Chapter One
Ethan
The sky deepens into a silky indigo as night falls across the Kingdom of Mountains. The battle has been raging hard and brutal for hours. Exhaustion envelops me like an ominous shadow, but I crack my neck and swing my axes with sharp flicks of my wrists, flinging the blood off the blades. The enemy soldiers flinch and scurry back, and I flash them a menacing grin.
Captain Ha, the head of the royal guards, plants his feet wide at my left and crosses his tree-trunk arms over his chest. At my right Jihun, my brother in every way that matters, wipes his long sword on his armguard, then stabs the tip into the dirt ground.
The soldiers jump and scamper some more. The poor fools have no fight left in them, but they still outnumber us fifty to one.
I locked up my father, the former King of Mountains, mere hours ago. It didn’t take long for his loyal general to lay siege on the Shinsi Palace in his name. And Jihun and I joined the royal guards to hold the line outside the audience hall.
A part of me wishes I hadn’t, damn my duties as the King of Mountains.
I left Sunny in the dungeon with my father, and I haven’t seen her since. While I’m glad she isn’t caught up in the fray, it’s not like her to shy away from a fight.
Where is she?
My skin tightens with a growing sense of wrongness. If she had a choice, she would be by my side right now.
“Do you surrender, General Shin?” I shout across the vast courtyard.
“Not until I have your head on a spike.” He waves his fist in the air, then in a fit of temper, he kicks and screams at the soldiers around him. “Go kill him, you worthless fools. All of you. Go!”
“Your Majesty”—Jihun half turns toward me, keeping his eyes on General Shin—“please retire to the audience hall and get some rest. We will subdue this uprising when reinforcement arrives.”
“How long until they reach us?” I subtly shift my weight from leg to leg to relieve the aches in my battle-worn body.
“They are a half day’s ride away.”
“I don’t have half a day,” I growl. Something went wrong in the dungeon. I need to get to Sunny.
“Your Majes—” he begins.
“I am ending thisnow.” I cut him off. “Are you with me, Jihun?”
“Always.” He doesn’t hesitate to give his support, even as a muscle jumps in his clamped jaw, frustration in every line of his face.
“Thank you.” I clap a hand on his shoulder. What I am about to do will sap me of what strength I have left, and he knows it. But I need to find Sunny before I lose my mind. I turn my grim gaze on the enemy. “Give me some room.”
Captain Ha backs up without question and orders his men to keep their distance. After a mutinous pause, Jihun walks away to stand with the royal guards. When my people are safely behind me, I cross my axes—one golden, one silver—in front of my chest, then slash them down, drawing anXin the air. They vanish before my fists fall to my sides.
I wouldn’t want to misplace the true crown of the King of Mountains.
With a deep inhale, I step toward the enemy soldiers. Many of them look too young to be twenty-four years old, the age the Shinbiin come into the peak of their powers and become nearly immortal. I don’t want to hurt these young soldiers, but I don’t have the luxury of second-guessing myself.
I need to find Sunny, and I have to get past them to go to her. They will fall, because she always comes first.
Thegiof Mountains rushes through my veins and sings in my blood. I close my eyes and coax the vibrant life force toward my heart’s center, concentrating thegiinto a single point. Sweat beads on my forehead, and my body trembles as I struggle to contain the growing power.
Almost there.
“What’s going on?” The anxious question bursts from a soldier at the front and spreads like wildfire across their formation. “What is he doing?”
When my entire chest beats with power, I open my eyes at last, casting a green glow on their terrified faces. The silvergiof Sky swirls within me, fortifying the magic, but it’s the greengiof Mountains that pounds to be released, burning in my eyes. I press the base of my open palms together and extend my arms out in front of me.
With a shout, I discharge the power in a pulsating stream through my hands, even as I grit my teeth to hold back its full might. The magic grows and spreads like a green tidal wave and rams into General Shin’s army. Silently, the soldiers fall, row after row, like a well-arranged domino set.
I grunt as I abruptly cut off the stream of magic. That couldn’t have taken more than five seconds, but it wasn’t a second too soon. My arms shake as I lower them back to my sides, my chest heaving with labored breaths.
