A Dance of Dragons: Series Starter Bundle (7 page)

Leena gasped, her hand automatically rising
to catch the cry on her lips.

Mikza was there, huddled in the corner,
covered in dry blood. His back was striped with deep lines, marks
left over from who knew how many lashes. His cheeks were swollen,
enlarged enough to almost close his eyes, red and raw.

But the worst were his arms.

His unmarked arms.

Mikza's tattoos had been removed. His skin
had been cut deeply, burned and shredded apart so it still bled
just a little around his wrists.

Leena stepped forward, but he flinched away.
Too proud to want her to see him in such a state. But Leena cared
little for his pride right now.

"Why?" She asked softly, continuing to move
closer. "Why did you have to confess? Why couldn't you let me
fight? I don't care about my face. I don't care how deep my father
would have cut me. It would have been better than this. Oh, Mikza,
I love you. Why did you give that away?"

Leena knelt down, hand floating an inch
beside his wounded cheek, unsure if it would only bring more pain
for her to touch him. He didn't need to answer, she knew the truth
already. He would never let anyone hurt her. He would give anything
to protect her, to keep her safe.

And he had.

"I am no longer Mikzahooq." His words
contained no bitter edge, only the emptiness of defeat. The
unmarked had no name. No identity. No individuality. With their
tattoos, so went everything about their former lives. They were
less than human in the eyes of the Ourthuri.

"You will always be Mikza to me." Leena
caressed his face with the back of her fingers, and despite the
wounds, Mikza leaned into her touch. "We can still find a way. I'll
leave tomorrow, I'll go wherever you want. We can figure something
out."

He pulled away.

"You must forget me, Leena. You must move on
with your life. I want better than this for you. I want you to be
happy. So…" he paused.

Leena's throat caught.
What have you
done?
A mounting sense of dread filled her chest.

"I made a promise to your father."

"No." Leena winced, gripping his arm. "No,
Mikza, what did you do?"

"He didn't want to kill me. He said it was
too quick—not enough of a punishment for me and that it would only
make you more defiant. Instead, he did this, and he is sending me
away. I don't know where, very little was explained, just that I am
to be gone from Da'astiku on a ship leaving in a few days
time."

"I will come," Leena interrupted, eyes
shifting across his bruised features, trying to read the emotions
on his swollen face. "I will find you."

"No." He shook his head, wincing. "No,
Leena." He gripped her hand, moving slowly to entwine their fingers
one last time. "I promised him that I would let you go. That I
would never return. That I would never speak to you again. And if I
defy him in any way, break that promise—"

"He will kill you," Leena finished his
sentence—solemn, stuck.

"No," Mikza squeezed his eyes shut, letting
one wet tear slide free. "He will kill you."

I am already dead
, Leena thought but
kept silent. It would be no use. Mikza had already sacrificed
everything for her, and she would not let him know it was in vain.
The girl he knew was dead, and Leena could only guess at the woman
she was about to become.

"I love you," she whispered. That was the
only certainty left in her life, a truth she would hold onto and
let guide her into the future.

"I love you, too."

There was nothing else that needed to be
said, not then, not in their final minutes together. So Leena sat
back against the wall and pulled Mikza's head into her chest.
Running her hands along his limbs, she tried to soothe his pain, to
pour out all her love so the memory of this moment would last.

He hugged her close and they stayed like
that. Intertwined. Not moving. Barely breathing. Just being.

But in the silence Leena's mind spun. She
had a promise of her own to make. A promise to never stop fighting
until her father was in the ground, buried, dead, unable to spread
any more cruelty into the world.

If he was the hard rock of their island
kingdom, she was the water crashing into their shores, slowly
breaking it down, slowly chipping the stone away until there was
nothing left. If he believed that love had weakened her, he was
wrong. If he thought this would break her, he was wrong.

Leena felt strong for the first time in her
life.

Empowered.

Love was her weapon.

Love would bring the king to his knees.

###

THE

SHADOW

SOUL

A Dance of Dragons #1

By Kaitlyn Davis

DESCRIPTION

GAME OF THRONES meets GRACELING in a new young adult
fantasy by bestselling author Kaitlyn Davis. Told in alternating
male and female perspectives, THE SHADOW SOUL has been hailed as
"an amazing start to a new series that is going to have people of
all ages wanting so much more." (Happy Tails & Tales
Reviews)

When Jinji's home is destroyed, she is left with
nowhere to run and no one to run to—until she meets Rhen, a prince
chasing rumors that foreign enemies have landed on his shores.
Masquerading as a boy, Jinji joins Rhen with vengeance in her
heart. But traveling together doesn't mean trusting one another,
and both are keeping a deep secret—magic. Jinji can weave the
elements to create master illusions and Rhen can pull burning
flames into his flesh.

But while they struggle to hide the truth, a shadow
lurks in the night. An ancient evil has reawakened, and unbeknownst
to them, these two unlikely companions hold the key to its defeat.
Because their meeting was not coincidence—it was fate. And their
story has played out before, in a long forgotten time, an age of
myth that is about to be reborn…

1

Jinji

~ Northmore Forest ~

A shadow was just the absence of light, a spot the
sun could not reach. It was empty. But floating below her, drifting
and dancing along the landscape, her shadow seemed full—not a
reflection, but an impostor.

She pumped her leathery wings. The shadow
did too.

She dipped closer to the trees. The shadow
condensed, its points sharpening to match the outline of her
body.

She arched up, farther into the cloudless
sky. The shadow expanded and lost focus, rippling over the pointed
trees below.

Enough,
she thought, gliding with the
wind
. Time for food.
She focused on the horizon, spotting a
deeper blue against the sky. Her mouth watered.

Keeping her eyes on the ground, she watched
as forest gave way to rocks that cut deep into the sea, a molten
sapphire speckled with white. She swerved left along the shore,
focusing on the cerulean expanse of the reef, searching for
movement.

There.

The lazy undulation of a fin.

She dove, jaws widening.

A black shape flicked into her peripheral
vision. She turned.

Bright white eyes opened in the darkness.
Jaws clamped around her neck. She reached out with her claws,
sinking razor-sharp nails into the invader's flesh.

They fell as one, smacking into the water, a
mass of light and dark, plummeting below the surface. The jaws
tightened. Her vision condensed. Air slowed.

They continued to descend deeper and deeper
into the shadows, to the part of the world the sun could not
penetrate, where the darkness gained a life of its own…

Jinji awoke with a start, gasping for air and
clutching her aching chest. Her lungs screamed. Her mind fought to
escape the daze. She blinked, but the darkness would not recede,
even as her memory ignited.

It was the same dream. A dream she had only
had once before but would never forget. A dream that was somehow
more.

Another blink and a soft orange light leaked
into her vision. She looked up through the smoke circle in the
roof, toward the sky.

Dawn.

Jinji stood, throwing her furs to the side
and stepping quietly past her mother and father. Soft dirt muted
her steps, and her parents didn't stir as she crossed the small
expanse of their home. Lifting the pelt aside, she stepped into the
morning mist and began to run. Her feet followed the path along the
longhouse, past the rest of her sleeping tribe and into the forest
beyond. No thought was necessary—she had taken this path too many
times before.

Besides, concentration was beyond her.
Jinji's thoughts had drifted out of the world and into her
memories, all the way back to her brother.

Janu
, her heart cried softly,
remembering him.

The last time she dreamed that dream had
been on the eve of his death—what did it mean that it had happened
again, a decade later on the dawn of her joining?

Jinji stopped.

She had reached the clearing, her sacred
haven. A place shared only with her closest friend Leoa. Away from
the game and too close to the outside world for anyone else in her
tribe to discover—this place was their secret. The only place two
girls could talk away from the attentive ears of the elders and the
only place she could go to truly escape.

Jinji fell to her knees and opened her eyes
wide, searching the air for something only she could find. She
looked along the ground, over the flecks of dew spotting the grass,
along the twining roots, up the rough bark and over her head toward
the clouds.