Crowning of the Sword : Chronicles of Esha 1, page 1
Copyright © Tabitha Day 2024
Published by Dorcas Publishing, Aotearoa New Zealand
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except as permitted under the Copyright Act.
ISBN 978-0-473-70915-0 (ePub)
ISBN 978-0-473-70914-3 (Paperback)
ISBN 978-0-473-70916-7 (Kindle)
Cover designed by GetCovers
Powered by Atticus
Contents
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
Epilogue
And Finally ...
Chapter 1
The front door crashed open and struck the wall before slamming shut again, the sound reverberating up through the floorboards.
In her bed, Ember froze, her breathing still deep and slow as if she were sleeping, but her body alert, every muscle, tendon, and sinew tense, ready.
There was always the dilemma of what to do when Bruno came home from a night out. Pretend to sleep and hope he would let her continue the charade, or get up and brace herself for whatever mood he was in. There were only those two choices, and whichever she chose depended on how brave or aggrieved she was feeling.
She could usually predict his temper by his tread on the stairs. Light and eager meant he’d had a win on the horses, or someone had flirted with him. Slow and heavy meant watch out. Sometimes there were no footsteps at all, and she’d find him flaked out on the couch in the lounge, stewed and snoring, all stale beer breath and sweat patches. That was always better.
Tonight, she couldn’t tell what his tread meant. Still, she could deal with it, whatever it was going to be. It was going to be the last time, after all.
The bedroom door creaked open, and she took heart from that. At least he was giving the illusion of being conciliatory. He undressed, the mattress tilting under his weight. She waited for his meaty hand to crawl across the blankets like a fleshy spider to feast upon her, but he simply lay down. His breathing soon became as slow and even as hers, but she could tell something was off. Usually, Bruno’s sleeping filled the room with snuffles and snorts, the churning of digestive acids, and the trumpeting of boozy farts that made the sheets reek. This morning however, he lay in silence.
Slowly, she turned her head on the pillow and cracked an eye.
He was staring straight at her.
The early morning light made his face look grey and drawn. The good looks that had first attracted her to him were long gone, hidden under red veined, bloated flesh and a layer of stubborn discontent.
“I knew you were awake.” He sounded pleased with himself. “Can’t fool me.”
She made a show of yawning, made her voice slow and sleepy. “Hi, baby. Did you have a good night?”
“Too hot,” he grumbled. “Hotter than custard.”
Which didn’t really make sense, but she wasn’t about to argue. Temperatures had been soaring lately. Old Mrs Hughes from the school had fainted inside her parked car and would have died if two kids walking past hadn’t seen her slumped over the wheel and dragged her out. Authorities had banned open fires for months now, although some had started spontaneously. There was that farm out west with the compost heap that had gone up, taking out three acres of dry grass before dying out at a creek bed. It was a miracle, the fire chief said on the tv news. Beside him, the farmer had a mixed look of shame and pride on his face—shame for the fire he’d caused, pride that it hadn’t turned the entire town to ash.
Every day dawned a hard bright blue and every day the air conditioner rattled and sputtered, and she prayed it wouldn’t break down altogether because they really couldn’t afford to fix it. Every day except today, of course. It wouldn’t be her problem soon.
Bruno reached for her and slurred, “Come on now, it’s not time to get up yet” which she correctly interpreted as “let’s fuck”, and mentally sighed, preparing for another round of inept grabbing and pounding and occasionally, pain.
He rolled onto her, his wet mouth sucking at her cheek, having missed her mouth entirely, and she flinched as stale breath whooshed over her, smelling intriguingly of whiskey and popcorn. He yanked up her nightie. She opened her legs and there was a stretch of fumbling as he tried to enter her, but he couldn’t. She lay still.
“Come on,” he muttered, rubbing himself, trying to get hard, his hand banging uselessly against her thigh.
“It’s okay,” she whispered, but perhaps she shouldn’t have said anything at all. His hand shot from his limp dick to her throat, and he shook her, before clipping the side of her face. It had all happened so fast that she didn’t have time to move aside, and the blow made her eyes water. She scrambled away from him, out of bed, out of reach, and he collapsed back onto the rumpled sheets.
“Your fault,” he told her. “Ugly bitch. Whore.”
She crouched in between the bed and the wall, the sting of his words hurting more than the slap did, as they always did. There was a gurgling snore and she let out a shaky breath, her hand creeping up to cradle her throbbing cheek.
The light coming through the window had turned from grey to golden, and the glass looked as though it was rippling - but no, it was the air outside. It was shimmering, turning the view of next door’s oak trees into a hazy mist, with tendrils of fog creeping out of the shadowy places among the leaves. She squinted. It was as though there were a pair of eyes looking at her, as green as emeralds, turning her inside out.
She shook her head, clearing it. The slap must’ve been harder than she’d thought.
She waited a few minutes more before crawling out and grabbing her clothes, placed ready on the rocking chair. She changed in the bathroom, snuck back into the room, filched his jeans and jacket, and went through his pockets in the hallway. Usually, she only took the coins and small crumpled notes, the ones he was less likely to notice, but this time, the last time, she took the lot, fifty-seven dollars and eighty-five cents. She slipped the wallet in her pocket too, intending to dump it in a bin in town.
Back in the bedroom, she dropped his clothes on the floor where he’d left them. Next—and this was the bit she’d lovingly turned over in her mind for days now—she took his phone, held it to his face to unlock it, and swiped a hard factory reset. She replaced the phone in his jacket pocket and scuttled out the door, heart pounding so hard she could hear the blood thrumming in her ears, her smile so wide it made her swollen jaw ache.
The car started first try, which she took as a good omen. She drove to the swimming complex and parked under the largest tree, ostensibly for shade, but the weather was so warm it was likely pointless. The beater wasn’t actually hers. It belonged to Bruno, and she’d known about the tracker tucked into the spare tyre compartment for months now. He wouldn’t notice anything different—if he could even get into his phone to check on her at all. Ember was just going to work as she always did.
There was enough time to loosen up with a few lengths of the main pool, and she soon settled into a rhythm. Her mind drifted as her body ploughed up and down the lane, muscles flexing and straining, heart pumping. Swimming was always a release, a time of liminal space between the heavy burden of home and the energetic bubbly time spent at work.
Her new art school wasn’t far from the coast. Maybe she could take a trip to the beach and swim in the ocean. She’d never seen the ocean in real life before, never tasted its salt on her lips, never fought for balance against relentless, pounding waves. Her money wouldn’t go far, though. She couldn’t go spending it all on day-tripping and excursions. She’d have to get a job somewhere, a room in a boarding house, maybe. Her hard-won scholarship would pay for her fees and there was enough left over to pay for basic food and utilities, but to have some kind of life, she’d need to get a part-time job.
Too keyed up to finish her customary thirty laps, she got out of the pool and went to the changing room to put on her swim instructor tee. Although her cheek still felt tender, she couldn’t see a mark in the mirror. There was nothing to say that Bruno had laid hands on her again. She was grateful for that. Explaining bruises away was easy but strained the limits of belief sometimes. The sympathetic looks from her colleagues made her feel uneasy, as if she were wrong somehow, not quite fitting into the world like they did.
The other swim instructors arrived and then Jan,
The nervous excitement that had been bubbling inside her all day kept her alert and happy, even as she threw sinking weights for the kids to dive for, dragged gleeful littlies around by pool noodles, and gently corrected her adult swimmers who’d learned so many bad habits that they were harder to teach than the children. When the last lesson of the day was done, she slipped away, got dressed, and headed out the door. She took the back way out of the complex, leaving her car with the tracker parked out the front. Freedom, she decided, smelled like chlorine and hot asphalt.
She pulled her cap low over her eyes, and with her head down, made her way down the street. Twenty minutes until her bus left; she was cutting it fine. She sped up, got to the intersection, and looked both ways. There was a noise, a familiar throaty roar that made the hairs on her arms stand up, and then an old orange Mustang with the ding on its front fender nosed its way around the corner.
Bruno.
Chapter 2
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
She spun and took off down the street, backpack thumping against her ribs, but he’d already seen her.
“Ember! Get back here!”
The aggrieved shout spurred her, and she picked up speed, sneakers slapping against the hot pavement. Her breath came hard and fast, her body already tired from a restless night and a day of swimming, pushing itself into new heights of physical exertion by adrenaline, fear and anger.
Around the corner, and across someone’s yard, down a narrow side street and through an alley into a cul-de-sac, blocked at one end by an enormous house. Shit. She edged behind a large maple tree and peered down the street. Nothing. Heat shimmers rose from the pavement, making her blink. For an instant it had seemed as if the entire world had quavered, become hazy and indistinct, before it came back into sharp relief again.
She leaned against the tree, trying to catch her breath, before swinging her bag off her back and digging around for her phone. Ten minutes until the bus left. She wasn’t much closer to the station than she had been before. She needed to get a move on. At least if she were at the station, he couldn’t very well drag her off the bus in front of witnesses, could he? She just needed to get there.
Her head snapped up. There was a consumptive throbbing in the air, growing louder and louder. She risked a peek past the tree trunk. At the end of the street, the orange mustang rolled slowly past. Ember glimpsed Bruno peering down the street and she dodged back out of sight, closing her eyes in silent appeal. When she risked another look back, the car had gone, the invasive engine noise slowly fading to nothing.
She was so focused on Bruno that the tremor under her feet barely registered at first. She paused, uncertainly, resting a hand against the tree trunk for balance in case the earth chose to move even more vigorously. Was that an earthquake? She looked up at the branches overhead, wondering if it was safer to shelter under the tree or out on the pavement away from the houses, and then, as the earth gave another tremor, darted into the middle of the road.
The temperature change from the shade of the leafy tree to the unforgiving black of the road was considerable. Houses all around, new builds all of them, expensive houses for expensive people, shimmered in the heat. The wavering air became hazier, thicker, almost viscous. Tendrils of white mist rose from the tarmac, like steam from a kettle, coalescing into a pulsating ball of cloud stretching high into the sky.
Ember gaped in bewilderment at the roiling, billowing mass in front of her, and then dropped her bag and clapped her hands over her ears as, with a deafening scraping of nails on a chalkboard, the cloud tore itself in half.
A man stepped out of the void, tall and lithe, with blond hair and angular features, wearing an outlandish costume the colour of pale golden buckskin that flowed and ebbed around his body like water. He blinked at her and as a slow smile spread across his face, she felt a tugging deep in the pit of her stomach.
There came another ear-splitting ripping, and she whirled. A second dense mist, black and oily, had formed behind her and was steadily tearing itself in two to reveal another man, dark-haired and black eyed. He wore what looked like a military uniform, velvet smooth in ebony black with mottled silver buttons and shoulder straps, and a sword—a sword!—at his hip.
He looked past Ember as though she was too insignificant to warrant even a glance. “Now, now, cousin.” His voice was both lazy and menacing. “No one likes a cheater.”
He held up a steadily revolving ball of orange, of fire, and then he threw. The fireball whizzed past Ember, so close that a streak of heat seared her cheek. There was the unpleasant smell of singed hair, and then something cannoned into the small of her back, sending her sprawling to the ground.
Chapter 3
She struggled, and the weight on her back lifted as the blond man dragged her unceremoniously to her feet.
“Are you hurt?” He raised a gentle hand to her cheek, a finger tracing the path that had felt the touch of the fireball. Without waiting for an answer, he whirled on the other man, pushing her behind him. “How now, Ashe. You know Earth, and everything about her, is sacrosanct.”
Ashe’s glance skated over her dismissively, and he lifted his hands in surrender. He scoffed in either resignation or disgust, Ember couldn’t tell. “You know full well I was aiming at you.”
“I doubt the Adjudicator would see it that way. Perhaps you need to work on your aim.”
Ashe’s face darkened, and another ball of fire appeared in his hand. He held it up with a scowl. “Perhaps I do.”
The blond man didn’t show any sign of fear. Instead, he laughed, genuine amusement on his face. “Try it.”
The inertia that had gripped Ember’s body—shock—receded, and she edged backwards, wanting to put as much distance between her and that ball of fire as possible. She wasn’t sure what was happening, but she knew she didn’t want to be in the middle of some shoot-out with fireworks, or whatever the hell was going on. And that freaky mist that had torn a hole in the world? She blocked that out. She had a bus to catch.
Another step and another, and then she spun, about to run, when the fireball soared over her head, hit the ground, and exploded. It sent up a roaring wall of flame across the road, blocking her path.
Ember screamed, covering her head with her hands. She scrambled back, collided with the blond man, and lost her balance. He slid an arm around her, steadying her, and for an instant their eyes met. His, an intense green dancing with amusement, and hers, a wide-eyed amber filled with bewilderment. He smiled again, slow and sweet, as though he had all the time in the world, as if a maniac chucking fireballs at them mattered not a jot.
“Get away from her, Cole,” Ashe warned, his expression as dark and foreboding as the uniform he wore.
“No.”
“I’m warning you.”
“And I accept your warning.”
Ashe gave a grunt of derision and stepped back into the black fog, the wall of fire on the street abruptly vanishing. The cloud closed around Ashe like a zip closing in a cacophony of crackling static that made Ember wince, before swirling and dissipating so quickly it was as though it hadn’t been there at all. But there was the other fog bank still billowing nearby, and through the drifts, a glimpse of towering trees and green hills …
The mass eddied, obscuring her view, and then Cole was in front of her, taking up all her attention. She became acutely aware of his scent, as warm and sultry as cinnamon and leather and grass after the rain. She raised her eyes to him, and his searing gaze immediately drew her in, giving her the impression she had just been scorched by another fireball.
