Immortal Reign(15)

He frowned as he ripped the splinter out of his skin with his teeth.

“My arm,” he whispered in the darkness. “What’s wrong with my arm?”

Actually, it wasn’t what was wrong with it. It was what was right with it.

His arm—both of his arms—had been broken at Kurtis’s command. He hadn’t been able to move more than a little without immediate, crushing pain.

He fisted his right hand, then moved his wrist and arm.

There was no pain.

Impossible.

He tried again to move his left arm with the same result. And his leg—the sound of the crack it made when broken and the mind-numbing pain that followed was still far too fresh in his mind.

He wiggled his toes inside his boot.

No pain.

A drop of mud squeezed between the narrow slats of the coffin and splashed into his eye. He winced and wiped it away.

The thunder rolled high above him. The sound had been a constant since he’d been buried. If he concentrated, he could hear rain pounding down upon his grave and soaking into the earth covering his coffin.

He pressed both of his hands flat against the wooden barrier above him.

“What am I thinking?” he mused. “That my bones somehow magically healed? I don’t have earth magic like Lucia does. I’m hallucinating.”

Or was he?

After all, there was a way to keep one alive and well long after they were supposed to die. He’d learned about it only recently.

Magnus frowned at the thought. “Impossible. He wouldn’t have given it to me.”

Still, he began to search himself with arms that now worked and hands that were previously useless to him. He slid his palms down his sides, over his chest, feeling the suffocating press of wood on either side of him.

He froze as he felt something small and hard in the pocket of his shirt, something he hadn’t noticed until this very moment.

Fingers trembling, he drew out the object.

He couldn’t see it in the complete darkness, but he could feel its familiar shape.

A ring. But not just any ring.

The bloodstone.

Magnus slid the ring onto the middle finger of his left hand, gasping as an immediate chill spread through his entire body.

“Father, what have you done?” he whispered.

Another drop of mud oozed onto his face, stunning him further.

Magnus pressed his hands against the wooden slats above him that were damp from the rain that had soaked into the earth. His heart lurched at the thought. Damp wood could give easier than dry wood, if he tried hard enough.

“No one is coming for you,” he imagined Kurtis’s reedy voice mocking him. “There’s no magic that’ll keep you alive forever.”

“That’s what you think,” Magnus muttered.

Along with the chill he’d felt from the bloodstone’s magic against his fingertips, strength also filled him again.

He made a tight fist and punched upward, succeeding only in slicing his hand with more splinters from the wet wood. He grimaced, made another fist, and then punched again.

This would take time.

He imagined that the barrier above him was Kurtis Cirillo’s face.

“Beetles,” Magnus gritted out as he punched at the wood again. “I think I’ll kill you with hungry, flesh-eating beetles.”





CHAPTER 5


    AMARA


   PAELSIA




Amara clutched the message that had arrived from Kraeshia in her fist as she limped into the royal compound’s prison for the second time in as many days.

Carlos had remained a strong yet silent presence, and she appreciated her guard more than she’d say aloud. Of all the men that currently surrounded her, she trusted him the most. And trust, given recent events, was in extremely limited supply.

She hated this prison. Hated the dank, musty odor it had, as if the scent from decades of prisoners had permanently soaked into the stone walls.

“Well, well, if it isn’t the high and mighty destroyer of kingdoms herself blessing us lowly, pathetic creatures with her presence.”

Felix Gaebras’s painfully familiar voice made Amara’s shoulders stiffen. She glanced to her left to see that he had been put into a cell with a small barred window in the iron door that showed part of his face, including the black eye patch covering his left eye.

She remembered very clearly when he’d had two eyes that had once gazed at her with desire.

“I would reply, but I won’t waste my breath,” she said.

Felix snorted. “And yet that sounded like a reply. And to one as lowly and pathetic as me. Fortune must smile upon me today.”

His sarcastic tone had once, not so very long ago, been one of his most endearing traits. Now it was only a reminder of her past decisions and the former assassin’s current hatred for her.

He shouldn’t be sarcastic to anyone anymore. Had all gone according to plan, he would have been long dead and not yet another problem for Amara to deal with.

“Show respect to the empress,” Carlos snarled, his heavy arms crossed over his chest. “It’s only by her grace that you haven’t yet been executed.”

“Her grace, is it?” Felix pressed his forehead against the bars and offered her a cold grin. “Aw, perhaps she thinks we can get together again. But sorry, I don’t share my bed with snakes.”