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  THE HEART OF DEATH

  A NOVEL BY

  L. RYAN STORMS

  “Heart-pounding action, fantastical worlds, and characters torn between duty and love – The Heart of Death is everything I look for in a fantasy novel and more.”

  —RACHEL LUANN STRAYER, PLAYWRIGHT OF DROWNING OPHELIA

  “The Heart of Death is an epic quest featuring bogs and tunnels, magic and mages, love and unutterable loss. A fast-paced and twisty-turny read, perfect for a cold and stormy night.”

  —SORCHIA DUBOIS, AUTHOR OF THE ZORAIDA GREY TRILOGY

  “An imaginative, intense sequel...with a creeping necrotic dread that culminates in an ending that had me shouting with equal parts shock and tentative hope for the next chapter.”

  —KRISTIN JACQUES, AUTHOR OF THE GATE CYCLE TRILOGY

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  THE HEART OF DEATH. Copyright © 2020 by Lorraine Storms. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without prior permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Published by RaineStorms Press, 2020.

  The paperback edition has been catalogued as follows:

  Name: Storms, L. Ryan, author

  Title: The Heart of Death / by L. Ryan Storms

  Description: Electronic file (eService)

  Series: The Tarrowburn Prophecies; Volume 2

  Summary: Reina and Quinn expected a happily-ever-after. Instead they’ve been thrust into the center of another prophecy. To stop the Chaos Wielder’s madness from turning the world into the living dead, they’ll have to journey through enchanted lands, make untold sacrifices, and retake control of the talisman’s unexpectedly volatile magic.

  ISBN 978-1-7328492-2-8 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-7328492-3-5 (ebook)

  Subjects: | YFC: Children’s / Teenage fiction: Action & adventure stories | YFH: Children’s / Teenage fiction: Fantasy & magical realism | YFB: Children’s /Teenage: general interest | BISAC: YOUNG ADULT FICTION / Fantasy / General | YOUNG ADULT FICTION / Action & Adventure / General | YOUNG ADULT FICTION / General

  www.lryanstorms.com

  Cover art by Jess Bieber, more at www.entertheglow.com

  For Nate, also known as “He Who Does Not Read”

  Thanks for reading my books.

  I’ll always look forward to our adventures together.

  Reina and Quinn have nothing on us.

  Contents

  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

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  Unfinished Business

  Quinn

  Marrying Reina was not my first act as king.

  Oh, I wanted it to be, but stepping into the role of ruler in a kingdom ruined by chaos over the last few years meant there was little that didn’t demand my immediate attention in one way or another.

  No, my first act was to direct the surrender of the King’s Army to the Resistance forces. Officers were to be tried for war crimes based on their actions under Bruenner, and foot soldiers—all twelve-thousand of them—were given the opportunity to appeal for clemency and return to their lives, their penance in helping restore order in one way or another.

  I’d seen enough death to last ten lifetimes. I wasn’t about to steal men’s lives for being on the wrong side of a war.

  Mercy, Reina says, defines a king.

  And if I must rule, I intended to do it properly. Especially since my grandmother would have my head if I didn’t.

  I smiled. Grandma Elle had a ring to it. She hadn’t arrived at the capital yet, but I expected her any day. Kelford had sent word weeks ago. Once the news traveled to Gillesmere, it took everything in his power to keep Madam Bonverno from leaving that very night. He’d somehow managed to convince her to wait and travel with McElson’s party. Or so his letters proclaimed. I pictured it easily enough, though. She’d fight anyone standing in her way to get to family.

  Governor McElson of Gathlin was a member of the High Council who had played a pivotal role in helping us get Reina’s message to the Resistance forces. Without him and his messengers, our army never would have made it to Reina’s side in time to help take control of the King’s Army once Bruenner was dead. I would be glad to see him again, but I’d be far gladder to see my grandmother.

  If someone told me a year ago what kind of turn my life was going to take, I would have brushed it off as pure hogwash.

  I’d gained a grandmother—and a kingdom—almost overnight. The grandmother was worth a thousand kingdoms in my humble opinion, but even so, I vowed to do what was best for the hundreds of thousands of citizens of Castilles who deserved better than they’d received over the last several years.

  Marrying Reina wasn’t even my second or third or fourth act as king. Actually, I hadn’t yet married Reina. Since the rushed coronation, I’d been up to my neck in trying to restore some semblance of a peaceful, prospering land, but Castilles would need more than a few weeks to recover. It would need years.

  Which was acceptable. I was familiar with waiting and well versed in throwing everything into my work to ensure the end results were what needed to be. I was no stranger to giving up everything for the right thing. And if that’s what needed to happen to bring Castilles and her people back to prosperity, that’s what I would do.

  How many times had I done so before?

  I lay awake in the ridiculously enormous bed in the outrageously enormous bedroom that once belonged to my mother and father—my biological mother and father—and stared at the ornate, painted ceiling, contemplating my life choices and how I’d come to be the king of one of the biggest nations on Liron.

  I rubbed my eyes. Kings probably weren’t supposed to debate the wisdom of such things. Surely they were supposed to accept their destiny as it had been handed to them. But then I hadn’t exactly been brought up with the wisdom of kings past. My destiny had come as a surprise—even to me.

  I almost didn’t hear the tap at the door. If I’d been asleep, I would have missed it entirely, but that was probably intentional on her part.

  “Come in, Reina,” I said. The massive door opened a crack, revealing a sliver of Reina’s profile. “I’m not sleeping,” I told her.

  She slipped into the room, closing the door with the smallest of clicks and leaned against it, a sly smile on her face. She viewed me from across the room.

  “How did you know it was me?” she asked softly, her inqu
isitive eyes narrowed. I could watch her brain work all day—or all night—and never get tired.

  I knew because I always knew, but instead I answered, “Who else would dare wake a slumbering king?”

  “You just said you weren’t sleeping.”

  I fought a smile. “I’m awake either way, aye?”

  She glared at me with raised brows, amusement tugging at the corners of her lips again.

  “I’ll go,” she threatened, but the smile on her face widened in contrast to her words.

  I rolled onto my side and patted the mattress beside me. “Sit.”

  She made no sound as she crossed the carpet to the bed. Truth be told, a herd of horses could probably cross this carpet without a sound given the thickness of the pile. The coin sunk into every corner of the castle reminded me of the wealth of the royal family of the Southern Plains. Other than the Plains, I’d never seen anything remotely comparable.

  Reina crawled onto the bed beside me, her nightgown half held in one hand so she wouldn’t pin it down as she moved forward on her knees. She let it go, lay down, and curled against my side, resting her head on my arm, careful to keep the talisman she wore around her neck from hitting my skin. The bloody pendant had shocked me more times than I could count in the past few weeks. I’d learned to cover it with a hand when I leaned in to steal a kiss lest it shock my chest and stop my heart. Hands absorbed a shock better than a heart would.

  “There was a time you would have died of mortification at the thought of lying beside me in bed,” I said.

  I enjoyed the feel of her thick hair resting on my skin, her face close to mine, her breath on my bare chest. My words were true. A mere few months ago, she would have turned beet red at the thought of lying beside me in a bed. Not that I wasn’t glad for the change.

  I was.

  “Are you complaining, Quinn D’Arturio?” She tilted her head to look at me.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.” I looked back at her and smiled, loving that she still called me by my name—my real name. Eron Alexandre Morel of Brenwyn didn’t exist here. Not between us.

  “Good,” she replied, nestling down again.

  I breathed her scent in and closed my eyes. Something lemony with a hint of an herb I couldn’t identify. Intoxicating nonetheless. She was mine, and I was hers, in a dream I never could have imagined turned reality. But it had. We were here in Irzan, and despite the messy business of rebuilding a kingdom, despite the fact that I rarely saw her throughout my days, we were in this together. Our future would be built together. I hadn’t ever thought to be handed such a gift.

  “Why are you awake?” I tucked her closer to my side. I wanted to inhale her, to kiss the spot behind her ear, and nibble her neck. I wanted to kiss her perfect mouth silly and chew her bottom lip.

  She sighed.

  “I was in the library today.”

  The library. She was thinking about the library and I was thinking about kissing. It figured, really. I didn’t think it would take Reina this long to find the royal library, but the coronation preparations had kept her busy, too.

  “He wasn’t lying when he said there were more Tarrowburn Prophecies,” she said, and she didn’t need to tell me who she was talking about. General Bruenner.

  The mere mention of him darkened my mood and in the space of a single sentence, I no longer thought about nibbling Reina’s neck or chewing her bottom lip. The imposter was still ruining my life. Bruenner was gone, dead—thanks to Reina, but even so, I didn’t like to think about him, about the lives he destroyed, the kingdom he ruined.

  “Are you about to tell me something to keep me from sleeping tonight?” I asked with a cringe.

  She gave a light tap on my chest. “You were already awake, remember?”

  “Right.”

  I waited for her words, my mind reeling with the possibilities. Every facet of dread gleamed like the side of some jeweler-cut stone.

  “There’s more to the prophecy. A lot more.” She paused, either gathering her thoughts or gathering the courage to tell them to me. Finally, she blurted, “We don’t have much time.”

  I withdrew my arm from beneath her head and pulled myself into a sitting position, leaning against the gilded headboard and angling to get a more direct look at her in the dark. Enough moonlight shone through the window to highlight the worry in her brow, the concern in her eyes. Whatever she had read, it disturbed her.

  Reina wasn’t one to worry without reason. If something bothered her, it would bother me, too.

  “Out with it,” I said, hoping, praying it was not as bad as I feared.

  “Joseph Faranzine made…morethanonetalisman.” The last words tumbled from her mouth so quickly it took me a moment to decipher them.

  “Joseph Faranzine—”

  “Made more than one talisman,” she finished for me.

  I breathed a small sigh. For a second, I thought the unknown prophecies were going to predict some new horror. A few life-bringing talismans weren’t much to be worried about. Unless…

  “How many?” I asked.

  “Three total.”

  “And?”

  I waited for the remainder of the bad news to fall from Reina’s mouth. She hesitated a moment, biting a lip before continuing.

  “The power of the three talismans acts to channel the natural abilities in three individuals at any one time. I wear the talisman that brings life, but there are two others…and if I interpreted things correctly, they reflect the other two aspects of our existence.”

  She paused a moment to look up at me, trying to gauge if I was following. I was. Neither of the other two aspects of our existence were pleasant, nor so benign, as life itself. Of course, Reina had managed to kill even with the power of life, proving nothing was what it seemed.

  “The other two aspects. Death and chaos,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “You’re telling me out there, somewhere, are two more talisman necklaces with the potential to bring death and chaos on the kingdom?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “The world.”

  “Fiermi,” I breathed with a sigh. I ran a hand along my neck, massaging the tightness there. “Why do I feel you’re not yet done delivering the bad news?”

  She took a breath and held it, regarding me, before letting it out. “It’s up to us. You and I…we have to make this right.”

  I let my head fall back, my skull clunking against the headboard with a dull thud. It was up to us. Again. Why should I think that Reina and I would ever get a semblance of normal life? Who was I to hope for such things? I reined in the errant thoughts, pulling them tight, stopping them short.

  My time with the Order prepared me for this. It prepared me for everything. I don’t know why I thought things would be different once the White Sorceress—Reina—was discovered.

  I sighed, resigned myself to the inevitable, then pulled myself out of the bed and began to pull a pair of pants over my nightclothes. I wasn’t sleeping anyway.

  Reina leaned on an elbow. Her hair cascaded over her hand in a dark waterfall I wished I could drown in. It was shorter than she used to keep it, but I suspected she used the talisman to grow it since her recent cut. The locks seemed to have gotten longer again quickly.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, her eyes falling on my chest. I hoped she was admiring the muscles there and not the smooth scar near the center of my abdomen. The scar was one more to add to the collection I’d earned. For the things I’d done, I deserved them all.

  “Heading to the library.” I shrugged a tunic over my head, concealing both my muscles and the scar. “Are you coming?”

  “Why do you get to get dressed first?” She stood and gestured to her night gown.

  I raised an eyebrow. “Because I don’t go sneaking into other people’s rooms in the middle of the night?”

  She pressed her mouth into a line and issued me a cocked eyebrow of her own. “You don’t normally hav
e complaints when I sneak into your room in my nightclothes. Stay put. I’ll be right back.” With that, she leaped from the bed and disappeared from the room.

  In another moment, she reappeared, wearing a deep blue silk robe tied at her waist. I followed Reina’s lead through the stone hallways, past the flickering oil sconces on the walls and down several sets of large stone stairwells. I nodded at each set of guards stationed in various locations along the castle corridors. With peace only recently restored, the personal guard insisted on setting up watch, even though I had said it wasn’t necessary. I suppose that’s what I should expect for making Agent Brigantino Captain of the Guard. At least the guards we passed looked watchful and alert, each one holding a fist to his heart as I passed. I expected no less of former agents, but I wished they’d stop saluting me.

  The library was in the castle’s lowest level to keep the books safe from heat and humidity during the summer months. The cool air wasn’t good for them either, but it was better than exposing the invaluable ancient texts to the sunlight and varied temperatures of the castle’s upper levels. As we entered the oldest section of the library, I brushed my fingers across the carvings in the dark stone archway mottled with lichen. IV3. It had been carved so long ago that the corners of the impression had rounded and dust and cobwebs nearly filled in the markings.

  “What does IV3 mean, do you think?” I mused aloud.

  She paused, looking up at the dark stone in the middle of the arch, keen eyes observing.

  She was quiet a long moment, considering. “Irzan Verity.”

  Irzan’s truth. A library could be labeled as such.

  “Irzan’s Vernacular, perhaps? Irzanian Vestibule? Irzan’s Veranda?”

  “Veranda?” I questioned with a laugh at the irony of comparing an underground library to an outdoor patio. Or a garden. Was a veranda a garden? I wasn’t sure.

  “Either way, it still doesn’t address the three. I’ve no idea,” she said.

  We left the archway puzzle behind and traveled through the stacks. The library itself looked more like a dungeon than a fountain of knowledge, the dark stone walls seeming to press inward the farther back we ventured. Reina grabbed a low-burning oil lantern from the wall before we pressed into the narrowest of the passageways between the stacks.