Sky Lord's Mate (Sin & Salvation Book 1) Read online

  They prevailed and so must I, but that does not mean I face this meeting without reservation.

  “Do you think they will listen?” I ask Talran, my hands tensing on the twin blades belted at my waist.

  My father would have made them listen. He would have cut down any who opposed him, truly earning his title. It may fall on me to do the same, but my people have long been fractured. I’ve called this meeting for the sake of unity, not bloodshed.

  “Some of them, maybe,” Talran says charitably. “Fair odds on at least one of them trying to soak the sacred stones with your blood.” He snorts in amusement. “Those old rocks could use a splash of color.”

  I look over my shoulder at the meeting space. High above the realms, the Blackstone floats undisturbed, shrouded in the misty trails of clouds. Onyx stone reflects nothing of the sun’s light, only absorbing its heat and drawing it into the cracks between formations. It ignites in ripples of molten energy, safe only for the feet of my people.

  Much blood has been spilled here, in this natural arena framed by tall, jutting peaks of onyx. Many times have I watched my father defend himself and those closest to him, including me and—many, many years ago—my mother.

  I will have no family to defend. My people have not been blessed by Straos in nearly a century. But if my blood is to join his, then I will consider it an honor.

  “I suppose we’d better get ready to do a little redecorating then,” I say, the muscles in my back tensing and then releasing as my wings unfurl.

  I bend my knees and push off from the ground, surging into the sky. My wings stretch, beating powerfully, propelling me upward until I am high above the tallest peak. I lower myself, feet planting on the molten stones, and already I can see other warriors closer than they should be, vying for space.

  None have dared to claim this throne for themselves yet, but I can see the hunger in their eyes.

  “Thank you all for coming,” I begin, my gaze scanning the Blackstone. A sea of men greets me, some with wings spread, some with weapons drawn. “I won’t waste your time or my own: Our curse grows dire. It was dire under my father’s rule, and it will only become more so as the years pass us by.”

  Murmurs catch on the wind, but there is no outright dissent. No one can argue with a clear statement of fact. There are no women in this crowd. Those that remain in Daevos are too old to bear children, many of them approaching the end of their lifespan.

  “And your father spent the last quarter of his life trying and failing to solve that problem,” comes a voice from below. “What do you propose to do about it, arhok?”

  Bone spears tap the rocks in agreement, a surge of molten heat flaring beneath me. The name—given to me when I took too long to master my wings—sparks an anger deep within my soul. It would be easy to leap from my perch, pin the dissenter to the stones below, and strip him of his own wings with my bare hands to see how much he appreciates being arhok in truth.

  But he is not the real problem, only a symptom of it.

  “I propose we unite and face this threat head-on, because if we cannot cast aside our personal loyalties and band together in this, our people will die.”

  Shouts and snarls erupt from below, several voices rising over the din.

  “We will never bow to the Daevosi!”

  “My people refuse to die for your impossible crusade!”

  “The last Warlord promised us independence!”

  All of these concerns are true. I suspect the others that get lost in the roar of voices are also true, in their way. Perched on a rock beneath me, Talran pulls his spear from his back, his stance guarded, ready to strike. My own hand twitches by one of my blades, but I refuse the temptation.

  “Enough!” I roar, my voice carrying like a fierce ripple through the disquieted crowd. “Speak your concerns with order and respect, or do not speak them at all.”

  The crowd is still, except for the lash of wings that extend, beating into the sky. One of the younger leaders—Vash, leader of the Barivosi clan—climbs high above me until the sun streams through the tears in his wings, scars from a well-fought battle. My jaw tenses and I lift my head to him, but I don’t engage. Eventually he lands on the jagged perch just below mine.

  “What assurances can you give us? How can you be certain we will ever find mates, when none have felt the pull in nearly a hundred years?” He rises to his full height, straps of leather pulling tight against his muscular torso.

  Everything about him is a threat, and I can feel that bone-deep urge to meet his unspoken challenge with a show of force. But my father did not win loyalty by rising to the bait of every young fool who addressed him with disrespect.

  “I will scour the skies, lead our people across this realm and the next,” I answer, “until I find the answer that’s been kept from us.”

  He scoffs openly, at that. “You are weak, arhok.”

  “Would you have me do as your father has done? Lie down at the feet of the gods themselves and beg for promises they will not grant?”

  I do not relish the pained look on his face or the fury that burns in his opal eyes, but we are past the time for prayer. We must do something, and we must do it together.

  A savage growl tears from Vash’s throat as he leaps toward me. The attack is expected and I wave off Talran’s immediate move to defend me, drawing my twin blades. The steel of his daggers flashes in the sun, giving away their position before he even moves, but my onyx blades—made of the same stone that burns beneath my feet—swallow the light and conceal my movements, making it all too easy to divert his wild flurry of blows.

  I catch him in the side, severing the leather strap of his harness, drawing a line of dark blood that flicks across the stones beneath us. Flying into the air, I dodge the frenzied strikes he answers with, slamming the roughened soles of my feet into his back, forcing him to the ground. The rocks quake as I land, one of my blades pressing against the back of his neck.

  “Yield,” I growl, drawing blood from his sun-kissed skin.

  I can see him breathe in and out, see the harsh rise and fall of his chest. His jaw is tense and so is mine. When he hesitates, I prepare myself for some kind of counter-attack. I will not kill a man who is pinned to the ground, all but defenseless. I will not turn my back on him, either.

  Instead of the bite of a blow from some hidden ally, though, I’m caught by the blaring of a different horn than the one that summoned us here. This one is shrill, sharp, playing in one continuous note that sends a spike of adrenaline racing through my blood.

  We’re under attack.

  I pull my blades back from the warrior who challenged me. He’s the least of my problems now. Pushing off of the rocks, I rise high into the sky, the sun’s glare making it hard to see as far as I’d like.

  The young man blowing the horn is one of mine. Greatly inexperienced and certainly not a warrior, he was entrusted with the duty of lookout only as a formality. A nod to his father and how well he served mine. A safe, comfortable position, for what could possibly reach him here, in this place beyond the edges of the sky?

  I have my answer when a spear of pure light pierces his chest, cutting cleanly through the other side. Blood flies from his open mouth, he lets out a choked noise, and my wings beat wildly as I try to reach him in time.

  It’s too late.

  He plummets, past the clouds and further below, his own blood following him with a strange, grotesque delay. I rush toward him, but I barely clear the first tuft of clouds before a force slams into me hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs.

  When my gaze clears, I can feel something cold, like the metal of a crude blade that has never known the touch of its wielder. Only this isn’t metal at all. It’s skin, burnished with an iridescent white that reflects the sun’s glittering rays. The body that has collided with mine isn’t bulky like my own. It’s made of lean, sinewy muscle pulled into a lithe form designed explicitly for the sinister, underhanded tactics of the Anjari.

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; Like killing a lookout who was little more than a child without giving him the chance to defend himself.

  He does his best to use the same tactics on me, pushing away from me and angling his light spear toward my wings. He means to ground me, because he knows it is the only way he can win this fight.

  I let out a roar, the muscles in my legs tensing as my body works against the space around me, claiming pockets of air that I bend to my will, forcing them under my wings. I reach up in time to grab his spear in both my hands, the light of it burning my palms. In one brutal motion, I break it in half.

  Above the clouds, I see there are others. They circle the stones like vultures, and I can’t stop to wonder how it is they found this place—how they can even see this sacred land. As Warlord, I must stop them.

  Pushing away from my now disarmed opponent, I surge into the sky, my blades drawn and angled to strike. I catch one of them from behind, slicing the onyx across his throat. Another I grapple with one arm, running the blade through his chest with the other.

  Another cuts beneath me, and I can see the path he intends to take. One of the older chieftains, Ezgal, is more vulnerable than most. Wounded from the last war, his wings don’t fully unfurl and he cannot gain the speed and power my people are known for. The Anjari are spineless vipers to exploit this, but this comes as no surprise.

  I follow, fighting against the draft that carries the hot air upwards from the stones. Drawing back, blade in hand, I throw it with lethal accuracy, the masterwork stone embedding deep into the Anjari’s back, just below his neck. As I slow my momentum to retrieve my blade from his lifeless body, I’m struck by a flash of movement to my left.

  Talran rushes toward me, his spear drawn and tucked beneath him as he charges. I look over my shoulder just in time to see him run the attacker from earlier through—the one who was brave enough to pursue me without his weapon, but not brave enough to do so honorably.

  My second-in-command, my most trusted friend lands on the stones, using the leverage of them to rip his spear back. The Anjari slumps to the ground, barely managing to catch himself, a shaking arm holding him up.

  The other men land beside us, weapons drawn, but I hold up one hand to stay the slaughter. Crouching down, I grab a handful of the attacker’s silver-threaded hair and yank upward, forcing him to look at me.

  “Why are you here?” I demand. “What of the truce?”

  My father was old enough to remember the wars between our people. An endless series of battles to see which of us would command the heavens. By the time it reached a bloody truce, a terrible price had been paid on both sides.

  “The realms must… be cleansed…” he coughs, flecks of blood joining the spittle.

  “Who sent you?” Talran asks from beside me.

  The fact that they are here could merely mean dissent among their ranks. Or it could mean an all-out war approaches.

  As he spends his last moments looking into my eyes, the cold steel of his showing only contempt, I know deep in my soul it is the latter.

  3

  Allie

  I can feel myself starting to wake up, but it’s a struggle. I’m groggy, unable to really recall what day it is or even guess what the time might be. My brain starts working, trying to put the pieces into place. I took the chem exam. I went to the study. I remember being there, but...did I come back to my dorm? Have I crashed into a horrible stress-induced nap? It feels like it. My body feels heavy and near lifeless, like I’m sick with the flu.

  But when my eyes finally open, I see that the reason I feel so weird is because I’ve been sleeping in a tub. The water is so warm and so still I can hardly feel it against my skin, and I’ve been sleeping propped up against the long, sloping edge in this dark room. Naked. Why am I naked?

  And I’m not alone.

  As my eyes adjust, I can see candlelight beating against the wet, slick skin of myself and the other girls from the study, all of whom are unconscious and wearing tight metal collars around their throats, each set with some kind of jewel. We’re in some strange stone room, empty except for these tubs and some candles on low tables. When I raise my hand, I can feel the collar and jewel nestled at my throat, and I start to rise out of this tub, my stomach heaving with the anxiety churning in me.

  Almost immediately, hands grip on my shoulders, pushing me down, and I shriek. A hand covers my mouth, and I look up with the knowledge that something is very, very wrong here.

  It’s...an angel. Has to be. White, shimmering skin that’s scattering rainbows when the candlelight hits it. White feathery wings tucked behind, barely visible behind the silver hair. It’s a woman, I think, and she’s older. Somewhere beyond the prime of life, but with a serene smile. She shakes her head at me, removing her hand as more of them file into the edges of my vision. Maybe a dozen in all.

  There’s only one reason why I can think I’d suddenly be surrounded by angels, and a feeling of cold dread washes over me. “I’m dead,” I whisper, closing my eyes...which fly back open when something rough tracks hard across my skin.

  I gasp, looking at my arm. The angel’s got some kind of cloth in her hand, and she’s scrubbing me like she is determined to erase every bit of dirt that’s ever maybe been on my body. It stings horribly, so much so that I know I can’t be dead. There’s no way being dead would hurt like this, so if I’m not, why are there angels? “Stop, that hurts,” I tell her, trying to pull my arm back, but she’s stronger. She gets me in a tight grip and hangs on, the cloth practically raking over my skin. I can hear the other girls waking up as all of these angels roughly bathe us. By this point I am very sure this is not worth fifty bucks, and extremely sure that these can’t be real angels.

  But I can’t tell what’s going on, why they’d bother to clean us up. The soap they’re using begins to fill my nose with its sharp tang, and something about it makes me feel so clean that it feels unnatural. Like no human should ever be this clean.

  They rinse us off, hauling us out of these tubs with a clinical detachment that scares me. One of the angels holds us firmly while the other one chants softly in some language I can’t understand, dipping her fingertips into something and painting it across our bodies. It’s slick, making me think it’s some kind of oil, and it’s so much cooler than the bathwater. They keep going, over and over, and any time someone attempts to speak or wrench themselves free, they’re shaken by their captor.

  Because that’s what they are to us. There’s no mistaking that now. We’re prisoners, and they’re about to do something horrible to us. We’re dressed in long white gowns, our hair brushed out and left long, with strange circlets placed on our heads. “Please,” I whisper to the angel fussing with me. “Please, please let me go.”

  Her eyes narrow and she cups my chin in her hand, forcing me to look up, while she says words I can’t understand. Tears start falling from my eyes then, shivering in this thin white dress, and I’m pretty sure that I’m about to die.

  The angel women look us over, most of us in tears by now, and herd us out of this room and down a long, stone passageway. There are more angels here, male ones. Their slender bodies are naked from the waist up, spears strapped to their backs, and they do not look at us as we are marched past them.

  There’s light at the end of this tunnel, and we enter a great, cavernous stone room to join a number of other women, not all of which are human, and that’s...weird, just like everything else in this room. The white material that’s on our bodies is fluttering down from the ceiling in long banners, covered over in more of the silver symbols I saw back in Camden Hall. There are candles everywhere: clustered along the walls, in sconces, overcrowding a large altar at the far end of the room. Between us and that altar, though, is a strange and unsettling sight.

  Angels in gray robes and hoods stand at intervals from one another, forming concentric circles with each other. The circles converge in the middle of the room, where a beam of pure white light is streaming down. Beside it, an angel with an elaborate s
ilver headdress is standing, a long silvery staff in his hands. “Welcome, chosen,” he intones. “The great pleasures and duties of life lay before you, and the hour comes for the ceremony of the faithful to carry on our legacy.”

  Gwen presses in close to me, her shaking hand grasping for mine, and I give it without a thought. “What the hell is this?” she whispers, her voice rough, the red gem at her throat gleaming in the candlelight.

  I shake my head, too terrified to even answer. It’s some kind of ritual, and I’m pretty sure I want nothing to do with it.

  “Let us begin,” the one in the silver headdress intones, and the angels in the hoods begin to chant. “Bring forth the first.”

  The angel women catch hold of one blonde girl, who begins to scream and struggle as she is dragged through the circles of robed figures. The chanting increases in volume until it’s thrumming in my ears, indistinguishable from my own pulse, and culminates in one harmonious note as the girl is cast shrieking into the shaft of light.

  And then there is total silence. Not even a breath in the echoing chamber.

  The girl gets to her feet, turning to face the angelic priest, and bows her head to him. He offers a hand to her, which she freely takes, and he kisses her hand. “Come, my pure daughter. Your chosen is among us, and you shall be joined.”

  He extends a hand to one of his circle, who leaves his position to take the girl’s hands, and she goes with him willingly into the shadows. The circle tightens to cover this missing angel, and the chanting starts again.

  That’s the moment my blood begins to run cold. Whatever that light is, I don’t want any part of it. It clearly does something to you, changes you somehow, and I’m sure as hell not going to be joined to some angel against my will.