A Dawn of Guardians

  Deep breath. I can do this.

  Fixing my eyes firmly on the rock in tunnel vision, I leapt again, and then again, until I was one stone away from Tejus. He spread out his legs as wide as he could on the stone before outstretching his arms, his dark eyes willing me to take the final jump.

  It took every ounce of courage and blind faith to place my complete trust in this man as I thrust myself forward over the final stretch of lava. There was not enough space on his stone for me to land on my feet. If he didn’t manage to catch me, I would sink. But he did catch me. He caught me firmly, one arm wrapping tightly around my waist while pulling me close against him. Then, raising me over one of his broad shoulders in a fireman’s lift, he twisted around on the rock and set his focus on the opposite bank. I was both relieved and terrified that I could not see the final jump that he made. It came with a harrowing jolt to my stomach, and I felt like I was going to throw up as we flew through the air and landed with a thump on solid ground. My heart was palpitating like a rabbit’s.

  Okay. We did it. We did it.

  As I glanced across the river back at Jenus, he was about to do the same with Ruby. And very soon after, his third brother along with Julian.

  The screeching of vultures sounded overhead, distracting me. The watchers had returned and, to my shock, so had the king. I wondered what had called him here. Maybe this next task had some special significance he wanted to witness?

  Tejus glanced up, urgency intensifying in his irises on spotting his father, before he pulled me toward the stone building. I didn’t get the chance to yell up about my brother.

  We arrived outside one of the cross-marked doors, where he set me down and snatched up a burning torch. Then, with one mighty thrust of his leg against the door, he forced it open. We spilled inside, emerging in a pitch-black hall filled with cobwebs and old, smashed-up furniture. The only light we had was that coming from outside, and from the torch Tejus gripped in one hand. There wasn’t a single window. As he cast about the flames, scoping out the room, I realized that it was shaped like a donut. It ended about fifteen feet in front of us, which meant that something else lay beyond that—either it led to another circular room that took up the middle of the building, or perhaps there was an internal courtyard of sorts…

  I jumped as another door opened. Jenus and Ruby.

  They followed us as we raced to the opposite wall, but there were no doors or windows anywhere to be seen. We followed the wall right around but found no way through it.

  “What the hell?” Jenus cursed.

  Tejus was breathing hard, his jaw tight.

  It suddenly occurred to me how cool this place was compared to outside. Yes, it was closed off and there weren’t windows… but stone absorbed heat.

  Then Ruby screamed a word which turned my veins to ice.

  “Ghouls!”

  Her panicked announcement was quickly met by a round of eardrum-bursting shrieks. The flickering torchlight illuminated ten ghouls manifesting from the shadows and zooming toward us, their long bony, clawed fingers outstretched. They were hideous in appearance: long bony bodies, mostly bald skulls, and sharklike teeth.

  Not the type of thing you wanted to see coming at you in the dark.

  I knew what ghouls did to humans, and maybe even to sentries, who weren’t all that different in terms of basic physicality. When they were in their physical forms, ghouls ripped people apart from the inside and consumed their innards. They were also mind-manipulators—hallucination-seeders and deception-instillers. We’d once had a ghoul problem in The Shade, long before I was born, which had caused Mona to believe that Kiev was cheating on her with my grandma Sofia. And then, of course, I’d heard all of my great-uncle Lucas’ stories about his time spent in The Underworld, as well as my uncle Benjamin’s.

  Tejus and Jenus whipped out weapons, brandishing them in front of us. The ghouls, being in their physical forms since they were preparing to maul us, were forced backward a few feet.

  Ruby and I would make easy targets and it seemed that the ghouls had already realized this. Their beady eyes fixed on us.

  Still holding the torch in one hand, Tejus lashed out with a sword as two attempted to leap for me at once. Practically choking on my tongue, I tightened my hold on Tejus in a panic, though, of course, he needed to be free to fight them off. My eyes passed over Tejus’ weapons. I grabbed his spear and held it out in front of us too in an attempt to assist. We backed up into one corner, trying to gain a scope on our problem.

  “We have to dismember them,” I gasped as they came at us again.

  “I know,” Tejus said through gritted teeth.

  It made me furious to see that Jenus had dropped his torch and was taking advantage of both hands to defend himself—he was relying on Tejus holding a torch. I reached to grab the torch from Tejus—he would be of better use holding two weapons.

  He lashed out and managed to catch one of the ghouls in the neck, slicing right through it, while I stabbed one in the gut (which did little more than aggravate it).

  The others were fast closing in on us, and as Julian arrived with the third brother, the ghouls went into a frenzy. A third batch of warm intestines to tantalize them.

  “Watch out, Ferros!” Julian’s panicked voice echoed through the hall.

  I turned just in time to see a ghoul wham into the side of Tejus’ third brother. It knocked him to the ground, sending Julian flying across the floor. It instantly pounced on Ferros and the next thing I knew, its claws were driving deep into his gut.

  “No!” I screamed.

  I had lost my mind to panic, not for Ferros, but for Julian. It was going to pounce on Julian next. I was sure that a human would be a more delicious—as well as rarer—delicacy than a sentry.

  “HEY!” I bellowed at the ghoul, before hurling my sword in its direction. It made contact with its back—enough to agitate it and make it turn in my direction.

  I wasn’t prepared for that.

  As it came rushing toward me, I went scrambling back toward Tejus… only to be cut off by another ghoul. I ducked and threw myself across the floor, attempting to avoid it, but one caught hold of my right foot. Its bony fingers winding around my ankle, its claws digging into my flesh.

  As I felt myself being pulled back, sliding across the floor, I was expecting another hand to grab me higher up my body and rip into my guts.

  But something sliced the air and crashed down hard against the stone floor. There came a screech and as I looked down, I realized that the ghoul’s arm had been severed.

  A strong hand closed around my upper right arm and hauled me up. Tejus loomed over me, his sword dripping with blood. He pulled me against him, indicating that I climb onto his back, before he whirled around and continued to fend off the ghouls.

  I was relieved to see that Ruby had climbed onto Jenus’ back, while Julian was huddled in one corner, the rest of the ghouls temporarily occupied by the sentries’ weapons.

  For the first time, I was witnessing Tejus and Jenus working together as they slashed through the ghouls. I could appreciate Tejus’ sword-fighting abilities over his brother’s. The fact that he could make something as gruesome and bloody as slaughter look almost beautiful said a lot about his skill. There was a smoothness to his movements that Jenus did not possess—a rhythm that came almost like a dance.

  Tejus and Jenus chopped and sliced and ducked until they had managed to dismember all of the ghouls. Then they raced with Ruby and me around the room to verify that none were left hiding. Unless any ghouls had gone transparent to hide themselves, the brothers had finished them off.

  We met up with Julian back where the main battle had taken place. He hurried over to us, standing in between Jenus and Tejus. The sentries gazed at their fallen brother before gathering around his body, but barely any expression crossed their faces. Like when Tejus had heard the news of their other brother’s death, it was as if it was merely a fact of life. Business as usual. Especially now they were in the mid
st of their father’s crazy trials.

  The ghouls being vanquished, Tejus and Jenus quickly slipped back into being enemies again. They started to rush back through the doors we’d entered, when a deafening grinding noise sounded behind us. It came from what had previously been a solid brick wall. Now it was parting, drawing aside like a heavy curtain and letting in light. It created a gap of six feet before stopping.

  Then the king’s voice boomed down from the sky:

  “On occasion, you must learn to cooperate with your opponents.”

  The brothers hurried outside. The king and his two cronies were circling above us in the sky. I wondered if he would feel anything at all when he saw that his third son did not emerge from the building. But my—and all of our—attention was quickly drawn elsewhere. We had emerged in a grassy clearing, in the center of which was a mound. And on top of the mound was… I let out a soft gasp. A sword, dug into the soil. A mighty silver sword with a handle of what looked like black marble. The sword.

  As soon as the sight registered in the brothers’ brains, they zoomed up the mound at what felt like the speed of light. The sudden jolt made me slip and fall onto the grass, and Ruby fell off a few feet in front of me. Julian approached behind us as the three of us stared with bated breath at the two brothers zooming to the top.

  It looked like Tejus was definitely in the lead, but as they reached within ten feet, they stopped abruptly. Blades shot up from the soil like magic, as they had done back in the goblin pit. But these blades were about ten times longer, and much thicker—just as razor-sharp.

  The brothers looked up to their father in the sky in confusion.

  “Father?” Jenus shouted up. “What is going on?”

  The king let his son’s question hang in the air for several moments before he descended lower with his vulture.

  When he spoke again this time, it was in a quieter voice. “Now you must learn to break rules.”

  With that, his gleaming eyes passed from Jenus to Tejus, before his vulture flapped him back to his cronies’ height.

  Break rules.

  But there was only one rule in this game to begin with… I froze with fear. The king had given permission for his sons to battle each other.

  Tejus’ and Jenus’ eyes shot to each other’s, where they fixed resolutely, their stances widening. They selected a sword each from their belt before leaving their other weapons on the ground.

  As Tejus held his blade out, his irises glinted with grim determination. They began to circle and scope each other out.

  Jenus was the first to take a swipe. He lashed out at his brother’s chest, missing by an inch as Tejus dodged. Then Tejus retaliated, forcing his brother to swerve dangerously close to the wall of blades protecting the prized sword. Jenus was forced to loosen his offense in order to slip away from the blades. He backed down the hill, but this only gave his brother a height advantage. Tejus’ sword became almost a blur as he fought his brother further down the mound, until Jenus lost his footing and tripped. I was hoping that Tejus would finish the job off quickly, but Jenus managed to rise and fight back in time, forcing Tejus back a couple of steps.

  I became too distracted by Ruby to witness what happened next. She started clutching her head and crying out in agony. Then, before I could stop her, she shot to her feet and started running—faster than I’d thought her capable of in her weakened state. She dashed up the mound toward the two fighting brothers.

  “Ruby!” Panicked yells ripped from Julian’s and my throats. “What are you—”

  She wasn’t heading directly for the brothers, as I’d first thought. She was rushing toward their spare, discarded weapons. She picked up Jenus’ bow and arrow and… aimed it at Tejus.

  “NO!”

  But she was too quick. Her fingers and hands worked at astonishing speed, as though she’d worked this bow a thousand times before… And in a way, she had.

  Jenus had broken into her mind.

  I should have seen it coming. His father had just declared this final bout a no-rules contest, had he not? And now that Tejus had the upper hand, Jenus was desperate.

  Before Julian or I could stop Ruby, an arrow flew from her bow. Slamming into her, Julian and I managed to wrestle her to the ground, but it was too late—the arrow had caught the back of Tejus’ right shoulder, causing him to let out a deep groan of pain. Blood spilled down his back. He reached his left hand behind him to tear out the arrow, but he was weakened.

  My skin prickled with fear as I felt my own mind being touched; a throbbing headache came on. One of the brothers was trying to break into my head—and it was either Jenus or Tejus.

  As Ruby continued attempting to break free, I found myself suddenly all alone in trying to constrain her. Julian had grunted in pain and let go. He scrambled for the pile of weapons and picked up a spear. Even though my head felt like it was beginning to split in half—so much so that I could barely even see anymore through the pain—I was forced to leave Ruby and hurtle toward Julian. As he aimed the spear, it became clear that it was Jenus who had taken control of his mind. His weapon was aimed at Tejus.

  My eyes beginning to water, I managed to snatch the spear from Julian’s hands. Keenly aware that I had let go of Ruby, whom Jenus could manipulate again at any time, I had not a second to lose. When Julian launched himself at another weapon, I spun the spear around so that its wooden butt was pointed toward Julian before bringing it down against the back of his skull.

  I’d been taught in self-defense lessons in The Shade that if you got the right angle, you could knock a person out without much force. I had managed to meet my mark. Guilt surged through me as Julian crumpled to his knees and rolled onto the grass, but I had no choice.

  Ruby had already picked up the bow and arrow again. I leapt at her and knocked them from her hands before attempting to wrestle her once again to the ground. She put up an exhausting fight, clawing at me and constantly attempting to stand. My face flushed from weariness, I finally managed to maneuver her so that she was lying face down on her stomach. Grabbing a dagger, I didn’t know what else I could do with her other than knock her out as gently as I could with its hilt, like I’d done Julian. They’d only be used as Jenus’ pawns. I knocked the back of her head, causing her to go still, before rising and returning my focus to the battle scene.

  Tejus, in spite of his injury and increasing loss of blood, still had the upper hand in the fight. He was managing to keep his brother from gaining ground up the hill, maintaining Jenus’ awkward position on the slope.

  The pain in my head intensified further still. I sensed that both of them were attempting to devour my energy, or crack me, or both at once. Oh, God. How am I going to survive this?

  I didn’t need the pressure from Tejus. I was planning to help him anyway as best as I could.

  I can’t crack. I can’t surrender!

  Biting my lip hard, I stooped down for the bow and quiver of arrows I’d knocked from Ruby’s hands. Placing an arrow, I aimed… but damn. It was ten times more difficult to steady the arrow now than it had been back in the forest. My head was throbbing and the scene around me looked like it was shaking. The ground beneath my feet felt unsteady, like I was in the midst of a mild earthquake. I couldn’t fire an arrow without being absolutely certain I would meet my mark, or it could hit Tejus—the two were so close to each other. I had to settle on a different plan.

  Discarding the bow and arrows, I snatched up the spear Julian had been armed with. Staggering, I ran as fast as I could toward the brothers.

  “Hey!” I hissed.

  Tejus glanced at me in time to see me throwing the spear. He caught its wooden shaft before thrusting it down toward his brother.

  This meant Jenus really had to keep his distance now from his brother.

  Tejus would have to manage completely on his own now, however. I doubted I could do anymore more to help him. Perhaps by Jenus’ design, I was feeling so much pressure in my head that I fell to the ground.

/>   Tejus hurled the spear, which caught his brother’s robe and pinned it to the grass, causing Jenus to stumble and fall. Then, closing the final distance, Tejus stamped down hard against Jenus’ right hand and confiscated his sword. He quickly snatched the back of his hair and pulled him to sit upright. Then, before Jenus could attempt to wriggle free again, Tejus moved to slice his throat.

  “STOP!” the king’s voice resounded in the sky like a thunderclap.

  Tejus paused, his dark eyes lifting.

  “You have proven yourself, Tejus, my son,” the king called down. “You may leave your brother alive.”

  I felt taken aback that the king had interrupted what should have been the natural flow of events. But I supposed I shouldn’t have been. It was clear that the king had a particular fondness for Jenus, and just because Jenus had failed to beat Tejus for the opportunity to represent the Hellswan family in the battle for the kingdom, the king did not want Jenus dead like his other sons.

  Tejus’ lips were pursed as he maintained his hold on his brother. Then, obeying his father, he let go of Jenus and backed away.

  Still lying on the grass, I felt too weak to sit up. My brain felt too drained. I knew it wouldn’t be long now until I passed out. I managed to hold on just long enough to see the barrier of blades relinquish into the ground, and for Tejus Hellswan, eldest son of the king, to climb to the hill’s peak, approach the mighty sword, withdraw it from the soil, and hold it aloft.

  Hazel

  I woke up in a spacious bed of velvet cushions and warm feather blankets. As I opened my eyes, the room was familiar—a large oval room whose entire northern wall consisted of wide windows, and whose floors were padded with deep red rugs. I’d caught a glimpse of it from the hallway of Tejus’ quarters before. This was his bedroom. Why am I lying here?

  Pushing away the blankets, I realized I was wearing a garment that was not my own—a silk, deep purple nightgown.