Heir to the Throne (The Wardbreaker Book 4)

  Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  Synopsis

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Author's note

  Read Danvers, RJ, and Karim's short story!

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  Also by Katerina Martinez

  About the Author

  Copyright

  HEIR TO THE THRONE

  The Wardbreaker

  Book Four

  By Katerina Martinez

  The mad Queen's crown opened a door to a place I was never meant to go back to. Now I may never leave.

  A couple of months ago I set foot in the Tempest for the first time. It should've been the last. My Guardian had closed the door to the realm of magic forever, but the Queen's took me back, and now everything's upside down. I want to do is destroy the crown, but she won't let me.

  The Queen is alive, or maybe she's dead - it's not totally clear. But she still exists, she's been imprisoned for thousands of years, and now she wants to get out.

  Summoning the crown bound us together somehow, and I spend my every waking moment worried she's going to find a way to take my body before I can figure out how to destroy the crown. I know I don't want to ever wear it again, but I keep trying to. The worst part is, she's not the only one trying to get to me.

  I'm fighting a war on two fronts, I'm running out of time, and I'm losing.

  ***

  To all the key workers getting us through this awful time.

  ***

  CHAPTER ONE

  The lanky creature before me unfurled a pair of black, feathery wings and stared at me from within the dark, empty sockets of its birdlike skull. Lightning crackled behind it, throwing its black bones into sharp contrast against the sudden flash of light. I remembered it. Oktos, the Psychopomp. He had been my guide through the Tempest. I never thought I would see him again.

  I wasn’t supposed to see him again.

  “Well?” Oktos asked, its voice sharp and high-pitched. “What the hell are you doing back here? Didn’t you just leave?”

  I couldn’t answer right away. The words kept catching in my throat. I could only stare at the creature, my jaw slack, my eyes wide, my heart hammering. “I don’t know,” I managed to say, “One minute we were outside, and now we’re here.”

  “This is impossible. How did you get back in here? And you,” Oktos jabbed a bony, black finger at Ifrit. “Why didn’t you stop this from happening? You had one job: keep the Mage out of here.”

  “I have many jobs,” Ifrit corrected, “But I also don’t know how this is possible. It must be the crown.”

  I’d forgotten I was wearing it. I touched it, fingertips lightly caressing the metal. It was warm to the touch, and vibrating, almost. “This…” I said, trailing off.

  “You know what? I don’t care how you got here, but you need to leave.” Oktos started to approach, making shooing gestures with his hands, “You’re not supposed to be here.”

  Ifrit suddenly jumped off my shoulder and exploded in size, becoming a fiery, humanlike creature as tall as the Psychopomp. “Don’t get any closer,” Ifrit warned, his voice now deeper, the light from his body illuminating the tower we were standing on.

  “Look, I’m not going to hurt either of you,” Oktos said, backing off, “But this is all horribly wrong. Whatever you did to get here, you need to do it again and go back. Your journey in the Tempest is over, don’t you understand?”

  “I’m not gonna argue with you there,” I said, “Believe me, I don’t want to be here anymore than you want me to be here.”

  “Then do something about it.”

  Concentrating, I touched the crown again, this time with both hands. I shut my eyes, breathing deeply. Thunder rumbled somewhere in the distance. From far below me, I could hear the sounds of waves bashing against rocks; a soothing sound that helped me keep my mind where it was supposed to be.

  “Take me back,” I whispered, and then the Tempest lurched.

  The feeling of motion made my stomach turn upside down, even though I wasn’t moving. In fact, the whole tower I was in hadn’t moved, but the rest of the world had. The wind was rougher here, the ocean more violent, the lightning strikes far more frequent and hitting much, much closer to home.

  “What did you do?” Oktos shrieked.

  “I don’t know!” I yelled over the sound of the wind and the waves. “I told it to take me back! I think this thing’s broken.”

  “No,” Ifrit said, pointing across my shoulder. “It’s not.”

  I turned around and gazed upon a rolling ocean of turbulent waves all crashing into each other like they were enemies. Sea spray and rain whipped against my face, matting my hair and making it difficult to see anything without putting my hand up in front of my eyes. But whatever Ifrit was seeing, I saw it, too.

  It was hard at first to know exactly what I was looking at. It looked like the dark tower we were on was the only structure standing above the water for hundreds of miles. But there, beneath the water… something was gleaming.

  I caught only glimpses of whatever was down there as the waves crested, frothed, and crashed. Lightning strikes made it a little easier to pick out what looked like structures, shimmering under the water.

  Towers, domes, walls. It was like a mirage, visible only for brief instants at a time, but it was there. The Drowned City of Ashelor. The domain of Qyhena Ophine, the First Queen—the Drowned Queen. It was there. It was here, in the Tempest.

  Of course, it was.

  What else would have the power to drown an entire city other than the most furious ocean I or any other living, breathing Mage, would ever know?

  “Oh my God,” I said, my voice trailing off.

  “No…” Oktos said, approaching the edge. “No, no, no. You shouldn’t be here.”

  “I know I shouldn’t be here,” I said, “You’ve made that pretty clear.”

  Oktos started pacing around the tower, growing more and more agitated with every passing second. “Why did you come back?” he snapped, “I did what I had to do, I guided you to your Guardian!”

  “I didn’t choose to come back!” I yelled, “Unless you haven’t noticed, I don’t know how this crown works.”

  “Then you shouldn’t be playing with it, should you?”

  “Yeah, I think I’ve learned that lesson.”

  “I’m not sure you have,” Ifrit said, “But I’ll take your word for it.”

  I looked across the waves and at the city shimmering beneath them. I was here. Finally, after all this time, I was here. The city was real. Alright, maybe the magnitude of what I had just done—the fact that I was even here at all—hadn’t quite kicked in yet, but that all felt like a footnote to me compared to the opportunity I had been given.

  I can reach it.

  Right now, from right here, all I had to do was leap off the edge of t
he tower and swim for it. Despite the daunting distance to the water, I felt like I could do it. I felt stronger in here, strangely powerful, and I didn’t mean only physically. That Ifrit was a fully sized fire demon right now and not a little flame on my shoulder seemed like he was mirroring the way I was feeling on the inside.

  But was that because I was back in the Tempest, or because I was wearing this crown?

  I touched it again, fingers lightly caressing the metal. I felt a tug against my chest, and I almost tipped over the edge. Scrambling, I grabbed hold of a nearby column and swung myself back inside, panting, my heart wedged inside of my throat.

  “What the hell was that?” I shrieked.

  “I don’t know,” Ifrit said, “But I felt it, too.”

  “You see?” Oktos said, “Do you see, now? You shouldn’t be in this place.”

  I backed away from the edge of the tower, moving closer to the center and to Oktos. He shied away from me, closing his wings around his body… almost like he was afraid. “I’m not going to hurt you,” I said.

  “I don’t believe that. I want to believe it, but with that thing on your head, I don’t know anymore.”

  I went to take the crown off, but Ifrit surged toward me and grabbed my hand. “Don’t!” he yelled, his touch warm against my skin. “I don’t know what taking it off will do to us.”

  “Hubris,” Oktos hissed. “This is hubris. You’ve violated the rules of the Tempest, rules that have been in place since the dawn of time.”

  He was slinking away from me, leaving a trail of black feathers as he moved. I still had dreams about Oktos, dreams about this place. Sometimes, I remembered him clearly. Other times, I couldn’t remember him at all. But one thing I knew for certain, this wasn’t the Oktos I had met the first time I had come here. That Oktos had been funny, and helpful; he’d helped me find Ifrit. This… I didn’t like this.

  “Your feathers,” I said. “What’s happening to you?”

  “That thing on your head is doing something to me,” he said. Oktos stumbled and fell to his knees. He looked up at me, almost like he was pleading. “Make it stop.”

  “I don’t know how. I want to, but…” I looked over at the edge of the tower. “I want to know what’s down there.”

  “You can’t go down there!” Oktos shrieked. “That is a dangerous place. It’s not safe. Not for me, not for him, and definitely not for you.” He shook his head. “Why am I even telling you this?”

  “It’s the crown,” Ifrit said, “It has power over you, doesn’t it? Power over the Tempest.”

  More of Oktos’ was falling away, feathers dropping to reveal the skeletal lines of his wings. “You shouldn’t have that. The person who built it was punished for her sins. If you wield its power, you will be punished also.”

  “Punished? By who?”

  “Those are questions for another time,” Ifrit said, “We need to leave.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “I think I might.”

  “You do?”

  “My powers have grown since we’ve been here. The crown doesn’t have the same effect on me that it’s having on Oktos.”

  “Lucky you,” Oktos snarked.

  “Can you send us home?” I asked.

  Ifrit leapt onto my shoulder, shrinking again to become a tiny flame barely larger than a softball. He jumped on top of my head, the feel of his movements filling me with warmth. I never thought I would feel comfortable with my head on fire, but then this was a day of firsts for everyone, wasn’t it?

  “Concentrate on home,” Ifrit said, “Touch the crown, bend it to your will. The crown doesn’t control you, you control it.”

  No, you don’t, came a voice, distant and soft, floating on the back of a breeze. Turning my head slightly I saw lightning breaking across a horizon that looked entirely different, now. The city was there; spires, and towers, and domes piercing the sky, a beautiful, golden sphere absorbing the brunt of the lightning as it whipped down from the heavens.

  It was like I felt my consciousness get pulled out of my body and toward it, toward the city, my spirit racing across the ocean. I could hear the wind, the crashing waves, the thunder, and beyond it—far, far beyond it all—a single voice, feminine and light, humming a barely audible tune.

  “Concentrate, Izzy!” Ifrit snapped, the echo of his voice into the underside of the domed tower sending me shooting back into my body.

  I pictured home, focusing hard on Danvers’ face, Karim’s, RJ’s… Axel’s, and even Becket’s. We’d been standing in his living room before I arrived here. I could still see them, dumbfounded at what had happened—how the crown had appeared to us in a lightning bolt.

  The world around me started to turn. I could feel the floor falling away from me, the tower’s walls and columns, and even Oktos.

  “Don’t come back,” he said, his voice echoing the further away from him I got.

  My ears popped, my chest released, and the floor beneath my feet felt sturdy again. I opened my eyes slowly, adjusting to the light. I was back in the living room, back on Earth. The wind, and the rain, and the water was all gone.

  Memories of what I’d just been through kept insinuating themselves into my thoughts even as I tried to concentrate on the here and now. The constant assault made my head start ringing. I ripped the crown off my head and tossed it aside, where it smacked against a wall and left a dent in it before dropping to the floor with a thud.

  “Izzy?” came Axel’s voice.

  I turned my eyes up to find everyone exactly where they had been the instant I had placed the crown on my head. The table was split in half, the room was filled with a smoky haze and smelling like burned wood. A sea of confused, stunned faces stared back at me.

  “Hey…” I said, blinking hard.

  “Hey?” Karim asked. “Can you tell me what the bloody hell just happened to you?”

  “What… did happen to me?”

  “You went all googly eyed,” Danvers said, “Like you fell into a trance.”

  I stared at the floor, then at my hands. “I think… I think I went back into the Tempest.”

  “That’s impossible,” Becket said.

  I looked up at him, blankly. My mouth opened, as if words were going to form. They didn’t. I rushed over to the crown, picked it up, and retreated to my room.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Axel wiped the sweat from his brow and headed for the front door, pulling his face mask down to his neck as he went. Renovations to Becket’s living room were almost finished; the walls sanded down and repainted, the wooden flooring repaired, the furnishings varnished.

  The whole house had a chemical stink to it now that was difficult to escape, the work had been long and hard, but it helped keep his mind busy.

  He found Karim outside, with a similar mask pulled up to his forehead and a thin cigarette between his fingers. Tresses of smoke floated listlessly out of his mouth and into the cool, New York air. When he noticed Axel, he quickly exhaled what was left of the smoke in his lungs and stubbed the last of the cigarette into the mug he’d been holding in his other hand.

  “Maestro,” Karim said, offering a half-bow. “How goes the work?”

  “Good,” Axel said, nodding, “We’ll be done in a couple of hours, but it shouldn’t stretch into tomorrow.”

  “And her highness? Any sign?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing yet.”

  Karim offered a glance up at the house; more specifically, at Izzy’s window, shielding his eyes from the sun’s glare. “She’s like a mouse.”

  “Mouse?”

  “She has to come out sometimes… for the loo, for snacks. But nobody ever notices.”

  “I’m not sure if snacks are high on her list of priorities.”

  “How extensive can that list be? She doesn’t leave her room, hasn’t so much as spoken to us—not since she put that damned crown on. What’s she doing in there? Writing her memoirs?”

  “If she is, you’re going to loo
k like a dick in them.”

  Karim shrugged. “I’m used to being the villain. I enjoy it, actually.”

  Axel nodded. “She’s going through something. I can feel it.”

  “Any chance you can dig a little deeper than that?”

  “I could, but I won’t. I make it a point not to pry into people’s thoughts.”

  “How noble of you,” Karim grumbled. He pulled a small metal case open and reached for another thin, long cigarette, but then thought better of it and set it back inside, shutting the case. “No. I think my nerves can go another hour or so without more nicotine. That woman is going to drive me out of my tiny, little mind.”

  “It’s not her fault. I still don’t understand what exactly happened to her that day.”

  “What is there to understand? She went back into the Tempest and it screwed with her brain. We aren’t supposed to go back there. Our Guardians close the door behind them when they come out to join with us.”

  “Well, it looks like the Queen figured out a way to open that door again.”

  Karim scoffed. “And doomed her precious, utopian city to oblivion for her hubris. I’m all for breaking the rules, but there are some things not even I would dare play with.”

  “You play with the dead all the time.”

  He waggled a finger at Axel. “Excuse me, I don’t play with the dead. I’m a Necromancer. The dead are my trade. Anyway, name one ghost who ever broke the barrier between this world and the Tempest.” He paused. “I thought so.”

  “Hey!” came a shrill voice from the door to the house. Danvers was also wearing a mask and cleaning gloves. Her hair, though mostly held up, was a mess, her cheeks rosy from the work. She pulled her mask off and cocked her head to the side. “What are you two slackers doing out here? We’re not done yet.”

  “Quiet, you diminutive taskmaster, you,” Karim yelled.

  “Well, someone’s gotta keep you two in check now that Izzy’s on the fritz.”

  “She’s not on the fritz,” Karim said, “Fridges go on the fritz. Computers, televisions, coolers—they go on the fritz. People have breakdowns; let’s call it what it is.”