Immortal Reign(2)

She frowned. “If the end is coming, do you have a plan? Have you told the others? What about Melenia? I know she can be horribly vain and selfish, but she’s also powerful, smart, and ruthless.”

“Indeed, she is. She reminds me daily of someone else. Someone lost to us so many years ago.”

Valia focused on the daisies again, unwilling to meet the immortal’s searching gaze. “Melenia is more useful to you than I could ever be.”

When she forced herself to look up at him again, there were no answers in his dark golden eyes. “A favor,” he repeated. “Do you agree or don’t you?”

Her need for immediate answers faded as a familiar greed rose up within her, too thick to swallow back down. She needed this gift, needed it to help strengthen her fading magic and recover her youth and beauty. To help her control what she still could in this seemingly uncontrollable existence.

The Obsidian Blade was only a fraction as powerful as the golden dagger she dreamed about, that she desired more than anything. But she knew she needed it. Desperately.

Perhaps the past didn’t matter anymore.

Only magic mattered. Only survival mattered.

Only power mattered, in whatever form she could possess it.

Finally, Valia took the Obsidian Blade from Timotheus, the weight of it a great comfort after so many years of pain and struggle.

“Yes, Timotheus,” she said evenly. “I agree.”

He nodded. “My gratitude to you. Always.”

Then the immortal and the dream world he’d pulled her into faded away to darkness. When Valia woke, tucked into her small cot with the hearth’s fire burned down to glowing embers, the jagged hilt of the blade was still in her grip.





CHAPTER 1


    JONAS


   PAELSIA




“You can’t escape your destiny.”

Jonas lurched up from the hard wooden floor so quickly that a wave of dizziness slammed into him. Disoriented, but with dagger in hand, he scanned the small room to locate exactly what had torn him out of a deep sleep.

But there was nothing there except a beautiful princess with long raven-black hair asleep on the small cot. A tiny baby lay at her side, swaddled in a piece of cloth ripped from Jonas’s cloak the night before.

The newborn’s eyes were open wide and staring directly at Jonas. Violet eyes. Bright . . . like glowing jewels.

His breath caught. What—?

Lucia moaned softly in her sleep, stealing his attention away from the baby for a moment. When his gaze returned, the baby’s eyes were sky blue like her mother’s, not violet.

Jonas shook his head to clear it.

Lucia let out another cry from her slumber.

“Bad dreams, princess?” Jonas muttered. “Can’t say I’m that surprised, given what we survived last night.”

Their journey to get to Lucia’s father and brother had been interrupted by Lucia giving birth during a massive rainstorm. Jonas swiftly found them a room at a nearby Paelsian inn so Lucia could recover her strength before they continued onward.

She shifted beneath the blankets, her face twisting. “No . . .” she whispered. “Please, no . . . no . . .”

The unexpected vulnerability in her voice tore at him. “Princess . . . wake up,” he said, louder this time.

“You . . . you can’t . . . No . . . I—I won’t let you . . .”

Without thinking, Jonas sat down on the edge of the bed. “Lucia, wake up.”

When she didn’t respond, he took hold of her shoulders to gently shake her awake.

In an instant, Jonas was no longer in the small bedroom. He was standing in the middle of a village, and the world was on fire.

Flames shot up as tall as the Forbidden Mountains, their heat an immediate, searing brand on Jonas’s flesh. The painful flames didn’t crackle like those of a campfire; they screeched like a vicious beast from the darkest corner of the Wildlands. Through the wall of destruction, Jonas watched with stunned disbelief as cottages and villas were set ablaze—people screaming for help and mercy before the flames devoured them whole, leaving nothing but black ashes where they had once stood.

Jonas was paralyzed. He could not cry out or run from the burning pain. All he could do was watch in horror as the destructive fire began to form something recognizable—the figure of a gigantic, monstrous man. This creature of fire stared down at another figure—that of a cloaked girl standing defiantly before him.

“Do you finally see the truth, little sorceress?” the creature snarled, each word the lick of a fiery whip. “This world is flawed and unworthy, just as all mortals are. I will burn all this weakness away!”

“No!” The hood of the girl’s cloak blew backward, revealing her flowing black hair. It was Lucia. “I won’t let you do this. I’ll stop you!”

“You’ll stop me, will you?” The creature began to laugh and stretched out his burning arms. “Yet you’re the one who’s made all this possible! Had you not awoken me after all these centuries, none of this would be happening.”

“I didn’t awaken you,” she said, her tone more uncertain now. “The ritual with Alexius . . . yes, I awoke the others. But you—you’re different. It’s like you awoke yourself.”