Xander
Unexplainable heat flashed through my body, the liquid fire at war with the biting chill taking up residence in my bones. Every muscle, every joint, protested as I willed myself still, anticipating another round of torment. The familiar antiseptic scent of healing potions and medicinal therapy battered my senses with each uneven breath I took.
My mind knew no concept of time. No sense of my whereabouts, my condition, my mortality. Was I dead? Was this hell? If not, it should be. Muddled and foreign voices whispered in my ear, but I could not decipher their meaning.
Friend or foe?
I could not tell.
“Xander?”
Tender warmth brushed along my brow.
“Xander? Wake up, you’re okay.” Her voice, thick with worry, roused me from my nightmare. A nightmare where the scent, the pain, and the voices were my only constants. The visions cleared, the pain faded, and my mind brought me back. To Skye.
She exhaled as I stirred and opened my eyes, finding her hovering above me, the whites of her wide eyes glowed in the darkness as she studied me. She swept my nightmares away every time I laid eyes upon her.
“Hey.” Her smile was sad as she smoothed her thumb over my forehead and lowered herself onto my chest. “Another one?”
For three weeks, I’d woken from the misery in my mind to Skye’s voice and tender touch. Three weeks of vague memories, of torment, of agitation. Three weeks of Skye touching and coaxing me back from hell. Back to her.
It was the only physical contact we’d had since the night Godwin died at the gate. Since the message Tabor sent. Since she went running for Nickoli at the first thought of his being injured. Earlier that day I’d bared my soul and begged her to let me into her life—then she ran to him. She’d chosen me to protect her, to sleep in her room each night, but the memory of her fear for him could not be erased.
During daylight hours, Cillian and I trained the men who came forward and joined our fight. Our days were spent in the snow and muck, working our bodies to their limits, or in meetings with refugees and soldiers as they arrived with stories of what they’d seen throughout the villages of Tyalbrook.
I rarely laid eyes on Skye until I returned within the castle walls in the early evenings. I bathed and changed in a room two down from hers, but I slept in her bed each night. We ate supper in the great hall with the Guardians and soldiers, we discussed news, security, and war, but we did not touch and we did not carry on personal conversations in public. We did not carry on personal conversations at all. Not until I writhed in my sleep and she saved me.
“Xander?” Those two syllables held a world of frustration. “What happened in that cave?”
My muscles flexed and a shudder ran down my spine as the last of the nightmare melted away.
“After the cave?” she asked brokenly when I did not answer her first question.
I slipped my arm around her back and eased her cheek to my chest. I was cold. So, so cold, and she was warmth. She embodied comfort and home.
“Do you want to talk about Tabor’s message?” I asked instead of answering her questions. We were experts at deflecting. We’d yet to discuss Tabor’s warning or the innocent man who died carrying that warning. She shied away from those discussions much the way I refused to speak of my nightmares.
Skye sniffed. “Want to tell me about the cave?”
Stubborn Queen.
“There were creatures in the cave,” I murmured into her hair. My eyes heavy as her heat thawed the frigidness in my bones.
“The ones you fought? The ones that caused the scars?” Her palm slid across my thin shirt and stopped over the scar which marred my lower abdomen.
“Yes.” I swallowed. “The after … it’s hazy. I don’t know what happened. I remember Magdalyn and, and—” the words wouldn’t come.
“She healed you with magic?” Skye prodded.
Did she? “I can’t recall.” She must have, and yet my mind sensed something, someone else.
“Do you think she wiped your memory and that’s why you can’t recall? Maybe Vonnedenia and the others could help.”
“I’d have to have memories to wipe.” I’d tried that route. The Three saw nothing of those weeks within my head. No memories to extract.
“It is as though you buried it, Xander,” Marivale, consistently the light of The Three, explained after I took their heads off with my simmering rage because they couldn’t help me.
“Buried it?”
“You died”—Violette tipped her head—“Or were nearly dead. Whatever brought you back, whatever happened—”
“I passed out in the cave and woke in a field near Kerra’s prison. Whole again.” The words flew from my mouth. The explanation surreal, like something that happened to another. Not me.
“How?” I asked.
The Three exchanged narrowed glances. “Magdalyn?” suggested Marivale.
Vonnedenia’s pale head shook at the possibility. “No. The seer did not do this. Or she did not do it alone. She does not have the ability.”
“Then who?” I asked. Or what?
“Valeyah.”
Marivale and Violette stiffened at the foreign, yet familiar, name.
“But the gates are—”
Vonnedenia hissed, cutting Marivale’s words off. Tension grew thick within the room, their usual luminous glow muted.
I eyed The Three. Their faces, their movements. “Who is Valeyah?” I asked, enunciating each word, my temper close to bubbling over once again.
Marivale drew her golden cloak around her neck, hiding within the gossamer folds of the shimmering fabric as she sat back in her chair. Her gaze slid from mine, while beside her Violette’s stare remained steadily affixed to Vonnedenia’s. Though her face remained vacant, Violette’s knuckles whitened as she clutched the gold stone cuff she wore around to her slender wrist.
“Who is Valeyah?” I pinned Vonnedenia with a fixed look.
She smiled in a most peculiar way. It was the she-devil smile I’d seen long months ago outside of Sheridan when she’d used her glamour and subdued Rioden’s mind.
“Valeyah is not a who, my dear Guardian.” She closed her eyes like she was praying. Or giving thanks? Or maybe she’d asked for divine assistance?
“We will find out what happened to you, Xander.” Skye whispered into the darkness, her voice resolute.
I inhaled, filling my lungs with her scent, and closed my eyes. “Sleep,” I urged as my fingers toyed with her long hair. “It’s not important.” Skye groaned and I chuckled at her irritation.
“I know it matters to you, and I do want to know the truth, but we have enough on our plate right now,” I reminded her as my lips brushed the top of her hair. “Don’t you think?”
Her cheek rubbed my chest as she reluctantly agreed with my assessment and my mind returned to The Three. They’d finally left Montibello two days ago, leaving my questions about Valeyah unanswered. Unanswered, except for one.
“Valeyah was the first kingdom,” Vonnedenia said, her voice soft and reverent. “The mother kingdom to Tyalbrook.”
My chest tightened. Air no longer flowed to my lungs and blood ceased pumping through my heart. I froze.
“The kingdom thought to have been lost five hundred years ago when a battle raged through the lands and a King sent his heirs to Tyalbrook for safety.”
Questions about Valeyah and worry for Skye plagued my sleep, and I woke with the urge to beat something, or someone, into the ground. That urge propelled me from the bed I shared with Skye before the sun rose in the east. That urge, and a desire for answers, sent me into the depths of Montibello. To McClintock.
“Tell me about Valeyah,” I ordered, foregoing niceties.
McClintock didn’t budge on his cot, not so much as a flinch as I ran the edge of my sword along the iron bars of his cell. The clatter of metal against metal ricocheted off the stone walls. I lit a second lantern and peered into the dark corner where he lay. A filthy ball of a man, under shabby blankets wearing weeks’ worth of grime and facial hair. I’d scarcely spared him a glance when I’d followed Skye down here before, too concerned with her safety to note our prisoner’s deplorable living conditions.
“Charming,” I drawled.
A ragged wheeze worked its way in and out of his lungs telling me he was alive. I nudged a wooden stool closer to the bars and sat, sword across my lap, back straight. I could wait.
The air was putrid. And subzero. The cold cut through the layers I wore and chilled me to my core. I flexed my fingers to keep my blood flowing. This man was responsible for the deaths of my parents, King Mercier, and a host of others. He deserved this prison. He deserved death.
“Does my appearance repulse you, Guardian?” McClintock asked after a long time of my sitting and watching.
I smoothed my scowl. I will not feel sorry for this man. “You were offered water for bathing and fresh clothing,” I reminded him. And myself. “Wallowing in this filth like a gutter rat instead of working with us was your decision.”
A hacking, sputtered laugh filled his cell.
“I have asked for two things. My son and Kerra. I will speak with them, then I will offer the answers you seek.”
Liar.
It was doubtful McClintock knew anything helpful about Tabor or the evil within the man whom I’d come to realize had pulled the strings here.
“You will not see Kerra. As for your son, he is his own man and if he chooses not to see you, I have no say.”
“He is alive then?” The flicker of surprise in his tone caught me.
I looked at my sword with a small shrug. “Nickoli? Why wouldn’t he be?”
McClintock propped to his elbow. “You covet her. The new Queen.”
My fingers tightened on the hilt of my sword.
“My son said as much before you returned, before I was imprisoned.” He wheezed and another coughing fit overtook his too thin frame. His shoulders spasmed.
I bit the inside of my cheek, waiting.
“Your face gave your feelings away when you followed her here,” he finished once he caught his breath.
I would not bother confirming or denying my feelings. “And?”
A wicked spark of amusement entered his eyes. “She is meant for more than you. More than a Guardian. Your duty is to protect her, protect the lands, but it is forbidden for you to love her. She will marry for the title. She cannot marry into your bloodline.”
The cold air crept into my bones once more as my blood drained from my face. Ready to rid myself of this man, I stood and turned.
“You asked of the lost kingdom,” his frantic voice halted my steps. His probing for information of Skye had pushed Valeyah from the forefront of my mind. He interpreted my pause as consent to continue. “The War of Drakoon.”
Drakoon. The Lord of Mist and Darkness.
I schooled my thoughts and tone. “What of it?”
McClintock smiled. He knew. He knew he possessed useful information, and his knowledge would not come for free. “Send Nickoli to me and I will share what I know.”
I left the dungeon without a reply. I left the castle without a word. I walked through the outer gates as the morning sun hit the valley. The first rays of the day melted the hoarfrost coating the field where, in moments, I would find release with a worthy opponent and a sword in hand.