Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, Book 3)

‘Where is S—’

Chella slapped him across the face, hard enough to hurt her hand. ‘Here.’ She didn’t need to speak. She just pulled the thread that bound her to each of her returned. Sula stepped from the shadow into Kai’s line of sight. The ghouls hadn’t left her pretty. Flesh and skin hung in a wet flap revealing her cheekbone, jaw, broken teeth, and the dark stump of her tongue. The dead girl watched Kai without curiosity. He sucked in a breath, gasping a deeper hurt than the needle had yet put in him. Perhaps she’d been his sweetheart. Surely more than a passing fancy.

‘Sula?’ Tears misted his eyes.

‘Oh, grow up.’ Boredom and anxiety nipped at Chella’s heels and neither would help her turn him. ‘She’s dead. You’re not. You can accept her death and find yourself a new direction, or you can join her. The world is changing. Are you going to change with it, Kai?’

Chella flicked her fingers at Sula and the corpse collapsed, ungainly, air belching as her stomach folded.

‘Is she still “your girl”, Kai? Does true love survive where flesh corrupts? What was she to you? A pretty face, a quick panting release? There’s no romance in death, Kai, and death’s the flip side of our coin.’ She ran her fingers up into that blond hair of his. ‘We’re just meat on bones, waiting to rot. Find your pleasure where you will, by all means, but don’t dress it up in sweetness and promises. There’s nothing left to pin your loyalty on any more, Kai. Give it up.’

She took his wrist below the manacle and drove the needle through his palm, past clenched fingers. He cried out then, half a curse, half a scream, starting to break. Soon it would be all scream.

‘W-what do you want?’ He gasped his words past clenched teeth.

‘Me? I want what you should want,’ Chella said. ‘I want what the Dead King wants me to want. The Dead King doesn’t need your loyalty, he just requires that you do what he tells you to do. And when he has nothing for us to do, our time is our own.’

Chella pulled the needle free and licked the blood off it. She slid her other hand down across Kai’s ribs and the hard muscle of his stomach, sweat slick.

‘What do you want me for?’ he asked.

Not stupid this one. And a survivor – at his core a survivor ready to do whatever is needed. Lead him slowly though, step by step.

Chella ran her hand lower. Even survivors balk if shown too much of the path at once. There’s a road to hell that is paved with good intentions but it’s a long route. The quicker path is paved with the kind of ignorance that clever men who just don’t want to know are best at.

‘You have talents that are rare, Kai.’

‘The Dead King wants to recruit sky-sworn now?’

‘Sky-sworn, rock-sworn, flame-sworn, sea-sworn.’ Chella pricked his ribs with each word. ‘They are all sworn, and men who can swear once can swear again. We’re the same, you and I, we reach through into other places. What do you think the necromancers are, Kai? Monsters? Dead things?’

‘You’re dead. Everyone knows necromancers rise from the grave.’

Chella leaned in close, close enough that he could bite her neck if he chose, her lips at his ear once more. ‘Death-sworn.’

In five years the Dead King had risen from being simply a new complication in the art of necromancy to a force that would change the world. He no longer bartered with necromancers, no longer manipulated, steered or simply terrified them into carrying out his will. He owned them. He no longer watched from the Dry Lands, peering into life through dead eyes where they fell, speaking with corpse lips, he inhabited the living world in stolen bodies, walking where he pleased. An army had grown about him. The lichkin had sprung from some untapped well of horror, lieutenants for the hordes of his dead.

While Chella had languished, the Dead King had risen beyond measure. His summons to court could mark a grisly end to the dark little tale of her existence, or a new beginning. She would present herself with Kai as her offering. Fresh meat. Even in the Dead King’s forces necromancers were not common. Bearing gifts she would answer his call and answer for her failings with the Ancrath boy – who had also risen beyond measure and expectation.





12


Five years earlier

Carrod Springs stinks. Not a human stink of waste and rot but a chemical offence against the senses, the bad-egg stench of sulphur, combined with sharper aromas fit for turning eyes red and stripping the lining from your nose.

‘You see now why the trail detours so far to approach from the west with the prevailing wind,’ Lesha said.

‘Why would anyone live here?’ Sunny asked.