Ella Dethroned Read online

  Contents

  Title page

  Copyright

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  Dedication

  About Me

  ELLA DETHRONED

  THE BOY AND THE BEAST

  PREQUEL NOVELLA

  BRANDON BARR

  Copyright © Brandon Barr

  All rights reserved

  Cover Art by

  Deranged Doctor Designs

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

  CHAPTER 1

  ***This story takes place in the Age of Primacy, several millennia before Her Dangerous Visions, book one in The Boy and the Beast series***

  MONAIELLA

  A ghostly wail tore through the tall, frozen pines, the branches over the road flailing madly as the wind came hissing into her ears. Ella squinted through the biting snow, desperate to keep Rathan and his horse within sight. Rathan peered back at her, his eyes sharp with concern.

  If the wicked storm and numbing wind didn’t kill them, the four hunters at their back surely would.

  Her horse, Calebren faltered a step, then his legs buckled, and she was thrown into a bank of snow. She tried to stand, but her legs plunged deep into the white powder. As she fought her way out on hands and knees, she saw Calebren collapsed upon the road.

  A hand grabbed her arm—Rathan’s. He eased her up, his dark, green eyes squinting fiercely at her.

  “My Lady, come,” he yelled over a blast of wind.

  She stared into Rathan’s eyes, the prophetic words of the Old Seer again stirring in her mind.

  “We must hurry,” he shouted again.

  She nodded, then ran quickly to Calebren and unbound her sword and sheath from the dying horse.

  Atop his mount, Rathan pulled her up behind him, and she wrapped her arms around his waist as he sped his weary horse down the road.

  In one night, she’d gone from Luminess of the Hold, ruler of the Blue Mountain Realm, to hunted outcast. The four, red-cloaked pursuers were less than a half hour’s ride behind and gaining. Brantieth’s men were well supplied and had sacks of grain on their saddles for their horses. Rathan’s horse hadn’t eaten since they fled the Hold, and in this deadly cold, the steed would soon meet the same fate as Calebren.

  And where would that leave them? They wouldn’t reach Tilmar by nightfall. It would be, at best, another day’s ride.

  As they rode, she slipped her right hand into her tunic and fingered the strange device the Old Seer had given her. It was otherworldly, made of a hard, peculiar material, black as obsidian but light as pumice stone. It intrigued her, as did the seer’s mission, and she dared not fail. If she did, the twofold promise that hung before her like a wondrous vision would rot with her in her grave.

  Rathan’s horse startled as something snapped and skittered on a small boulder just to their right. The broken shaft of an arrow lay in the snow at the base of the rock.

  “Keep down!” shouted Rathan. He steered his horse off the road toward a thick tangle of trees.

  Ella turned and saw a red-cloaked rider expending his horse’s energy at an alarming pace. Three other figures upon horseback were much further back on the path, barely visible in the white flurry of snow. The rider closing in on them drew another arrow back.

  This time, she feared he’d adjusted for the strong wind.

  “Rathan!”

  She yanked him off the horse onto the snowy ground as an arrow whizzed just over their heads. Rathan’s horse cried out sharply and she looked up to see the arrow buried in the animal’s side, just below the saddle.

  Rathan grabbed her by the hand and pulled her toward the labyrinth of trees. She pressed hard through the snow that rose up above her knees, her legs itching for the freedom to run. At any moment, she might feel the stabbing pain of an arrow splitting through her heavy furs and into her back.

  As Rathan pulled her into the thicket of trees, the trunks surrounded them like a maze of great, stone pillars. She and Rathan raced along more easily, the snow not as deep, within the thick woods.

  “Did you see the others?” asked Rathan. He glanced behind them, his eyes searching.

  “Yes,” she said. “They were barely visible. But not far.”

  Rathan suddenly stopped and pulled her behind the trunk of a poplar tree. He put a gloved finger to her lips and whispered, “He’s just entered the trees.”

  A sword flashed in Rathan’s hand, cold and deadly as the winter storm howling through the branches overhead. She stared at him, his face close. It was the same boyish face she’d glimpsed a year ago, when she ascended the throne at twenty-four, a face fierce with passion. It had disturbed her at first, but time had helped her understand him, and now she found his intense devotion a blessing rather than a concern. “You are my Life Protector,” she whispered, “but please, do not fulfill your oath to the gods prematurely.”

  His zeal shone hard as diamond in his eyes as a tight grimace carved the ends of his youthful lips downward. Then his eyes darted toward a sound. He pressed a hand upon on her shoulder and she slid down the trunk to the snowy ground.

  For a moment, there was only the whistle of wind in branches high above. She peered up at Rathan. He gripped his sword tight, the blade poised in front of his face. Then she heard the crunch of snow just behind the tree where they hid.

  Rathan swung around the trunk and the ring of metal vibrated as his blade was met by another. A flurry of sword blows pushed Rathan back until the hunter stepped beside Ella. He hadn’t seen her, too intent on Rathan. Ella reached to draw her sword, but stayed her hand, reminding herself of the covenant she’d made with the gods.

  She leapt to her feet, still at the hunter’s back. As the best swordswoman in the Blue Mountains, she could easily have driven her blade tip through the hunter’s leather-clad back and out the chest, impaling his heart in-between. Instead, she lashed out with her booted foot, driving it against the side of his knee. The bone popped upon impact and the man fell back into the snow with a shrill cry. She moved swift and agile, despite the heavy furs she wore, her heel coming down on the fingers of the hunter’s sword hand. With her left foot she kicked the sword free.

  Rathan lifted his sword to plunge a death blow through the man’s leathers, but paused and glanced at her.

  She shook her head. “Leave him, he’s no harm to us anymore.”

  She reached out her hand and Rathan took it, and again they were speeding through the woods, only now, she felt a warmth enter her bones. It was only a foolish hope perhaps, but the prescient words of the Old Seer had given her a powerful new vision for her life that somehow overcame the brutal fact that she and Rathan were now without horses, running through the woods in a blizzard with no provisions and a long way off from Tilmar.

  The hunched, shrivel-faced Old Seer had come to her the hour before her banishment. The old man had no name, and was ever only called by his age and gift—Old Seer. How he’d arrived at the Hold a century ago, no one seemed to remember the story, and his precise age was as mysterious as his arrival. He lived in the roots of the mountain, roaming the ancient passageways of a bygone era, and seldom had he wandered up to speak some ominous word, or future promise. She was astonished and frightened when he confronted her in one of the Hold’s upper passageways. In a deep voice that croaked thunderously from his throat, he’d warned her of her impending dethronement. She’d stood before him, paralyzed with dread
, and then his rumbling voice went on. He spoke two future promises over her, both conditioned upon her safely carrying out a mission for the gods.

  He had handed her the strange object, then declared that she must deliver the relic into the hands of a man called Quanthum who lived in Tilmar. It was a prophesy teetering upon a narrow bridge of chaos and chance.

  She gazed at Rathan’s messy dark hair. His hood flailed about the back of his cloak as he pulled her along through the woods. He knew nothing of the object she carried or the mission laid upon her by the Makers. Nor did he suspect the part she foresaw him playing in the future promise. Though she had no reason to keep any of it secret from him, there was also no reason to tell it. At least not yet.

  “Do you think we can make it to Tilmar by tomorrow?” she asked. “I have friends there among the servants. They will hide us.”

  Rathan glanced up at the clouds through the dense canopy of leaves. His face held concern, but he smiled at her, his usually smooth-shaven face darkened by stubble. “First we must survive the night,” he said in a lilting tone, as if embracing their dilemma. “We’ve got some daylight left, but no food, no blankets, and nothing for shelter. I like a good challenge.”

  “Don’t forget about me,” said Ella. “I’m no liability. You know my resourcefulness.”

  “Yes,” he said with a hint of humor. “Still, I’d take your sword any day over your resourcefulness. Your skill could mean life or death for us. Besides, you won the war; isn’t your promise to the Makers completed?”

  He’d never fully embraced her pledge to the gods. To a soldier, a sword was the most valuable object one had.

  “I swore it for my lifetime, and so shall I keep it.”

  Rathan sighed. “You should still be on the throne, My Lady. Brantieth and the regents are fools. The gods and I will see you seated back in your rightful place again—you are still the true Luminess.”

  She was, at that moment, tempted to tell him about the two promises the Old Seer had spoken over her. Rathan believed a return to the throne was in her destiny, but the gods had said otherwise.

  “How did you know Brantieth would try and kill me?” she asked, continuing a brisk pace beside Rathan.

  “I have a sense for these things,” he said, then glanced back at her, passionate energy scrawled in every line of his youthful face. “You are too trusting, My Lady.”

  “Since I no longer have the throne, I’d prefer you not call me My Lady.”

  “Alright, Monaiella.”

  “Just Ella, please.”

  He gave her a hard look. “As you command, Ella.”

  She laughed, and the lightness of the sound rolling inside her surprised her. A Luminess rarely had the tranquility of mind to laugh. And doing so now, despite the dangerous men behind them and the precarious road ahead, it felt like a weight falling off her shoulders. And it was a strangely freeing reminder of her new, possible future.

  CHAPTER 2

  RATHAN

  Watchfully he led Monaiella through the trees, searching for paths where their footprints could not be tracked so easily in the snow. If any of Brantieth’s hunters had abandoned their horse to pursue them through the dense woods, they wouldn’t have any trouble following. But hunters were not the only danger on Rathan’s mind. The appetite of the white cavebear was voracious in the dead of winter, when most of the game had migrated away from the large meat eaters’ dens. He and Monaiella would need to be extremely wary.

  The dark was beginning to close in as the grey clouds above dimmed with twilight’s approach. Every so often he would look back over his shoulder, searching for a glimpse of movement or a flash of red. He pushed as fast as he dared, his lungs beginning to feel the cold despite the exertion. Already, the certainty of a frigid night was beginning to worry him. Monaiella was strong, very much unlike the frail queens of other realms, and she was young, and had a vibrant energy that he’d glimpsed again and again while serving as one of her ten riders during the war. She kept pace with him now without complaint, and while he remained vigilant, his thoughts turned to what he’d sworn to the Makers.

  As one of Monaiella’s ten riders, he’d grown to esteem the young Luminess. Throughout the war she’d not been afraid to put herself in harm’s way, even with her half-mad oath to the Makers. In the midst of war, she was almost reckless in her desire to spare life, and he suspected she knew very well the anger she would incur by going to King Tapherd of the Verdlands, hated as he was by her regents.

  It was a powerful strategy, for with the Verdlands’ armies, they had had an overwhelming force. Many lives were spared—both soldiers, as well as the citizens being held within the captured city of Praelothia. But Monaiella faced a barrage of hatred as a consequence for her alliance with King Tapherd, for she’d promised the king the treasured city of Praelothia as recompense for his aid. It was the city that held the mysterious, god-made portal that led to other worlds—worlds where humans had built ships that sailed the stars and where wealth and influence might be gained if King Tapherd discarded the protocol that kept their world safe and clean of the outside.

  Rathan had questioned the Luminess’s decision himself, but in the end, he believed she’d chosen the harder but purer path. And when Brantieth and the regents stood against her, he’d spoken in her defense. But they cared only for what she’d surrendered to King Tapherd, not the lives she spared by making the bargain. Rathan knew well that Brantieth was wise enough not to murder her outright since she had stepped down willingly, but Brantieth was as sly as a harlot. He would send men to do the job in secret. It was that night Rathan stole into Monaiella’s bedroom and warned her that if she did not come with him now, she would be dead by morning.

  “Tell me a safe place and I will take you there,” he had told her, his eye on the door.

  She looked at him, then swore against the mountain, blurting something about a promise, and then denouncing Brantieth as a fool and a coward. Rathan had been careful to keep his eyes down at her feet, for she wore only her silk night robes.

  “I’ve gathered twenty good men. They are willing to die to see you safely away from here.” He hoped his words might reassure her.

  “I don’t want to start an uprising,” she had said, “nor give Brantieth the notion that I am threatening him, as brash and fool-brained as he is.” She’d turned her eyes upon him, trust and ferocity stirring her eyes like a dark, frothing sea. “Just the two of us, Rathan. No others.”

  Her words had moved him strongly. As he’d seen her do many times before, she was willing to sacrifice her own safety for what she perceived as the good of the kingdom, and she was entrusting her safe keeping in his hands. He fell on one knee before her and pledged an oath: “I swear, Luminess, before you and the Makers. I will protect you as long as I live.”

  She stared at him, bewildered by the ancient bond he’d just invoked. It was an echo from the histories, an oath not spoken in ages.

  “Come then,” she finally said, “take me to the Verdlands. King Tapherd will give us asylum. But first, we must stop at Tilmar. I have an errand I must complete.”

  That had only been last night, and he marveled at the immensity of the oath he’d sworn. It was ancient practice, swearing allegiance and protection to one man or woman for life, and had not, to his knowledge, been done for thousands of years. He was bound to her now. Had the gods moved him to make such a declaration, or was it his romance with the books of history and the old ways of valor he read within them?

  Either way, it was his reverent awe of the Luminess that played the catalyst which drove him to pledge his life to her. Over the course of his year-long service, his devotion had only grown. And now, as he had protected her in the war, so would he protect her for the rest of his life.

  If there was, one day, a way for Monaiella to return to the Hold, he’d unseat Brantieth and see that she, the true Luminary, attain her throne once again.

  —-

  The thicket of trees ended in a wide mead
ow. The sky above was a fuming ember, dark as charcoal with a touch of crimson. They would need to find shelter soon, but Rathan feared stopping prematurely. If any of the hunters had come after them, they would be desperate to catch them before the night’s snowfall covered their tracks.

  “I see a place for shelter,” said Monaiella, her breath like smoke in the air. She pointed.

  On the east side of the meadow was the base of a mountainous pile of boulders. She was right. Surely they could find a nook to crawl inside to escape the frigid wind and sleep.

  “We’ll keep to the tree line,” he said. “We need to hurry. The light is scant.”

  Before long, the dark began to swallow even the greyest shadows. He had to take her hand and lead her blindly through the woods. For a time, he lost sight of the meadow with its blanket of faint white snow and feared he’d lost his sense of direction, but then the dim gleam of the vast meadow reappeared. He led her out into the open now, confident that they were safely wrapped in darkness and could not be seen by any pursuers.

  “It’s too cold,” she shouted above the wind that whipped through the treeless space, stirring the freshly fallen snow into their faces. “I can’t feel my feet and the numbness is spreading.”

  “We’re almost there, My Lady. I believe that dark line beyond the snow is where we’ll find shelter.”

  “It’s Ella,” she shouted above the wail.

  His legs were trembling by the time he reached the darkness beyond the pale sheet of snow and felt the cold rocks. He pulled Monaiella up the side of a boulder, feeling outward with his hands. Together they climbed blindly, and once at the top, he stood and scooted along the surface, using his boot to feel their way. After several failed attempts to find a crevice, his boot felt resistance and he reached out with one hand, growing desperate to find refuge from the wind before they froze to death. Carefully he felt the rock before him, maintaining a tight grip on Monaiella’s hand. She came up beside him and together they began working across the rock, searching for an opening.