Read Divided: The Alliance Series Book Four Online
Authors: Emma L. Adams
Divided: The Alliance Series Book Four
DIVIDED
THE ALLIANCE SERIES: BOOK FOUR
Emma L. Adams
This book was written, produced and edited in the UK, where some spelling, grammar and word usage will vary from US English.
Copyright © 2016 Emma L. Adams
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Amalia Chitulescu
Stock photographs purchased from Shutterstock.com
About Divided
Ada is gone, taken by a group of magic-resistant warriors with a grudge against the Alliance. Kay is stranded on Earth, with no way to reach her.
But he won’t accept that Ada is lost.
Ada refuses to resign herself to her fate as a weapon of the Stoneskins. Tapping into her own magic might be her key to escape, but now she’s in an unknown world, far beyond the reach of the Alliance. And the tyrannical, dangerous StoneKing has his eye on her -- and her magic -- for reasons she never could have seen coming.
Kay puts his job, and his life, on the line to get to Ada. But with powers shifting inside and outside the Alliance and an old enemy waiting in the shadows, the countdown to war has begun…
Divided
is the fourth novel in the world-hopping urban fantasy Alliance series. You can find the other Alliance novels on my
Amazon page.
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CHAPTER ONE
ADA
I walked under a starless, pitch-black sky. My entire body ached, and my mouth was dry, my skin already cracked from the blistering heat. It was cooler now night had fallen, after countless hours of walking over dry, dead ground. On either side of me walked a warrior. Not a human. Even if they looked like people, I couldn’t think of them like that. Not when they’d captured me.
Not when they’d beaten Kay, brutally. The one hope I had left was that he was still alive despite what they’d done to him, because if I dared consider the alternative, I’d fall down and never get up.
I’m alive, Kay. You’d better be alive too, because I’m going to find you.
I didn’t even know which world I was on, but chanting those words in my head kept me from cracking and trying to make a break for it. When I’d shifted out of line, one of my captors had grabbed my arm and hauled me back into place, gripping hard enough to leave a bruise. A reminder that these… creatures weren’t human. They called themselves Stoneskins, and with the magicproof adamantine woven into their skin, they formed an unbreakable wall on both sides of me. I couldn’t fight them with magic or physical force, and no weapons seemed to work on them. Kay’s Alliance dagger had broken the instant it made contact with their skin.
Oh, God, Kay.
We’d been so damn
stupid.
We’d run into the Passages without a plan, to check on a rumour, and walked right into the hands of the enemy. It was hard to believe less than twenty-four hours ago, I’d been at Kay’s flat. Now, we were literally worlds apart. Last time I’d seen him, he’d been bleeding on the ground in the jungle of Vey-Xanetha, before the Stoneskins had dragged me through the doorway and cut us off from one another.
I’d given up trying to see what else was ahead. Nothing but the unbroken line of the horizon. Whoever was navigating must know where they were going, though how they did so was anyone’s guess. We human prisoners had been shunted into a line, like cattle, caged in by stone-skinned, invincible warriors. They carried no weapons, but then again, they
were
weapons.
When the Stoneskins had dragged me through the open door, I’d known immediately they hadn’t brought me into the Passages—the blue-lit metal-walled corridors lined with doors to all the worlds in the Multiverse—but to another world entirely. An empty one. Where
they
came from, I didn’t know, because the ones who spoke English refused to tell me. It couldn’t be Earth, nor any of the other worlds Earth’s languages had spread to, like Valeria. Because those were Alliance members. I’d met people from twenty-odd worlds, and as an Alliance employee, I’d had access to information on all species across the Multiverse. But I’d never seen creatures like these before. Which meant either they weren’t from any of the worlds registered in the Multiverse, or they’d been hiding. But how had they known my name? Not just my given name: my real name. They’d called me Adamantine. They’d said they needed me for something. But what?
Time had shrunk to a bubble, but night had fallen in the past hour. Walking under the burning sun had been nothing short of torture. The back of my neck burned, and my throat was permanently dry even if one of the Stoneskins had been thoughtful enough to hand me a flask of water. They didn’t seem to need it themselves.
The one on my left was male, human in shape, dressed in a long, robe-like garment. Not that he needed to protect itself from the sun, because his skin was literally rock, marbled in shades of brown, black, and grey. He paid me no attention. The female Stoneskin on my right kept glancing at me, curiosity in her expression. It made her look almost human, which screwed with my head more than the notion of being kidnapped by these creatures.
The group stopped. The Stoneskins moved deliberately, decisively, though I didn’t see who gave the orders. The guards spoke to one another in a language I recognised—Klathican—and I shifted, trying to hear the others. The guard at my side shouted something at the guard opposite, who shouted a reply. As if I didn’t stand between them. I knew spoken Klathican, though I was a bit out of practise. The first speaker had said,
Watch the humans.
His companion had replied,
I know.
Someone had to be leading the group. There must be a chain of command, because from their disgruntled expressions, the two guards weren’t best pleased about having to watch over me rather than walking up front. The other humans at the back walked in parallel lines, like slaves. They didn’t need chains when no one had anywhere to run. In the hours we’d walked, no one had even tried to make a break for it across the wilderness.
Prisoner. Slave. The word left a bad taste in my mouth. It wasn’t the first time I’d been held captive. The Alliance had arrested me once already, back when I’d been illegally trespassing in the Passages as part of my work helping other people escape the war on my homeworld. But even when shit had repeatedly hit the fan, I never could have imagined there existed a creature capable of enslaving magical forces and even Cethraxian monsters.
The Stoneskins had almost destroyed the Multiverse in their quest for magical sources. They’d played everyone for fools, including the Alliance. When they’d failed to drain all the magic from Vey-Xanetha, and the doorway had closed, they’d been reduced to searching for an alternative… me. And I still didn’t know
why.
One of them pushed me, lightly, but enough for me to stumble forward. “Go to the other humans,” he said, in English. The guy’s voice even sounded like a rockslide.
I couldn’t argue. Not like there was anywhere to run. Just rock and dust and empty sky. There didn’t seem to be any kind of animal or plant life either. We might be the only people left in all the world. In this world, at least. No signs of human habitation anywhere, and no landmarks. How did they know where they were going? It wasn’t like you could get satellite navigation out here. Even the Alliance’s maps didn’t cover everywhere, and doorways didn’t always match. These guys had somehow created
a doorway themselves. With a world-key, maybe, but those were limited to certain higher-up Alliance members. Kay had used one, before—
Don’t think about him. Don’t.
Besides, it probably wasn’t as bad as it looked.
When the Stoneskins had dragged me through the doorway, I’d seen them knock Kay down. But they’d blocked the way, and I’d only seen from a side angle. Kay had survived more than one attack from an angry god, for crying out loud. He’d survived
third level magic,
which was fatal if it struck you directly. He couldn’t—couldn’t have—
I pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes.
Calm down, Ada. Calm down.
Panic out here and I might as well be dead already.
Kay would tell you to survive.
I drew in a deep breath. The Stoneskins were herding the other humans to one area. Rather than taking my place amongst the others, I hung back at the edge of our ‘camp’, watching them. There were at least fifty Stoneskins, and despite the adamantine in their skin, they moved so much like humans. Except… now I watched closer, some appeared to have webbing between the fingers. Some walked barefoot on clawed feet.
Another possibility sank into my heart. The Stoneskins were from more than one world. They had to be. Their marbled skin and bald heads made it difficult to tell at first, but the physical differences left no doubt. They couldn’t have started out that way. Somehow… they’d been changed.
I shut off that train of thought—with difficulty—and tried to see if I could spot their leader. I made out the shape of some kind of cart up ahead, at the head of the group, but it was too dim to make out any more. The darkness had crept in, all lights on the barren world extinguished. The Stoneskins themselves became shadows, some remaining on guard while the others set up tents. A couple carried lanterns, but didn’t deign to bring any over to the humans.
The prisoners didn’t have anything as fancy as tents. Just one blanket each. At least a river ran on the other side of the camp, which I ran to, gasping for a drink after walking all day. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten, either. I didn’t have a way to keep track of time. I’d never packed for an impromptu kidnapping. Sure, I’d put a bunch of items in the inside pockets of my coat, like my communicator and my house key. My
house key.
I’d never been further from home. Ever.
As for my communicator, the signal was out of range. After briefly checking for a signal during one of our stops, when I was sure nobody could see me, I’d switched it off to save power, until we reached wherever it was we were going. I had no doubt the Stoneskins would confiscate my communicator if they knew I carried it with me. I should have brought one of the earpieces; they worked on any world. But like an idiot, I’d given it back to Central yesterday, along with my weapons. The one defence I had was magic, and the Stoneskins could absorb it without even trying.
Adamantine. I’d faced antimagic before—I could absorb it, in fact, because antimagic
was
magic in some sense. But the usual rules didn’t apply to these… creatures. They must have an insanely high level of adamantine in their skin. Higher than I did, even, though with me, it was in my blood. The Stoneskins were practically
living
antimagic. My bruised arm throbbed where the guard had grabbed me. I was lucky it wasn’t broken. Because out here in the middle of nowhere, there was no way to fix it.
All things considered, being the Alliance’s prisoner had been more fun. The thought made me want to laugh and cry simultaneously. Back then, I’d had a way to contact my family. They’d think I was dead.
Even the humans made me wary. There were maybe fifty of them, and four hovered in a close-knit group near some rocks. The others stood apart from one another, like they didn’t want to get too close. The Stoneskins had set up their tents so they surrounded us on all sides except the one where the river ran alongside camp, too deep to swim across. I wasn’t desperate enough to try my luck against the raging current.
That must mean we’re near an ocean,
I thought, scanning the dark horizon. There was no point in looking too closely. We’d be gone tomorrow.
