My friends!

The release day of Fall of Thrones and Thorns is only just over a week away. Can you believe it?

I sure can’t.

And I can’t wait to share the conclusion of this series with all of you. I can’t wait so much that I decided to share Fall of Thrones and Thorns Chapter 1 with you today.

Scroll down to read Fall of Thrones and Thorns Chapter 1 and join me throughout the week for news about the release!

Crowns will crumble and regents mourn

when comes the fall of thrones and thorns

 

One

Bree

The water is darkened with my spilled lies and the blood’s still slick against my palms when the Nereid soldiers seize us, along with anyone else who made it safely to land. From the corner of my eye, I watch them swing from the ship’s ladders to board the vessel, searching for other survivors.

They won’t find many more of us. The battle at sea that found us limping into Nereid waters took many lives—especially once the Egrian ships unleashed Ruin’s Reaping.

My wild eyes scan the shoreline, taking in the soldiers milling like wasps around us as they take inventory of our people, our weapons, our dispositions. They easily outnumber us three to one.

They’re easier to look at than my companions right now. I can’t bear to see Meddie and Liam’s jaws dropped, right alongside Lady Lilia’s. I can’t look at Elena, her face doing that impassive thing that makes her look too much like her sister for comfort. I most definitely can’t bring myself to take in Aleta, Tregle, and Caden’s eyes, looking shocked and betrayed as they review everything I’ve said since meeting them, picking through the moments of deception and honest mistakes alike.

Especially Aleta, who thought she was the one coming home to her family. And I just took that away from her.

I’m hauled ashore, trembling as the full implications of what I’ve just revealed set in. My wet feet sludge through the rough grains of sand along the beach, and my breath sticks in my throat as I’m fumbled from hand to hand, soldier to soldier. I trip and stumble, grateful for something to hold me up, but desperate to break free and run from all of this.

No. I can’t run anymore. I came here for a reason. Whatever happens, I need to remember that. This isn’t a simple case of self-exploration, of wanting to know where I came from.

The Nereids need to know what’s coming for them.

The night air whips through my clothes, singed and ragged. The moon is bright and illuminates the sky to a glowing blue, drowning out the stars around it. And when I finally let my gaze fall to the others, they are pale beneath its white light. Caden’s eyes move endlessly, taking in everything from the path before him, the crowd of Nereids surrounding us, the mountains huddling over the beach we stand on, and—every so often—me.

I can only imagine what he sees when he looks at me.

I’ve finally completed my tour of the Nereid soldiers to stop beside the tall woman who commands them. I try to slow my rapidly pounding pulse as she huffs out a humorless laugh, lifting the long white garment she wears to climb over the steep incline of sand.

“A full moon. One saga completes for another to begin. I might have known when I saw the approaching ships that the surprises tonight were only beginning.”

Right now, I must think of her as just…a woman. A Water Thrower. The Nereid regent, Lady Helen. Anything but my aunt. I’m not ready to think of her that way. No matter that her blood flows to the water like mine—a river bursting from a dam after a storm.

More used to navigating this terrain than I am, her stride overtakes mine as she moves to the head of our pack, to what I assume is her usual position, and the rest of us follow behind her. The soldiers accompanying us don’t offer us any choice but to go along with them, but that’s fine.

This is the path I’ve been set upon. And, finally, it’s a path that I am choosing to take.

~ ~ ~

The ride from shore to civilization isn’t brief, but one of the Nereids whispers in stilted Egrian that it shouldn’t take more than a few hours for us to reach their city. On the backs of animals that look as though the Makers decided to create small caricatures of horses, we clod over mountain paths and through rocky outcroppings. I wobble where I sit, and one of the soldiers rights me.

“Steady on, Your High—”

With wide eyes, he swallows the title down before I get too lightheaded over it and how very wrong it strikes my ear.

Day breaks, and we reach the summit of the mountain. I catch my breath at the sight of a white-columned structure staring down at us from another mountain’s peak. It must have been great once. Meant to inspire awe in those who beheld it. Its sheer size conveys that.

But even from this distance, I can see that those days have passed. One column appears to be missing, and another is decrepit. Crumbling. Bathed in the new day’s light, I can make out the cracks that slither up to the roof and gaps where large chunks of stone should be.

The damage appears recent. The open stone doesn’t have that dirtied, worn-in look of rocks that have braved the elements for centuries. Lady Helen’s expression shifts at the sight of it. She looks almost…sad.

“What happened to your palace?” I feel compelled to ask when I see her face, but I mean to whisper the question to the soldier nearest to me. Unfortunately, despite my best intentions, my voice catches the ears of Lady Helen.

She turns, quirking a brow at me, and moves closer. I swallow the frenzied pulse in my throat. “Pal-ace?” she questions lowly, sounding out the word to herself. Her expression clears as something clicks. “Ah, those are the self-indulgent buildings that the Egrian king uses to house himself and his government, yes? Ridiculous. Home and state should be separate entities.”

She nods to the structure. “I suppose you’ll not have prior knowledge of the temple of Kyrene. She was first of the Water Wielders. Lady of the Moon and Tides. Keeper of the Current. We place no structure above her.”

She’s right, I’ve never heard the name before tonight. But if she was the first one to “wield water,” she must have been one of the first people endowed by the Makers with Elemental abilities. “What happened to it?”

A shadow crosses Lady Helen’s face. “The earth trembles as of late. It’s taken a toll, but it shall pass.”

I’m certain she doesn’t want to discuss it, but I can’t help fixating on the temple. I can hardly tear my eyes away. It practically shines in the morning sun, nestled among the other mountain’s trees. “So it’s not a palace, then. But…you are the queen of Nereidium?”

“I was the queen regent,” she corrects lightly, something that’s almost a smile touching the corners of her eyes. “But I believe that title falls to you now.”

I shrink back, heart shriveling in my chest. Makers, I pray Aleta didn’t hear her. The last thing I want is to twist the knife of my betrayal deeper.

Still, Lady Helen’s piqued my curiosity. The temple is such a grand structure, rivaling the size of the palace in Egria’s capital. It’s hard to believe a monarch wouldn’t seize upon it for themselves. “You really don’t sleep there?” I ask dubiously, too familiar with what King Langdon would do in her place.

“Only if my prayers are unduly boring.” Her smile lifts at the end of her sentence. “But I find that, if I am moved to pray in the temple alone, they are sufficiently gripping to keep me alert.”

“Then where do you sleep?”

She sighs, aggrieved. “In my home,” she says simply. Turning, she motions to someone beside her to take the lead, saying something I don’t understand in Nereid, and she falls back beside me to change the subject. “You are not the girl the king of Egria has attempted to hold over my head all these years.” She nods toward Aleta. “She, however, fits the description I was given. Pray, how did your paths meet?”

Well. She’s not one to beat around the bush, is she?

I, however, take pride in my ability to encircle, beat, skip, and dodge a bush. “You can call me Bree,” I say as cheerfully as I can muster.

“Sweet of you. It’s interesting, you know… It has the cadence of one of our names. We called you Alee as a babe.”

Again, she cuts straight to the heart of things, and I waver, wanting to know more of my youth, of my parents. Where I slept, what I did, what they were like, but I swallow those questions down.

“So you don’t sleep in the temple. You sleep in your…house?” I guess, not wanting to call it a manor or estate and be corrected again. She nods, and I continue, relieved that I didn’t get it wrong. “And where will my friends and I sleep?”

Tugging her hair free from where it’s caught around her waist, she sighs again. “We keep quarters for traveling representatives from the other city-states. Visiting dignitaries from the mainland. They will sleep there.”

I sit up straighter on my mount, not failing to notice her use of pronoun. “They will?”

“It’s been a long time, niece,” she says, gracefully riding past me. “I think that you should stay with me so that we may, as you Egrians, say, ‘catch up.’”

My eyes widen, and if I’d been traveling on foot, I would’ve halted where I stood, but the animal beneath me plods determinedly on.

I’m too tired to argue with Lady Helen’s plans. But when she announces that our party will split for the night, Caden and the rest of them look ready to fight her on it. Before they rouse themselves to create more friction in our group than there already is, I hop off my mount and put a staying hand on Caden’s wrist.

His eyes fly to mine as I shake my head in warning, stopping him. “Bree—Aleta…” He releases a quick breath, and his lips twist into an ironic grin. “Now I’m the one who doesn’t know what to call you.”

I choke out a laugh, arms flying about his neck, grateful that at least he doesn’t seem to hate me for my secret. “Call me Bree. Makers, please don’t call me anything else. I can at least keep hold of my name.”

I pull away, and he inclines his forehead so that it’s resting against mine, a hand at the back of my neck reassuring him that I’m still there. “We shouldn’t separate. We need to stay together.”

I bite my lip. “I’ll be safe. This isn’t Egria. It’s not your da. She’s…” She’s my family. Something twinges inside of me as I think of Da. I cough and blink to clear those thoughts away. “I’m going to go with her. They’ll give us all housing, and we’ll talk things through tomorrow.”

“You’re sure?” Tregle asks quietly, beside him. They’re taking this all well in stride, but I follow Tregle’s eyes as they move worriedly to Aleta.

Who still isn’t looking at me.

“Yes. I’m sure,” I say, without looking at Tregle. My gaze is on Aleta now. “Tomorrow. Are you all right, Aleta?”

She breaks, snapping at me, her green eyes sharp and cracking as they land on mine. “Perhaps you should call me charlatan. Because it certainly seems as though I have no claim to the name of Aleta.”

A quick kick in the side gets the animal beneath her moving as surely as if she’d driven her heels into a horse’s flesh.

“Tomorrow,” Tregle says, giving me a strained smile before he follows her, the others trailing after them with glances back in my direction.

Caden presses a kiss to the back of my palm and drops my hand. “Tomorrow,” he repeats in a whisper. Then, he’s gone too.

By the time we make it to Lady Helen’s home, I barely have the energy left to keep my eyes open. Someone fetches me a change of clothes. I’m led through a large courtyard to a bedroom, and I collapse onto the bed as if I haven’t slept in weeks. Makers, I might as well not have. The Throwing I performed last night was so great that I’m surprised I didn’t fall to my knees immediately after. Especially given that I hadn’t managed so much as a splash in the weeks before.

Of course, if Elena is to be believed, that’s because I had a lot of things I needed to accept.

Such as Da’s death. Such as having a legitimate claim to a throne, Makers be blessed. I’d finally let something inside of me give and it had all burst forth in a terrible and glorious wave of destruction.

The Egrians hadn’t known what hit them.

Accepting Da’s death doesn’t mean I won’t make King Langdon pay for it, though. His time will come. A small smile curves my lips.

The bed’s linens are cool silk against my skin, and Lady Helen hesitates in the doorway before leaving.

“We’ll speak in the morning. Good night, niece. And…” A small, awed smile plays about her lips as she shakes her head in disbelief. “Welcome home, Your Majesty.”

Continue reading when Fall of Thrones and Thorns releases on September 27, 2016…