CHAPTER I
Xerxes
I squeeze the iron bar in my hands until it snaps. My body radiates darkness, and my skin cracks, revealing streams of fire instead of veins, but still no magic channels through the iron.
I growl in frustration, the cave walls shuddering.
“Milord, please,” Marayke cries. “You’ve been trying for a year already, we have to think of another way.”
I want to snarl so loud that the rock crumbles, and Marayke the Iron Maiden is the only reason I refrain. She’s been my most loyal general for years, and went into hiding with my closest retinue and me when we lost everything.
And we sure as hell lost a whole fucking lot. I, as the Fire King, had all the realms in my grasp, and I was rapidly expanding towards the heavens. I pick up another bar to unload my frustration on, sweat glistening on my skin as I turn to the molten lake of fire just a few feet away. How long have we been hiding inside the volcanic caves at the heart of the Fire Realm? It must have been at least a year now that I’ve been wandering from magma chamber to magma chamber, seeking to reconstruct the fire core of my energy body.
“Milord, with all due respect. It makes sense that you listen to my sister and go about this differently,” Kareim Velduros says. “We need to find something that will help you regain your abilities.”
I don’t look at him, but I can sense his manipulative sneer. I know what something he has in mind, he’s mentioned it before, and it’s out of the question. But he keeps bringing it up with every failure.
“You need an energy worker to replenish your magic, and you need one fast,” he insists.
I break the second iron bar as I try in vain to activate my innermost powers and melt it, but this time it’s not just the frustration that fuels me, it’s the low burn of violence in my veins. I know Kareim would have betrayed me long ago if he weren’t still afraid of me.
The mage’s long robe shimmers in the lava light as he stands as far away from the heat as possible, his hands on top of his staff that he’s far too young to be using. He has long wiry hair the color of rust, the same color as his sister Marayke, but unlike her, he’s vicious for the fun of it, not because of a lifetime of harsh military training that made him into a brute.
“You need to find her, Milord,” he pushes when I don’t respond. “Cerys Dark is the most gifted energy worker in the Flipside, despite her young age. She is a descendant of Merlin. If anyone can replenish your energy core, it’s her.”
Marayke remains silent, a clear sign that she agrees with her brother, even though she doesn’t like the idea of me getting close to Cerys Dark any more than I do.
I curl my lip over my teeth, staring down at the liquid fire boiling down in the volcano’s core.
I growl, deep, from my chest, trying to speak. I haven’t done it in a year, focused on pulling myself back together after the King of Frost and the Sea Queen blasted my core to smithereens. They basically blew the heart from my chest. My physical body regenerated. My energy body didn’t, and I’m not half the god of flames I used to be.
“Cerys Dark would only—” My voice comes out like claws grating on stone. I clear my throat, but it sounds like the snarl of a beast. The Undead that just entered the cave flinch and back off. “She would only replenish me for a short while.” Even though I would be functioning on much more power than now, when I can’t use anything beyond the most basic magic and, of course, my physical strength. “What I need is a new core. The Firestone Crystal, the central stone of the Fire Court Crown, only its magic can fully restore me.”
“But,” Marayke whispers, “the god Apophis’ Wraiths stole it centuries ago.”
I remember how I chased down the Wraiths. They hadn’t gotten to destroy the Firestone before I captured them, but they hid it, and no matter how I tortured them, they wouldn’t disclose its location. Which is understandable—if I’d let them live, Apophis, the God of Chaos, wouldn’t have.
I sink into silence, reliving every moment of the day I killed the Wraiths. Every twist of the shadowy, featureless faces that expressed more than any conventional face ever could. They floated like black spirits in the wind, but if captured they turned to flesh, and they could suffer physically. And suffer they did.
I would have dedicated more of my resources to finding the Firestone, but back then I was the most powerful fae king of all the realms, on par only with Lysander, the King of Frost. I had armies and magic beyond most supernaturals’ wildest dreams. I could spit fire like a dragon, and fly on wings of shadow. I could activate volcanoes that had long been dormant. I didn’t need the Firestone, and I thought I never would. Now look at me, reduced to the raw strength of my muscles.
“We could find out where it is, the Firestone.” Marayke now stands too close to me. I know she wants to place a hand on my shoulder, I can smell it in her body chemistry, the desire, the longing. It makes my stomach twist.
“I don’t even know where to start looking,” I tell her as softly as I can, not wanting to hurt her feelings or be too brusque with her, but my vocal chords still sound like instruments that haven’t been oiled in forever.
“But she surely does,” Kareim puts in. “Cerys Dark, or the company she keeps.”
“Why would she know?” I angle my body towards him with a frown, folding my arms across my chest. “She’s got nothing to do with Apophis or his Wraiths.”
“No, but she’s got everything to do with your other enemies—Lysander the King of Frost, and his wife, the Sea Queen. Not to mention her whole guild of witches and warlocks in the Flipside. Someone is bound to know something.”
All roads lead to her, don’t they? I can’t keep avoiding the unavoidable.
“Besides,” Kareim presses his advantage with a foxy look in his crimson eyes, now that he can see by the look on my face that I’m finally considering it. “There’s this other thing that she, and only she, can do. And you can get it from her easily, since she still has no idea.”
Cerys
I SHOULDN’T BE OUT here, but I couldn’t resist. The masquerades in Flipside Edinburgh are unique. The masks, the magic filling the air, the scents from the inebriating potions and the magic sweets can give one the best high of their lives. Everybody is happy, joy fills the air. Ever since the King of Flames was banished a year ago, his danger no longer hovering over the supernatural realms, they all have been vibrating with new-found life.
Shifters dance with vampires, sorcerers with fae, witches and their cats with arcane priests and their dogs and snakes. As for me, I couldn’t resist the pull of cotton candy and magic punch. I’ve never missed one of these events in my life, except for the better part of this year. While Xerxes’ banishment meant freedom for everybody else, it means indefinite isolation for me.
After the world-shaking confrontation between Lysander the King of Ice and Xerxes the King of Flames a year ago I had to leave my shop on a little side street close to the Royal Mile, and hide in the underground, always heavily guarded. Thank Providence for Nazarean, my familiar, who never leaves my side, giving me some measure of normalcy—except for tonight, when he had to stay behind to make sure the guards don’t discover I’m gone.