Soulmarked (The Fatemarked Epic Book 3)

  I am not alone anymore, he thought. I have Gwen. I have Roan, wherever he is.

  The thought made him sit up straighter, and all his fears and doubts seemed to fall away.

  Just ahead, the beautiful iron structures of Ferria rose like great angular sculptures built to be a part of the forest, rather than something separate. Each plate of metal gleamed as sunlight breached the forest canopy.

  Aye, this is where I belong. This is home.

  Though butterflies fluttered through his stomach, Gareth ignored them. Before, when he’d entered the city of his youth, he would’ve done so with princely bravado, trading quips with his citizens, purchasing a sausage and onion sandwich, chewing irreverently and laughing with his mouth open.

  Not this time.

  Now he rode straight-backed and silent, poised, nodding to those he passed, most of whom gawked at him openly. More than likely, he’d been the subject of many a rumor and juicy morsel of gossip over the last month. Let them stare, he thought. They know nothing of what I’ve been through.

  The city’s main thoroughfare fell away behind them, and soon they reached the castle’s enormous iron gates. Several large guards defended them. Notably missing was Beorn Stonesledge, their ironmarked leader.

  Though the guards, as they were trained, tried to hide their surprise, most of them visibly flinched when they realized who he was. One of them stepped forward to address him, one finger twirling his long red mustache nervously. “Sir, uh, I mean, prince, we didn’t expect…no one told us you were coming.”

  “Need a king of the east announce his arrival?” Gareth said.

  “Beggin’ your pardon, but the king holds court on the throne at this very time.”

  “Not anymore,” Gareth said. “Step aside!”

  The guard flinched again, but didn’t refuse him. A gap opened as the guard shouted, “Make way for Prince Gareth Ironclad!” Without a creak or jangle of chains, the iron doors opened, melting away to either side, controlled by one of the Orians, who channeled the ore.

  As usual, the outer castle circle was abuzz with activity. Archers trained using strawmen targets. Legionnaires conducted mock battles with dull-edged swords. Grooms brushed down black and white horses. Armor was polished.

  Gareth ignored it all, even when he heard the whispers, saw the fingers pointed his way as all activity ceased, like he’d entered the calm, silent eye of a storm.

  They rode in a curving path around the outer circle, entering another gate and reversing direction. More stares. More whispers. After several more gates and direction changes, they reached the great iron stairs. Here, they dismounted.

  “Are you ready?” Gwen asked.

  “I am the king,” Gareth said. “I was born ready.”

  Gwen grinned. “I almost believe you.”

  With Orian speed, she took the stairs two at a time—it wouldn’t do for a king to arrive at court without a caller preceding him. He took them more slowly, relishing how his muscles remembered these steps.

  He reached the top just as he heard his brother say, “Gwendolyn Storm? I’ll be damned.”

  Instead of responding, Gwen said, “You’re sitting in the king’s seat.”

  To his credit, Grian laughed. He stopped when he saw Gareth standing behind her. “Brother? Is it truly you? I wouldn’t have thought you’d have the nerve to crawl back to the country you failed.”

  Gareth stepped forward, refusing to rise to the bait. In his youth, he’d have charged his brother, settled this with fisticuffs and much scratching and clawing. But that boy was gone now, leaving behind the man he’d been forced to become.

  “Prince Grian,” Gareth said. “You shall address me as ‘Your Highness’ from this moment forward.”

  His brother tried to hide his discomfort behind a smirk, but a twitch in his eye gave him away. “Prince Gareth,” he said. “You stepped down from the throne. You spoke the words. You did the honorable thing; don’t ruin it now.”

  “I was injured, Grian. There were a dozen witnesses, including Gwen. I was coerced into speaking the words against my will.”

  “Liar!”

  Gareth finally noticed something: the others in the room were all legionnaires. Generals. Advisers. This wasn’t just any meeting. This was a council of war.

  “What has happened?” Gareth said.

  “It is not your concern,” Grian said. But again, the quiver in his voice gave away his unease.

  “Beorn Stonesledge wasn’t at the gate,” Gareth said.

  “The ironmarked has many responsibilities.” Grian refused to meet his eyes as he said this.

  A man cleared his throat, looking equally uncomfortable. General Jorgundium, a man who’d been appointed to his position by Gareth’s father almost a decade ago.

  “Do you have something to say, General?” Gareth asked.

  “Not a word,” Grian said, firing daggers at the man.

  “I cannot let this farce go on a moment longer,” the man said. “Throw me in the stocks if you must.” He turned to Gareth. “The ironmarked is dead.”

  “What?” Gareth and Gwen said at the same time.

  “General.” The warning was still in Grian’s tone, but it had lost its sharpness.

  The general went on. “It’s true. He fell at Darrin. We thought the city would be all but undefended, so only a small force was sent over the Black Cliffs. I was against it from the beginning, but I was overruled.”

  “Speak another word, General, and you’ll be wishing for death!” Grian roared, pushing to his feet. His face was beet-red.

  The general ignored the outburst. “Instead, the northerners had two sets of reinforcements. We were decimated. Stonesledge fell.”

  Grian was livid. “Arrest him. For subordination and treachery of the highest order.”

  None moved.

  The general said, “We are spread too thin. We wage wars on three sides, but they are ill-planned and overly hasty.”

  “We are winning in the south,” Grian said, his jaw set. “And the western forces have retreated back toward Knight’s End. What happened in the north was a minor setback.”

  It was Gwen’s turn to speak. “The south? What progress have you made against Calypso? Have you crossed the Scarra? Have you set foot on the Southron peninsula?”

  “Well, no,” Grian said. “But we have defeated several bands of Calypsian savages on the edges of the desert. They were the guanero, their mightiest warriors.”

  “You fool.” Even Gareth was shocked by the venom in her tone. Had it been directed at him, his legs would’ve turned to rubber.

  “Excuse me?” Grian said, not backing down. “You dare speak to your king that way? Just because my father gave you a long rope doesn’t mean that I will.”

  “Your father was a wise man, a great warrior. You are but a child next to the lifetimes I’ve lived. I knew another Ironclad king like you, full of arrogance. He poked the Southron bear, too. Do you know what happened?”

  Stunned silence.

  “No? Well I was there. It was my bonding day, in fact. Do you know your history, child? The Dragon Massacre was a day I will never forget.”

  “The dragons are dead,” Grian countered, though his confidence was fading. He looked pale now.

  “A sleeping dragon isn’t the same as a dead one,” Gwen said. “They will return, and it will be because of you. Now step down with our thanks. You’ve done little but keep the throne warm for Gareth.”

  “I will not.” Grian turned toward Gareth, an eerie calm entering his voice. “You are a failed Shield, brother. You have no place here. The people will never accept you as their king, and without the people, you cannot rule.”

  In the past, his brother’s words would’ve cut into him like a hundred knives, but now they bounced off his skin. He was wearing a different kind of armor. The armor of truth and purpose.

  “I may have failed as a Shield, but I am the Shield no longer.” He remembered Gwen’s words, back amongst the decaying stum
ps of the Rot. “Now I am the Sword.”

  Gwendolyn Storm

  The feeling started on her skin, a faint buzzing, almost like the precognition that comes before the arrival of a still-distant storm.

  No.

  Her heart sped up, fleeting memories long buried rising to the surface. Fire. Claws. Death.

  Please, no.

  She’d spoken the words before as a warning, not a prophecy, and yet now she knew they were both.

  Grian was screaming at his brother, at the generals, crying for arrests and trials, clinging to the throne like a fly to a leaf amidst a gale force wind.

  She barely heard any of it, her keen ears trained skyward, listening.

  She heard the shouts first. Then the bells, clanging their warning. Their call to arms.

  Ferria was under attack.

  That’s when she heard a sound she hadn’t heard in eight decades:

  The beating of powerful wings.

  PART II

  Raven Grey Jai

  Falcon Bane Roan

  Bear Windy

  The halfmarked are joined; a key is complete.

  A lock is opened; their fates are sealed.

  The Western Oracle

  Fifty-Eight

  The Southern Empire, Calypso, Circa 532

  Raven Sandes

  “What are our options?” Raven asked her war council. For the moment, the civil war with Phanes had been put on hold. The more immediate threat came from the east.

  Father, are you truly dead? she wondered. Thus far, they’d only heard rumors of his passing. Until it was confirmed, Raven refused to let herself feel anything.

  As heads bobbed and turned to look at each other, Raven felt an eerie sense of déjà vu. Like her sister, Fire, her first act as empress was the consideration of war.

  These are dark times we live in, she thought.

  “I’ll speak if no one else will,” Rider said. The dark-eyed dragon master had long been a friend and ally to Raven. Though Rider was at least twenty years older and had been training the dragonia for years, she had a timeless complexion, her dark-skinned face unweathered by wind or sand, stress or battle. She wore a black cloak that typically flapped in the wind as she rode the dragons, but which now hung lifelessly behind her back.

  “Thank you,” Raven said. “What do you propose?”

  The dragon master stepped forward, past the rest of the council. There were five others invited to the meeting: Goggin, the commander of the guanero, the legion of elite warriors who rode their reptilian steeds, the guanik, into battle; Ponjut, a brute of a woman and Goggin’s second-in-command—she would go along with whatever he said; Shanolin, a narrow-eyed dragon master with thirty years of experience; Whisper, Raven’s sister and the Third Daughter, who was heir to the Calypsian throne in the event Raven perished; and, of course, Rider, who spoke now.

  “My position has not changed. The dragonia are almost a year from maturity, and their development cannot be forced. These attacks by the easterners are not a major threat to the empire. We should wait. Do nothing.”

  Raven gritted her teeth, but not because she disagreed—she’d made almost the exact same argument in Fire’s war council, in regards to the civil war with Phanes. Was this really any different? Yes, the Ironclad monarchy, which was now ruled by Grian Ironclad, was attacking the nomadic border villages along the edge of the Scarra Desert, but they were still hundreds of leagues from the southern peninsula. If anything, King Ironclad seemed to be goading Raven into taking drastic action when none was needed.

  Raven shifted in her uncomfortable throne. The dragon throne was intentionally full of spikes and hard edges, so that the ruler never got too comfortable in it. As her maata had always said, Ruling is a privilege not a right. “Goggin?” Raven said. “Any thoughts?” She was surprised she had to ask at all; the man was usually the most outspoken of her leaders.

  “We can’t do nothing,” he said. One hand played with the mangled stub of ear he’d recently acquired in battle; he was fortunate the Phanecian arrow had only taken his ear, and not his life. “That is no option. The people will see you as weak. They may rebel. Send a portion of the guanero. We will clean up this mess with the east.”

  Goggin would ask to be sent into battle against a gang of bloodthirsty rabbits if he had the chance. He thrived on battle. Raven sighed. “You lost half your forces at the Southron Gates. Your new recruits have never seen battle and are not fully trained. You would have me send them to the border?”

  Goggin pounded his broad chest. “We do not fear death. We serve the empire with our strength, and our blood if necessary. All members of the guanero have taken their oaths, and they will do as I command.”

  “I am not questioning their honor, only whether we should spend more lives.”

  “What other option is there?” Shanolin asked, though he didn’t make it sound like a question. He paused, licking his dark lips. “Goggin spoke truly when he said we cannot do nothing. The Sandes have always been strong; Calypso has always been strong. To do nothing would expose you to threats both inside and outside the empire.”

  To Raven’s ears, it almost sounded like a threat, though it was probably true. She nodded toward Rider. “What say you?”

  “I agree with that,” Rider said slowly.

  “I doubt you’ll agree with the rest of my proposal, however,” Shanolin continued, giving his fellow dragon master a pointed look. Raven knew from experience that the two most experienced dragon masters rarely saw eye to eye on such matters. “We should conduct the testing of the dragonia early.”

  “Absolutely not,” Rider said, shooting a glare at Shanolin. She turned back to Raven. “Empress, it has only been three months since they were last tested, and only one of the dragons came anywhere close to passing.”

  Raven already knew this—she had been there. In fact, she was the only one of her sisters who had bothered to attend. Heiron, the largest of the brood, had put on a spectacle, passing all but one of the tests and making the rest of the dragonia look utterly inadequate.

  “I’ve been spending extra hours with the weakest dragons,” Shanolin offered. “They might surprise you. Anyway, what’s the harm in testing them again? If they don’t pass, it will make this decision much simpler.”

  “Empress, if I may—” Rider started to say, but Raven raised her hand to cut her off.

  “Shanolin’s right, Rider. It won’t hurt anything.”

  “It will waste time that would be better spent training them.”

  “True, but only a half a day—perhaps a day at the most. In any case, I would prefer to know exactly where their abilities stand.”

  “As you wish,” Rider said. Raven could tell from her tone that she was offended by the decision, but too loyal to speak out further.

  “What about the guanero?” Goggin said. “While you’re playing with your dragons, we could still send a small force to the border. Let us be your fist against the east.”

  Raven glanced at her sister, but Whisper seemed not to be listening, staring at her feet and playing with a lock of her flawless chestnut hair, which was so long now it kissed her hips. Her long silk dress was dark, as it had been for days, and lacked any of the usual adornments she adored. Raven wanted so badly to reassure her that she wouldn’t die like their mother had, like Fire had, but she couldn’t. Not now.

  As Raven considered, her hand absently moved to play with her long black hair, a habit of hers, but found nothing but empty air. She was still getting used to her short hair, which was in the awkward stage of regrowth after it had been burned off in the arena while she fought Fire for the dragon throne. “Send thirty guanero,” Raven said, dropping her hand.

  “I will lead them myself,” Goggin said.

  “No. Ponjut shall lead them. I need you here.”

  Goggin nodded, though there was disappointment in his expression. He would sorely miss another stop in Kesh, the oasis in the desert, renowned for its hospitality and spirit. Raven,
however, would not miss Kesh—the last and only time she’d ever visited the desert village Fire had almost been murdered in her sleep.

  In the end, Fire died anyway, she reminded herself.

  “Thank you. That is all,” Raven said. Everyone filed out, save for Whisper, who continued playing with her hair, oblivious to anything but her own thoughts. Raven watched her for a moment and then cleared her throat. Nothing. Her sister’s huge brown eyes were glazed over, staring at something only she could see.

  “Whisper,” Raven said.

  “Hmm?” She turned her head in Raven’s general direction, but didn’t make eye contact.

  “I—” What did she want to say? What could she say? She couldn’t bring her maata or sister back from the dead. Nor their father, who had seemed dead for a long time. And maybe now he really was. She also couldn’t promise that she would never leave. Nor should she. Whisper was next in line for the empire, and babying her now would only cripple her. “I miss them,” she said instead.

  Whisper’s eyes finally met hers. “I can’t breathe sometimes,” she said breathlessly.

  “I know.”

  “Do you really?” Whisper snapped, her voice turning to steel—well, at least as much as it could. “You’re talking of war, Raven. You sound just like them. Maata. Faata. Fire. That’s all they cared about. And where did that get them? It got them dead.”

  “I’m not them. I’m being more cautious.”

  Whisper shook her head, pursing her butterfly lips. “You’re not. You just agreed that if the dragonia pass the testing that they’ll be ready for battle, even if they’re not fully grown.”

  So she was listening, Raven thought, surprised. “I didn’t make any decision other than to test the dragons. And they won’t pass.”

  “You can’t know that. And anyway, you sent thirty guanero to the border.”