Fallen Ashes: Fated & Forbidden

by T. F. Walsh

  “Whoa there. Want to get recaptured?”

  A crease marred the bridge of her nose, dusted in black powder. Hair blemished with ash curled behind her ears. And her irises were incredible—the shiny reflection of an opal beneath a rainbow. Saber swore the fleck of colors shifted. His gaze settled on the iridescent silver scales at the corner of her eyelids. To humans, it probably resembled make-up. Most drae women were born with transparent scales on their eyelids. The males of the species sported pale gray just like his.

  “Why’s there an invisible barrier?” Watching her pace back and forth in front of his cell wasn’t helping.

  “I think we’re bound by magic. Now, either handle the fire or get back into your cell.”

  With the siren and Fire Girl’s indecision, Saber’s brain buzzed with fuzzy static. If he didn’t know better, he’d have sworn he was picking up an old radio signal.

  When she sent another quick glance down the hallway, her face went rigid with tension. “Damn you. Back away from the door. Now.” Her commanding tone did something to his insides, warming them.

  “Do your parlor trick, then.” He retreated to the rear of the cell, keeping his attention fixed on the door. If they remained, Noah would sell Fire Girl to a power-starved lord, or an old pervert desperate for a young female. Noah was a psychotic half-drae who got his kicks from siphoning magic out of strong Tapestry draes while making a buck by selling the rest of his prisoners without usable magic. That was why Saber was locked up in the holding cell, waiting for his buyer to come and collect him. But today he was getting out.

  He rubbed his hands together, noticing the dragon indent on the inside of his wrist again. Last night, he had a fucked up dream about the Creators selecting him to find a soul mate before the Blood Moon. Otherwise, they’d turn all Tapestry beings into humans. Fuckin’ ridiculous. For one, Saber didn’t have a soul, so no shitting way would the Creators have chosen him. He guessed the dragon mark was Noah’s branding, and it might also explain the magic binding him to the girl next door. The dragon stamp hadn’t been there yesterday when he left the main prison but was the first thing he noticed this morning after waking up in this dump. The enchantment might also explain his delusional dream, or maybe someone had knocked him over the head hard before his transport.

  A guttural sound echoed down the halls outside his prison door. Curiosity forced him closer. When golden flames licked the underside of the door, he halted. How in Tapestry’s existence had she conjured fire again so easily? With that force, she’d need a blowtorch. No one he’d ever heard about in the two kingdoms had such abilities.

  Azure light radiated upward, and its tentacles zigzagged across the enchanted barrier. A flash. Sparks shot into the air.

  Saber covered his head with an arm, bolted for the door, and grabbed the handle. A jolt of searing heat burned his flesh. He flinched. A thousand knives stabbed his palm, and he swallowed the scream rubbing the back of his throat. Red blisters across his palm from the burns hardened in an instant and cracks formed, reminding him of soil in drought. He curled his wounded hand and a dusting of soot cascaded. The pain eased, replaced by numbness and stiffness. Purified dirt would solve his problem before it spread, and that meant getting out of prison fast.

  The door creaked open, and he staggered sideways.

  Fire Girl stood in the opening, eyes wide, one of her hands gripping the handle with no reaction. “We have to go.”

  No time for questions. He squeezed through the doorway into the dark corridor.

  Heavy breathing and stomping caught his attention from the other end of the hallway. Two trolls emerged. Tusks. Dreadlocks. Seven feet of muscles. Their leathery skin glistened with sweat. The duo charged. Trolls were at the bottom of the food chain for a reason. Dumb-asses.

  Fire Girl stood immobile in a staring match with the encroaching guards, their wrinkled blue uniforms showed even in the darkened corridor.

  “This way.” With his good hand, Saber grabbed her wrist. A charge arced up the length of his arm from her touch, but he held on and ran. Dilapidated walls blurred in his peripheral vision.

  As they careened into another passage, they located more rooms.

  Behind them, the guards thundered in a straight line toward them.

  Fire Girl’s cheeks paled.

  “Feel free to use your fire magic, anytime.”

  “I-I… Just run.” Her breathing labored.

  With Saber’s lungs starved for air too, he didn’t have the energy to argue.

  Their boots crunched debris, probably rat bones, but Saber didn’t want to think about it. He pulled Fire Girl along, yet with every turn, they encountered more passages. Saber’s heart raced as his gaze darted left and right to more hallways. Which way out?

  A quick glimpse back over his shoulder and he saw a guard rounding the corner at least twenty feet away. Arms swinging. Each pounding step closed the distance. Shadows deepened the guard’s scowl.

  Fire Girl ripped free from Saber’s hold, skittered into a passage half buried by a collapsed wall, and vanished into the darkness.

  Great idea. He sprinted after her. Climbing over the debris, Saber tripped to keep up with her petite form. The girl was agile.

  A horrendous crash from behind startled them, and they both glanced around to see one troll removing fallen chunks of wall from the floor and tossing the huge lumps of concrete aside.

  Saber’s fantasy of freedom had never involved being squished to death by trolls throwing sections of walls.

  “Go faster,” he shouted.

  Emerging from the hallway, they entered a room four times the size of the prison cells. No other doors were visible—dead end. A gaping hole in the ceiling was probably big enough for a troll to push through. The rays of sunlight glistened in from the opening and caused them both to squint.

  A guttural croak resonated somewhere behind them.

  Fallen realized the walls surrounding them were too high and unreachable with a single jump. No furniture in the room for leverage either.

  “Help me over the wall.” Fire Girl’s gaze bounced between him and freedom.

  “Remember, we’re bound together. You won’t get far.”

  “I’ve got a plan. Now move.”

  Considering he hadn’t come up with another idea to break free, he nodded.

  She stepped into his interlaced hands, weighing little to nothing. He raised his arms, lifting her upward. Using the wall for balance, her fingers grappled for the edge of the hole. Saber pushed her above his head, standing on tiptoes to give her added reach. Despite their fucked predicament, his attention lingered on her curved ass. Wrong place. Wrong time. Wrong everything.

  The moment she pulled herself up and out of the hole, a grating voice barked unintelligible words. Saber spun around.

  Hulking across the room was a drooling troll, his fat lips smacking as if he’d just chewed on bones. These bastards ate humans. Yet, the queen still hadn’t issued a culling for the breed despite the growing number of trolls outside the realm.

  Saber surveyed his surroundings for a weapon. Nothing. An empty room, reeking of shit!

  “All right, we’ll do some butt-kicking the old fashioned way.”

  The towering troll scrunched his flat nose and snarled, reminding Saber of an overgrown Guinea pig with no facial hair.

  “Don’t worry, it’ll only hurt a lot.” While trolls generally didn’t understand human words, this guy would soon enough. Saber charged his opponent before the second bulldozer could join the scene.

  The troll swung an arm. Saber ducked to avoid the blow… a swooshing breeze across his back. He sidestepped and launched in an upward climb along the troll’s back. Clutching several dreadlocks, he drove a fist into the creature’s ear. Get the troll dizzy enough and maybe he could escape.

  When he stared at the open ceiling, the sunlight teased after months locked in the shadows and darkness. Where was Fire Girl with the rescue party?

  A large hand swatted S
aber in the face. He lost his balance and tumbled, landing on his back. Air gushed from his lungs in a loud puff.

  The troll raised a bare foot with pointy toenails over Saber’s head. Saber pushed into a side roll and scrambled off the floor. No toe jam in his face today.

  “Sometime this century, Fire Girl,” he shouted, hoping to inspire his partner to hurry. Was her intention to let him die? She’d still have his body bound to her. Surely, she wasn’t that stupid. He hoped not.

  The troll lunged.

  Saber, still stuck in his thoughts, gritted his teeth as huge hands smashed against his chest. Driven backward, he struck the wall with enough force to empty his lungs and gasp for air.

  The troll’s laughter exploded, snorting through his nose while lips peeled back over stained teeth. Rotten cabbage breath bathed Saber.

  He gagged when the troll head-butted him. Saber’s vision blurred, and he watched the walls rush past as he landed on the ground like a sack of rice. Every bone in his body groaned.

  Saber dragged himself onto shaky legs, now standing across the room from the troll.

  The second dumb-ass with only one tusk burst into the room and unleashed a gorilla belch, thumbing a fist to his chest.

  “I agree. Your boyfriend should have waited for you before having fun.” Saber shook his head, but the fog refused to dissipate. It shouldn’t have mattered when two trolls were glaring his way. If Saber escaped through the passage they’d entered, he wouldn’t get far. Not while bound to Fire Girl, who was quickly becoming a huge disappointment.

  “Okay, boys. Let’s talk about this.” He raised his palms into the air. “I know a great place where female trolls hang. I can’t promise quality…” He waggled his eyebrows.

  One-tusk stomped across the room, his chest rumbling with a snarl.

  Saber curled his hands, the burn wound sending a wrenching cramp through his arm.

  When his enemy swooped closer, Saber curled into a forward roll and leaped to his feet. He dealt punches into One-tusk’s ribs, then kicked a boot into the back of his knees, and thrust sore hands into the guard’s back, propelling the ugly one into the other troll.

  “We’re just getting started, boys, though two against one is never a fair fight.”

  A shadow loomed from above.

  Saber glanced up with astonishment as a tree, complete with roots, swung into the room through the hole. The limbs grated against the edge of the room. The trunk smashed into one troll, pinning him by the chest to the floor. He wailed but wasn’t going anywhere and would probably survive with a few broken ribs. Hard bastards to kill.

  The top branches of the tree leaned against the opening. “Took your time.” Saber launched up the make-shift ladder.

  One-tusk snagged his shirt, hurling him backward. Saber pivoted in place to catch himself and laid a heavy punch on the guard’s chest. Strike after strike, he drove the bastard back. Finally, the troll tripped over his own feet.

  Saber spun and lunged onto the tree. Holding on tight, he scrambled up.

  A few feet from escape, the trunk rocked and yanked out from under him. He struggled to hang on, his fingers latching onto the ledge of the gaping hole. Beneath him, the tree lay across the room. One-tusk’s arm reached for his feet.

  Saber curled his legs upward and pulled himself higher. His injured hand sparked with a stabbing sensation. He gritted his teeth, trying to overcome the pain. Once into a sitting position at the top of the opening, he glanced outside. An ocean of forty-foot-tall trees with green crowns in every direction. Saber inhaled the fresh air and grinned.

  “Freedom, how I’ve missed you.”

  He sat two stories above the ground. How had Fire Girl managed to get the tree up this far?

  Without hesitation, he jumped down, landing with perfection on a bent knee as a blanket of dust and dirt puffed up around him. Ah, where were the crowds to cheer him on for that clever move?

  Now where was Fire Girl?

  Saber’s gaze swept the forest nearby, landing on a building resembling an asylum. For centuries, Earth and Tapestry remained separate worlds but magically linked. With humans depleting resources and polluting the environment as if it were a race to destroy themselves, their world had begun to draw resources and energies from Tapestry for survival. Without that connection, the humans would have gone extinct years ago. Now, replicas of their buildings and entire cities had started to appear in Tapestry in locations drained of energy. Nothing else would grow there again, just like this building in the middle of the woods. The two worlds were so closely linked that if one died, the other wasn’t far behind.

  An object moved in his peripheral vision, and he whirled around, fearing another enemy.

  Fire Girl stepped out from behind a tree three times her width. Her hands were deep in the pockets of the jeans sitting low on her hips. Singe marks and small holes dotted her clothes. Sunlight sparkled in her hair amid the black soot. Her pale complexion was common among most draes, but even in human clothes, she’d stand out in a crowd. The curves of her frame had him transfixed. Even her blonde hair screamed ghost—a contrast against the dark eyes that studied him. The corners of her mouth were raw and swollen as if she’d rubbed them too much or got burned. But the blaze in her expression dared Saber to ask the wrong question.

  He ran a hand through his hair. “Could have used some earlier help. Guess you were busy looking for the perfect tree. Anyway, I’m Saber, and we need to leave this place, now.”

  “You’re a talker,” she said. “How do I undo our bond?”

  “Babe, if I knew, we’d already be going our own ways.”

  A noise from below at one end of the building turned their attention to a troll careening around the corner. One-tusk!

  “Fuck.” Saber grabbed Fire Girl’s elbow and propelled her near him. “Run.”

  3

  Fallen sprinted across the forest floor. Dodging low-hanging branches, she darted through a curtain of ivy dangling from an oak. Leaves covered the branches, and more vines wrapped around the trunk. The forest was green and beautiful while releasing a thread of sugary magic that tickled her nostrils, confirming they were in Tapestry, not the human world. Farther to her left, trees with twisted trunks fanned out into an overgrown hedge to a haunted house. Beyond them lay the center of the Hoia-Baciu woods.

  In the human sphere, people believed the place was a paranormal phenomenon with so-called UFOs, ghosts, and angels. To draes, the Baciu forest was a graveyard to the Blood War that had taken place between the two realms centuries ago. Now, the kingdoms remained sworn enemies.

  Saber kept pace alongside Fallen. Magical bond. Locked in with him. Laughable, but she’d been thrust backward by the invisible shackles twice. She’d find a way to break free once they ditched the troll.

  She caught a glimpse of Saber’s strong arms. Could he bench press a car? And then she spotted a tattoo running vertically down his neck—script in the ancient language.

  Shuddering at the sight, every nerve sizzled. Her foot tripped over a rock, and she barely caught herself on a nearby tree.

  And the day kept on sucking as they raced through the forest, avoiding conversation.

  Saber was a fucking Queen’s Guardian. The same bastards who hunted down draes for living outside the realm so Her Majesty could interrogate them. Once a drae was captured, they never left the kingdom again.

  Fallen had been hiding from Guardians her entire life. Now, she’d somehow been attached to one. Who knows why he’d been imprisoned, but once a Guardian, always a Guardian. They were sworn into the army for life. A chill ran through her body.

  The troll still thundered behind them—the ground vibrating with each stomp. Fallen’s idea was to ditch the human devourer, then face the bigger problem—Saber.

  She had just rescued the one person who could force her into the kingdom. Supposedly, despite the queen’s age of 1,023 years, the monarch could still detect a drae’s affinity and the level of magic from a single taste of th
eir blood. Fallen’s secret would be revealed in an instant. Then she could hold a farewell party for her independence and life. Her mind returned to the Creators’ dream. If she let the queen capture her, she’d fail her mission, and everyone on Earth and Tapestry would die. Talk about gargantuan stakes. There must be a way to avoid that kind of pressure.

  The incline of the terrain had her calf muscles twitching. Her boots slid on dried leaves, nearly causing her to lose balance. She seized nearby branches for leverage, occasionally sweeping a hand across the sweat trickling down her nose.

  Behind them, the repetitive thud of the troll in pursuit escalated. Fallen knew she had to move faster.

  Saber yanked her by an elbow.

  She pulled away. Obviously, the guy had zero idea where he was heading because this way led to the Baciu forest. Fallen had heard tales that the trees there came to life and wrapped victims in the roots, burying them underground.

  She knew the troll wouldn’t give up until it caught them, so she hoped they could reach the city first where more buildings would provide many places to hide.

  Over the crest of the hill, the air current beat against her back. The dense trees thinned and shards of morning sunlight cut through the canopy overhead.

  “We stay in the woods and use the trees to conceal ourselves.” Throughout their trek, Saber had barely broken a sweat. Fallen puffed and wheezed as if she’d been on a treadmill for hours.

  “No.” Her exhausted mind couldn’t string a sentence together. Damn, she’d promised herself to take up running, to get fitter, but she’d used every excuse in the world to avoid exercise. Now she was paying for it. “Follow. Me.”

  The descent on the other side of the mountain pushed her faster, feet skittering across debris.

  She leaped onto flat ground where sunlight revealed beech and oak trees.

  Without a word, she dug deep for extra energy. After a moment, she emerged from the woods and headed toward the main road thirty yards away. That route would take them to the human city of Cluj-Napoca—Romania’s second largest metropolis. Or at least the decayed replicas of the city that appeared in Tapestry. Once they crossed the thin veil, she’d step into the real human world in the exact same spot she stood whilst in Tapestry. The queen’s Guardians rarely entered the decayed human ruins, and that was why Fallen had selected the location as her home.