Claiming the Prince: Book One

by Cora Avery

  It grew quieter as they traveled downwards. Deafening clangs and the stomps of hundreds of boots gave way to the shuffle of softer soled feet and hushed whispers, to near silence when she and Kaelan were finally and unceremoniously dumped onto their butts.

  Her head pounded. Her vision blurred. Blood ran along the bridge of her nose, skating hot and salty over her lips. But at least she was sitting up. Kaelan rolled onto his side next to her, his eyes fluttering. He, too, had a bloody wound on his forehead.

  Before them rose a dais, upon which loomed a geometrically embellished throne carved from the same greenish-blue stone that made up the grand hall around them.

  On that throne sat a wizened and imposing dwarf with a star-white, blue-streaked beard. His deep brown eyes were half lost under his bushy eyebrows. A golden, gem-encrusted diadem crowned his white mane with its blue braids. His clothes were no different than the those of the dwarfs who had brought her or those who gathered in the periphery of her vision—lamellar-studded leather tunic, scuffed but sturdy-looking boots.

  Dwarfs and fairies weren’t the only ones gathered there. Between the towering columns clustered sharp-eyed brownies, bobbing bald imps, long-nosed warty goblins, even a hulking, yellow-eyed troll.

  The dwarf on the throne, Lord Froenz, she supposed, wrapped his thick fingers around the arms of his chair and leaned forward.

  “Guilty!” His voice boomed like a man ten times his size. “To the death!”

  She tried to speak, but the oily rag, now damp with her spit, only seemed to work itself deeper into her mouth from the effort.

  “Wait, my lord,” another voice said.

  From the crowd, a limping man in loose linen clothes emerged.

  She tensed, going for her knives, but the ropes lashed her hands palm to palm, preventing her from reaching into her shadow’s vault. The only daggers she could throw at Python were from her eyes.

  Kaelan remained slumped on the ground beside her, insensate.

  “Oracle, step forward.” Lord Froenz waved him towards the throne.

  Python offered Magda a snake smile as he approached the dwarf lord, giving Froenz a low bow.

  Froenz pinned Python with an obdurate look. “You wish to speak in defense of the convicted?”

  Python’s hands flew up. “No, my lord. They are guilty of being Elves.”

  A strangled protest came out of her throat, but was ignored.

  Froenz continued to watch Python fixedly, waiting.

  “But I thought it might behoove you to know that I believe these two may be of some import and may be worth saving . . . for a time.”

  The dwarf lord leaned back, running his hand over his beard.

  “Before I was driven out of my home by that bastard Elf King all those years ago, may he and all his heart-places rot in the bellies of the Forgotten Caves . . .”

  A murmur of agreement rippled through the hall.

  When it quieted, Python resumed his speech, holding his audience rapt.

  “I foretold the coming of a Prince, who would bring about the war against the Dökkálfar that we have long waited for. The one who would see the Throne bow.”

  A raucous cheer greeted this. Even Froenz’s eyes took on a happy twinkle. At that moment, something warm and soft brushed up against her hand and along her back.

  Hero.

  Everyone was too busy pumping their fists, cheering the mention of war. No one seemed to notice the rat burrowing between her back and hands.

  Delirious at his appearance, she imparted an image of the pile of bread to him.

  “Oh sure,” he said, as he began chewing into the ropes binding her hands. “Still waiting for the first one.”

  She wanted to smile and cry at the same time. Even if she managed to free herself, she didn’t know what good it would do her in a hall filled with hundreds of Elf-haters.

  Though she probably could’ve spoken telepathically to Hero, she found it easier to impart another image.

  Finally, the crowd settled down enough that Python could be heard again.

  “As you know,” Python went on, “I made the mistake of telling the King of my vision. I thought soon I would die. I did not realize that the great and strong Lord Batri, 614th ruler of the Petra Islands, would come to my aid.”

  More cheers.

  Hero slunk along her hip and thigh. She bent her knees up to allow him under.

  “When I made this prophecy, the Elf King tortured me with basilisk venom, dripping it upon my legs so it ate holes straight through my flesh and my bones. Under this agony, I was compelled to reveal to him everything that I had seen. Most importantly, that this Prince, who would see the advent of this great war, would be of his own blood. A second born twin.”

  The hall was silent. Python held them spellbound. Even Magda hung on his words.

  Suddenly, Python swept his arm towards her. She lowered her legs.

  “Careful!” Hero cried as he was pinned under her calves.

  “Later, I had another vision. One of a King to come, whose wife would bear these ill-fated twins, and then the death of that second son by his father’s own hand. And I despaired. For it seemed the time of war would not come, and that we would fail in our noble quest against the Dökkálfar.”

  The mood in the hall darkened. Even the lights seemed to dim.

  “But then I met this Rae, this Ljósálfr, exiled by her own kind, and I received yet another vision. I saw her in the Shadow Realms. She reached into the tempest of darkness and withdrew two swords. One was red with blood, and upon its blade was the King’s diadem. And that was when I knew the twins had been born, but that the father had failed. The second son had escaped and survived. I knew this Rae would find him and bring him forward.”

  Every eye turned towards her. The weight of their attention fell as heavy as dwarf boots on her.

  A second son of the king? One she would bring forward? But that didn’t mean . . .

  She glanced over at Kaelan, still unconscious on the floor. When she looked at him, everyone else did too.

  Her eyes snapped back to Python. The soft gnawing and groan of rope filled her ears, but if anyone else heard it, they didn’t appear to realize what it meant.

  “And so she has,” Python said, his slick eyes sliding over to her before he turned back to face Froenz, who had pressed himself far back in his throne, his eyes wide and yet distant—as if he was both eminently aware and deeply thinking.

  “I know that our cause has always been against the Elves, of all names,”—Python threw this comment back over his shoulder at Magda—“but I implore you to consider that this Rae and this Prince might be our only hope of seeing an end to the reign of the Elf King once and for all.”

  “Well, now,” a voice said from the back the hall, smooth and deep and haunting, “isn’t that interesting?”

  Magda twisted, accidentally snapping the ropes that Hero had loosened. With all eyes on the back of the hall, she was able to shake them free and surge up to her feet without challenge. Hero darted over to Kaelan, perching on his arm protectively.

  “Seize her!” Froenz bellowed.

  She retrieved her knives and unleashed them, backing up until her heel bumped Kaelan.

  The crowds remained frozen despite the King’s command.

  The deep pockets of shadows filling the grand hall swept together, like the hands of an ogre, crashing together before the massive entrance doors.

  The shadows parted, unfurling across the floor and up towards the ceiling in billows. As they cleared, they revealed a lone figure in black armor.

  Endreas.

  FROENZ LEAPT TO his feet. The head of the axe in his hand was bigger than the one on his neck. A contingent of dwarfs raced into formation, creating three lines before their lord, one of shields, one of spears, and one of axes. The rest set up along the perimeter, merging in front of the doors, behind Endreas. Fairies swirled up, up, up and away, fleeing via some unseen cracks or vents perhaps. The brownies, too, vanished
. Imps darted frantically back and forth between the columns. Goblins hunkered down behind the dwarfs, as if preparing to take bets on the fight to come.

  She should’ve been looking for a way to take advantage of the situation, yet she couldn’t quite pull her attention away from Endreas.

  His fitted armor at first appeared to be leather, but the scales were black and iridescent. Color rippled over their surface as he moved. From the stiff shoulder pauldrons shadows wafted like a torn cloak fluttering behind him. His hair was drawn back, fixed in elaborate plaits, giving his cheekbones a deadly edge. Both of his swords remained at his sides, sheaths fixed to the cuisses constructed of the same oil-like scales.

  He didn’t look at her. His black eyes remained fixed on Froenz.

  Python slithered back, up to the dais, next to the lord’s throne.

  “How dare you enter my hall?” Froenz bellowed.

  “Your hall?” Endreas glanced around at the dwarfs surrounding him, a smirk playing over his lips. “Everything in the Realms belongs to the King. Are you the King, dwarf?”

  “You should not be able to enter this place,” Froenz said, almost as if to himself.

  Endreas’s smirk grew into a smile, but it quickly wilted as his gaze moved away from Froenz and found Python. “Oracle.”

  Python gripped the back of the king’s throne. “What are you waiting for?” he growled to Froenz. “Kill him!”

  “Yes, kill me,” Endreas said, drifting over to one of the flanking dwarfs, who was glaring bloody murder up at him. Endreas removed his glove and ran his finger down the curve of the dwarf’s axe blade, drawing blood. “Ouch,” he said, licking the blood from his skin. For a split second, his gaze flicked to meet Magda’s.

  Finally.

  But then he was tugging his glove back on and returning to the center of the hall. With Elven flourish, although she once would’ve called it Pixie flourish, he drew his swords, spinning, whipping tendrils of shadow around him.

  Sweat could be heard dripping onto the polished floors as the dwarfs stood poised at the ready, waiting.

  “Now . . . lord dwarf, you, the oracle, her, and that,”—he pointed his sword from Magda to Kaelan—“will return with me and submit to the King’s justice.”

  “My lord—” Python growled.

  “And the others?” Froenz asked. “My people?”

  “If you come peacefully, we will allow the women and children to leave.”

  “And if I refuse?” Froenz asked in the same granite voice.

  Endreas slid his swords back into their sheaths.

  “I have a friend who has been waiting to exact her own kind of justice for what you’ve done to her children.”

  A thunderous thud accompanied the hall’s quaking. Crystal globes fell and shattered around them. Cracks appeared in the ceiling. Faces turned upwards, mouths agape.

  Magda drew back her knives and crouched, slapping Kaelan’s cheek. “Wake up.”

  His eyes fluttered. He rolled onto his back as another deafening boom sounded from above. The hall shook with increasing violence.

  And then a distant shrieking roar echoed through the earth and into the hall, filling Magda’s heart with claws of ice.

  The troll in the back blubbered, “Dragon.” The word echoed softly through the hall.

  And then a mass exodus began, goblins and imps and the troll shoving through the line of dwarfs to open the hall’s doors.

  Endreas stood at the center of the hall, arms folded, face serene as the hordes streamed past him. “What say you, dwarf?”

  Froenz strode down the steps of his dais, his men parting before him and closing again behind him.

  “This is my hall!”

  He lifted his axe and let out a war cry to match the roar of the dragon above. The lines of dwarf warriors surged forward.

  Endreas spun. A black whirlwind formed around him, growing and growing, spinning up to the ceiling. Shadows peeled away from the cyclone and resolved into Elven warriors, who met the dwarfs’ axes with their swords as the shadows sloughed away from their blades like phantom sheaths.

  “Damn it,” Magda growled as she was buffeted by the dwarfs pushing by her to reach the Elves. She grasped Kaelan’s arm and attempted to heave him up, but she was too weak to carry him.

  Another boom from above splintered a nearby pillar. She threw herself over Kaelan. Hunks of stone crashed and shattered around them. Fragments pelted her, cutting her arms. Dust choked the air.

  She hooked her arms under his shoulders, intending to drag him towards the doors. But they were at the far end of the hall and the battle barred the way. She let Kaelan slump to the floor again, waving the dust away, searching for another exit. Surely Froenz didn’t enter through the main doors.

  She crouched, covering Kaelan again as an Elf almost backed into her, and a dwarf’s axe thunked into the stone a few inches from her knee. Another Elf appeared, a woman, she grabbed the dwarf’s head by the hair and yanked it back, slitting his throat. Blood poured in a crimson gush across the dwarf’s chest.

  The Elf’s deep green eyes lingered on Magda quizzically for a moment before she was drawn away by the battle.

  Magda locked her arms around Kaelan’s chest again. “There has to be a way out of here.”

  “I believe I can help you with that.”

  From his perch on her shoulder, Hero hissed.

  Near Kaelan’s knee a little man had appeared wearing a brown silk suit and a pert expression on his walnut face.

  “Kirk,” she spat. “You traitorous little—” She grabbed for him, but he disappeared and reappeared on Kaelan’s other side.

  “I’ve been sent to assist you,” he said imperiously.

  “Just like you assisted me with the Enneahedron? Where is it?”

  “It is quite safe.” He winced and grimaced as another dwarf fell, dead, next to him. “But I do believe we should go.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you. I should murder you! You—”

  A splintering crack, like lightning, interrupted her. A huge chunk of ceiling crashed. Dwarfs and Elves fled, but not all of them made it clear. A black scaled snout that made Anqa’s beak look like a sweet little canary’s thrust through the hole. A snort of smoke shot from the dragon’s slitted nostrils, filling the hall with sulfur.

  “Oh shit,” Magda muttered.

  “No more time to argue,” Kirk said. “Hold on.” He placed his hands on Kaelan’s leg.

  A jet of violet-white flame funneled down through the hole.

  Wrenching, piercing cries filled the hall. A sound she knew too well—the screams of blood spilling.

  A wolf’s fangs bore down on her. Two ice blue eyes trembled before her. A low growl rippled out of the beast’s throat. Hero darted down her shirt, balling at the small of her back, digging his claws into her skin.

  “Thank you, Kirk,” Python said as he stepped forward.

  The brownie bowed. “Yes, Master.”

  Python placed a hand on the wolf’s head, which came up to the oracle’s shoulder. Two slate-gray wings stretched from the wolf’s back . . . not a wolf after all.

  “Semargl,” she said, hugging Kaelan’s shoulders tight. He groaned softly, but didn’t wake. “I thought they were extinct.”

  Python ran his hand over the top of the semargl’s head. “If the Elf King had his way, all of the wolf breed would be.”

  Kirk had magically transported them to a rough-hewn stone chamber. Behind Python and the wolf-semargl, a yawning opening as big as a double garage showed the star-soaked sky beyond. On either wall, torches guttered against the salty ocean breeze. The crash of water breaking against rock churned somewhere nearby. Just when she was about to speak, the call of the dragon pierced the night, echoing from a distance.

  She swallowed hard, resisting the urge to skewer Python with her dragon blades. “You planned this, didn’t you?”

  “No,” Python said, smiling sadly. “I do not make the future, I only see it.”

>   She laid Kaelan’s head gently down on the stone floor and rose. The semargl’s wings flexed again, his head and ears lowering, his icy eyes never leaving her.

  Python stroked the creature’s head. “You’ll have to forgive my friend. She does not trust Elves.”

  “All this time, you knew I would come back here?”

  “No,” he said. “I only hoped you would. So many visions I’ve had, so many paths that could be, but you are our best chance, our only chance.”

  “Chance for what?”

  “To bring an end to the Elf King’s tyranny.”

  “You mean for him to bring an end to it,” she said, gesturing to Kaelan. “Is he really who you say? An . . .”—her jaw locked up for a second—“Elf Prince?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Then why did you say—?”

  “Because I foresaw that you would find him and bring him forward. And that is just what you did.”

  “I didn’t bring him forward. We were accosted and dragged into Froenz’s hall. And where is the Enneahedron?”

  “Here.” Python took it from his pocket and held it out to her.

  She hesitated, nonplussed by his willingness to hand it over. Charily, she took it from him. Relief and a fresh influx of much-needed strength passed into her from the smooth stone.

  “You will take the Prince and become Radiant, correct?” Python asked.

  “Is that why you lured me to this island?” she said.

  Python’s expression was impossible to read. “I had to bring you before Froenz and the others.”

  “The other dwarfs?”

  “There were more eyes in that hall than you realize.”

  “Why?”

  “I had to convince them to support you.”

  “Support me? Froenz was going to kill me.”

  “I would’ve persuaded him otherwise,” he said. “It is in their interests to join with the Crown, as much as they hate Elves.”

  She stuffed the Enneahedron deep into her front pocket. “I am not an Elf.”

  “You are Ljósálfr—light elf,” he said.

  She shook her head, digging her hands into her hair, grinding her teeth. “What do you want from me?”