Conquering Fate Read online

  Conquering Fate

  Order of the Krigers Book 3

  Jennifer Anne Davis

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and events in this book are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Reign Publishing

  Copyright © 2018 by Jennifer Anne Davis

  All rights reserved. Neither this book, nor any parts within it may be sold or reproduced in any form without permission.

  Cover Design by KimG-Design

  Editing by Mary C. Weller

  * * *

  ISBN (paperback): 978-0-9992395-8-2

  eISBN: 978-0-9992395-7-5

  Library of Congress Control Number: 1-6162564251

  Contents

  Also by Jennifer Anne Davis

  Map

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  I. Sneak Peek of The Key

  Prologue

  1. Rema: Seventeen Years Later

  2. Darmik

  About the Author

  Also by Jennifer Anne Davis

  The True Reign Series

  * * *

  THE KEY

  RED

  WAR

  * * *

  Reign of Secrets Series

  * * *

  CAGE OF DECEIT

  CAGE OF DARKNESS

  CAGE OF DESTINY

  * * *

  The Order of the Krigers Series

  * * *

  RISE

  BURNING SHADOWS

  CONQUERING FATE

  * * *

  THE VOICE

  For Samantha

  Prologue

  Fortid

  The man crouched in one of the dark alcoves of the stone hallway, praying none of the Heks noticed him hiding there. Twenty feet away, over a hundred Heks celebrated in the large gathering room of the citadel. He’d never seen so many of them in one place before. His breathing sped up just thinking about the unnatural magic they wielded.

  A screeching sound caused him to flinch. One Heks spun around, making odd noises while she flailed her arms in strange, jerky movements. He supposed she was dancing—if one could even call it that. Several other Heks joined in. Many of those standing along the perimeter of the room drank from mugs with mist cascading over the rims. Some of the Heks were devastatingly beautiful while others were withered hags not even his nightmares could conjure. He knew better than to equate those who were attractive with being virtuous—most often they were the deadliest. After all, he’d seen firsthand what their evil magic could do—what it was capable of.

  If everything went according to plan, when the explosion detonated, it would draw the Heks out of the citadel. Then he could sneak into the gathering room and steal their precious sapphire. If something went wrong, the Heks would gut him.

  The room quieted as two Heks entered side by side. Those gathered turned and bowed to the couple. The male wore a cobalt cape while the female was dressed in a shimmering orange robe. They gracefully strolled to the middle of the room where they stopped and faced one another. They stood atop strange marks engraved in the floor. The man had never seen markings like them and had no idea what they meant.

  The crowd formed a loose circle around the couple. The male raised his arms and his sleeves slid back to his elbows, exposing his unusual, pasty-white skin. Blue light slithered below the surface of his skin, growing in intensity. The female’s skin was significantly darker, almost black. The air around the couple rippled, and the blue light surged out of the male’s hands, forming a single rope that slid into the female’s body at the base of her neck. She tilted her head back, moaning in ecstasy. Those gathered began chanting words the man didn’t understand. A cold chill crawled over his skin and he had an intense desire to leave.

  Heks were not normal, not natural. How they’d managed to survive on this continent for so long was a mystery. It was time to end them all.

  A blast exploded in the distance, startling the crowd. The blue light connecting the male and female Heks recoiled, severing their connection and returning to the male. Mayhem ensued in the room as everyone rushed to leave.

  The man remained hiding in his small alcove as footsteps pounded past him.

  “We’re under attack!” a Heks shrieked.

  “To the docks! Ships have been spotted!”

  “We must defend our land!”

  “Kill the humans!”

  None of the Heks carried weapons—they didn’t need them since they wielded powerful magic capable of killing faster than a sword. Once it quieted down, the man peered out and observed the large room. Pewter mugs lay discarded on the floor, but no one remained. Crawling out of the alcove, he quietly made his way to the corner of the empty room where a glass case stood on a raised platform. Thankfully, the Heks left it unguarded just as he’d predicted. They were too arrogant to think a human could enter their citadel.

  Inside the case, the sapphire hovered midair. Grabbing a coin from his pocket, he tossed it at the glass case to test for protection wards. The coin simply bounced to the floor with a soft ping. Time was of the essence—he could be spotted at any moment. He reached forward and opened the glass door. The sapphire began to glow and swirls of blue mist coiled around the inside of it. The man plucked the sapphire from the case. It was the size of his hand and weighed almost nothing. He slid it inside his pocket, his adrenaline pumping from the gravity of his actions.

  More explosions boomed in the distance. He could feel the vibrations under his feet. He needed to get out of here before the cannons struck the citadel with bombs. He quickly glanced over his shoulder to make sure a Heks hadn’t come back and spotted him. The room and nearby corridors appeared empty. Hurrying from the gathering room, he crept along a dark hallway and down a narrow stairwell until he came to an exit. Glancing outside the door, he observed several Heks running by as complete chaos ensued in the distance. Humans and Heks fought, swords against magic, dead bodies strewn on the ground. The Heks appeared to be winning this battle. The man would never make it out of the citadel unseen.

  From what his spies had gathered, the sapphire acted as a conduit between Heks and the magic deep within the world. It called magic to the surface, creating new Heks. Without the sapphire, they couldn’t reproduce. The sapphire had to be destroyed. Heks were too powerful and they deserved to be eliminated.

  Moving twenty feet down the hallway to ensure no one could see him, he pulled the sapphire out of his pocket. It suddenly felt heavy. The mist inside grew brighter, whirling with a frenzied intensity as if sensing his ill intentions. He could have sworn he heard whispers coming from it: seductive promises of power and riches beyond his imagination. He closed his eyes, remembering his wife and child—both brutally murdered by Heks. He had nothing left. That was why he had volunteered for this mission. Opening his eyes, the voices va
nished. He fell to his knees, clutching the sapphire. It was time to end this madness.

  Raising the sapphire above his head, he swung it down against the floor, cracking it. The glow faded and the mist inside of it snuffed out like a candle. Suddenly, everything started shaking. A sense of wrong filled him. It had been a mistake to destroy the sapphire. The ground split open and blue light erupted from the crevice. The man quickly picked up the damaged sapphire and ran, almost losing his balance as the ground shook. The walls began to crumble. He couldn’t let the magic deep within the world reclaim the sapphire.

  He sprinted away from the crevice just as the ceiling above him collapsed. He toppled to the floor, the precious sapphire flying out of his hand. Rocks piled on top of his back, crushing him. The sapphire landed a foot from his fingertips. A chunk of the wall dislodged, hitting the sapphire and breaking it into three pieces. The shaking instantly stopped.

  1

  The twelve of us stood in a large circle, facing one another. Like my fellow Krigers, my weapon rested on the ground near my feet. My fingers tingled, needing to touch my bo staff. The forest trees rustled in the late afternoon wind.

  “Now,” Marius said.

  I reached down, picked up my bo staff, and immediately connected to the magic within it. A surge of power filled me, begging to be released.

  “Everyone except Kaia link to the person on your right,” Marius instructed.

  Gripping my bo staff, I forced my power to remain contained inside of me. I couldn’t release it yet. The trick was to wait until all the Krigers connected to one another and directed their power to me. Then I would take our combined power and make the killing blow.

  Several of my fellow Krigers grunted from the strain of linking together.

  “Okay,” Marius said. He stood on my left, sweat beading on his forehead. “Now I’m going to connect all of us to Kaia.” He glanced at me, eyebrows raised.

  I nodded, ready for the onslaught.

  “Here it comes.” Marius pointed his weapon at me. The tip glowed blue.

  It felt as if I’d jumped off the cliff of a waterfall; my body crashing with the water into a turbulent lake below. I didn’t know which way was up, I couldn’t breathe, and I couldn’t see. Whispers hissed all around me. I screamed and everything went black.

  I blinked and saw that I was lying on the ground, eleven heads huddled around me.

  “Give her some space,” Henrik snapped.

  Everyone moved back a few inches.

  Gulping in the crisp air, I sat up. My arms shook and my head felt dizzy. “What happened?” I asked, a sinking suspicion in my gut. Everything had changed the day I snuck through the mines with the rebel, Roy, to enter the capital. I recalled the massive jordskjelv and being in a sort of trance, drawn to the magic as it tried to pull me into the world. Roy had managed to drag me away from the cavern where the magic had been unearthed, and reason slowly returned to me. I wasn’t sure what it meant, or why the magic being released changed things, but it had. Now when I tried to access my power, the magic that flowed just under the surface of the world called to me, and I had no idea how to control it.

  “You passed out,” Marius said, helping me to my feet. “Maybe the power we direct to you is too much for you to wield.” He rubbed his face. “I’ll talk to Damaris. Maybe there’s another way.”

  “Do you want to try it again?” Henrik asked.

  I shook my head, exhaustion consuming me. It suddenly became hard to breathe with my fellow Krigers all staring at me. If I couldn’t master the power, then we couldn’t kill Morlet. And if we couldn’t do that, then the Krigers were worthless. I turned and headed toward the treehouse.

  My eyes flew open. The gray light of dawn filtered through the window and into the small treehouse perched high above the ground. It was just a dream, I told myself. However, the vivid details still haunted me. Being sucked into the ground, brilliant blue light everywhere, something dark and sinister calling my name. Each night the dream became more intense.

  Sliding my legs off the mattress, I pulled on my boots, grabbed my jacket, and left the room I’d been sharing with Damaris. My hands shook as I crossed several swaying bridges connecting the structures built around the trees. Everyone would be waking soon and I needed some time to pull myself together. I climbed down the five-story ladder, jumping onto solid ground.

  Just a dream, I repeated, clutching my hands into fists. Only, I’d had the same dream every single night for the past week. Trying to keep my panic at bay, I made my way to the bank of the nearby lake and crawled on top of a boulder. Clouds dotted the sky and cold wind whipped against my body, making me shiver. I wrapped my arms around my legs, trying to get warm. The nearby waterfall drowned out the sound of morning birds singing.

  I wanted to ask Morlet if he experienced similar dreams. However, I hadn’t spoken to him since that night he had agreed to father my child as the curse required in order to create a new breed of Heks—a human infused with Heks magic. I punched the boulder, splitting open one of my knuckles. The curse also demanded that all twelve Krigers link our powers together, and then I had to take our combined power and use it to make the lethal blow, killing Morlet. It was the only way to break the curse and save the people of Nelebek.

  While no one else had a qualm about killing Morlet, I did. My feelings for him were muddled. One minute he was vicious, beating and murdering his subjects. The next moment, he was kind and sincere, healing me when I had almost died and sharing his thoughts with me. The only way I could make sense of him was to think of him as two distinct people. Morlet—the evil king of Nelebek consumed with dark magic, and Espen—the man he’d been; who’d made a mistake and had been paying for it for over a hundred years.

  No matter how I thought about him, there was no getting around the fact that I had to kill both parts of him—Morlet and Espen.

  “Kaia,” Anders’s gruff voice said from behind me.

  My spine stiffened. I’d been avoiding him for the past week. Ever since I’d realized he had feelings for me but was unwilling to act on them out of fear. He’d told me the master assassin who bought him from a slave owner and raised him was a Skog Heks. That meant if we defeated Morlet and ended the curse, when the borders reopened the master assassin would still be alive. Despite the fact that the master assassin could come for Anders, I was willing to stand by his side, to take the chance. He wasn’t. And that killed me.

  “Please don’t run away,” Anders said calmly as if speaking to a child or a skittish animal. “We need to talk.” He climbed onto the boulder and sat next to me.

  Having no desire to sit there and chat with him, I leaned forward to jump from the boulder. His hands encircled my wrists, stopping me. I inadvertently glanced at his beautiful square face, brown hair shorn close to his head, and his broad shoulders. I recalled the crisscrossed scars on his back, the time he told me about his family being murdered in front of him by the master assassin, and the look on his face when I’d rescued him from Morlet’s magical fire. I’d only known him a short time, but he held my heart. And he’d broken it. But I didn’t want him to know that. I didn’t want him to see me as fragile and weak.

  “Let go.” The mere touch of his skin on mine sent a spark of heat through me. I closed my eyes, willing the pleasurable feeling away.

  “Not until you talk to me.”

  I tried wiggling free, but his grip only tightened. I couldn’t face him; not when he’d practically begged me to marry Vidar, making it perfectly clear he wanted nothing to do with me romantically.

  “I’m sorry I hurt you,” he whispered. I twisted and shoved my shoulder into his chin, hoping he’d release me. His legs wrapped around my body, pinning me in place. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Raising my eyebrows, I glanced back at him. “You’re holding me here against my will. I’m not the ridiculous one.”

  “Because I want to talk to you, but you’re ignoring me.”

  “Keeping me here isn’t going to
entice me to speak to you.”

  Anders released me, making an agitated noise. “Vidar said you broke off the engagement.”

  I shrugged. I’d already told him I didn’t want to marry Vidar. The curse dictated enough of my life; I wouldn’t let Anders and Vidar control what little bit I had left.

  “I hope it’s not because of our kiss,” he said.

  The feeling of his lips on mine was seared in my memory. My face heated up just thinking about it. “No. It has nothing to do with that.” My voice sounded weak to my own ears, the lie obvious.

  “Kaia, I need you to marry Vidar. There are things you don’t understand.”

  “Then explain them to me.” Be honest with me, I silently begged.

  He glanced away. “I can’t.”

  Of course not. He was never good at expressing his feelings to me. He kept everything hidden inside. How he’d managed to survive for over a hundred years like this was beyond me. Not wanting to continue this conversation, I jumped off the boulder and headed back toward the treehouse. This time Anders didn’t try to stop me.

  Smiling, Henrik tossed his ax to the ground. He tilted his head from side to side, stretching his neck. “Come on,” he taunted. “Let me see what you’ve got.”