Witch Queen
Authors: Kim Richardson
Tags: #romance, #adventure, #paranormal, #sword and sorcery, #young adult, #epic fantasy series, #teen fantasy, #myths and legends, #fantasy and magic, #throne of glass
Witch Queen, Divided Realms Book 2:
Copyright © 2016 by Kim Richardson
Edited by Grenfell Featherstone
All rights reserved by Kim Richardson. No
part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or
retrieval system without the written permission of the author. The
characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any
similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not
intended by the author. Thank you for respecting the author’s
work.
First edition: January 2016
Acknowledgments
To those who
have taken the journey with me into Elena's world.
Thank you for
believing in me as a storyteller.
Map
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
T
HE BLACK BLIGHT WAS A SCAR. The world was blackened and
decayed, and everything reeked of death. The cold and damp sky was
a gray emptiness that blended with the bleak streets of Soul City.
The quiet of the daily market was a far cry from the usual
cacophony of voices and the bustling crowds I’d grown accustomed to
over the years.
The once glorious birch trees that lined the
streets had become blackened and leafless, their trunks rotting
from the inside. Flies buzzed around my head, and I slapped them
away. While the sorcerer’s black magic plagued our land, the golden
temple shone like a brilliant sun in the semi-darkness, mocking me.
I hated it more than ever.
I cringed, not only at the blighted
landscape but because Jon was still missing.
Two days had passed since he was taken from
me, and I was a mess. The Goddess had given me a glimpse of the
unconditional and everlasting affection that signified true love,
and I’d be damned if I’d let the priests keep it from me. I had
tasted it, and I
needed
it back.
After Will and Leo gave me the news about
Jon’s capture, I’d returned to my little cottage to find Rose
shaken but alive and angry at being babysat by two of Mad Jack’s
men. But angry was good. I needed her to be feisty and energized
for what was about to happen in the world.
Although I was disheartened, I gave Rose a
detailed account of what had happened during the race: how I had
been the devastated by Prince Landon’s betrayal, how I had seen the
real power of the Heart of Arcania stone, and finally how I had
learned that the high priest of Anglia
wasn’t
a priest at
all but some kind of powerful sorcerer. I told her how he had cast
the spell that had spread the black blight over Soul City.
The accusing I-told-you-so look in her eyes
made it clear that she partly blamed me for the blighted world. I
had set off a chain reaction by stealing the Anglian crown. She
had
warned me to take it back. And like always, I hadn’t
listened. I was glad she didn’t blame me and let me finish my
tale.
I skipped the intimate details of my
relationship with Jon, but I explained that Mad Jack’s real name
was Jonathan
Worchester
.
He was the rebel leader in the Pit and wasn’t the thug we had first
believed him to be. I didn’t tell her about my healing powers till
the very end. I watched her carefully for any signs that she’d
known something had been different about me all along. Her reaction
told me all I needed to know.
“So you knew,” I told her, my temper
flaring. “You knew about my abilities all along, and you never told
me. Why?”
“I had seen your mother’s magic with my own
eyes,” Rose said. “And yes, she had told me that you were the same
as her. It was a secret I promised never to reveal. I promised her
to keep you both safe. And yet your mother was always looking over
her shoulder.”
“What do you mean?”
Rose shook her head. “She died before she
could tell me more,” she continued. “Perhaps I was wrong not to
tell you, but at the time I thought it best. I
was
going to
tell you eventually…with all that’s happened, I just never felt the
time was right.”
Time was the essential element I was
lacking. And I didn’t have enough time to drill her with more
questions—not yet. I needed to save Jon before he was tortured and
killed, if he was even still alive. So I kissed her forehead, and
without another word I went in search of him.
That was two days ago.
And now I was facing the city gates yet
again, about to make my
second
attempt at a rescue. Even
with the help of Will and Leo, my first attempt had failed
miserably. We’d never even made it past the gates. It didn’t help
that the city was protected by a circular stone wall.
And now, where only two guards had been
stationed at each of the four gates before, ten were there in their
stead. It wasn’t that we couldn’t take down ten ordinary temple
guards; it was that
these
particular guards had black magic
powers that gave them three times the strength of any normal man.
At first glance you’d have thought they were normal temple guards,
and that’s where you’d make a fatal mistake. Their once healthy
skin had become rotted and blistered, and angry black veins pulsed
around their necks and faces. They had been infected with black
magic. Their faces had become emaciated, and their skin had pulled
tight around their skulls making them look skeletal. Their humanity
had been removed, and their eyes had become black, soulless
orbs.
Magic was new to Soul City and to
me
.
I was only just starting to understand my own powers. As a steel
maiden, a magic bearer, I knew I had been blessed with the innate
ability to fight and to wield weapons. I also knew that I possessed
an extraordinary healing power. Although I still had many questions
about my own blood magic, they would have to wait because the black
magic blight was spreading fast. I wasn’t sure how it spread from
victim to victim or how it affected the trees and vegetation. But
it was clear that it was drawing the life out of everything.
I had only seen the black magic in action
once. The sorcerer had used the stone to conjure his magic from a
shadow in the darkness, and threads of something black had shot
into the bodies of men. It had wormed its way into them, into their
souls, and it had stolen their humanity and turned them into
demons. The black blight had spread from the city and had begun to
infect the trees and vegetation
outside
the walls. It was
only a matter of time before it reached the Pit and the surrounding
villages, before it consumed all of Anglia.
The only thing going for me now, what set me
apart, was that
I
was partly immune to the sorcerer’s black
magic. But it wasn’t enough. There was only one of me, while
thousands had been infected. And they were all bent to the
sorcerer’s will. I couldn’t take on an entire dark army.
A group of eight men from the rebellion had
volunteered to help me rescue Jon from the temple prisons. Will and
Leo had joined the group, and I’d given them each a grim smile to
show them my gratitude. These men all shared a hard weathered look
that displayed the toll of living in the Pit. The worried looks in
their eyes made it clear that they cared about their leader as much
as I did.
If we were going to defeat the guards and
get past the gates, we would have to outsmart them. My years of
thieving and sneaking in and out of the city unnoticed would come
in handy. I had become an expert at getting out of tight
situations. I had planned this rescue mission for hours, and I knew
exactly what to do.
The smell of decaying flesh and sulfur
burned my throat with every breath. It was the smell of black
magic, toxic and deadly. The scar at the back of my neck throbbed,
a reminder of my own brush with that evil magic. The witches had
said I would never truly heal, whatever that meant, I wasn’t
sure.
All of us were cloaked and hooded. We
crouched low in the shrubbery some fifty feet from the south gate.
I was dressed in the same clothes I wore during the Great Race:
a long sleeved green tunic with leather
bodice,
a pair of soft leather leggings, knee-high leather
boots, and a black cloak. I hadn’t bothered to change when I
arrived home, and now my clothes were covered with a layer of
grime. I wiggled my nose at the smell of my own sweat.