Crisanta Knight: The Lost King
© 2019 Geanna Culbertson. All rights reserved.
Book Six in The Crisanta Knight Series
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopying, or recording, except for the inclusion in a review, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Published in the United States by BQB Publishing
(an imprint of Boutique of Quality Books Publishing Company, Inc.)
www.bqbpublishing.com
978-1-945448-45-4 (p)
978-1-945448-46-1 (e)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019940385
Book design by Robin Krauss, www.bookformatters.com
Cover concept by Geanna Culbertson
Cover design by Ellis Dixon, www.ellisdixon.com
First editor: Pearlie Tan
Second editor: Olivia Swenson
Books in The Crisanta Knight Series
Crisanta Knight: Protagonist Bound
Book One (2016)
Crisanta Knight: The Severance Game
Book Two (2016)
Crisanta Knight: Inherent Fate
Book Three (2017)
Crisanta Knight: The Liar, The Witch, & The Wormhole
Book Four (2018)
Crisanta Knight: To Death & Back
Book Five (2019)
Crisanta Knight: The Lost King
Book Six (2019)
Crisanta Knight: Into The Gray
Book Seven (2020)
Dedication
This book, like everything I shall ever accomplish, is dedicated to my mom and dad. You are my heroes, my coaches, and my best friends. I am thankful for you every day for more reasons than there are words in this book.
Special Thanks
Gallien Culbertson
For a million things and counting, thanks for being there. Mike Tyson said people have a plan until they get punched in the face, so thanks for helping me recover from those punches and throw the best jabs myself.
Pearlie Tan & Olivia Swenson
Thank you for helping me make every book the best it can be and for pushing me to be the best author I can be. I appreciate you both tremendously.
Alexa Carter
I always give thanks to you in my books because of the important role you play. I wonder if someday I’ll run out of adjectives to describe you, but today is not that day. Thanks for being so caring, wonderful, dependable, and brilliant at all times.
Ellis Dixon
I am so grateful to have you be a part of Team Crisanta Knight and I love working with you to develop the covers for every new book we work on.
Julie Bromley & Jennifer Herron
Ladies, I am so appreciative of all the work you do to help me and my series grow and seize new opportunities.
I also want to thank The Fine Family, Bree Wernicke, // TECHYSCOUTS, Girls on the Run, Read to a Child, Girl Scouts, Aimee Bender, Ian Culbertson, and all the other wonderful people who have supported this series so actively, and my many fans who I hope to continue to amaze, enthrall, and surprise in the future.
Bonus Dedication
Since this is going to be an eight-book series, each book will include a bonus dedication to individuals who have significantly impacted my life or this series in some way. This one is for my publisher, the fantastic Terri Leidich & BQB Publishing.
Terri, thank you very much for believing in me at the start of this journey and for always working hard to help me and my series be the best we can be. Your support for the last few years has been invaluable and greatly appreciated. Every quest could use magical assistance and every hero on a mission could use an ally. Thanks for being one of my most important ones.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1 DIVIDE & CONQUER
CHAPTER 2 THE TEMPLE OF MALBONA
CHAPTER 3 WORLD’S SCARIEST PROMISE
CHAPTER 4 THE LAST PENDRAGONS
CHAPTER 5 THE SIEGE
CHAPTER 6 REUNITED
CHAPTER 7 A GREAT ADVENTURE
CHAPTER 8 IN PLAIN SIGHT
CHAPTER 9 THE SET UP
CHAPTER 10 MY BROKEN PROMISE
CHAPTER 11 EXORCISED
CHAPTER 12 MURDERER
CHAPTER 13 BLONDE MITOSIS
CHAPTER 14 THE LAST STAND
CHAPTER 15 LOOSE ENDS
CHAPTER 16 KNIGHTED
CHAPTER 17 PROPHECY FULFILLED
CHAPTER 18 SLEEPING ARRANGEMENT
CHAPTER 19 THE GIRL IN THE MIRROR
CHAPTER 20 MY NEW ROOMMATE
CHAPTER 21 THE PRINCE & ME
CHAPTER 22 BACK IN THE SADDLE
CHAPTER 23 FRIENDSHIP & SOMETHING LIKE IT
CHAPTER 24 COMMITMENTS FULFILLED
CHAPTER 25 MY FIRST
CHAPTER 26 THE WOMAN IN BETWEEN
CHAPTER 27 TRIGGERED
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Prologue
Oh, what a difference a day makes.
You’ve probably heard that saying before, though you may not be able to pinpoint where it came from. I get that. As the daughter of Cinderella, and a girl who lives in a world full of fairytale characters who are constantly being adapted in new stories, I’m used to being surrounded by things that feel familiar but have foggy origins. The latest turn in my adventure, for example, has been a hodgepodge of recognizable characters and concepts, but also one mindboggling surprise after another.
It all started last semester when my friends and I discovered that the antagonists of our realm were plotting to break out of their magically sealed-off kingdom of Alderon, overthrow our world, and eliminate its protagonists.
To give a little background, the citizens in my world of Book are divided into two main groups—protagonists and common characters. Common characters are the ensemble cast of our reality.
What do I mean by that?
Well, have you ever been in a coffee shop surrounded by people and thought to yourself: Is everyone here meant to make a difference in the world, or are some people just fillers—everyday folks who don’t cause ripples, but form the masses that cause the unique to stand out? That’s the mentality in Book. Common characters (commons) are the horses that allow the unicorns to stand out, and protagonists are the unicorns.
Protagonists are destined to be the main characters of their own stories and attend special academies in their youth to prepare for those roles. My roommates, SJ and Blue, and I are protagonist students at Lady Agnue’s School for Princesses & Other Female Protagonists. Meanwhile our close friends Jason and Daniel are protagonists enrolled at our brother school, Lord Channing’s School for Princes & Other Young Heroes.
Our realm’s Author selects Book’s main characters and her choices are manifested in the form of physical texts called “protagonist books.” These volumes are inevitably filled with her visions for our futures, but all start with a prophecy that summarizes the gist of the plot that will define each of our lives. Once your protagonist book appears, you are sent to the appropriate school to learn how to be the type of main character the Author intends for you to be. If you don’t receive a book, then you go on living an ordinary life as a common where nothing spectacular is expected of you.
This was our land’s system—rigid, but orderly—for generations. Too bad the whole thing was riddled with deceit. Last December, my friends and I discovered that the Author wasn’t some all-controlling, all-knowing prophet. She was actually a former Fairy Godmother with Pu
re Magic Disease, which gave her the ability to see glimpses of the future. Our realm’s Godmother Supreme and the rest of our higher-ups had been using her visions and propagating her legend for a long time to control our land and its people.
My friends and I had planned to expose this sham, but we had more immediate problems to address first. Starting with retrieving Paige Tomkins’ memories.
Paige was a Fairy Godmother who’d disappeared from Book a decade ago. Because of her former position in the Fairy Godmother Agency, she was the only person who knew where Book’s mega-powerful genies had been imprisoned. Fearing that people would eventually capture her and force her to share that mighty secret, she’d fled the realm and gone into hiding. Book was only one of fourteen magical worlds in our dimension, known as the Wonderlands, so the odds of her being found were slim.
Regrettably, Book’s antagonists (commons gone bad, if you will) were undaunted by these odds and set on tracking Paige down so they could find out where the genies were being kept. They wanted to use the magical beings to further their plans of conquest over Book. Thus, SJ, Blue, Jason, Daniel, and I had embarked on a quest to foil them. We were a few of the only good guys out there who knew about the antagonists’ wicked intentions, so we had a responsibility to stop them by locating Paige first.
Lo and behold, we’d actually succeeded (yay!) but the win was not so simple.
In order to really protect her memories, Paige had gone to Oz and gotten herself turned into a brainless scarecrow. Brainless scarecrows were victims of Glinda (the formerly good, but recently turned wicked witch of Oz). When victims were transformed into scarecrows, their memories were stored in Glinda’s all-but-impenetrable memory stone, which she kept in her lair in the North Mountains of Oz. The only weapon that could pierce this memory stone and thereby retrieve Paige’s memories was the legendary Camelot sword Excalibur. So, off we’d gone in search of the famous blade so we could achieve our goal.
This was a demanding challenge on three fronts.
For one, traversing Camelot and its many formidable monsters, dangerous lands, and treacherous traps in pursuit of Excalibur was a lot to ask of anyone, let alone five (admittedly feisty) teens.
Second, the main antagonists we were competing against were even more formidable, dangerous, and treacherous. It was hard to say which of them I hated more: Arian, Mauvrey, or Alex.
Arian, under direction of the antagonist queen Nadia, was one of the main villains leading the charge against Book. Our paths had been intertwined since my protagonist book prophecy declared I was going to be the key force responsible for either stopping the antagonists’ plot or helping them accomplish it.
Arian was smart, ruthless, and an impressive fighter. I’d learned to respect that and be wary of it. He was also a constant threat to us because he could get past the defensive force field surrounding the antagonist kingdom of Alderon, called an In and Out Spell.
In and Out Spells are enchanted barriers that keep people from getting in or out of the locations they protect. There were several in Book, and the one around Alderon worked at half capacity so villains and monsters could get tossed in but wouldn’t be able to escape. Unfortunately, some antagonists like Arian were not limited by the spell because they were Shadow Guardians—people who allowed dark creatures called Shadows to live inside them. It was a symbiotic relationship because while the Shadow fed on the soul of the host, that very lack of a soul let the host pass through In and Out Spells undetected. Luckily, most people were not compatible with Shadows, so there were only so many antagonists from Alderon running freely around the Wonderlands. Which was fine by me because there were plenty of bad guys out here already. Like Mauvrey.
Daughter of the famous Sleeping Beauty, Mauvrey was a protagonist turned Shadow Guardian and villainess. She had gone to school with me, SJ, and Blue since the start; however, girl decided to go all evil and disregard her princess lineage for a life of wickedness. I still didn’t know why she’d changed; I’d met her a few times before attending Lady Agnue’s and thought she was perfectly nice. But she had turned malicious at school and fully leaned into the villainess role. Now, like Arian, she had no problem trying to kill us and was working with the antagonists on their nefarious endeavors.
I loathed the blonde for many reasons, but the greatest was that she had brought Alex into this. Alex was one of my two older brothers. He used to be heir to the throne of our kingdom of Midveil, but after getting romantically involved with Mauvrey, he had joined the antagonists and helped launch an attack on our kingdom and castle as part of the commons rebellion gaining traction in Book.
Ugh. I can feel myself grinding my teeth just thinking about it.
Before all this came to light last week, Alex and I had been really close. Now it felt like he was dead to me. He was a Shadow Guardian, an antagonist, and a traitor. All but a tiny ember of love that remained deep within me was sure that he could never be redeemed. As such, I would not hold back whenever or however he opposed me. The time for mercy had passed. I already had enough things going on without being distracted by affection for someone who was so lost.
Anyway, aside from our cruel foes, the third main threat working against my friends and me in our quest to retrieve Paige’s memories was time. This issue was arguably the most daunting.
At the start of our quest for Excalibur, we only had a few days to get it and get back to Oz. Now we had less than one day to return there and cross the In and Out Spell around Glinda’s lair during the Vicennalia Aurora.
I know, it feels like we’ve been building toward this climax forever, right?
For those of you who missed the last two story arcs, or would like a little reminder, the Vicennalia Aurora is this great magic fluctuation event that takes place simultaneously across all Wonderlands, despite time differences in each realm. For us in Book, it happens every twenty-five years. Other worlds, like Oz, Neverland, and Camelot, experience it every five-and-a-half. Either way, at exactly 7:30 p.m. tonight, for just one hour, all the skies in the Wonderlands were going to be streaked with beautiful colors as magic throughout the fourteen realms went bananas.
While the greater populace of the Wonderlands was excited about this because of the pretty lights and celebratory parties, my friends and I were gaming up for the magic instability caused by the Vicennalia Aurora. We had learned that this year’s Aurora was going to make ordinary magic weaker. Which meant In and Out Spells were going to become weaker too.
Oz’s rulers had blocked off Glinda’s domain in the North Mountains with an In and Out Spell to protect the realm from her. It was a bit of a weird hybrid spell because it combined different forms of magic, but it worked like the one around Alderon: beings could go in but they could not get out.
Though my friends and I had become immune to certain types of In and Out Spells through past ventures, we were not immune to Glinda’s. Therefore, the only night we could enter the North Mountains in pursuit of Glinda’s memory stone was tonight, during the brief hour of the Vicennalia Aurora when the spell would be weak enough to allow us to pass back out without a problem. If we didn’t exit in that window, we would be trapped there just like Glinda.
This brings us to the here and now.
Throughout our journey the antagonists had been one step ahead, but for once we finally had the advantage as we raced against the ticking clock of the Aurora. After a harrowing journey across Camelot, my friends and I had beaten our enemies to Excalibur and I now had it in my possession. It was literally in my hand and we had seven and a half hours to get to the North Mountains and use it before the Vicennalia Aurora struck and a whole bunch of climaxes collided.
What, did you think getting Paige’s memories was the only thing at stake here?
Don’t you know me better by now?
y entire world flashed and I found myself standing six feet in front of Blue.
“You’re back!” my friend exclaimed, scrambling to her feet.
She’d been sitting on
the sandy embankment of the lake that surrounded the mystical Isle of Avalon. While she and the others needed to stay behind, Jason, Daniel, and I had gone over to the isle to find and retrieve Excalibur.
Blue threw her arms around me. Then she abruptly pushed past me to hug a surprised Jason, who had appeared behind me alongside Daniel.
“How’d we get here?” Daniel asked. “We were just in that cave battling the antagonists.”
“The Lady of the Lake,” I replied. “It was part of our reward for successfully claiming this.” I raised my arm and proudly held up Excalibur. The sunshine reflected off the glorious blade, which glowed light blue.
“Oh, my word! You did it!” SJ gasped. Our princess friend was standing high on the bank near the treeline, on the lookout for enemies. Her long black braid swung behind her as she cantered toward us. “You actually did it!” she said, her gray eyes full of wonder.
“Was there ever any doubt?” I asked sassily.
“Yes,” my friends replied in unison.
“Fair enough.” I shrugged and smiled.
SJ gave me a hug as Kai embraced and kissed Daniel. Kai was Daniel’s long-time girlfriend from their hometown of Century City, the capital of our realm. She wasn’t a protagonist like the rest of us; we’d only met her recently. But through a bizarre turn of events and a potion that the wizard Merlin had given us, she’d ended up in Camelot.
Ordinarily I would have welcomed all the help we could get. Kai was courageous, fierce, and an amazing swordfighter. Unfortunately, Daniel’s prophecy complicated things. It dictated that I would be a key ally to him and Kai, but it also said I had the potential to destroy her.
Daniel had entrusted me with this information last semester, assuring that he didn’t hold it against me. We both believed we could take fate in our own hands, so he was going to do everything he could to ensure his prophecy had a favorable outcome and he ended up with Kai. Meanwhile, I had promised to do everything in my power to help him protect her along the way. While Daniel may not have held me responsible for his prophecy, I felt responsible for him, at least his happiness. The hero had been my ally and friend throughout this journey and he meant something to me. As for Kai . . . we’d gotten off to a rocky start, but I liked her. I just hated that she was in the thick of it with us because protecting her was about to become much harder.
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