Chapter One
Gray
Orange luminance from my dagger blurred in the darkness, its blade leaving a scarlet thread across the Kinetic's throat. As she stumbled backward, reaching for the blood cascading down her pale neck, I spun and plunged the weapon deep into the heart of her partner behind me. Their eyes harbored a desolate hardness that Kinetics were bred to inhabit. Murderous intent painted their otherwise pretty features in ugly shades.
The pair of Kinetics collapsed to the cracked concrete, one after the other, as their veins turned black from the redfern poisoning embedded within my blade. It would take them several minutes to suffer a painful death, unless they had the antidote on their person. But Kinetic Warriors weren’t usually allowed to carry them, at least not the ones under my father’s rule, though he was no longer the ruler of anyone. According to Slate, he’d fucked off with the queen of Tempests, Celanea, two months back.
“Which domain are you from?” I asked the one with the plum pixie cut, needing to know who’d sent the ambush. I kept my senses open, aware of the battle raging around me in the deserted streets ofDowntown Perry, ensuring no one would blindside me while I fished for any information.
The Kinetic clutched her chest, blackness mixing with the red of her blood as it seeped and coated her fingers. She gasped for air, glaring at me from where she lay on the ground. “Traitor.”
I rolled my eyes. It wasn’t the first time I’d been called that by a Kinetic since Chrome demolished the Royal Domain and turned Infernal. Honestly, I no longer gave a shit what other Kinetics thought, considering they relentlessly besieged Elemental Hollows, intent on retribution for their king. A king who had tossed his people to the fucking wolves and couldn’t care less about them.
Imagine how effective it would be if Kinetics and Elementals teamed up against the dark magic that had interwoven itself into our world. But while we fought one another, Celanea was now free to rain hell without a single disturbance to her plans.
“Which domain are you from?” I repeated, my patience wearing thin as I loomed over her. I needed to know how coordinated Kinetics were without Forest leading the helm. So far, every attack had come from a different domain. Plus, I held onto the hope that one of them would lead me to my father.
Dark liquid began to trickle from the corners of her mouth, casting a dark shadow on her lower lip. “Tuscaloosa.”
I smirked. “I haven’t met one of you yet.” Shrugging, I dropped to a squat, making myself eye level with her. With a flick of my forefinger, I directed air into her lungs, suffocating her with an abundance of it. “Pleasure to meet you.”
The Kinetic flailed as her eyes bulged, slamming her head onto the concrete. Panicking, her frenetic hands shifted between the hilt of my dagger protruding from her heart and her chest, where she couldn’t breathe.
Something inside me snapped the day that Chrome left. A menacing vengeance burrowed deep within, unsatisfied until the blood of those responsible for his downfall drenched the earth. Atwisted joy uplifted my heart at the sight of her suffering. “I’d appreciate it if you called meQueen.”
Rising to my feet, I glanced at the Kinetic gurgling to her death while the other suffered the effects of redfern poisoning a foot away. “Best get in line, or none of us will have a world left standing,” I spat, disgust in my tone as my lip curled up at the edges. I whirled around, strolling toward the end of the alleyway.
If it hadn’t been for a scout’s tip informing us that Kinetics were closing in on our Hollow, we would’ve been blindsided again. Except this time, we didn’t have Chrome in our arsenal. So instead of letting them find us hidden in the middle of nowhere, risking the wards in place from Onyx and Chrome, we decided it would be advantageous to bring the fight to them in town.
I pressed my back to the building’s brick wall, peering around the corner to check for any Kinetics waiting to ambush me.
Snatching the hood of my distressed cloak over my hair while pulling the cowl over my nose and mouth, I pushed my essence outward, sensing which route to take to avoid the chaos of Elementals and Kinetics clashing with metal and magic. I could feel the movements through the air as my essence pushed further, even so much as a breath caused a disturbance that I could sense.
I didn’t have time to deal with their shit unless it led me to Chrome or to an answer to reverse his devolution and restore him to his real self. And unless I found someone of importance who I thought could lead me to Forest, I didn’t want to waste my energy on any other Kinetics, despite my burning desire to kill them all. I trusted the Elementals to handle it. But my goals had become obsessive: find Chrome, restore Chrome, and kill Forest.
Technically, I was now the queen of both Kinetics and Elementals. But I couldn’t even get my own emotions and thoughts under control, much less unite two warring species, one of which wanted my head on a spike.
The stars winked above me, mocking me as they did every night for ever believing I’d found happiness. What a joke.
The cord on my heart tugged. The energetic tether connecting Chrome’s soul to mine always snagged like a violin string when he had strong emotions or if he was nearby. We were one soul split in two, but one half was tainted with darkness while the other suffered the consequences down the line.
Chrome lived. Always just out of reach, never letting me get too close, taunting me so much that I could feel his faint amusement at my growing frustration through the bond. I fought back the tears being forced to the surface by my constricting chest as I thought of my last memory of him and the pain that nearly destroyed me when his essence devolved into something dark and sinister.
I closed my eyes.Come back to me,I thought.
“I love you,”I’d confessed in those final moments.
“I’ll find you again.”The ash had rained on me as I watched him walk away…
So many questions had tormented my mind since that awful day. But the main one was, “Why?” So many whys. It wasn’t until a few days after I returned to the Hollow and was recovering in the healing ward that Slate told me what Chrome had done. Initially, I believed Chrome had turned Endarkened, when actually, he turned into something worse, even though I didn’t fully understand what that meant, yet.
The cord tugged again, urging me to follow its pull. I breathed a sigh of relief at its presence. When Chrome turned Infernal, the bond between Chrome and me morphed, too. A thread seemed to have ripped free from our cord, and each day I failed to find him, another thread seemed to follow, creating a frayed connection that grew fainter by the day.
I wasn’t sure how I would react once I found him again, because Iwouldfind him. Just as much as I would collapse to my knees in tears, there was a chance I’d want to beat the shit out of him for all of the lies. The worst betrayal of all? The fact that he had known all along that Slate was alive. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to forgive that one, but at least he’d be here.
I watched as orange and blue blades whirled through the night. If it weren’t a scene of gory violence and hatred, it’d be a beautiful sight. But these days, that was where I felt most at home: in bloody darkness. I smiled as I witnessed a Kinetic drop to his knees just before an orange sword severed his head from his neck.
I pushed off the wall and stormed down the sidewalk, summoning two knives from my weapons belt to my hands. Two Kinetics double-teamed an Elemental. I flicked a knife free from my grasp, and it speared into the neck of one of the Kinetics. My steps never slowed as I passed by, dipping my head to the Elemental before they finished off the second Kinetic.
