Exalted

Copyright
©
2012 by Ella James

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the
U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a
database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author.

This book is a work of fiction. Any names, places,
characters, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination and are
purely fictitious. Any resemblances to any persons, living or dead, are
completely coincidental. PLEASE DO NOT PIRATE THIS BOOK. PIRACY SUCKS.

Part One

Chapter
One

He
burst through the waves howling. One crested over his head, and freezing water
sloshed into his mouth, pulled down his throat by a gasp. His lungs sputtered,
aching as they tried to contract—but the current was swift and unrelenting,
pulling him along head-first, and when his body called for air, his lungs just
found more water.

I’m drowning
.

This
was a mystery to Cayne, not just because he’d been swimming since he was a wee
lad, but because in his mind’s eye he saw only snow. Where the snow had been,
he couldn’t recall, but he knew he’d been somewhere with heaps of snow, and
he'd been there with Julia.

As
the current jerked him over sharp stones, he saw a swatch of landscape: rushing
water between tree-lined banks, branches crisscrossing in front of gray sky.
His knee caught on a rock, his body spun, and when he surfaced again, his plane
of vision was level with the grassy shoreline.

That’s
what gave it away: the grass. It grew in tufts, like an old man’s hair. It was
thick and pale yellow and sweet-scented, and along with the particular bend of
the river, it conjured a distinct impression: the Falls of Dochart.

In
the back of his stinging throat, he could taste the particular tang of Loch
Tay: earthy, boggy, and with just a hint of brine. The taste had been called
home once, the falls the site of boyhood feats.

Now
the rapids sped him toward his demise. He banged his temple against a sharp
stone and moaned, gulping more water. Starved of oxygen, his mind spun like a
film reel, jumping from Rosa’s house to a stolen car to Nepal with Samyaza,
then the river; he told Julia about the exorcism and there was shame, but her
hands were soft; he was kissing her mouth; there were tears on her cheeks as
she fled his cell; they were escaping an alpine resort. Lots of snow.

Julia!

He
thrashed his arms and legs, and his heel met the stony river bottom. He used it
to kick off, throwing his head back so his mouth was just above the water. A
chilly wind slapped his cheeks as he choked down air.

Somehow
he found the strength to spread his arms out. When the falls rammed him
face-first into a rock that jutted above the current, he clung to it with all
his strength.

He
sucked another deep breath then coughed violently, golden sparks bursting
behind his eyes. The water pushed him from behind, but he wrapped his legs
around the stone and held steady, breathing in a frenzied rhythm while his mind
searched for its own foothold.

He’d
been confused like this before…no clue where he was or who he was. The confused
feeling dredged up another: one of loss. He’d lost Kat.
God
. The memory was crushing, but it was nothing compared to this…this
claw inside his chest. This desperation to find her. Julia.

He
remembered it in pieces, the terrible thing that had happened. An attack in the
night. Stained everywhere, shooting blue-fire from their fingers, running
through the snow in bedclothes. But they escaped. Escaped and...what?

 
Cayne
wanted to scream his frustration, to bang his head until he remembered, but he
wiped his eyes, peering over frenzied white-caps and beyond the wooded banks:
Killin.

He
was here—but
how
? And where the hell
was Julia? When he tried to remember what had happened to her… What had brought
him here…

He
lost his hold on the rock and choked again as he surfed the falls. He was able
to stay above water until he could grab another rock closer to shore. He pulled
himself up onto the flat topside of it, bracing himself against a battering
wind.

He
tasted something thick and tangy; he raised his hand to his face, and it came
away bloody. He was bleeding from his mouth, and it was staining his shift.

And
wasn't that something. He wore a shift just like a wee bairn. Soaking wet, it
clung to his chest and hips and thighs as he climbed from the boulder onto the
ragged grass.

He
dropped down into the muck and covered his face. His shoulders trembled from
the cold he hardly noticed. Nothing mattered to him but Julia and the awful,
haunting feeling of something gone so wrong. He couldn’t lift his pounding
head. He didn’t want to be here, back in this cursed place!
 

He
heard steps to his right, soft footfall. He looked up and felt a surge of joy.
Julia!
Julia, dressed oddly—she wore a day gown and had her long, dark hair pulled up
in plaits—but still Julia.

He
started to rise, to throw his arms around her, but before getting up, he
halted. She was still standing a few feet away, watching with flat eyes as he
struggled to breathe.

“J-Julia?”
His mouth trembled from the cold.

For
sure, something was wrong. Her lovely lips pressed thin, and she blinked down
at him with an unreadable expression. “Cayne.”

He
looked her over, hoping for something to explain why her arms were still folded
and not reaching out to embrace him.

“D-do
you know what’s going on?” he asked her.

“I
was gonna ask you the same thing.” She edged a slight bit closer and frowned
down on him, like he was a bug she'd come across.

He
rose on unsteady legs, glancing behind her at the cobblestone lane on the
outskirts of the village, where men and women went about their business,
completely unaware of two intruders.

“How
did we get here?” he asked.

“Again,”
she said, “something I was going to ask you. Isn’t this where you’re from?”

She
said it almost in a sneer, her nose crinkling like she couldn’t stand the sight
of it.

“What’s
wrong?” he whispered.

She
looked down at her gown—pale yellow, with a ribbon at the hem. When she looked
back up at him, her mouth was pinched, a bitter expression that didn't suit her
face. “What do
you
think is wrong?
Suddenly I’m in medieval Scotland dressed like some kind of servant girl—”

“You're
not dressed like a servant girl.” It seemed irrationally important that he
explain this, the single thing he understood. “You're dressed like a young
woman of mean. A wee bit chaste perhaps, but that's not...” She blinked at him
like she couldn’t understand how he could be so inane, and Cayne found himself
at a loss.

Of
all that was wrong about their situation, it was her manner that had him
twisted up inside.

His
feet edged a little closer to her. “Do you remember anything about where we
were before...this place?”

“The
first thing I remember is looking up to see you break the surface.”

Cayne
had never been a look-on-the-bright-side kind of guy, but as he looked at her
drawn face, he reminded himself that all the gray above him had a silver
lining: Julia was here at least. She was off: anxious, unhappy—probably
“freaking out”. He supposed he would be bothered, too, if he were her. This was
almost two hundred years before she was born, while for him it was merely
childhood.

“It’s
okay. We’ll work this out.” He stepped toward her again, but again, she stepped
away, and again he felt a noose around his heart. “You’re angry,” he said, half
question.

She
shook her head. “I just don’t want you touching me.”

“Julia,
why?”

Her
mouth pinched in that un-Julia-like manner, and when she looked up at him, her
eyes were like ice.

“Cayne,
I'm sorry but I just don't want you anymore. When I woke up here, in this weird
time, in this weird place... I realized for the first time what you are.” She
raised her hands, gesturing loosely to the landscape. “You should have been a
man here. You should have died here. But you have your father in you.” She
shook her head, as if to say
for shame
. “Even if I could forget your
past...how could I stay with a-a monster in whose nature it is to destroy?”

He
stared at her, unable to draw breath. He stared at her, really stared at her
face. Julia's face.
His
Julia. “You don't— you can't mean that.” Looking
into her pretty brown eyes, he shook his head. Even if Julia felt this way, she
wouldn’t behave this way. She was kind and thoughtful, and she would never want
to hurt him.

And she wouldn’t feel this way
. She
accepted him. She would never turn him away. Even when he couldn't fathom why
she cared for him, he trusted that she did.

“Who
are you?” he asked the thing that looked like her.

“What
are you talking about?”

“You
do a terrible Julia.”

False
Julia pursed her lips, appearing for a moment to consider. Then she was gone,
dashing down the riverbank, toward the village. Cayne groaned as he dashed
after her—or it, whatever it was.
Not
Julia!

He followed
the apparition over grassy moors, around trees, across a bridge that spanned
the thrashing water, into the village center. Dimly he noted the church
building, the schoolhouse. He realized he was running on bloody feet, still
coughing up loch water and choking on the biting air, but he couldn’t let her
get away.

Villagers
appeared, all oddly unfamiliar, lining the lane like gawkers at a parade—but
these waved dull swords or clubs. Cayne hardly spared a glance their way. His
eyes were on the imposter Julia, sprinting in her day gown, now at the far edge
of the village.

Cayne
slowed. Dear Christ. He knew where she was leading him.

Fog
rose from the soggy ground and night fell like a blanket. Deep voices echoed in
his ears, and his knees trembled as emotion overcame him. He wrapped his arms
around himself and sank down to the ground.

“There
he is!”

“The
wicked boy!”

“On
the hill!”

Something
slammed into his shoulder: a farmer’s cudgel. Another man attacked him with a
stick, but Cayne wasn’t a bairn. He wouldn’t cry or cower. He spread his wings,
knocking the villagers away, and he rose into the air while they screamed in
fury. He turned a circle and spied false Julia several dozen yards away, up the
road to the earl’s castle: a dark, two-story stone structure with fog all
around, pale and curling in the black night.

As
he hovered there, over the rioting villagers, she dashed across the lawn,
disappearing inside heavy oak doors that slammed behind her. He was across the
sky in an instant, throwing the doors open almost as soon as she'd closed them,
stumbling inside on legs that trembled with remembered horror. He found himself
in a drafty, candle-lit foyer. The ceiling rose to the second floor, and Cayne
spied the earl waiting for him on a wide staircase.

As
he stared at the man's distantly familiar face, the earl morphed. The figure on
the stairs wasn't a human at all, but a great shadow, indescribable and dense,
speaking to him with a mouth of razor teeth and a tongue of rotted meat.
“At last. My son.”

Cayne
froze, stunned by something he hadn’t felt in almost two-hundred years: genuine
mortal fear. His
father
? The creature
before him was certainly a Demon, but Cayne had never imagined a Demon this
strong. Its presence filled the room like a physical illness.

Before
he could make sense of what was going on, invisible hands seized his shoulders
and he was pushed forward, into an ornate meeting hall.

“Cayuzul,
Cayne,
Somairhle
. Hello.” The
torches lining the walls of the great hall flared, and the well of dread inside
Cayne’s chest cracked open.

The
darkness took form in the earl’s fine chair: a simple man with the look of a
shepherd, one of many on the Highland slopes.