For Mom, who believed in me.
Dad, who supported me. Andi, who rooted for me. Josh, who encouraged me.
And Michelle and Jeannie, who journeyed with me from start to finish.
Races of Etâme
Aeriel {air}
Eerden {earth}
Mervais {water}
Fyydor {fire}
Fvudor {wyldfire}
•••
Tierenved {fire/earth}
Tierenvar {fire/air}
Tierenvem {fire/water}
Tierendar {earth/air}
Tierendem {earth/water}
Tierenmar {water/air}
•••
Elder {air/earth/water/fire}
The Nine Worlds of Etâme
Eerthe | Ionia | Helede | Balask | Corday | Grodaan | Toriel | Haimar | Sahmora
Provinces of Ionia
Gailleonne | Navean | Urkan | Heromalii | Ladria | V
ane | Quall | Turj | Rhoenne
Erroll | Deltorra | Kember | Cerulean
Prologue
{Heledian Summer, Day 46; Year 889, Helede}
The crowd gathered in the amber light of dusk, their red eyes fixed on Prince Killian as he pulled the dagger from the white-hot coals.
Killian lifted his gaze, meeting his father’s russet eyes. He could feel the eagerness of the crowd as he handed the blade to his father and exposed his forearm. King Fyrenn settled the dagger against Killian’s wrist. Fire erupted in his muscles as metal seared into skin. He bit back his scream, casting his mind wildly for something to distract from the pain. The memory that surfaced was dangerous—a secret that threatened to shatter him. If his father knew, he wouldn’t hesitate to turn the blade and drag it down Killian’s wrist, bleeding him out then and there.
“Killian Falken Fyrenn.” His father’s voice—smooth, pleasant, with an undercurrent of instability—was amplified for the thousands watching. But his eyes bore into his son with a sharpness that rivaled the dagger’s edge. The blade left Killian’s skin, trailing a thin wisp of smoke and the sickly sweet scent of charred flesh. “Your coming-of-age trials are complete.”
Killian allowed himself his first real breath, then broke his father’s stare and looked down, flexing his fingers and stretching his arm to relieve the pain. His family crest glared blood-red and cauterized-black.
“This mark you bear as a reminder to all, of who you are and what you have done to earn the right to bear it.”
What he had done.
The memory returned: his knife at the throat of a broken, defenseless man. “The boy in your dreams is not you. He is real. And—”
His father’s eyes flickered and narrowed.
Killian’s heart stuttered with fear.
“You have proven yourself a Fyrennian,” the king continued. “Most importantly, you have proven yourself as my son.”
I have proven nothing. You played me for a fool, and I have dared to play you back. He wished he could scream the words instead of swallowing them.
“Let the celebration begin,” the king declared, signaling the fireworks that soared into the darkening sky.
A cacophony of cheers, whistles, and explosions engulfed the ceremony square. But the moment his father leaned in, the sound seemed to drown to a whisper.
The king’s voice had returned to the hard-edged tone Killian knew best. “Come. We have much to discuss.”
Killian hesitated, sensing something dangerous in his father’s manner. He searched the party of guards and servants standing watch on the castle stairs, catching sight of his mother. In the instant her eyes found his, Killian’s insides turned to lead.
The subtle shift in her expression would have been unnoticeable to anyone but her son. He understood the warning in her eyes as well as if she’d shouted: He knows.
Chapter 1
Ariana rested her forehead against the bay window of the dusty, derelict room, imagining that the world obscured by the steady rain was safer and kinder than it was. “Forty more days...”
“And you’ll be free,” Tehya completed the thought without missing a beat, her cinnamon-red curls bouncing lightly as she dropped into the seat beside Ariana.
“Free to finally roam the school grounds together. Free from the Huntsmen. Free from her.” She caressed the worn, aged cover of the book in her lap, imagining Ruekridge and its fabled towers. “No more sneaking around, hiding my father’s life’s work under dirty old floorboards, stealing back the books when she finds them.”
Tehya grinned, warmth and excitement in her eyes. “Yes, now you’ll be able to take them from the Ruekridge Library with full permission.”
Ariana’s heart filled with delight at the prospect. “I’d sleep in that place if they’d let me.”
“I’m not the least bit sorry to know they’d never let you.”
Ariana laughed. “If only sharing a room with you was a more likely scenario.”
“If only,” Tehya sighed wistfully. “But it’s possible we could get rooms facing each other.”
“That would be the best, wouldn’t it?”
Tehya’s verdant eyes sparkled with mirth. “Oh, the trouble we could get into.”
Ariana envisioned a vine linking their windows, several stories high, stretched across the space between their Orders’ towers. “Trouble? Us? Never.”
“You’re right. Never us,” Tehya teased. “You’re the trouble. I just follow you around and get caught in it.”
“Ha!” Ariana thumped Tehya’s leg with the flat of the book, and Tehya kicked harmlessly at her in retaliation.
Their laughter was cut short as the double doors blew open, dust motes flying about the room like startled birds.
Ariana tensed. Tehya shrank into the cushions.
Madame Emory entered the room like a thunderhead, slate-grey eyes glowing in cold disapproval.
“This has to stop, Ariana.”
She gripped the book tighter. “You’re right. Please stop.”
Her mother’s expression didn’t change. “I’m not doing this with you again.”
“Then don’t.”
Her mother arched her brows; her tired skin taut over angular bones, making her look, as ever, both beautiful and severe. “Give me the book.”
“It’s all I have left of him.”
“No. It is the reason you don’t have him at all.”
Ariana stood, incensed. “It isn’t, Mother. It isn’t and you know it. You just don’t want me following in his footsteps.”
“Those footsteps will lead you to an early grave, Ariana. I won’t have you throwing your life away for a cause that cannot save us.”
“But it can! And once I become the next Master of Words, I’ll prove it to you.”
Her mother shook her head. “You will not. Because you cannot.”
“But she’s incredible, Madame Emory,” Tehya put in, uncurling from her corner, bravely meeting the Shadow Keeper’s hawkishly narrowed eyes. “If anyone has the skills to do it, it’s her.”
Ariana took Tehya’s hand in hers; a silent thanks for her unwavering support. But the gesture didn’t soften the sting of her mother’s words.
Madame Emory offered Tehya a sad, knowing smile. “I do not doubt my daughter’s skills, sweetling. I fear them.”
Ariana tensed, her hand sliding out from Tehya’s.
Her mother took a step toward her. “You are Tierenmar. That alone is a threat to your life. On top of that, you’ve declared the most dangerous profession in the Nine your calling. If the Fyrennians ever found you—and by some miracle, didn’t kill you—they would enslave you in Lockden and torture you until you had no will of your own. And then
they would use you as a weapon against us. You—with your abilities—are an incredible threat.”
“Maybe,” Ariana interjected, as Tehya moved to stand by her side, nodding agreement. “But I’m also an asset, if you would allow the Shadows to use me. Being Tieren makes me a target but it also makes me strong. Strong enough to fight—”
“Not right now, it doesn’t. Not at fifteen. You’re too young and too stubborn to see that you’re as much a danger to yourself as you are to the Fyrennians.”
Madame Emory held out her hand, silencing Ariana’s protestations before they could leave her tongue. She straightened her shoulders, her face solemn. “If you continue to fight me on this, if you refuse to consider another way—a safer way—to employ yourself in the Shadows, you’ll force me to do something drastic.”
A chill plucked at Ariana’s skin. Threats were a new tactic. In all the times they’d had this argument, not once had her mother stooped so low. Her blood fizzed as anger coursed through her veins. “I will fight you for as long as it takes for you to accept this. I’d rather die like my father, trying to change things, than squander my abilities just to extend my own life under this oppression.”
Ariana had not raised her voice, but in the silence that followed, her words rang loudly in the air around them. No one moved. No one took a breath.
Her mother’s eyes darkened. “Give me the book.”
“I’ll just find it again.”
“Not if I burn it.”
Ariana jerked back in surprise. Then she stepped forward, her anger flaring, and shoved the book into her mother’s hands. “Burn it, and I’ll never speak to you again.” She brushed past her, pushed through the doors, and swept down the curved stairwell to the entryway.
As Ariana stomped into her boots, she heard Tehya politely and awkwardly maneuver out of the room to follow her.
“I can’t stay here another moment,” Ariana didn’t turn around until she’d snatched her long coat from the rack and slung her leather satchel over her shoulder.
Tehya looked ruffled, but she nodded, reaching for her own coat and boots.
Madame Emory descended the stairs. The temperature in the entry plunged as she met her daughter’s eyes. The rain hammered the roof of the house as if in warning. Ariana paid it no heed. Upset as she was, the weather wouldn’t affect her.
She was barely out the door and down the front steps before the raindrops turned to snowflakes in a radius around her. Puddles splashed her knees as her boots slammed into the ground, the flying droplets crystallizing in the air before dropping back down to the newly frozen pools beneath her feet with an icy tinkling. She ran hard and fast through the sodden fields, trying and failing to escape her anger.
Only when she finally reached the tree line at the edge of Rockwood Pass, did she stop. She turned, waiting, her breath ragged—from the run itself or the adrenaline, she couldn’t be sure. Shaking off the dusting of snow that clung to her dark hair, she swiped at her watery eyes.
Tehya caught up after a moment, soaked from head to toe and shivering, her expression one of loving annoyance. “Couldn’t have extended that snow to land on me, too?”
Ariana grimaced. “Sorry.”
Tehya waved her off. “I understand. Help me dry off a bit, would you?” She twisted her hair tight in her hands, wringing it out.
Ariana nodded, pulled off her coat and dropped it on the ground before wrapping her friend in a tight hug.
“Brr.” Tehya flinched at Ariana's touch.
“Sorry again. Give me a minute.” Ariana let her icy skin sense the woolen texture of Tehya’s soaked coat against her arms—and the cool, satin-softness of the girl’s wet dress against her exposed knees. A stray thought crept into her head and she noted, absently, that she ought to have changed out of her house shorts before she’d stormed out. But she tuned out the distraction and her thoughts turned completely to the moisture in Tehya’s clothes as she drew it out.
For a moment, Ariana’s skin seemed to absorb the water. Then she shook it off. “There,” she said, as the air around them filled with droplets that dissipated and drifted in a mist to the rocky path beneath their feet.
Tehya breathed relief and patted her dry clothes. “Good work.” Then she frowned. “Ariana,” she said, drawing the syllables out slowly, caution in her voice. “I know you’re upset, but… we shouldn’t be here. Did you mean to come this far?”
Ariana looked around. She had come too far. What she could see of the main road—before it bent and disappeared in the trees—was, for the moment, empty. But it wasn't likely to stay that way. She'd run right past the entrance to their secret, much safer path. She reached for her coat, intending to turn back, but a noise stopped her, half-bent.
"What was that?" Tehya whispered, her eyes wide.
Ariana strained to listen. Around the bend, a horse neighed, and someone cried out—in shock or in pain, she couldn't tell. Torn between curiosity and fear, she grabbed her coat and stood, unsure which way to go.
"Huntsmen?" Tehya whispered.
Ariana furrowed her brow. She worried the same. Only... "It sounded like a boy. He could be in trouble."
"But the horse..."
"Maybe he stole it, and it bucked him off?"
"Or a Huntsman ran him down," Tehya cautioned.
Ariana sighed. That was much more likely.
They listened again. Whinnies and the murmur of a boy's voice. But nothing else. No rough commands, no screams of pain or helpless protestations.
"I don't think it’s the Huntsmen."
"Me neither. We should take a look," Tehya said, not waiting for Ariana’s agreement. "Make sure the kid's not hurt, at least."
"Stick to the edges," Ariana cautioned.
"Of course."
The girls ducked into the tree line and started around the bend. As they drew closer, Ariana glimpsed the silky blackness of the horse through the trees. Her steps faltered. But the horse had no metal horn strapped to its head, no armor, no saddle, and most importantly, no red metal band around its back right hoof. Which could only mean that it was—
"A Mustang," Tehya breathed, coming to the same conclusion.
"They never come this close to the city," Ariana murmured in astonishment.
"Ria, look.”
There was a boy—tall, with hair the color of rich, wet soil—standing before the Mustang, his back to the trees. His clothes were strange, unfamiliar, dirty, but otherwise intact. He wasn't hurt or even, remarkably, in danger of getting a hoof to the face, it seemed. He was interacting with the beast as if it was tame. But it wasn't. It couldn't be. It was a Mustang: wild and dangerous and never, ever this close to a human. Not willingly. And yet, it was letting the boy touch it.
He reached his long, tan arm past the Mustang's muzzle and ran his fingers along its flank, calming it with a low voice and soft words.
"What is he doing to it?"
For a moment, Ariana didn't follow. Then she saw what Tehya meant. Wherever the boy's fingers touched the Mustang's jet-black sides, they left chalky white trails. But his eyes never left the Mustang's face, and he didn't seem aware of what he was doing. For someone their age, this skill was remarkable. To be able to do something like that, at fifteen, without conscious effort, he'd have to be...
"No way." She couldn't see the back of his hands well from this distance, but he seemed to be unmarked, like her. Like Tehya. "A Drawer?"
"A what?"
Tehya's confusion was understandable. Ariana only recognized his race because she'd read about them during one of many searches through her father's library for information about what made her own race so rare. Of course, that was back when the library had still held books, not just dust and thwarted dreams. "He's Tieren, Tey. Tierenved''. As rare these days as she. Lucky thing, then, that he had yet to get his mark. "He's one of the Hunted."
Tehya's eyes widened with excitement, then fear. "Then why in the Nine is he standing out in the open in the middle of Rockwood P
ass?"
"Apparently, he has a death wish," Ariana edged closer to the tree line, straining to pick up his words. His accent was strange and hard to place. There was something wrong here. Why was he in the Pass? The toned muscles beneath his strange, short-sleeved shirt were relaxed, as if he was unaware of any threat. But anyone from Ladria—really, all of Ionia—would have some sense of the danger. Unless they were already in league with the Huntsmen, already enrolled in Lockden.
“We have to warn him,” Tehya whispered. Her friend's thoughts were clearly not taking the same turn as Ariana’s.
“Tey, wait. I don’t—” Ariana cut herself off. Tehya had already slipped through the last stand of trees. Ariana bolted after her, hoping to catch her arm and pull her back before he noticed.
But Ariana’s sudden movement spooked the Mustang. It jerked its head back, its eyes wide and wild.
The boy whirled, his pale olive eyes locking on the girls with confusion and surprise.
“Hai! We—” Tehya began, stepping forward as she spoke.
The Mustang backpedaled, then reared.
"Look out!" Ariana's cry came too late
There was a hard, muffled thud as the Mustang reared, its hoof catching the boy in the back. His mouth formed an "O" and then he flew forward, slamming into the trunk of a large tree. He slumped, facedown and unmoving, onto the leaf-strewn ground.
The girls gaped. The Mustang took off running and disappeared into the trees.
The surprise kept them frozen until the sounds of hoof-beats were no longer distinguishable from the pattering of rain on the canopy above. But as soon as reason returned, Tehya darted over to the boy. Ariana started toward him too, but what lay on the edge of the packed gravel road caught her eye.
Near an open canvas bag, which sat half-buried in leaf litter, aged papers poking out its top, was a book. It was worn and tattered and splayed open, revealing a page filled with ancient, cryptic-looking symbols.
She snatched it up, hardly daring to believe her luck. Elder Script. The dying language of the Masters. The language that only she and a handful of others in all the Nine, truly understood. The language of the portal books. A sudden, startling possessiveness took hold of her. This was a book her mother would never know about. And even if she did, she couldn’t take it away because it wasn’t hers. Borrowing had never been an option; there were so few left in this world. But now… Now it was possible. She had to ask him for it. However he’d obtained it, she had to have it.
The Onyx Vial (Shadows of The Nine Book 1) Page 1
