Heir of Ruin: A Hades and Persephone Paranormal Fae Fantasy Romance (Fae of The Saintlands Book 1)

by Leigh Kelsey

  The bright colours of the riverside huts and houses blurred past as Az’s feet pounded the paving stones, earth magic shuddering through him. His power reached out to every speck and mineral in the cobbles beneath him, ready to defend him when he gave the command.

  Beneath the well of earth, a darker, more cunning magic cracked an eye open, warily watching as Az skated around a cart thick with the scent of fresh honey cakes and sugared saints. He stifled a wince at the stallholder’s bark of complaint—and the frightened gasp that followed as she noticed the score of Foxes chasing them, the woman reassessing Azrail, Ev, Zamanya and Jaromir. From nuisances to dangerous criminals. Her brown eyes lit on Siofra held tight in Az’s arms as he ran past, the girl eerily still and calm in his arms. Just as they ran out of sight of the sweets cart, the vendor’s eyes narrowed with realisation that this girl was the one destined for the butcher’s block. Fear paled her copper skin as she staggered back.

  “It’s alright,” Az murmured as Siofra marked her reaction too, her violet eyes sharp—too sharp, too watchful. It was terror that held her still and silent.

  Az dragged air into his lungs and pumped his legs faster. Ev’s breaths were loud beside him as they sped around the bright stalls and away from the lantern-strung riverside, racing into the dim warren of alleys and backstreets he knew like the back of his hand. The sweet scents shifted to stale rainwater from puddles, cheap home cooking from a nearby open window, and piss—no matter where he went in the market quarter, it stank of river water and piss.

  “Left!” Jaromir gasped, his red hair flashing in Az’s vision as his friend streaked past him, racing towards an opening in the alleyway on their left.

  “But there’s nothing there except…” Evrille began growling, and then swallowed, her husky voice uncommonly stark. “Except the Wolven Lord’s graveyard.”

  Zamanya laughed, a rough sound that usually sent a pang of unease through Az’s chest. It was no different now. He glanced between his friends, his little family, and his chest tightened. One of these days, only three of them were going to return. Az wished he could turn it off—his desperate need for revenge, the vicious desire to watch the people who’d killed his parents suffer.

  “I like where this is going,” Zamanya said with a crooked grin, flicking black braids over her shoulder as she peered back at Ev, her dark eyes lingering on Siofra in Azrail’s arms for a second before she whipped forward again, her burgundy leathers creaking as she sprinted down the uneven cobbles.

  “I don’t,” Azrail muttered breathlessly, but he followed her and Jaromir in a mad run into the alley. The hum of Vassalaer fell silent: voices from one of the cafe barges on the nearby river hushed, shouts from the markets turned to murmurs, a shrill argument in a house to their right muffled, and even the gulls’ calls were quieter, like a blanket had been thrown over his senses.

  There was something about this place, about all the saints’ temples but especially the one to this forsaken saint, the saint whose name had been intentionally forgotten, whose story had been thoroughly erased … Azrail could almost believe the wrathful saint himself loomed over them, judging their souls like he judged the dead in his chasm.

  “They’re coming,” Siofra breathed suddenly, her voice light and tremulous as she curled her fingers into the fabric of his shirt, peering over his shoulder. She was trembling, her body a block of ice in his arms. Pure white light burst through her clenched fist and Az’s chest caved in as he glanced away, his eyes stinging.

  Saintslight. It really was saintslight. And to be so close to that mythical power … his knees threatened to buckle as he made the tight turn at the end of the small alley, following the red blur of Jaro’s hair and the gold streak of Zamanya’s magic.

  Stomach already in knots, Az glanced back as they rounded the corner, swearing softly at the burnt orange uniforms following them like a wildfire. He locked down his dread so Siofra wouldn’t see it, letting her see only strength as he ran faster, pulling up more and more magic from the earth.

  They’d have to fight, and it would be an equal match. The Foxes were all fae, and at least one of them was full-blooded. A match for Az and Ev’s demi-fae magic and Zamanya’s full power. As a beastkind, Jaro didn’t possess any magic other than the spark needed to transform into a jaguar, but he knew how to fight. Maybe they’d have the edge. They’d walked away from fights with worse odds.

  But power built in coiling ribbons around the Foxes’ spears when Azrail threw another rapid, assessing glance, each breath scraping up his throat as he pulled up yet more power, holding it shaking in his arms. He’d have to give Siofra to Evrille or Jaro while he let loose this coiling strike of magic.

  No, he hissed at the clever power that once again opened a lazy eye from deep within him. Not you. Go back to sleep.

  To his relief it did. For now.

  “Faster!” Azrail growled at his family, the full weight of his authority behind the word—a voice he preferred not to use. Rare, for a demi-fae to have this dominance, and rarer still for one to possess this much power—enough to rip up a whole square.

  He flicked his fingertips, the only movement he could manage with his hands gripping Siofra tight, that precious cargo. Saintslight … shit. She could commune with the saints. Or at least was brushed by their power, imbued with it. She was the only glimpse of that power they’d seen since the last Ghathanian Queen, since that rare light was snuffed out by the current crown family. No way in the dark fucking chasm was Azrail letting these Foxes snuff out this child’s light as well.

  Not just because she was a kid and didn’t deserve the kind of end intended for her but … pivotal. She was so damn pivotal to the things he planned in secret. She could change everything—for him, for his sister, for every persecuted or indentured beastkind in the Vassal Empire.

  He tugged on a thread and the dirty bricks in the back street behind them rumbled, hauling themselves out of the ground. Az didn’t look, trusting his magic, trusting the living earth in the stones as they slammed up into their enemies’ skulls, into their chests, and between their legs. A messy, brute strength blow with little precision, but Az only needed to slow them down.

  “Siofra, no,” he gasped as the girl lifted her fingertips, ribbons of pure moon-white illumination trickling from her fingers. Power ruptured through the world, as solid as any bomb’s explosion.

  Azrail was thrown viciously into the side of the undertaker’s house—the only person willing to live so close to the Wolven Lord’s desecrated temple—as power blasted from Siofra, so strong that his bones shook, his hairs stood on end, and every atom in his body lit up, as if struck by lightning. Not painful, but the awareness of that power, that pure, undiluted magic … his senses sharpened.

  Everything in him sharpened, honed. His earth magic dismantled whatever was left of the cobblestones, creating an abyss in the middle of the alley that even the rats avoided. He was almost relieved when his heightened magic dropped, returning to his normal level.

  “Gone,” Siofra murmured shakily, clutching tight to his jacket. And they were. The Foxes were little more than blackened scorch marks on the walls, on whatever remained of the ground. Incinerated from existence. Smited.

  “Saints,” Evrille swore, looking at Az with blind terror and awe on her tanned face.

  He knew what she was thinking: that this rescue was deadly, even for a group of rebels who’d dedicated themselves to saving people destined for the chopping block. Everyone else they saved, the Foxes would hunt for weeks and then forget. But a girl with saintslight … even the council—fuck, even the queen—would hunt her down.

  And if they found her, they’d find him and Evrille.

  But what could they do? Abandon Siofra now? Azrail didn’t have that kind of cruel ruthlessness in his soul. For his enemies, certainly, and for those who’d orchestrated his parents’ deaths, but for this scared, innocent girl … no. There was no abandoning her now. He tightened his grip on her, watching the light fade from
her clenched fingers as they all stood there, staring, shaken.

  “Come on,” Jaromir urged with a gesture of his pale, elegant hand, three steps closer to the graveyard at the far end of the alley. His eyes were bright at the sight of saintslight, but not daunted. “Faster, Az, Evrille!”

  Azrail glanced at the scorch marks one last time and hurried to catch up to his friend, Zamanya lifting her palms and sending a streak of golden magic across the alleyway, a barrier that would slow the Foxes. It wouldn’t buy them much time, but it would buy them some, and he was grateful for it.

  “Everyone alright?” he asked as he ran, his chest tight and strained, aching for breath that wouldn’t come until they were safely home.

  “Fine,” Zamanya bit out, her chocolate eyes churning as she scanned the silent, hallowed place they emerged into at the end of the alley.

  “I’m okay,” Jaro said, watching Az carefully with jade green eyes that missed nothing. Being observant was a prerequisite of his job—as both a courtesan at the pillow rooms and Azrail’s most trusted spy. “Are you?”

  Az pressed his mouth into a thin line, but he wouldn’t give them an honest answer to this, not even to Jaro who knew about the breathlessness and dizziness that struck when he was anxious like this. “Let’s just get home. Ev?”

  Evrille stalked closer, trampling weeds with her heavy boots as she surveyed the space around them with distrust. The Wolven Lord’s temple had once been the biggest in the city, in the entire Vassal Empire according to the few stories and whispers that remained, but now it was little more than a ruin. An overgrown garden flecked with chunks of stone and shards of mirrored copper from its shattered dome was all that survived, marble columns collapsed in the long grass and every stained-glass window blown out. Intentionally, Az assumed, and wondered what the hell this saint had done to become so hated, so feared.

  There was no longer any need for a temple to the saint who ruled over the souls of the chasm; not a single person worshipped him. No one remembered his name, not the way they knew Manus, Sephanae, and Enryr, the saints of the ocean, the living, and knowledge respectively. If the Wolven Lord had once had a name, it had been scratched out of every history book, from every scroll of lore and tome of myths. It had even been gouged from the stone carvings on the arched doorway of his own temple, the only part of the original building left standing.

  This was a bleak place, hushed and frozen in a way that most of busy Vassalaer wasn’t, and that clever, sleeping magic in Azrail widened its eye to cast a look around, responding to the dark power that bled from the earth here.

  “Would you check Siofra for injuries?” he asked his sister, finally dragging his gaze from the ruins and weathered gravestones that thrust up from the long grass like jagged teeth.

  Evrille nodded her dark head, still wary as she drew close. “I’m Evrille,” she told the girl, her expression neutral and kind—her healer face. While Ev had never received official training—the risk that whoever processed her application would discover her true name was too high a risk—she’d stubbornly helped out at the nearest Hall of Indira every weekend until she was eighteen, when she was invited to apprentice for one of the healers there. Her bedside manner usually left a lot to be desired, but she was one hell of a healer, and Az was fiercely proud of her, especially as she softened her rough edges and smiled at Siofra.

  “I’m Siofra,” the fair-haired girl replied, her purple eyes watchful.

  Ev lifted a hand, green ribbons of power twining around her fingers, and Siofra recoiled, gripping Azrail’s neck tighter. His heart twisted into a knot of rage and sympathy. What the chasm had she suffered, these weeks—or years—she’d been held, awaiting execution?

  “It’s alright,” Azrail promised, catching Siofra’s eyes and holding the girl’s gaze, steady and calm, hiding his own anxiety far below where she couldn’t glimpse it. “You can trust my sister. I promise.”

  He’d made many promises in his life; to his sister, to his dead parents, to the rebels and beastkind looking to him for direction, to the bastards who’d killed his parents by falsely naming them traitors. He’d yet to break a single one.

  Zamanya whistled, giving the girl a toothy grin as she inspected a rotted gravestone. “Now you’re really part of the gang, if Azrail’s giving you promises. He keeps them all, you know? And never promises anything unless he means it.”

  Az was grateful for Zamanya’s grin and swagger, for her sun-bright attitude, because Siofra relaxed and gave Evrille a nod of consent, loosening her grip around Az’s throat, just slightly.

  Evrille inhaled sharply as her streaks of green power wrapped around Siofra’s emaciated body, a storm churning behind his sister’s blue eyes as her fingers moved, guiding the magic. It was bad, then, the state of Siofra’s health. They’d take care of her, he swore. She’d never know starvation, cold, or suffering again. Never see steel bars all around her again. He swore it to himself and to the saints.

  “There,” Evrille said, her voice gentle in a way he rarely heard. Surly, often, and annoyed, most of the time, but gentle and soft in this way … rarely. Pride burst through Azrail’s chest at the way she handled Siofra, at the caring smile she bestowed on the girl as she drew her emerald magic back, at that healing magic at all—it had been a surprise when she’d first shown a healing talent, especially after the shadow of their parents’ deaths had cloaked them all her life.

  But he’d tried so fucking hard to shield Evrille from the grief, the suffering, the … lack. He’d tried to be a good brother, to give her everything she could ever need. He’d failed at times, and he’d been a bastard far too many times when the pressure of being a parent got to him, but … it was moments like these when he got the sense that he’d done things right, raised her the right way.

  Ev caught the look on his face, and rolled her eyes, back to her usual coarse self as she stalked away, her heavy black boots trampling grass and shattered glass alike.

  The stones back in the alley sent flickers of awareness down Az’s threads of magic, and he stiffened. “They’re catching up. Let’s move.”

  The sleeping power in his gut took one last sweeping look around the shattered temple as they hurried past fallen walls and stone pews—and then it went blessedly still. Azrail exhaled a breath of relief. He didn’t know what that dark power was, had thought it to be grief for years until he’d realised otherwise, until he recognised it for what it truly was—magic vast enough to sever his mind, tear his soul, and take over his body. Too much power; the kind that destroyed a person. He’d never acknowledged it since, and didn’t let it rise for even a second.

  “Let us handle them this time, alright, Siofra?” he asked, panting as they ran from the fallen temple and down a twisting snicket on the other side. Scents of fresh bread and roast pig filled the air a minute before the backstreet fed them out into the market, where shouts of hawkers blended with the screams of gulls. Colour blazed everywhere, from the marquee stalls to the strings of lanterns to the bright paintings on the buildings opposite them. “If the Foxes find us, let us take care of it. You keep your power inside, where it’s safe.” When Siofra just stared at him, Az urged, “Okay, love?”

  She shook her head, her eyes going over his shoulder, watchful, terrified. He knew enough of independence and self-reliance to recognise it in Siofra. How long had she been on her own, hardened to life, desperate to survive? He swallowed, and hated his next words, no matter how vital they were.

  “You can’t use your power, Siofra. If you use it, the Foxes will find us; they’ll see it and know exactly where to find us. Keep it hidden for now, keep it safe. If you use it, we’ll all be taken back to that square.”

  To the executioner’s block.

  He saw understanding in the paleness of her face, the way her fingers tightened on his jacket. It twisted his gut to see her that scared, full of so much dread, but he didn’t have time to coax her into trusting the four of them; he barely had time to scare her into doing what
she needed to to survive. And they survived too, his little family, all he had left after the crown and council took his parents.

  “Foxes patrolling on the right,” Zamanya said in a low voice, gold power readying in her hands. “Do we engage or run?”

  “Run,” Az replied instantly, scanning the rows of stalls and tents in front of them, the three Foxes patrolling down the far end near the soap stalls. “Wait. Stop,” he said, hard enough that they all obeyed.

  “You’re insane,” Evrille muttered, even as she huddled in close, her blue eyes sharp with wariness.

  “No running,” he decreed, his mind working fast. Running would only draw unwanted attention. “We walk through the market like any other person here, looking to buy, browsing at leisure.”

  “You’ve completely lost it,” Ev went on, her dark braid flapping in the wind off the nearby river, her gaze now hard with judgement, disagreement, and—fear. Fuck, Az hated that fear in her eyes, but he’d known all along that he’d have to face it when they made the decision to free the people the queen condemned. To bring her palace crashing down around her, her crown and throne in fucking splinters for what she’d done.

  “It’s a good idea,” Zamanya disagreed with Ev, offering a nod at Azrail and unstrapping the long dagger from her thigh, hiding it inside her thick leather jacket instead. “We’ll walk through the market, looking at the stalls we pass, like we’re browsing for a specific thing, and then when we’re out of the Foxes’ sight, we can run.”

  Az gave his friend a tight smile of gratitude, his magic coiled tight within him, ready to leap to their defence should it need to.

  “Maybe we’ll even spot a gift for Az’s birthday,” Jaromir said, pulling his hood tighter around his face and giving Az a mischievous grin. “Stubborn bastard still hasn’t told us what to get him.”