Vanquished Gods (Hallowed Games #2)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

W ith a gloved hand, I stirred the acorn porridge, feeling nauseated at the mere thought of eating it again. Steam rose as I stared at it in the cauldron. Stewed acorns smelled a great deal like a mixture of nuts and dirt. Maybe I could find some berries or honey to sweeten the stew this time.

Despite the tasteless food, deep in the Thornwood, Leo and I had carved out something like a normal life for ourselves, even if we were sharing the small space with two bards who never stopped talking. The important thing was that the Order had no idea where we were—out here in the middle of nowhere—and we were getting by just fine. I foraged for nuts and berries, the boys fished, and we lived happily in our cozy little home.

The only time we argued were when the letters arrived from the vampires.

In the tub by the fireplace, Godric scrubbed his shoulders. “What does the newest one say? It’s from Lydia, isn’t it?”

“I’m not interested, whatever it says,” I grumbled.

Apparently, my oldest friend, Lydia, had joined them. I really couldn’t picture her there, a genteel lady among the blood-drinkers, but she had a tendency to surprise me.

At the kitchen table, Hugo blew his pale hair out of his eyes, a pen in his hand. “Lydia says they are on a small island kingdom called Gwethel, just west of the large vampire kingdom of Sumaire. She says the witches like her have a gated village all to themselves. She says it’s safe there. And do you know who their king is?”

I stirred the porridge again, as if that would make it taste better. “No, and we’re not going.”

“Is it Sion?” Godric called out from the tub.

“That’s him,” said Hugo. “The old Magister Solaris.”

At the rough wooden table, Hugo’s forehead wrinkled. “The little messenger crow is waiting for us to send a reply letter. Listen, I don’t mind disappointing the vampires, but I don’t want to let that little crow down. He’s a good boy. He just wants to do his job. We will give him an answer.”

I sighed. “Tell the crow that we will not be joining Lydia in the vampire kingdom.”

“Do they have a castle?” At the kitchen table, Leo was shelling more acorns that he’d collected earlier. “Lydia says she’s in a place called Donn Hall. It sounds like a castle. I’ve been in a manor house, but never a real castle.”

I cleared my throat. “Hugo, please write down for the crow that we will not be joining Lydia on the vampire island because we are perfectly happy and safe where we are, without having to worry about being eaten by blood-drinkers. Tell the crow that Sion once murdered my own father, and we don’t need to live in a castle. We have everything we need already.”

“Do we, though?” Leo asked doubtfully.

I once again stirred the acorn porridge. “I’m making some food right now. And I’ll make it more flavorful this time. And you and Godric did such excellent work on that vegetable patch. And the snares you made with Hugo! We’ve all done excellent work, getting our life sorted here .” I glanced back at Hugo as he sat hunched over a wooden table. “Don’t write that bit about the porridge. Just say we have everything we need here, that we are fully stocked on food, and that we’re perfectly safe from the Order. Say that we’re leading a perfectly happy and normal life far, far away from vampire fangs.”

Hugo scribbled away, his tongue poking out as he wrote. “Right. Got it. No flavor in the porridge…”

Godric dropped Lydia’s letter, and he broke into song.

“ She danced on the green, with nary a care,

A brisk girl was she, with an arse like a pear ? — ”

“Godric! Can you have a day off singing?” I snapped.

As he scrubbed his back, suds spilled out onto the rushes.

Leo dropped the unshelled acorns into a pot of water. “I’m just wondering if at the castle, we might have better food.”

“Do you think they’d have better food in a castle full of blood-drinkers?” I turned to him, holding the acorn-sludge spoon. “Who knows what they get up to in Gwethel? I’m not taking you to a vampire kingdom, my love. Vampires are monsters who eat people, understand? I have been told by an actual vampire that they don’t have souls and that we should stay away.”

Leo’s eyes brightened. “Lydia said they have feasts there every night, because there are so many human thralls?—”

“I told you not to read those letters,” I said with exasperation. “I don’t want you even knowing what a thrall is. It’s not a word a child should know.”

Leo shrugged. “They’re the human servants who give their blood willingly. I don’t see the problem. They want to become vampires someday, because vampires are stronger and better than humans?—”

“The problem ,” I said sharply, “is that vampires are violent, and they can’t control themselves. And their king, Sion, is the worst of them all. We’re better off here, darling. I’ve made up my mind, and I’m not changing it. And after all the work we put into the snares and the vegetable garden, we’re not giving up.”

Leo hadn’t seen what I’d seen of the vampires: Maelor soaked in blood, Sion casually slicing off people’s heads with a dark smile.

Or the time Sion told me that true hunters should toy with their prey.

No one else in this cottage seemed particularly concerned that Sion had butchered my father in the forest years ago.

If Lydia thought I was willingly bringing a ten-year-old boy to their kingdom, she was out of her mind. Leo didn’t need any more nightmares.

Maybe our food was bland, but at least we weren’t knee-deep in gore.

Hugo frowned at the letter, his handwriting a barely legible scrawl. “Lydia said Sion thinks he needs your powers, as it happens. He thinks you can help him defeat the Pater.”

The problem was, whenever I used my lethal magic, it only made me crave death more. It turned me into a monster. Using my magic meant sacrificing my reason completely.

“If I killed a thousand people at once, I’d never recover my wits. Tell the crow,” I went on, “that I’m not going to let Sion use me as his weapon. I don’t trust him, and I never will. We’re staying here, in this cozy cabin, and we’re going to lead a perfectly normal life in the woods. We will make food, and hunt, and we can even have a birthday party for Godric next week.”

I smiled brightly.

“ With a sway and a grin, she caused quite a stir,

The whole village now dreams of an arse like hers. ”

Godric’s voice boomed off the rickety walls of the tiny cottage.

I turned, casting a look around the cozy space. Sure, it was a bit of an odd setup. Hugo had washed his clothes earlier, and he was sitting in a blanket he’d wrapped around himself while they dried. Leo sat crammed under a window, scowling at the fireplace. Furniture, dried rushes, and beds filled every inch of the house. And Godric never stopped singing his wildly inappropriate songs.

But the cottage had its own charm, too. Sunlight poured in through diamond-paned windows onto four tidy beds, and I’d been decorating every surface with wildflowers. I’d woven baskets to gather fruit and nuts. Really, it wasn’t much worse than living in the barracks, where we’d started.

We just had slightly worse food.

I grabbed a basket, my stomach rumbling. “Right, you lot. I’m going out to look for berries.”

“Thank you!” said Hugo.

I slipped into my leather shoes. My feet crunched over the dried rushes as I crossed the rickety floor, and I pushed the door open walk outside. From the oak boughs, birds chirped, and sunlight ignited their leaves. At the beauty of the forest, I was even more certain this was a reasonable place for a little boy to grow up, safely protected by three nice adult humans who didn’t drink blood or burn them on pyres.

I hurried into the forest, the shade of the trees cooling my skin, and inhaled the scent of earth and moss with each breath. If I could find a good clearing, it might be the best bet for raspberries or strawberries—or maybe some gooseberries in the shade of the oaks.

I had no idea what we’d do in the winter, but we’d just have to figure that out later. Maybe hunting, drying the meat to get us through, and the boys were reasonably good at fishing. If I could pick enough berries, we could make some jam.

Yew boughs arched over me, their leaves shot through with sunlight. Such pretty trees, even if they were ancient symbols of death. They were said to grow from grief and sorrow, from skeleton bones, and that they covered crooked gravestones, shielding the dead. I believed it. Ten years before, a young yew had grown from the place where Sion killed my father, where his blood had fed the soil.

From a yew branch, a raven cawed at me, frantic, drawing me back from my musings. I wondered if he could sense my death touch. I flexed my gloved hands and hurried away from the tree.

Hunger carved through my stomach as I walked. We clearly needed more than just nuts and berries and the occasional fish. When I got back to the cottage, I’d set to work on making a spear.

At last, the forest opened into a clearing, and my heart quickened at the sight of bright purple raspberries as hunger carved through my gut.

I pulled off my glove on my right hand to pick them. Plants seemed to be the only thing I could touch without killing them. Sadly, I couldn’t just stuff my mouth with these because Leo needed nutrients more than I did. I licked my lips anyway, imagining how they’d taste.

As I plucked the berries, I couldn’t stop thinking of Maelor. I had all the company I needed in the cottage. Maybe far more than I needed, in fact. But my mind kept wandering back to Maelor, missing him.

What would he have been like before he’d turned into a vampire? I could almost picture him when he was alive—in love with the sounds of words and the colors they evoked as he wrote, enraptured by the lush blue of the sky and the sunlight on the grass. Enthralled with his daughter, Pearl, before she died.

As I picked the berries, I pricked my finger on a blackberry thorn, and a streak of red ran across my skin. I popped it into my mouth, tasting the salty tang of blood.

Our curses had really twisted us, hadn’t they? The vampire curse, the death-touch…in Maelor’s case, it had stolen his soul, cursed him with an insatiable blood-hunger that forced him to kill to survive. In mine, it had turned me into a walking poison. Someone who couldn’t even hug the people I loved.

I could imagine a world without the Order, without magic, where I’d meet Maelor in a clearing just like this. I’d rest my harmless hand on his beautiful face…

A twig snapped behind me, jerking me from the daydream. I spun, heart pounding. A man stood only a few feet away, stepping from the shadows of the clearing. Once, someone like him would’ve been a complete mystery.

How could anyone so tall move that quietly, like he appeared out of thin air? Why would he wear long plaits down his back, in a style that had vanished centuries ago? To the Elowen in years past, the rich blood-red of his cape, edged with intricate gold embroidery, would have seemed baffling.

But most importantly—at one time, I wouldn’t have understood why his gaze was locked on the single drop of blood glistening on my fingertip.

His eyes had darkened to black, and he licked his fangs. The wind rushed over him, toying with his blond hair, and shadows darkened the air around him.

I felt the warmth bleed from my body, and a shiver ran over my skin.

I’d come out here without a weapon, and I couldn’t kill this enormous vampire bastard with my touch.

Sunlight washed over him as he dragged his eyes up to meet mine. “Elowen. You have been summoned to Gwethel.”

My pulse roared. “Did Sion send you?”

“You’re coming with me.” He jerked his head, like I was supposed to follow him.

My gaze traced the metal chain around his throat. There was the reason he was alive, standing in the sunlight—a pendant that kept him protected from the sun’s rays. At the bottom of that chain, I’d find a butterfly pendant, just like the ones that Sion and Maelor wore.

I shook my head slowly. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

My heart thudded. I didn’t want this vampire anywhere near Leo. I didn’t want him anywhere near my bleeding finger, either.

He took a step forward, cocking his head. His eyes were dark as midnight. “If you don’t come to Gwethel with me, you can say goodbye to that little boy.”

Anger slid through my veins.

His gaze flicked down to my finger again, and his hand shot out, reaching to grab me. His lip curled, and he bared his fangs.

It only took an instant. Just a fraction of a second for me to grab the chain around his neck. My hand shot out, and with a sharp, violent tug, I snapped off his throat.

The vampire’s eyes widened when he saw what I’d done—the butterfly pendant that gleamed in the sunlight now resting in my hand. But already, smoke curled from his skin, and his mouth opened with horror. I stepped away from him, stumbling back as his body ignited. Licks of fire rose from his clothes, and he staggered back, screaming as the scent of burnt flesh filled the air.

I turned, shielding my eyes from the sight. Gritting my teeth, I blocked out the sound of his screams, clutching the pendant in my hand. Heat from the fire singed the air around me, and smoke billowed, the scent of charred flesh still flowing on the wind. Until the world fell silent, broken only by the sound of that wind rushing through the trees and crackling embers. I waited a moment, then turned back to the spot where the vampire had been standing.

In his place, only a pile of ash was left behind.

If you don’t come to Gwethel with me, you can say goodbye to that little boy.

The wind carried his cinders into the air.

Shaking, I turned over the butterfly pendant in my hand, and I found his name written on the back. Bran Velenus .

I shoved the pendant into the pocket of my cloak.

Did Sion really think he could simply threaten me into joining forces with his vampire army?

It was really very simple.

Anyone who threatened Leo would die.