A Crown of the Gods, page 1
About the Author
S. M. Gaither is the author of multiple bestselling romantic epic fantasy books. And while she’s happiest writing stories filled with magic and spice, she’s also done everything from working on a chicken farm to running a small business, with a lot of really odd jobs in between. She currently makes her home in the beautiful foothills of North Carolina with her husband, their daughter and one very spoiled dog. You can visit her online at www.smgaitherbooks.com
ALSO BY S. M. GAITHER
The Shadows & Crowns series:
The Song of the Marked
A Twist of the Blade
The Call of the Void
The Queen of the Dawn
The Serpents & Kings series
The Shift Chronicles
The Drowning Empire series
S. M. Gaither
* * *
A CROWN OF THE GODS
Shadows & Crowns
BOOK FOUR
Contents
THE HIERARCHY OF GODS
PRELUDE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
AFTERWORD
To Amanda—
Thank you for putting up with me.
Prelude
PRINCE VAREN STOOD OUTSIDE THE LIBRARY WINDOW, BALANCED on a makeshift stool, his short legs stretched out as far as he dared to stretch them.
He was spying. Trying to keep his eyes on his father, who was talking to a stranger dressed in black leathers. The stranger had his face angled away from Varen. A fire was roaring next to the two figures, its light creating shadows that stretched frighteningly tall against the endless shelves of books that wrapped around the room.
Outside of that room, in the courtyard where the young prince watched from, it was fast becoming cold. The sun was setting. Wind howled from the east. The only part of Varen that wasn’t cold after standing in that wind for the better part of the last hour was the throbbing patch of red on his cheek.
That stinging brand was his mother’s work. She had been chattering away with one of the ladies of her court when he’d stumbled in to ask her for a bedtime story. When she’d started to summon a servant to do the job, Varen had automatically teared up at the thought of old Nana Faye and her scratchy voice reciting whatever strange stories she remembered from her childhood in the southern empire. Those stories of wild magic and monsters frightened him, and Nana Faye had always seemed to delight in his fear.
The tears had been his mistake, of course.
The Queen did not like tears.
He should have known that. He did know that. The slap had only been a sharp but necessary reminder. After that, he had left his mother—without another word about stories—and sulked his way toward his room.
But something had caught his attention before he reached it—a seizing coldness, like the nasty shock of having a warm blanket jerked off by someone trying to wake him up.
There’s magic afoot, he’d heard one of the servants telling another.
He didn’t understand magic.
He only knew Nana Faye’s stories about it, and that his mother hated it as much as she hated tears—so he should have avoided it, the way he usually avoided crying.
But curiosity had overcome his fear and led him to follow the pull of that magic … and this is what had brought him to the library window.
Another shiver of power grabbed at his skin. It seemed to be coming from that man dressed in black, though it was hard to tell where the cold, easterly wind ended and the frigid magic began. That cold—whatever was causing it—made his throat ache.
A small cough escaped him.
The man in black glanced toward the window, and Varen ducked.
Minutes later, when he felt courageous enough to look inside again, his father was alone in the library. But the flames in the fireplace had shifted to a pale shade of blue, and there was a single raven feather floating down through the air, slowly coming to rest where that man in black had only just been standing.
How odd.
Varen heard someone approaching. He shuffled off the upside-down pail he’d been using as a step stool, planted his feet on the hard stone path, and squinted into the darkening twilight.
A young girl with waves of reddish brown hair emerged from the darkness. His big sister. His twin, most people assumed—though he was actually ten months younger.
“What are you doing, Ren?” she asked, head tilting. She had a book tucked under her arm. The Tiger and the Queen. One of his favorites. He sniffed and rubbed away a tear that started to fall.
The only thing worse than Nana Faye reading to him was his sister reading to him. It simply didn’t feel right; she should have been listening to the story alongside him instead.
Her gaze jumped to the red spot on his cheek, and she frowned.
Varen sniffed again. That didn’t feel right, either. Like she was concerned about him …and what for? He could take care of himself as well as she could. She acted so much older than she ought to act.
Then again, people said the same about him.
Strange children, the court called them. Sometimes that court whispered, at least sounding sad or worried. Other times they sounded loud and …cruel.
But that didn’t mean they were wrong, did it?
And maybe if he could find a way to act less strange, his mother would be more interested in reading him bedtime stories.
“Come on,” his sister said, grabbing his arm and pulling. “You’re s’posed to be in bed.”
Despite less than a year between them, she was already much taller—and stronger. He didn’t see the point in fighting her. He let her pull him through the palace, back to his room, and then he crawled into his bed and slipped beneath the covers.
His sister stretched out across the foot of the mattress like she always did, resting on her back with the book extended above her as she read it. He usually complained that he couldn’t see the pictures when she held it at this angle. But tonight, he didn’t care. He didn’t want to see them, her, or anything else.
He closed his eyes so the tears would stay in as he listened to his sister tell the familiar story in her usual, overdramatic reading voice.
Once upon a time, a young queen lived alone in a big castle near the very top of a mountain, surrounded by the tallest trees you could imagine.
And within those trees there lived a family of tigers.
The young queen was captivated by them, and every day, she drew closer and closer to the dark forest, hoping for a glimpse …
Varen fell asleep just as the queen finally gathered enough courage to step into the forest in search of her beloved tigers, only to find herself changing, sprouting claws and stripes and becoming a beast herself.
SOME TIME LATER, Varen jerked awake, shivering. He felt it again. Magic.
His sister was gone. The room felt too big—too empty—without her in it. He tried to huddle under his blankets and go back to sleep, but the cold persisted, so he shuffled from his bed and plodded down the hallway to his sister’s room.
She wasn’t there.
The icy fingers of magic continued to curl around him. Beckoning him. Pulling him down one hallway and then the next, the next, the next, until finally he came to a large set of doors—the entrance to the sitting room his mother had been in earlier. He could hear people moving inside.
His fingers tapped the mark on his cheek.
Still tender.
He didn’t want to speak to his mother again tonight … but he wanted to know what was happening in that room.
There was a storage space and a servant’s corridor that connected to it. Using that instead of the main doors, he inched along with his back to the wall, and soon he caught sight of his mother, of the sequins of her dress shimmering in the light of a low-burning fire. The ladies of her court were gone. But she wasn’t alone. There was a …
His breath caught.
What was that?
As he stared into the room, at the nightmarish …thing …before him, he wondered if he was still asleep. He gave his head a shake. Nightmares weren’t real. Monsters weren’t real. His sister told him that all the time.
And yet …
And yet, here a monster seemed to be, taking up an entire half of the massive room. Its curled ears were pinned back against its monstrous head, and it stared at the Queen with eyes that burned bright, flashing between shades of white and pale, frozen blue. It looked like one of the beasts from Nana’s stories. Like a wolf—but one surrounded by unnatural ribbons of black that writhed like l
The Queen clutched one of the metal rods from the basket by the fireplace, her fingers white from the strength of her grip.
There was another rod left in that basket. One with a sharper end. A better weapon. Varen snuck forward, his gaze locked on that shiny, sharp end.
He came to his senses at the edge of the fire’s circle of light. He stumbled to a stop, dropped slowly to his knees, and clenched his small fists into the shaggy carpet.
Why had he come in here?
The Queen had not noticed her son; she only had eyes for the wolf.
It stalked closer to her.
Her grip on the metal rod tightened. She stood her ground, and Varen could just barely hear her whisper, “I knew the gods were angry with us. You’ve come for a sacrifice, haven’t you?”
The shadows around the wolf danced, as if excited by the idea.
The Queen recoiled slightly, but she still did not flee.
Varen curled closer to the floor. A sound escaped him—another soft cry.
Another mistake.
His mother moved to him as she heard it. She took hold of his arm, pulled him to his feet, and held fast. She kept him by her side even as the wolf turned its eyes on him. She forced him to stand up straight even when he tried to cower against her skirts.
A soft growl rumbled through the room.
Varen shivered. His mother’s grip on his arm tightened, weakened, tightened again …until finally she seemed to make up her mind, and she shoved her son in front of her.
The monster had started forward, only to pause at the sight of a child with weak knees and shaking hands—almost as if it felt uncertain. Confused, maybe.
But even to Varen’s four-year-old mind, the unspoken command his mother had given was clear enough.
Take him instead.
Here is your sacrifice.
Varen closed his eyes and braced himself for the feel of teeth and claws against his skin.
When several moments passed and the sharpness did not come, he cautiously peeked one eye open again.
The shadows around the monster were twisting and reaching toward him.
But they thinned as they passed over Varen, turning to barely-there vapors that left nothing more than a chill on his skin before they moved on, sweeping back behind him and surrounding his mother instead.
Silently, they swallowed her up—so silently that the Queen’s final gasp was easily heard. She was cocooned and suspended in the air only long enough to release that gasp, and then she was falling, slumping, crumpling to the floor. No longer moving. Or breathing.
Dazed, Varen crawled away from her. His stomach ached. His hands and feet felt funny. Tingly. He wanted to keep crawling forever—or until he reached someplace far away where no one could find him—but he froze once more, just outside of the firelight, as a wave of cold overtook him. He glanced over his shoulder.
The wolf stared at him.
He stared back.
He should have shouted for help. Instead, he reached out a trembling hand …
But why?
To tell the beast to stop?
Or to beckon it closer, to grab at those shadows around it? They were thick, a shield that hid the true shape of the beast. The only clear things among its darkness were its eyes, which were now the bright red shade of burning coals.
A thought gripped Varen as he watched the shadows dance.
Mine. I want them to be mine.
He was afraid, and he was thinking only of how strong those shadows must have been, to do what they’d done to the Queen. He wanted to be strong, too. He wanted something to protect him.
Mine. They should be mine.
The beast growled, as if in opposition to this unspoken thought.
Varen staggered to his feet. He looked at the Queen’s body. Still not moving. Not breathing. It hit him then, all at once, with a force that nearly knocked him back to his hands and knees.
Dead.
His mother was dead.
Anger intertwined with his fear, but he still did not shout. He couldn’t make himself loud. He never could, it seemed. The royal court whispered about this too.
Strange child, to be so young yet throw so few tantrums.
His anger had always been quieter—darker—wrapping around him like a weighted security blanket that he carried with him wherever he went.
But in that moment, someone else was being loud; someone else had started to shout for him.
His sister.
She appeared in the doorway, clutching a stuffed tiger in her hands. It was his own toy; Nana Faye had been sewing its tail back on. Was that why his sister had left him alone in his room? So she could go and collect it?
His hand was outstretched toward the beast again, Varen realized. And he couldn’t seem to pull it back. Or maybe he didn’t want to pull it back. He still wanted those shadows. He wanted to control them, to use them to cover up the dead Queen so his sister didn’t have to see what had happened.
The room grew darker. Colder. Those shadows closed in on him, just as they’d done to his mother. As they encased him, he felt his body slumping just as hers had.
He wanted to lay down and go to sleep.
Before he could, several things happened all at once.
Through the blackness, he saw a flash of white, snapping teeth. He felt an arm wrapping around his waist, pulling him away from the teeth and the shadows, and then he was on the ground with his sister beside him. She kept her arm around him, kept pulling until they were in clearer air. Once there, she straightened and stood in front of him with her arm drawn back, as if readying a sword and preparing to slay that beast before them.
But there was no sword. And there were no guards rushing to protect them either. No other help was coming. There was no way out.
The dark beast stepped forward—
Only to meet a wall of brilliant light.
It washed over the wolf and drove it back. The beast tossed its head, lowered its body and snapped its gaze from side to side, searching for its shadows.
But the light was growing, scattering and chasing those shadows out of sight, out of reach. And it seemed to be drawing out more light from everything around them—even pulling it from within the wolf itself—until the entire room was drenched in a blinding glow.
Warmth overtook Varen, sinking deep into his skin. He closed his eyes and let the feeling of it carry him away.
“REN.” His sister’s voice, shaky and soft, from somewhere in the distance.
He slowly blinked his eyes open at the sound.
The light was gone.
The beast was gone.
It was only him and his sister now—there was no one else in the entire world, it felt like.
She moved first, crawling over to the stuffed tiger that had fallen nearby. Wordlessly, she gathered it up and handed it to him. He clutched it to his chest, and his sister clutched him to her chest, and despite the overwhelming feeling of death and dangerous magic that permeated the air, Varen felt safe enough to close his eyes and fade away again.
THE NEXT TIME he opened his eyes, his sister was nowhere to be found.
Varen could no longer speak. Not to his father, not to Nana Faye, not to the multitude of doctors and nurses that paraded in and out of his room.
Even at his mother’s funeral, he neither cried nor spoke.
Weeks passed.
He dreamt about the light that had surrounded him and his sister almost every night. And when he finally found his voice, the first words that came out were quiet and shaking, just as his sister’s last word to him had been. “Where did she go?”
“She took ill,” his father said without looking at him, “and she’s gone away to get better.”
So Varen waited for her to get better.
Most days he sat alone in the tallest of the palace’s residential towers, accompanied by stacks of books. The books went mostly unread. He was too busy watching the gates for a procession that would herald the Princess’s return. She was going to come home. She was going to come home and explain the light that she had conjured from nowhere, and the wolf that had fled from it, and everything that would come next for the two of them. Together. Whatever came next, they would face it together.
Soon, little Prince, Nana Faye mumbled distractedly, every time he pestered her about it.
