A dawn of gods and fury, p.1
A Dawn of Gods and Fury, page 1
Contents
Also by K.A. Tucker
Map
1. Annika
2. Sofie
3. Romeria
4. Annika
5. Romeria
6. Zander
7. Atticus
8. Romeria
9. Sofie
10. Zander
11. Sofie
12. Zander
13. Atticus
14. Tyree
15. Annika
16. Romeria
17. Annika
18. Romeria
19. Atticus
20. Sofie
21. Romeria
22. Tyree
23. Annika
24. Romeria
25. Atticus
26. Romeria
27. Sofie
28. Romeria
29. Annika
30. Atticus
31. Romeria
32. Tyree
33. Annika
34. Zander
35. Tyree
36. Annika
37. Atticus
38. Romeria
39. Sofie
40. Romeria
41. Tyree
42. Annika
43. Romeria
44. Sofie
45. Romeria
46. Sofie
47. Romeria
48. Atticus
49. Tyree
50. Annika
51. Romeria
52. Zander
53. Atticus
54. Sofie
55. Romeria
56. Zander
57. Annika
58. Tyree
59. Annika
60. Romeria
61. Atticus
62. Sofie
63. Romeria
64. Zander
65. Romeria
66. Annika
67. Tyree
68. Annika
69. Romeria
70. Sofie
71. Zander
72. Atticus
73. Romeria
74. Annika
75. Tyree
76. Romeria
77. Atticus
78. Romeria
79. Sofie
80. Romeria
81. Atticus
82. Sofie
83. Atticus
84. Annika
85. Tyree
86. Romeria
87. Zander
88. Atticus
89. Zander
90. Sofie
91. Romeria
92. Atticus
93. Romeria
94. Annika
95. Romeria
96. Atticus
97. Romeria
98. Annika
99. Atticus
100. Romeria
Pronunciations
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by K.A. Tucker
A Fate of Wrath & Flame
A Curse of Blood & Stone
A Queen of Thieves & Chaos
Ten Tiny Breaths
One Tiny Lie
Four Seconds to Lose
Five Ways to Fall
In Her Wake
Burying Water
Becoming Rain
Chasing River
Surviving Ice
The Simple Wild
Wild at Heart
Forever Wild
Running Wild
The Player Next Door
The Hustler Next Door
Until It Fades
Say You Still Love Me
Be the Girl
He Will Be My Ruin
Keep Her Safe
The Wolf Hotel series
The Empire Nightclub series
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Copyright © 2024 by Kathleen Tucker
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All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For more information, visit www.katuckerbooks.com
ISBN 978-1-990105-42-5 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-990105-40-1 (ebook)
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Edited by Jennifer Sommersby
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Cover design by Hang Le
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Published by K.A. Tucker Books Ltd.
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Manufactured in the United States of America
To the many characters who brought this story to life in a way I couldn’t imagine when I typed those first words.
1
Annika
“Is there nothing palatable on this fates-forsaken ship?” I inspect a bruised apple under the oil lamp’s glow before tossing it back into the bushel of spoiling produce.
The Tempest’s cook—a brawny man with a tufted gray beard—pauses in his task of fileting the day’s catch to eye me. That’s all any of these sailors do—offer stares but no words for their princess.
“Well?” I snap. “Does no one’s tongue work around here, save for your delightful captain’s?” Who I would pitch overboard if I didn’t think his crew would toss me in after him.
“Eat your day’s rations when they’re given, or someone else gladly will,” he finally answers, his voice gruff.
“You mean that slop of soggy oats and salted pork? Is that what you deem adequate for a member of Islor’s royal family?” Corrin would beat this mortal with a wooden spoon if she were here, and I would enjoy watching.
“Pardon me for bein’ so boorish. Is there somethin’ else I can get ya?” he asks with mock sincerity, holding up his hand. The radiant two-crescent moon emblem is a taunting beacon in the gloom of the scullery kitchen.
“I would have to be on my deathbed to take your vein even without that mark,” I sneer. The man can’t have seen soap in weeks. Few of the sailors on this ship have. I can barely stand the smell below deck.
“Ya may be there soon enough.” And by the grin, he doesn’t look at all disappointed.
I’ve never been spoken to by a mortal in such a disgraceful manner. “What is your name, sailor?”
“Why?”
“So I may provide it to my brother the king when I next see him. I’m sure he will love hearing how you relished in the idea of my suffering.”
He snorts. “Name’s Sye, an’ we all saw what we were runnin’ from back there. Not much of a king without a throne to sit on. Besides, he’s likely dead, or soon will be.”
I flinch at his callousness. My twin may have left me in Cirilea to deal with a rebellion, and we may barely tolerate each other, but … all I have left are my brothers. That, and a city ablaze and shadowed by a beast like none I’ve seen before. “Perhaps I am the only royal family member left, then, which would make me queen.”
“Well then, queen, you can grab yerself a biscuit and quit pestering me. I got work to do.” He brandishes his cleaver toward a shelf where the basket of hardened bread sits and then lops off the head of a fish.
The block of kitchen knives to my left taunts me. I could probably put one of those through this filthy mortal’s jugular before he had a chance to yell. Little good killing the cook will do me, though. I’ll still be stuck on this ship and with hungry sailors, no less.
“Don’t get no silly ideas,” Sye warns, his eyes also on the knife block. “There’s a lot of us and only one of you.”
“I’m not a savage.” I make a point of snatching two biscuits—twice the day’s ration—plus a bruised apple.
Sye scowls. “Be off, then!”
A jug of mead sits nearby. On impulse, I snake my arm around it and, hugging the awkward cask against my chest, I saunter up the stairs with my head held high, trying not to stumble under the weight.
Hudem’s silver moonlight shimmers off the seawater, highlighting the absence of land.
“Must we sail so far from shore?” I complain to anyone listening.
“If we don’t wish to punch a hole in the hull and sink to our deaths,” Captain Aron answers from the helm.
“I assumed we were already as good as dead once the sirens find us.”
“If the winds don’t pick up, we won’t get that far.”
The air is stale and warm, the ship’s sails sagging. There’s barely a ripple over the water.
He peers at me, then at my loot. “I see you found the kitchen.”
“And your foul cook.”
He smirks. “Sye’s a stickler for rations. You must have really annoyed him to get away with all that.”
I flop onto the floor and yank out the cork. “I figured, by the time I reach the bottom, all my problems will vanish.”
“Couldn’t find what you’re really hankering for down there, Your Highness?” comes that grating voice.
I count to five before I gift Tyree my attention, to find crystal blue eyes locked on me. The Ybarisan prince doesn’t have to spell out his meaning. At least a quarter of the sailors on this ship brandish glowing marks, and I wouldn’t trust the unmarked ones. But I haven’t fed in days. If I’d had any inkling of the looming rebellion, I wouldn
“You look dreadful.” Worse than before, his olive complexion now a sickly pallor.
“Can’t imagine why,” he drawls, twirling the dagger I stabbed him with before his fist clamps onto the bronze handle forged from Aminadav’s horn. “Not just a merth blade, is it?”
“I guess my father foresaw my need for a special weapon.” I was sixteen when he gifted me the blade and warned me to never use it unless under dire circumstances, for even a minor scratch could prove fatal.
Tyree shifts and winces. The belt, confiscated from my dress, is soaked in his blood, the wound still leaking more than a day later. “What exactly is it doing to me?”
I shrug. “I’ve never stabbed anyone before. Glad you were the first, though.”
He gives the blade another twirl. “Perhaps I should repay the favor.”
That Tyree hasn’t stabbed me yet is shocking. “I’m still more valuable to you alive.”
He flashes me that cocky, infuriating smile and reaches out a hand toward me, the smooth onyx cuff around his wrist a pretty shackle. Atticus secured the matching set on the enemy Ybarisan to cripple his access to his elven affinity—to what, I haven’t deduced yet. It made no difference in the end. He still managed to escape, kill several guards, and kidnap me. “Show a dying male some compassion and bring me a drink.”
I yank the cork out of the cask, top up my metal cup, and guzzle it down, splashing mead down my ruined dress.
He grins. “Hey, Captain, isn’t my future wife a sight to behold? Can you imagine what she’ll be like on our wedding night?”
“That is never happening!” I hiss, whipping the empty cup at Tyree’s head.
He snatches it from the air with those quick reflexes I keep underestimating, even as he slowly bleeds out.
And now I don’t have a mug.
“I’ll have that drink now.” He waves it in the air. “It’s the least you could do, seeing as I saved you from that mob.”
“I would have been fine. I know every place to hide in that castle.”
His eyes lack their usual wickedness as he heaves a sigh and offers a more conciliatory, “Please, Annika. I’m tired and thirsty and I’d love something to dull this pain.”
A twinge of guilt stirs inside me. He could have hurt me in retaliation a hundred times over, but he hasn’t.
“Look, I’ll even tuck the dagger in here.” He winces as he turns, sliding the blade into the wooden crate he’s perched on, out of easy reach.
With reluctance, I drag myself to my feet and lug the jug over.
An overwhelming waft of that sweet neroli oil makes me inhale sharply. My incisors burn, begging to release. It reminds me what a bad idea it is to be this close when I haven’t fed in so long. But I also know his blood is as toxic as the marked mortals on this ship and would deliver me to an agonizing grave just as swiftly.
Tyree keeps quiet as I fill the cup and watch him drink, that sharp jut in his columnar throat bobbing with each swallow. It really is too bad he is so hateful. Even I can admit he has physical appeal, his thick, dark locks collecting at his nape in a sexy wave, his square jaw a contrast to lush lips.
What would his Ybarisan blood taste like?
I’ve heard it’s euphoric.
Orgasmic.
“So, how does it work?” Tyree’s attention is on the glowing Hudem moon above, nearly at its peak. “If you fucked me right now, we’d be guaranteed an offspring, right? Annika, help save my bloodline for me.” He holds out his arms, presenting his waiting hips for me. “I can see you want it.”
That’s not how it works—we aren’t in the nymphaeum, and he isn’t an Islorian immortal—but I don’t answer, instead snatching the mug from his hand and upending it over his crotch. Hollers from every sailor on the deck, including the captain, sound as I stroll away.
“Relax, I didn’t waste it all.” Besides, that was well worth it. Maybe the stench of mead will drown out his more appealing scent that now trails me back. I pour myself another cup full and watch Hudem’s moon as it swells until the silver is nearly blinding. In all my years, I’ve never seen it so brilliant and so low before, but I’ve also never been at sea for it.
“Is that typical for it to be so bright on the water?” Tyree asks, noticing it as well.
“Aye, I don’t spend much time ponderin’ that moon. It’s never brought me any good,” Captain Aron mutters, but he studies it with a perplexed look.
Either way, it is a beautiful view.
I take a deep breath, inhaling the warm sea air as the silver globe begins to dim, passing the height of Hudem—another that will surely make its way into Islor’s history books, with my family’s slow demise.
But …
I frown.
Something has changed.
I whip around.
Tyree is still there, still breathing.
Still watching me like a predator waiting patiently for an opportunity with its prey. I move toward him, toward the scent of his tempting Ybarisan blood.
“Is something the matter, Annika?” He eyes me warily.
“No. I just …” I inhale again. I can still catch the scent of his blood, of all the mortals’ blood around me.
But the unmistakable craving that plagued me only moments ago is suddenly gone.
In the far distance, an unearthly screech fills the night.
2
Sofie
“Watch yourself, my love.” Elijah’s grip on my hand tightens as I step over a corpse.
“I am watching.” But even with my keen eyesight and the rays of light from the silver moon above, it is a challenge to avoid limbs as we move toward the castle. A grand path of destruction has been carved through the royal garden, the ashy remains of trees still smoldering. Statues that were likely once grand have crumbled. “What manner of creature caused such carnage?” Surely, it was no mortal being. The manicured lawn wears gouges from a beast’s claws.
“A powerful one who will bow to me before long.”
I steal a glance up at my husband, still in disbelief that after almost three centuries, I am walking alongside him again, in flesh and blood, his hand within mine.
He feels different. Those endless years in the Nulling have hardened him. I suppose it is to be expected that he would not be the same.
“What sparked this battle, I wonder.” I have seen the aftermath of war before—cities toppled, bodies left to claim or rot.
“Weak kings.” Elijah’s jaw is firm, resolute.
I open my mouth to ask him what he means—and how he knows—when a cluster of blood-streaked elven soldiers rushes through the castle doors.
“Ah, good, you’ve found us.” Elijah’s voice is cordial—dare I say, cheerful.
“Declare yourselves!” a burly soldier demands, moving ahead of the others, gripping the pommel of his sword as if prepared to attack.
