at some point in the past and, with no precise way to fix it, someone decided to place a bridge there instead. One wrong step and I’d slip away and never be found. A small chill runs through me.
The robot, probably not built to traverse wooden bridges, turns and leaves me here.
The sense of being watched assaults me again. Everything beyond the bridge, which is a wide-open space with dozens of closed doors, is dark. Anyone could easily hide in those black-hole shadows.
I should wait, I tell myself, and see what comes out from the shadows.
Stepping onto the bridge, I look down into the vastness. I can’t see anything, but based on what I smell—the hint of battery acid—I know it’s black water. It’s worse in Skyscraper City. How or why, no one knows. It’s like a great sin started here and it only needed someone to unlock the mystery of its beginning.
Why a river runs through the Palace is puzzling.
Echoes of splashing and crashing below reach my ears, though the sounds aren’t loud enough to drown out a metallic silence that reverberates around me.
“Lovely, isn’t it, Ms. Plesti?” a dark voice says from the other side of the bridge. A woman, tall, sleek, with eerie cat eyes that move and don’t move at the same time, approaches. “And to think that a thousand years ago this water was liquid diamonds. Now, black silk.”
I am more interested in why there’s a crack in the building, but perhaps I’m missing something that’s well known.
I shrug. “I don’t know if I would call it black silk. It was never this bad back home,” I say absently without realizing what I’d said. I planned to be cool, detached, remote. Something about this room—this woman—has made me a bit foggy.
“Home? You are a great deal away from home, then. Are you in the PPS service?”
Am I a Personal Pleasure Servant? Who is this woman?
“No,” I say calmly as I push back the hood from my fabriskin robe and smooth my right hand over the faux black silk scarf wrapped around my hair. My hand comes away wet.
The woman inspects the black scarf. In fact, she hasn’t stopped inspecting my whole person the entire time. I wonder if she has perfect vision. It wouldn’t be the first time someone was enhanced. Her voice purrs as her eyes dissect me, layer by layer. I have a feeling I’ve passed some sort of test. Or she plans to eat me for dinner.
“Of course,” she murmurs. “My mistake. I am Cat Evinas, Roland’s chief of staff.”
Roland.
I shudder, tingle, and sweat the second she says his name. Roland. I want to pour the word from my mouth, drink it, bathe in it. It’s always been this way. He is the reason for my journey to the city.
Roland Rexus. Powerful. Hungry. Dangerous. Some called him the Dark Prince; others, a Devil. I didn’t care which I met tonight.
Her eyes move to the bag under my arm.
“Please excuse the invasion,” she says before I realize she’s talking again, “but I must inspect your belongings.”
In a flash, she’s an inch from me and I’m handing the bag over. I see no reason to resist. I’m close enough to see the brilliance of her amethyst eyes as she examines the benign contents of my bag, then, without warning, a dark shadow crosses her face. She looks up, studies my face for a full minute, looks down again, and, just as quickly as it darkened her features, the shadow disappears.
The exotic woman places the bag’s loops up my arm and over my shoulders.
“Everything satisfactory?” I ask. I don’t know what to make of her behavior, so I keep my voice neutral.
“Why wouldn’t it be?” she asks in a challenging tone, turning away from me. “This way, if you please, Ms. Plesti,” she calls over her shoulder. Her tall legs pull her away from the bridge faster than I could ever catch up. Cat walks to one of the far doors and leads me into a cleaning chamber. I can smell the antiseptic as she opens the door. “Perhaps you would like to freshen up.”
***
Peeling off the wet robe, shirt, and trousers, I stack and fold them neatly on the granite counter. If I’m dismissed, I’ll be able to come back for these on the way out. I pull out a well-used, dressier-looking black fabriskin robe from my bag, slip it over my nude frame, and close up the toggle clasps that start at my breastbone and go down to just below my sex.
Inspecting myself in the mirror and still finding myself lacking—the black silk wrapped around my hair really doesn’t do much for me—I carefully apply coral lipstick and exit the cleaning chamber.
The woman waits patiently near the
door.
“Shall we continue on?” she asks.
“Yes, thank you, Ms. Evinas.”
“Don’t thank me just yet,” she says. As she straightens my fabriskin robe, Cat smiles seductively, as if she’s left prey for a hunter. A silver fingertip lingers near my neck, scratching me slightly—and moves away from me. I involuntarily shudder. She’s good. She’s very good. I have a feeling that Cat Evinas will complicate everything.
Before I notice it, we’ve moved into another chamber. I spot a large, active fireplace and two richly upholstered chairs nearby.
The room turns darker, even with the fire, as Cat walks me deeper in. A soothing, a soft music reaches my ears.
She smiles and leaves my side.
“Wait…” I call out. Surely she’s the one interviewing me. She slips through a door near the fireplace. As I watch her go, I realize one of the chairs is occupied.
“Hello Rahda,” a baritone voice from the furthest shadowy chair says. Long fingers play on a delicate armrest, perhaps keeping melody with the music I heard only seconds ago. “Thank you for coming this evening. It’s not often that I summon someone. I know that all of this must seem strange to you.”
Strange and exciting and seductive, I think. I can scarcely stand still – or breathe – because I am only a few feet away from him.
I stand there like an idiot, racking my brain for a coherent reply. I can hardly respond with what I’m thinking. Roland Rexus is talking to me. Roland Rexus is talking to me.
“Forgive me,” he says suddenly. “Please sit.”
“Thank you for inviting me.” Dear Goddess, I’m sitting near Roland Rexus. “It is a pleasure to be here, Prince Rexus.”
A small laugh comes from his dark corner. I have yet to see his face; not even the firelight reaches him even though it should. Why does he hide? I imagine his eyes are crinkled; that’s the way the laugh sounded, and slowly I thaw, relax.
