Did you already read it? If so, Would you take a moment to leave a rating or review? It really helps other readers find my book!

– Amazon –
– StoryGraph –
– Goodreads –

Check out the first chapter below. (SPOILER ALERT! Don’t continue if you haven’t already read book one.)

---

“Thank the gods, my sons, that you live now. A time of fear and death is coming. I do not see hope for restoration.”

— Horatio Ploita, High Priest of Geykorae in Matha
Recorded sermon
Year 1039 in the Second Era

Sweat ran down Foss Cassidis’s forehead and into his eyes. He blinked to clear them and licked his cracked lips, wishing he could take a drink of water, but he couldn’t, not with the rope binding his wrists behind his back. Pushing aside the thirst, the pain from the chafing of the rope, and the ache that had sprung up in his shoulders from the awkward position of his hands bound behind his back, he eyed the tall black stone walls of Bellum that loomed ever larger on the horizon. This was not the homecoming he had always imagined: bound and escorted by a group of grim-faced Joiners.

Foss had been born in Bellum and at the age of twelve had been drafted into the army where he’d been taught that it was his duty as a human to assist in the methodical extermination of the Stone People—the creatures that roamed the harsh Wasteland, admittedly killing every human and animal they encountered. The life of a soldier in Bellum was hard, but it was harder for Foss because he was the son of Bylar Cassidis, the General of the armies of Bellum. The General was as harsh and merciless a father as he was a commander, and his single goal in life was to exterminate the Stone People and establish Bellum as the ruler of all Eleytia. Foss wasn’t cut from the same cloth as his father and, sickened by the bloodlust of Bellum’s army, had deserted at the age of sixteen.

His flight had brought him to Peretos, the city of the legendary Joiners, where he had discovered he could be trained as a Joiner to manipulate the primitive elements of Eleytia and perform supernatural feats. He had found a new home in Peretos and a new purpose among the Joiners. His life had been upended once more, this time not of his own choosing, when Julian Stratarcase, his mentor and the Master Joiner of the Academy, had died in a skirmish with the Stone People. In the wake of his death, the new Master Joiner and Foss’s ex-mentor, Biron Worswood, had announced it was time for Peretos to begin fighting the Stone People in earnest, which entailed an alliance with Bellum. Bellum had a history of brutal hostility toward outsiders—the Joiners in particular—and Biron had determined that offering Foss, a known deserter, as a peace offering, was the best way for the Joiners to get their foot in the door.

“You alright?” a low voice asked, intruding on Foss’s worries.

He met the emerald gaze of the slim, dark-haired girl by his side, Fae Turnshaw, his Koinos, his ideal Joining partner. He felt the brush of her teknae and accepted the bond, relishing the peace and confidence of her thoughts. Joiners linked their life-forces, their teknae, to tap into the primitive elements of Eleytia and form them into the alloys that changed reality. A side-effect of the bond was an uncanny intimacy that made each Joiner privy to their partner’s emotions. Until Fae, Foss had considered the sensations of his Joining partner intrusive and distracting but because Fae was his Koinos, he relished the closeness.

“I’m good,” he said and curved his lips in an expression he hoped would pass for a smile.

Foss would have been happy to never again see Bellum’s towering city walls, but he was responsible for the Joiners who were making the journey and had grudgingly agreed to return to his birth city. It was a risk. Desertion was one of the worst crimes in Bellum, punished by beating, flogging, and branding. If the wretched deserter survived long enough, he was crucified outside the city walls at sundown. There usually wasn’t a corpse to dispose of when the sun rose the following morning.

Fae pursed her lips, clearly unconvinced by his half-hearted reassurance. He marveled again at how much strength and determination was packed into her small frame as she strode alongside him, ignoring the burning sun overhead, hands hooked through the straps of her pack whose canvas was warped by the square imprints of several books she had stuffed inside it. His expression threatened to become a real smile; Fae couldn’t resist lugging around her own personal library.

He knew many of the volumes she carried were about prophecy and again wondered if he had been right to tell her about the strange foretelling he had found in Peretos’ library nearly a year earlier—a prophecy that hinted at a future in which the stone Wasteland would vanish and Eleytia would once more be covered in growing plants and non-monstrous animals. When he had first told her about it, the prophecy had caught her imagination and she’d spent hundreds of hours searching for more prophecies, more promises that Eleytia could be restored. She’d come along on this fool’s journey to Bellum because she thought there were more Restoration prophecies in Bellum’s records that clarified how Eleytia could be restored.

“It’ll be alright. Biron isn’t stupid enough to let the General kill you.”

Foss just shrugged, not wanting to express his true opinions of the new Master Joiner of Peretos, Biron Worswood. Before he had become Master Joiner, back when Julian Stratarcase had still been alive, Biron had been Foss’s mentor and close friend. However, Fae’s arrival in Peretos the previous year had changed him.

When she’d arrived in the city, half-dead from an attack by the Stone People, she’d explained that she’d been exiled from her home in Jorisfell, thousands of leagues to the south. Foss had later learned that not only had Biron also come from Jorisfell, but that he was Fae’s uncle and had been exiled himself from Jorisfell two decades earlier.

Fae had been overjoyed to find him, but her feelings had not been shared. Biron had pulled away from his niece and the bitter memories of Jorisfell that she invoked. Burning with anger and resentment, he had stopped teaching at the Academy and cut off his mentorship of Foss. The last Foss had seen him before Stratarcase’s death had been in a pub where the once-great man was wallowing in a drunken stupor. It had been a shock when he was elected Master Joiner following Julian Stratarcase’s death, and neither Fae nor Foss understood why the unstable man had been given such a powerful position.

As they stepped into the shadow cast by the walls of his hometown, Foss tugged his thoughts away from Biron Worswood and made himself focus on the present. He eyed the scarlet flags decorated with the crossed swords of Bellum that adorned the battlements and fluttered in the hot afternoon breeze and felt a mix of nostalgia and fear. Biron, who had been walking ahead of the group, stopped several paces away from the closed gates and spoke in an undertone with one of the teachers who had been walking beside Foss on the approach to the city.

That morning, Biron had summoned Foss to his tent and informed him that the full delegation from Peretos would set up camp several thousand paces away from Bellum’s city walls while Biron would lead a smaller group of teachers the final steps toward the city. 

“You’ll be bound, of course, as is fitting for a deserter,” Biron had said.

Foss had been sickly pleased that his ex-mentor didn’t meet his eyes as he said it. Now, Foss gritted his teeth as Biron stepped away and the teacher grabbed Foss’s arm, as if to keep him from running away. Foss locked eyes with Biron for a moment before the Master Joiner broke the gaze and studied Bellum’s closed gates.

The Master Joiner had the same green eyes as Fae, but they held none of the warmth hers did. Foss had to give him credit; however ostentatious he was in displaying his newfound power over the Joiners, it hadn’t extended much to his appearance. He wore the same clothes he always did: a loose tunic tucked into snug trousers. His sole ornament was a mark of his office, a small pin of four interlaced circles. Each circle represented one of the four elements the Joiners manipulated when forming alloys: red for Fire, blue for Water, brown for Earth, and gold for Air. The sight reminded Foss of something.

“Fae, could you take my pendant? Just for safekeeping.”

He felt her immediate spike of concern through their bond, but she reached up and slipped the thin leather thong that bore a simple stone pendant from around his neck. Foss had taken the pendant from the corpse of a Stone woman after the first and only Stone Raid he had participated in before deserting from Bellum. He’d worn the necklace ever since—a grim reminder of the evils humans could perform—and now felt naked without its familiar weight around his neck. He sought solace in Fae’s thread of consciousness through their Joining bond. Nerves edged her emotions, but she still managed to exude confidence and strength.

After several tense minutes, Bellum’s gates ground open and expelled a group of soldiers. They marched out onto the Wasteland in perfect sync and halted in two neat columns through which a man in a scarlet cloak strode. He was tall and dressed for battle in bracers, grieves, and a mail shirt of interlocking steel rings underneath a leather vest. As he drew closer to the group, Foss saw the man’s pale blue eyes and the thin silvery scar that ran across the right side of his face, from his temple to the corner of his mouth, a souvenir from a fight with the Stone People. Bylar Cassidis, the General of the army of Bellum and Foss’s father, exuded the same aura of power, control, and cruelty Foss remembered. His eyes swept dismissively across Biron and the teachers arrayed before him. When he spoke, his voice still held all the arrogance and assumption of obedience it always had.

“I thought I made myself very clear six years ago when I said that if any citizen of Peretos ever came here again, they would be killed immediately.”

Under Stratarcase’s tenure, the Joiners had once attempted an alliance with Bellum, but the venture had fallen to pieces when Stratarcase discovered the extent of the General’s bloodlust and cruelty.

“I would never have believed that you cowards would be too stupid to not listen to me,” the General said.

Then his eyes narrowed, and he stepped forward.

“What is this? Where’s Stratarcase? Does he insult me by sending a lackey in his place? Or is he too afraid to face me himself?”

Biron stepped forward, his back straight.

“Julian Stratarcase is dead. I’m Biron Worswood, newly elected Master Joiner.”

“I remember you,” the General said. “You were here the last time Peretos sent her cowards slinking over to us.”

Biron ignored the insult and spoke in a clear voice devoid of fear.

“That was then. This is now. Peretos seeks an alliance, and I believe my goals will be more to your liking than Stratarcase’s were six years ago. I ask you to hear me out, and in the meantime,” he gestured at Foss, “I bring you a gift, a token of peace and a symbol of our respect for Bellum’s laws.”

The teacher holding Foss’s arm yanked him forward as if he were trying to hang back, which he wasn’t. When the General’s eyes fell on him, Foss forgot this petty annoyance. He hadn’t felt the weight of that gaze in four years and hadn’t realized until now what a blessing that had been. The General’s lip curled into a sneer, and he made a curt motion. Two of the soldiers behind him sprang forward and grabbed Foss.

“Take him to the cells.”

Foss caught Biron’s words before the soldiers dragged him through the gates and out of earshot.

“I don’t hand him over blind to the punishment he may receive, but I am doing this out of necessity, to show that we value your goodwill above all—even our own.”

Biron’s voice faded as the soldiers marched him into the city, and the familiar sights and smells of his hometown assaulted him. Women and children stared at him then turned to one another and gossiped in low voices, quick as ever to step out of the way of the volatile soldiers. The crowd thinned as they crossed the square in front of Bellum’s central keep, and Foss avoided looking at the whipping post where countless men and women had experienced the harsh punishments handed out to Bellum’s lawbreakers.

As the soldiers pulled him up the steps and into the keep, he tripped, the dark cavernous entrance chamber was a sharp juxtaposition to the bright afternoon sunlight in the square outside. The soldiers marched him across the echoing chamber and down a wide flight of stairs. As they wound ever deeper below the keep, the staircases narrowed, the air grew stale and clammy, and the smooth-cut stone walls gave way to rough, unhewn rock.

Eventually, they reached a hallway lined with barred cells that were inhabited by dirty, ragged prisoners who cowered in the shadows. The soldiers shoved Foss into an empty cell and left. Foss watched them go then turned to eye his new home. The cell was small; if he stretched, his fingertips brushed the rough walls on either side. A bucket was his sole companion in the cramped space—a half-full bucket.

As its smell assaulted his nostrils, the reality of his situation crashed down on him. He sat as far away from the bucket as he could manage, closed his eyes, and focused on the faint wisps of Fae’s emotions that floated in the back of his mind. Joining was difficult over long distances, especially once eye contact was lost, but because they were Koinos, Fae and Foss had been able to maintain their bond.

Keeping his eyes closed, he leaned his head back against the cold, stone wall of the cell and tried to fall asleep.

* * *

Icy water splashing across his face woke him. He gasped and sat up, feeling for the sword he usually carried on his hip, but a pair of rough hands yanked him to his feet. Blinking water out of his eyes, he stumbled as the soldier dragged him away from the cells and into a large chamber where another soldier waited.

In this new, grime-streaked room, the reek of vomit, old blood, and rotting meat mingled with the stench of human waste. The soldiers locked him into a pair of manacles that hung from the ceiling on a long chain, which looped across the ceiling through a set of pulleys. Once his wrists were secure, the soldiers fastened his ankles with a set of shackles that were bolted to the floor then cranked a handle on the chain’s pulley system, yanking his arms above his head and his weight onto his toes. Panic bloomed in his chest as his shoulders creaked in strain.

He hung suspended for several painful minutes until the largest man he had ever seen lumbered into the chamber. The man’s neck was as thick as one of Foss’s thighs, and his arms rippled with veins and bulging muscles. Light from the torches bracketed throughout the chamber glinted off his smooth bald head and made his small, watery eyes glitter. He nodded a greeting to the two soldiers, pulled on a pair of gloves, and advanced on Foss. He stopped a pace away and pulled on a pair of white gloves, fussing with the straps that secured them to his wrists. The white leather was stained pink in spots, and Foss’s stomach dropped, knowing what substance was the likely culprit.

Without warning the man pulled back a fist then drove it deep into Foss’s side. The pain took Foss’s breath away. A second blow landed, this one on Foss’s left side. Then one to his chest, then his stomach. Foss retched, his whole body shaking as he expelled his previous night’s dinner all over the rough stone floor. The giant stepped back and motioned for the soldiers to clear away the mess. As they shoveled the vomit into a bucket, the giant man circled behind Foss and began pummeling his back.

Foss was used to taking hits in training, but this was different; the inability to fight back tightened his chest and made it even harder for him to breathe. When the floor in front of Foss was vomit-free, the man walked back around and landed his first punch to Foss’s face, right below his left eye. Foss’s vision blurred, his head swam, and he heaved. He had already emptied his stomach, so nothing came out but acrid bile that coated his tongue. The second blow to the right side of his jaw made his head feel as if it would split. After landing a third punch on Foss’s mouth, which loosened several teeth, the giant paused to wipe his forehead with a towel and take a drink of water. Spots of scarlet dotted the man’s white gloves; Foss’s blood had joined the tapestry of smudged pink spots on the white leather.

During the respite, Foss realized he had lost the bond with Fae. Panic bubbling in his chest at the loss of Fae’s reassuring mental presence, Foss squinted at his attacker through eyes blurred by tears and swelling. The man’s nondescript face was devoid of emotion—and fatigue. This torture wasn’t about to end anytime soon, and he would have to endure it without his Koinos. Foss tried to tell himself that this was a good thing, that Fae shouldn’t have to experience this—even secondhand—but he still wished desperately for that connection with her.

Blissfully unaware of Foss’s inner turmoil, the bald man drank the last of his water. He set the waterskin down, cracked his neck from side to side, and began systematically pounding at Foss’s legs, with fists and sharp kicks. After he had worked on Foss’s legs for a while, he started on his arms.

It was the most orderly beating Foss had ever received. Neither the man nor Foss spoke a word the entire time. When the man finished with Foss’s arms and returned his attentions to his torso, Foss passed out.