Wicked Crown (Shattered Kingdom Book 2) Read online

  But this … this was different. She had seen that woman go up in flames—blue flames. Dragon fire. And now it was Gandrett burning. There was no illusion. No poison. Magic. Her magic was doing this—

  Something iron-hard banded around her wrists, the touch of it so cold—icy against the flames that were consuming her—and just like that, as if someone had thrust her into water, the heat ceased.

  Chapter Seven

  Panic was a word, the use of which Nehelon had parted with centuries ago; when the courts of Ulfray had fallen asleep. But as he was scanning Gandrett’s thrashing body, her limbs scraping over the forest ground, tearing her uniform in places, and leaving bloodied stains, Nehelon remembered what exactly panic was.

  She was muttering in-between screams of agony, her face distorting in the pain she was hallucinating, words as difficult to understand as if she was speaking a foreign language.

  With a glance around the narrow space between the trees, Nehelon reassured himself that there were no spectators, his Fae ears confirming that there wasn’t even a deer close by. Then he reached into his pack, leaving Gandrett’s side for no longer than a couple of seconds before he returned, holding biting, cold iron shackles in his fingers. He cursed at the feel of the metal on his skin, how it pushed on his own power, daring it to come play. But the shackles weren’t for him. If he didn’t do anything to stop the mortal’s seizure, she would suffer damage that even his healing powers would be useless against.

  “Hold on,” he whispered as he leaned over her, waiting for another moment before he let those shackles snap around her wrists with a movement of his shaky hands, studying her agonized features.

  She slumped on the ground like a bag of sand and slowly, so slowly, her face smoothed over, features relaxing, and her breathing turned less labored.

  “I am here,” he told her softly, probably too softly for her human ears, and as if he had spoken the words for himself rather than her, the panic ebbed away. He was there. This time. Unlike the last time when something like this had happened. He shivered at the memory that had been haunting him for almost two-hundred years.

  But this was different. This time, he was prepared.

  His gaze ran over the young woman; dirt smeared on her face, the slow rising and falling of her chest, the chain of iron running across her hips between her hands. She would sleep for a while and he wouldn’t lift a finger to move her until she had woken and he could reassure himself that she was all right. This was too important, and he couldn’t risk making mistakes.

  Gandrett tried to see past the swirling symbols, now an array in her mind, and even though the meaning eluded her, something of weight, of importance seemed to follow in the wake of the symbols as they slowly faded. One by one, they winked out like stars swallowed by the morning light.

  The first thing she felt was the icy cold that enveloped her. No pain, no blood in her mouth. She could breathe freely and deeply and that familiar scent—

  “Nehelon.”

  His hand was on her forehead before she had finished speaking his name.

  “Your temperature is normal,” he noted, sounding oddly human.

  Blinking away the lead that was holding down her eyelids, Gandrett opened her eyes and found darkness surrounding her. An owl hooted somewhere nearby as if in greeting, and the content stomping of hooves made the ground beneath her vibrate for a brief moment.

  “Don’t try to sit up,” Nehelon said in that same voice as he placed one hand on her forearm. “You will only hurt yourself.”

  Hurt myself how? Gandrett intended to ask, but her voice forsook her, a rasp all that left her mouth.

  “Something triggered your magic, and you exerted all of it in a seizure,” he informed her as if that was something she would understand—could understand.

  Vague memories of fire filled her mind. Blue-and-turquoise flames.

  Gandrett jerked upright so fast her head almost collided with Nehelon’s chest.

  “Had I told you to sit up, it would have been more likely for you to stay down, wouldn’t it?” Nehelon eyed her with weary eyes from above as she slowly let herself sink back onto her elbows. There was a chain linking her hands together—a long iron chain.

  “What?” She was still sorting through her mind for what had truly happened, how she had ended up bound on the forest ground and only half-heard his question.

  “You rarely do as I say these days.” Something bemused had taken over his tone, the weariness gone from his features—human, no sign of Fae but that excessive beauty.

  Gandrett shook her head. “That might have something to do with me no longer being in your service,” she suggested and rolled into a sitting position, leaning well away from Nehelon, and held out her arms before her. “How did those get there?”

  “You do remember what happened, don’t you?” Nehelon’s gaze was on the iron shackles, which were biting into her skin like ice; a weight as heavy as her heart, which throbbed as the memory of the destroyed farm in Alencourt returned to the front of her consciousness.

  “I remember enough to know that something isn’t right.” Sharp words. Maybe too sharp for the man—male—who had probably saved her life. But the shackles on her wrists indicated that there was more to the story than what her memory allowed her to glimpse.

  “After we left Alencourt?” Nehelon raised an eyebrow as he studied her from the side, his gaze inquisitive.

  Gandrett tried hard, but there was nothing but the glowing symbols of turquoise and the pain.

  And the woman who had burst into flames.

  “Why am I in shackles?” she responded with a question. Gandrett had survived enough during her training not to fidget at the uncomfortable feel of the metal locked around her wrists. She also knew better than to expect an explanation from Nehelon. He had been notoriously cryptic from the moment they’d met. Cryptic and annoying. And painfully handsome.

  “This,” Nehelon tapped one shackle with his index finger, “is pure iron.”

  Gandrett studied his face through the darkness.

  “Iron is probably the only thing able to bind magic,” he offered as explanation as Gandrett didn’t respond. “Your magic was consuming you, and if I hadn’t slipped those”—he gestured at the metal binding her like a slave—“on, your brain would be soft as poorly spiced Eedwood fish paste.”

  Gandrett swallowed. She had heard the rumors, the bedtime stories that iron was a weapon worth keeping when you traveled close by the borders of Ulfray. And if the iron had saved her from slowly burning to death—

  “You put them on me,” she repeated and earned a nod. “So you touched them.” It wasn’t a question.

  Another nod.

  Gandrett’s eyes searched the darkness for Nehelon’s hands and found them resting in his lap, neither of them appearing to have suffered any damage.

  “I heal quickly,” he answered her unspoken question and held out both his palms for her to examine.

  Gandrett ran her gaze over them before her attention returned to her wrists. “Why doesn’t it hurt me?” Not hurt was the wrong expression. It was cold and uncomfortable, biting at her skin. But nothing compared to the agony she had endured before she had blacked out. Memories of flames, of searing fire on her skin, inside her lungs, returned as she tried to figure out why her skin wasn’t scathed.

  “You are human, Gandrett,” Nehelon followed the conversation they had started. “Iron doesn’t hurt you the way it hurts me.”

  “You’ve handled my sword before,” she retorted, realizing that he had touched iron right in front of her, and she hadn’t noticed any injuries.

  “My glamour is stronger than you would think,” was all he had to say to that. But after a moment of Gandrett’s glaring, “If you ever feel the need to kill me, Gandrett, run me through with an iron blade—solid iron.” He flashed a dire grin as if daring her to try.

  She didn’t know what to say.

  “So, my magic was triggered by that woman who burned… wit
h dragon fire?” She changed the topic. “And you chained me with iron to silence my magic?”

  “To keep you alive and intact.”

  Why did he sound like he was talking about a domestic tool?

  “Sane,” she offered. “You mean sane.”

  Nehelon shrugged. “At this point, sanity could be considered a luxury.”

  The look on his face, half-hidden in the shadows of the night, made her wonder if he was talking about himself.

  As they kept staring into each other’s eyes, neither of them inclined to yield, Gandrett held up her hands between them. “So are you going to take them off?”

  Nehelon frowned. “I am not sure if you’re ready.”

  “Ready for what?”

  “To face your magic.”

  The memory of blood and ash flourished on her tongue, and she swallowed, which made Nehelon reach into his pack and extract a waterskin. “Drink.”

  Gandrett caught the waterskin as he dropped it into her lap, and she grinned at the small victory. In shackles, yes, but not incapacitated. If he wouldn’t take off those shackles, she could always strangle him with them—if she was fast enough.

  “Don’t even think about it,” he snarled as she glared at him, sounding a lot as if he had just read her mind.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” she muttered under her breath, and from the dark amusement dancing in his eyes, she knew he had heard her.

  “I will take them off in time. But before, I want your magic to calm, and I need you to be patient until you have regained enough strength that a sudden trigger won’t deplete you to a life-threatening level.” As Nehelon scanned her, that amusement made way for the initial weariness she had noticed on his features. “What happened there in Alencourt…” He paused and sighed through his nose. “That woman deserved what she got.”

  Gandrett froze as she deciphered what he had just admitted. She could see it before her, the figure impaled in the main square of Alencourt, bursting into blue flames. He had told her not to look back—and she hadn’t listened.

  “It was you,” she realized. “You put her on that spike.” Revulsion filled Gandrett top to bottom. She had known that Nehelon was Fae, that he had to be violent and brutal the way the stories suggested. A threat to everything good and virtuous. His handsome face suddenly appeared like a mask, covering up the truth. “You … killed her.”

  The words had just left her lips when Nehelon’s hand darted for the iron chain, tugging her toward him with a rough pull, and held her in place, his features twisting as he brought his face close to hers. “And you can thank the gods I did, or you would be ash and rubble like your dear mother.” His glamour slipped, and his anger was so beautiful and terrifying that Gandrett forgot to breathe.

  Nehelon let go of the chain and cursed, holding up his palm to show her where the iron had bitten through his skin, leaving streaks of open flesh behind.

  “Don’t believe for a moment that I would have let her live after what she admitted.” His voice turned softer, less of a snarl, and Gandrett pulled back from him, unsure whether to be horrified that he had killed that woman or that he had impaled her in a public place as if to make a statement.

  “What did she do that she deserved to die like that?” Her words were mechanical. Nothing heartfelt in them. Just the memory of the fire and the pain that had followed in her own body. Nehelon’s gaze was still holding hers, and it didn’t allow for anything but words. All her emotional capacity was bound by the way he looked at her—like he needed to justify his actions. Like he was actually sorry. Even if his words were the opposite.

  “I got some information from her about the soot marks in Alencourt and about those wrecked farms”—he didn’t specify that her family’s farm was one of them—“and when I pieced it all together a couple of days later…” He released her from his gaze, searching the darkness with piercing eyes. “It’s the worshippers of the god of dragons who are burning down farms.”

  Adrenaline flooded Gandrett’s system once more, the creature in her chest roaring against the effect of the iron.

  “See,” Nehelon gestured at her bound wrists. “It’s wise to keep you locked in those until you find your composure. Another break out like before, and there won’t be much left of you either.”

  Gandrett frowned and rested her hands in her lap. “Why does that sound like a threat?”

  Nehelon bared his teeth, white and sharp and perfect in the moonlight filtering through the treetops. “Not a threat. Never a threat with you.” He threw the words at her as if they didn’t have any meaning, but something about them resonated in Gandrett’s chest, easing the violent beast tugging on the leash the iron had put on it.

  “The Shygon cult is burning down houses and collecting survivors. Youth, mainly.” His fists clenched before him, hiding the already healing injuries. “Your brother barely escaped.”

  “She burned down my family’s farm?” Gandrett concluded.

  A silent nod was all Nehelon gave her as confirmation. But it was enough. He had killed her, impaled her on a spike, and left her in the main square, not for the villagers to see but for any worshipper of Shygon—a warning with blue flame as a sign that they had overstayed their welcome in the peaceful village of Alencourt. It had to have been his fire that ignited the corpse. A symbol that their assaults didn’t go unnoticed.

  “Then, she may rot in Hel’s realm.” If what Nehelon had indicated was the truth, then Andrew might have ended up as a blood sacrifice for the god of dragons. And to what end? What did they want? What was their goal? Why were they killing people to please their god? All those thoughts, tearing at her from the inside, and what she said was, “Why?”

  Nehelon’s throat bobbed. “No one prays to the god of dragons without hoping for the power he supposedly grants.” There was something about the way his eyes flickered in the darkness, like gems of terror, that made her believe this wasn’t the first time he was witnessing the evil-doings of the Shygon cult.

  So Gandrett pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on top, her arms with the chain slung around her legs and said, “Maybe it’s time you tell me a little bit more about what you know, Nehelon.”

  Chapter Eight

  Nehelon stared at her for a long, darkness-threaded moment.

  “What would you like to know exactly?” He got to his feet, his tall frame little more than a silhouette in the night, his tone heavy as if the burdens of centuries were surfacing at the question she’d asked.

  Gandrett studied his outline; the broad shoulders clad in leathers, his slender hips, and muscled thighs. She didn’t need to see the stunning face, equally belonging to a creature of fairytales and nightmares, to know to be on her guard. Nehelon had killed someone. Even if it was the woman who supposedly had been about to collect Andrew as blood sacrifice for the Shygon cult—Gandrett hadn’t even known until a moment ago that there was an actual cult—he had still killed someone. She shuddered and tucked the information away, trying not to think about it, and focused on getting more information about the cult.

  “Tell me about dragons.” Gandrett listened to herself as she sounded like a little girl asking for a bedtime story. No, that wasn’t it. She needed any shred of information she could get. If Nehelon was right—and after what he had done to ensure that woman would never bother anyone again, she believed he was—those people who prayed to the god of dragons had killed her mother. They had attempted to procure her brother as a vessel. She couldn’t tell how many others had been sacrificed the way Linniue had tried to do with Addie in the temple under Eedwood Castle. But it couldn’t happen again. “Tell me anything that will help us bring this cult down before it can do any more harm.” This time, there was determination in her voice.

  “Dragons.” He fell silent, his silhouette motionless as he was either pondering what to tell her or thoroughly ignoring her.

  A breeze of cool night air ruffled Gandrett’s hair and filtered through her clothes, making her shiver.<
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  Nehelon shifted in the shadows as Gandrett’s chain rattled when she grasped her knees more tightly.

  “You must be cold,” he noted and reached for the pack on Lim’s saddle. The horses were dozing under the trees, close enough for Gandrett to hear them huff every now and then.

  “I’m fine,” Gandrett automatically said. A trained reflex from the priory. Appearing in need of anything was dangerous when everyone was waiting for her to make a mistake—everyone but Surel and Kaleb. And, of course, Nahir, who had been her only friends there. Even if only because they had been stuck there together with no prospect of escape—ever.

  Now that Nehelon was wrapping a blanket around her, the priory at Everrun seemed like an eternity ago. Even if she didn’t have the right of thinking of eternity when Nehelon had probably lived that long—at least half an eternity.

  “I am sorry, Gandrett, truly, for everything that happened to you.” He lingered, crouching before her on the forest ground, each of his hands holding on to a corner of the blanket as he pulled it tightly around her shoulders.

  There was true sorrow in his voice, honest compassion. Gandrett couldn’t tell how she knew, but a hint of the Nehelon who had promised to help her with her magic was now gazing at her. The Nehelon who had heaved earth for a grave when she had wanted to bury her mother. And it was even harder to look into his eyes and see them spark in the moonlight and think that he had just killed someone—no matter how much that woman had deserved it.