Read Dominion of the Star (Descendants of the Fallen Book 1) Online
Authors: Angelica Clyman
Dominion of the Star (Descendants of the Fallen Book 1)
OF THE
STAR
DESCENDANTS
OF THE FALLEN: BOOK I
ANGELICA
CLYMAN
This is
a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are either the
products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely
coincidental.
Copyright
© 2015 by Angelica Clyman
All
rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or
other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of
the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical
reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
First
Edition
ISBN:
978-0692476345
For
Grant
Kayla sat slumped against a crumbling wall, gazing beyond
the clouds, into the burning pinpricks of the sun’s rays. She was trying to
stare spitefully into the light, but the defiant star wouldn’t cooperate. Its
fire had never seared her eyes or flesh before, but she hoped today would bring
just a little pain, some small change, anything that would jar her out of this
apathetic existence and push her forward. She tried not to blink. Kayla pressed
her back harder into the wall, seeking the uncomfortable heat that was
generated by the kilns baking pottery on the other side. She held her breath,
searching the sky for meaning. Nothing was different.
With her head still upturned,
she pulled a thin, worn box out from under her blouse with the grace of a
movement often repeated. Kayla tugged on the chain around her neck, her fingers
trailing over the wood grain of the locket before she pressed it hard against
her chest. It was as if the palm-sized box could be wedged into all those
hollow spaces within her.
She sat motionless for a long
time before opening the clasp with a quick jerk of her thumb and bringing her
head down solemnly to gaze at the photograph nestled in her hands. Kayla’s eyes
went first to the man with red hair so like her own. His face was turned to
meet the wind as it lifted his locks from his shoulders. He was laughing, eyes
closed. His arm was around another, younger man who watched him with a look of
smiling admiration. Kayla’s brow furrowed a bit as she focused on the wiry
youth. His brown hair was just long enough for him to pull back loosely into a
short ponytail, revealing a boy’s face set with intense eyes. Under the
photograph was scribbled:
Steelryn and Serafin
. She sighed, her eyes
traveling as they always did to the letter set beside the picture.
Michael —
It’s a wonder this photograph
survived the last four years. Finding it gave me hope, and it makes me remember
what our names still mean when heard together. I realize now that when Kiera
and Kayla were taken, with them went our reason, our comfort. Tomorrow we
fight, and although we can’t regain all that was lost, we will lift your wife
and daughter up out of darkness.
— Asher
Kayla quickly snapped the
hinged box closed so her falling tears wouldn’t mar the only relics of her
past. Her hand gripped the box tightly, a corner digging into her palm. She
didn’t understand. She couldn’t remember her parents, and no one here knew
anything about Asher Serafin. Kayla always thought that one day her history
would be revealed to her, but she was more than halfway through her seventeenth
year and couldn’t wait any longer for a sign that might never come. She had
already run out of excuses to stay. Thrusting her treasure back beneath her
blouse, Kayla stood up in one quick movement, legs unsteady, and wiped her
dirty palms onto her linen pants before smearing her tears away. She wouldn’t
give herself time to change her mind.
When she reached the small room
in the back of the pottery studio, her nervous steps stilled. She looked down
at her bed roll in the corner, the few drawings she stuck to the wall and her
little trunk beneath the work table. Kayla tried to muster up some
heart-swelling emotion for this last visit to the only shelter she could
remember, but her chest and head felt numb. The romantic notion of her flight
was already dampened, simply by being in this place. She began to fill a bag
with her few belongings, but a heavy sense of apathy seemed to come from the
air and walls around her, seeping into her skin, slowing her movements.
“Oh my, what are you doing,
dear?”
Kayla whirled around, flushed
and gulping. “I’m leaving, Miss Helena,” she blurted out, the words violently
escaping her lips. “I don’t belong here. I’m grateful for everything you have
done for me, but I have to find out…I have to know—”
“Yes, yes, you will.” The old
woman’s words were slow and quiet, causing Kayla’s fevered confession to fall,
neutralized, into their void. “Explore and know, yes, good. But for now, there
is work to be done.” She gently extracted the bag from Kayla’s stiff fingers as
she guided the girl to the door.
“No, I…I…”
“You have such lovely dreams
and they’ll all be yours, but first there is greenware that must be loaded into
the kiln.” Helena released Kayla’s arms from the steering clasp of her hands
when they reached a shelf of dull, gray pots.
The girl felt her shoulders sag
as the rush of independence she experienced just moments earlier was suddenly
sapped away. “Do you think tomorrow will be different?” she whispered.
“Why, each day is.”
Kayla barely felt the
encouraging pat land on her arm before the old woman left her alone with her
duties. She was still for a long stretch before her body began to move on its
own, performing this familiar task with delicacy and precision, even with limbs
deadened by her bruised spirit. She looked down at the pitcher in her hands.
The surface of the vessel was decorated with twisted branches, sprouting leaves
as they climbed to the sun. Something about these trees caused her pulse to
quicken again. She set the pot back on the shelf with trembling hands. Why
could she never hold on to her nerve? Her passion was always cooled before it
could start a fire. Still, there were moments when she felt like something
braver than herself, when she almost grasped memories that made her feel
flooded with life.
She held the vision of those
branches in her mind as she ran out of the studio and into the street. She
could hear the neighbors calling her name and their voices were what kept her
feet from slowing, even as her breath shortened. When she thought her heart
would explode, Kayla saw the familiar branches and she stopped, her body
suddenly light, her gasps for air triumphant. Her eyes moved over the broad,
flat leaves, and then drifted to the darkness beyond, where the trees grew more
densely. This wasn’t her first time here at the border of the village. The past
few weeks she’d found herself at this spot, and somehow, here, she was reminded
of her ability to dream. Here, out of sight of the squat buildings and simple
faces that inhabited the town, her bones felt restless, as if they wanted to
burst through the boundaries of her body and ascend to the sun. Kayla held her
breath and felt the air touch her skin with the soft pressure of an embrace. In
the rustling of the leaves there was the echo of her name, spoken with some
unfamiliar emotion that inspired her to throw off everything she knew for the
vision of its source.
She closed her eyes. Here, in
this place, it was hard to imagine these feelings disappearing, but she knew if
she returned to the village she might never again gather the courage to leave.
Hope, fear, and a new sense of urgency beat painfully in her head. She grabbed
her locket. It had been years since she accepted that her parents were dead and
she was finally old enough to stop fantasizing their return. But if she could
just find this Asher Serafin, if he was still alive, she could at least
understand what happened to them and what led her here.
Kayla’s toes ventured further
into the shadows cast by the trees and she saw the beginnings of a road forming
between clumps of fallen leaves. She had heard of a city named Madeline, a few
miles to the north. It was her only beacon: the notion of a place where there
might be news beyond the evasive and blank eyes of everyone in this nameless
town she was leaving behind.
Asher
Serafin
. Kayla felt the
searing force of his image in every pulse beating against her temples, his name
in every labored breath. She would find him.
*
Kayla didn’t know how long she had been walking, but as the
hours passed, the road dissolved further into swampy ground. The air smelled
ominously of fire and ash, and as her surroundings were becoming increasingly
tree-choked, she felt as if the gathering darkness threatened to swallow her.
Kayla pressed on, too afraid to stop and rest, but too tired to keep up even
her slowed pace for long. The righteousness of her cause that served as her
driving force was beginning to waver. She fought to control her breathing in
order to keep her thoughts from panic, focusing on the simple task of trudging
forward.
She heard the sound of an
argument before she saw the flicker of a campfire in the distance. A man’s
voice reached her ears first. “What the hell was that, anyways? A set up? I’ve
never seen a basic relic seize turn into that kind of clusterfuck. When we get
back, I promise you someone’s gonna pay for this!”
Kayla froze, listening. A
girlish voice followed the man’s growl. “Oh, stop. You act like we’ve never run
into trouble before.”
“I’m not talking about the
ambush. In case you didn’t notice, we were abandoned by our own, left to die
beneath a burning building—” She could hear an edge of pain in his angered
snarl.
The little girl giggled. “Lay
down
.
I’ll watch you kill them later, but rest now, okay?”
Her curiosity piqued, Kayla
crept closer, careful to stay off to the side of the pair’s small camp. The man
sighed heavily. “I hate you.”
She heard another childlike
laugh. “You’re so cute when you’re bleeding.”
The ground fell out from under
Kayla’s feet so suddenly that she didn’t have time to stop her scream from
escaping. She groaned, more from dread than from the aching pain coursing down
her backside after her rough landing. She held her breath, waiting for her eyes
to adjust to this deeper darkness, and sat helplessly, knowing it wouldn’t be
long before she met the two strangers. Above her, a small flame appeared and
she could hear the young girl calling out, the sound closer than before.
“Jeremy, it’s a girl in a
hole.”
The distant voice yelled back,
uninterested. “I know. Girls scream like that.”
“C’mon! Let’s help her out.”
“You told me to lie down.” She
could hear him rolling his eyes.
The girl let out a snort of
impatience. “Fine, I’ll do it myself!” A large pair of brown eyes peered over
the edge above, the light from the torch revealing a child’s form, bronzed skin
and long, dark hair sprinkled with thin braids. She extended her small arm.
“I’ll pull you out.”
Kayla frowned. How could she be
lifted up by a girl barely more than half her size? Despite her doubts, she
slowly stood up and reached for her rescuer. The little girl stretched her arm
further into Kayla’s pit, grunting with the effort, the sound rising to a
scream as she inched too far and tumbled forward, knocking them both down to
the wet earth below. Before the shriek ended, Kayla could hear Jeremy running
towards them, calling,
“Kit!”
“Down here!” the child yelled
back. The torch was still burning on the ground above them, and Kayla watched
the girl’s eyes shining with expectation.
“Jesus, Kit!” breathed the
voice from above. Kayla looked up. She could see a young man’s features,
transitioning from concern to relief to tight-lipped laughter. No longer
fearing for his friend’s safety, his gaze then focused on Kayla. His unruly
black hair hung down around his face, but his blue eyes were clear and
striking, emerging unnervingly from the deep shadows cast over his form. A thin
trickle of blood ran from an almost-closed gash on his forehead. His smile
vanished. “Alright, Kit, take my hand.”
Jeremy leaned deeply into the
hole, hoisting out the smaller girl with ease. Then he hesitated, exchanging a
long glance with Kit. Sighing, he extended his hand again, reaching for Kayla.
His arm was bandaged tightly with white cotton, smeared with blood and dirt,
his fingertips naked, the tails of his bandages swinging loosely. She timidly
held out her hand, gulping down air in an attempt to slow her heartbeat. He
reached for her and she closed her eyes, but with his touch came a sudden,
blinding pain, and she was released as quickly as she was grasped.
Kayla fell onto her knees,
turning away from the light above. She held her throbbing hand close to her
chest, biting her lip to keep from crying out. Her fingers pulsated and burned;
it felt as if her bones were pressing outwards. Kayla’s eyes widened as she
watched a bony protrusion issue out from her palm and land heavily on the
ground before her. First she examined her hand, and when she found it
unbloodied and whole, she had the strength to lift the strange object close to
her face. It looked like the hilt of a sword, formed organically by a fusion of
bone. Knowing that now was not the time for further investigation, Kayla
quickly hid it in her deep pocket and turned back to face the light her
would-be rescuers shined towards her.
Jeremy’s eyes were narrowed
slits, watching her with suspicion. He extended his hand again towards her
slowly, defying her to shock him once more, and determined not to miss what
happened a second time. Not understanding what just occurred and afraid of
another episode, Kayla hesitated. Whether it was out of the fear of those eyes
burning into her now, or just the intense desire to be free, she lowered her
head, took a deep breath, and lifted her arm up towards him. Their hands met
again and Kayla swallowed a sharp intake of breath. No searing pain came with
his touch, but she noticed the hilt in her pocket grow warm and restless
against her thigh. She closed her eyes, allowing herself to be lifted from the
hole. Blindly grasping this stranger made her ascent feel more like a rescue.
