The shattered empress, p.1
The Shattered Empress, page 1
Shattered Empress
Fifth Draft
Rae Stilwell
Contents
Summer 544CE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Untitled
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
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Spring, 554CE
Chapter 62
Epilogue
Summer 544CE
Britannia
Chapter
One
Athansasia
The taste of murder clung to the tip of Athanasia’s tongue, metallic and sharp as a blade. She swept her fingers across her lips, gathering the essence of coming death. For as pungent as the taste was, she expected to find blood on her fingertips when she pulled them away.
Athanasia brushed her thumb over her fingers. The anticipation of death alone had not drawn her across Britannia to this field. Magic thrummed in the air with the whisper of a summons she could not place.
She felt it tugging against her soul in a way she had never known — in a way she had waited millenia to feel.
The Immortal Empress turned her study to the ocean of grassland stretched out before her. Amid the short grass and wildflowers, a hundred bonfires blazed. They threw heat and smoke into the night air, gilding the flesh of the humans who sat around them. There were some four hundred Britons and Celts. Seated arm to arm alongside, outmanned two to one, were the Saxon barbarians. Together, they reveled in the feast at their peace summit.
Athanasia touched her tongue to the air.
Nowhere in the plains offered a respite. The scent of man and sweat, fermented beers and wines, roasted fish and wild game that cracked in the hands of the men was cloying.
The air itself tasted of cooked meat and herbs — and death.
If the source of her summons was here, if the arrival of the soul the Immortal had been waiting for had come on the verge of slaughter, then this latest turn in the cycles of warring mortals was even less welcome.
These mortals had warred — were warring.
The Saxon invasion was a brutal one, and the British Kingdom struggled to maintain control against the power of the barbarian horde.
Even amidst the reveling of a peace summit, were the whispers of worry that the Saxons would turn, and the hushed encouragement that the barbarians would not dare wet these grounds with blood.
In these sacred plains, near the shallow valley of the River Avon, the warm light of the Cloister of Ambrius burned not two miles southwest of the gathering. There had been no weapons permitted here.
The Britons, elders and Lords of King Vortigern’s court, were staunch in their faith to the Good Shepherd and his Father and all too aware of the proximity of the monks. They sat among the grasses or on large stones, dressed in fine, dyed linens and jewelry. Their clean-shaven faces shone with grease and spirits flushed their cheeks. It was as if they had not led the heathens in prayer only hours earlier.
Heathens like the Celtic Kings and chieftains who had been tamed by the British in a mutual truce. Even with their fair hair combed into elaborate curls and braids, they appeared wild. Swirling patterns of blue woad ran along their exposed chests and across their faces. They prayed to different gods, and Athanasia had watched their ancestors raise the stone menhirs crowning the plains. This place was a holy ground to them too.
Among the whispers were the names of their gods, spoken as prayers between drinks of ale and wary bites of food. Their gods — and her name among them.
Athanasia.
Revered as their goddess; though she was no god. Worshiped and loved, though she could do nothing but take from them and offer small favors in exchange for their blood and their devotion.
But tonight, they would find no protection in invoking her name, and Athanasia deafened herself to their whispers.
The Saxon barbarians who had called the summit were even wilder than her Celts. The Saxons were big and savage, with dark mattes of hair falling down their backs and hard bodies made from stone-like muscles. They wore furs and undyed tunics and carried the acrid scent of animal and man.
If the Saxon gods had followed them from their homeland, they had not claimed these plains as sacred grounds. The barbarians had no cause to respect them.
Athanasia brushed the edge of her thumb across her bottom lip. She needed to find the one singing to her heart before the slaughter arrived. If the Saxons were the cause of the taste and scent in the air, they would leave no survivors in their wake.
The Immortal’s eyes swept across the field.
The King of the Britons, Vortigern, sat at the center bonfire, his wine-flushed expression shadowed by the height of his golden crown. To one side of him was his wife, the Saxon-born Princess Rowena, with whey-colored hair and dove-white skin. On her opposite side was her father, Hengist — the leader of the Saxons. The barbarian was larger than his Saxon horde; so much so that Athanasia wondered if he shared her Elysian bloodline. What human could be so big and so wild, dressed as he was in furs and jewels?
Surely there was something as magical to the barbarian king as there was to herself. Yet, he was not the one who had drawn her to these fields. He was not singing to her in the way her destined mate would.
At this rate, her heart would be lost before she found it.
Athanasia wrinkled her nose and glanced toward the moon. Bathed in its light, she could feel the sensation of another magic. A magic smelling of Fae and of moonlight.
Someone else was watching the proceedings from a place that did not stink of death.
A man bumped hard against Athanasia. It drew her attention from the sky in time to see him stumble to the ground. Mortals were clumsy with their lumpy flesh and heavy feet, even when they had not been drinking wine and beer by the cask.
Cloaked in the shadows of the flickering firelight, she was invisible to human eyes. It did not stop the man from reaching out, the soft tips of his fingers a hairsbreadth from the sheer muslin of her dress.
The air was cooler around her despite the fires and seasonal warmth of May rolling through on a breeze.
He shivered and crossed himself before shuffling to his feet.
Losing interest in the human, Athanasia shifted her focus back to the more pressing mystery. The Empress closed her eyes, listening for the music her mate would sing to her when they were found, but she could hear no singing in her soul beyond what she heard of her family.
The music bound her to her siblings by threads woven through her very being. One day, it would bind her to the mortal meant for her heart and her eternity.
She heard nothing yet; felt nothing beyond the pull and promise that her mate was here. The thought did not please her as much as it should.
Athanasia had lived among humans for so long the cycles of barbarism and greed were as likely as a rainstorm. No sooner would one empire burrow its roots into the lands than another would appear like a seedling on the wind and choke out its predecessor.
If the barbarians intended upon a massacre, it would mean a turning point in the war between the Saxons and the Britons. Her heartbeat quickened; as did her pace.
Instead of a promised song, Athanasia found a glint of metal in the firelight. Her lips pursed. The Immortal gathered her dress and crouched for a better look.
Tucked into the boot of a Saxon was a sharpened blade — one of their seax knives.
She ran her tongue across her sharp teeth and over her upper lip, tasting the air. Far too much death in the air for a single knife. Far too much for a single man, even a savage like a Saxon. Her eyes raised, and she stood, taking in the barbarian’s profile.
His eyes were sharp as he observed the gathering; though he busied his broad hands by plugging his drinking horn to lower it to his hip. Despite the wild tangle of dark hair, a strong build, and height that matched the rest of the Saxon horde, this barbarian was just a boy. One who hardly managed the scruff of a patchy beard, and had fewer scars and age lines than his brethren. The thin line of a fresh scar traced through his stubbled
The Saxon rolled his shoulders against a shiver and turned his head to search the shadows — almost touching on the place she hid at his side.
She smirked, and though she had no time for games, raised a hand to tweak his hair.
Like a snake striking out, his hand shot up, gripping her wrist like a vise.
His skin was like fire where it closed around her and rough as stone.
The Empress stilled.
This was a familiar game, one she had played with mortals thousands of times over the passage of eternity. She couldn’t remember a mortal fast enough to catch her while she hid in the shadows.
In the span of a heartbeat, she decided on a prize for the boy.
Athanasia let her glamour drop between them and met the widening of his eyes as he saw her. He seemed to take her in within a matter of seconds, before his gaze snapped to the gathering that could not see her.
His focus found her again. “Who —”
Hengist’s voice boomed like thunder across the plains, and the merriment and laughter quieted.
The Empress released her physical form into a cloud of mist to escape his hold. As she trailed like smoke above the gathering, her attention was on the Saxon King.
“Let us finish this feast in the tradition of the Saxons!” Hengist lifted his massive hand, sloshing beer from his goblet as he turned in a full circle to address the whole of the gathering. In his shadow, Vortigern’s thin lips twitched into a weak smile as Rowena translated the words to Latin, and he stroked his chin, suddenly smaller and so much less a king beneath Hengist.
“Tomorrow,” Hengist bellowed with laughter, “we speak of politics, riches, and prosperity for us all! Tonight, eu nimet saxas!”
At his command, spoken in the barbaric tongue of the Saxon, Athanasia found the source of the murder she had sensed.
Each Saxon drew their hidden blades and fell upon the nearest Briton, or Celt, with the ferocity of a rabid dog.
The Immortal sailed above the chaos before manifesting again atop one of the tall menhirs crowning the plains and watched.
It was over in less than a quarter hour.
Hengist left first, dragging Vortigern by his fine clothes toward the cloister of Ambrius. Dozens of his men lingered long enough to collect leftover roast, sucking at meat and bones as they picked through dying or dead bodies. Her boy was nowhere to be found among them, and she wondered if he had managed to fall.
Surely not, for as quickly as he could move. But he was not standing on the field, and eventually, only Athanasia remained.
In the stillness that settled over the plains like a cloak, there was no sensation of magic, no calling whispered through her soul.
Only death.
She stepped down from her haven and found the ground soft with the fresh blood. Plucking up her skirt, she wove her way between the fallen men. The blood ran so deeply the puddles reached up to her ankles, but she tiptoed onward, observing the dead.
Few Saxons had been lost and fewer left alive in their bloody betrayal. The only survivors were a handful of Britons and the Celts who had escaped.
And King Vortigern.
Vortigern’s abandoned crown still caught the dying firelight in a glimmer from its place on the trampled earth.
With a hum, the Immortal bent to collect it, studying her reflection on its surface. Her lambent eyes, glowing with silver fire, blinked from the place her image stared back at her.
A gurgle sounded at her feet, distracting her. She let the crown tip from her fingers and fall to the ground, turning her attention to the dying Celt laying nearby.
He coughed, sputtering blood across his lips and jaw. Athanasia knelt alongside him, soaking herself in the blood surrounding them both as she reached a hand to brush his cheek.
“Do you know me?” she asked, trailing fingers along his brow and into the tangles matted there.
“Athanasia,” he wheezed.
The Celts. Her Celts. A beautiful people with stories that were even lovelier. The Celts saw more than other mortals, revealing through their songs and lore the Elysian blood that wove magic through the lands. She had always loved slipping up, unseen, around their fires, listening to them speak of fair folk. Of her.
The Immortal lowered her head. She was not truly a goddess, but there were moments it did not harm to pretend for more than just her own entertainment. “You are dying, a mhuirnín. Shall I see you off to the Otherworld?”
He made a sound, something lost in the fresh bubble of blood that passed his lips. The Celt was too close to death for her to risk waiting for his blood to become poison.
She left a kiss as fleeting and cold as a snowflake against his lips before nuzzling her face into his throat. Her mouth opened over the weakening beat of his pulse, and she pierced the man with her fangs.
Even if Athanasia was not a god, nor a Fae or spirit who could see a mortal to their preferred afterlife, she had a comfort of her own to give. In her blood sang a music like nothing a human could make — nothing a human would ever hear unless she drank from them. She sang through their connection, through his veins, lulling him with her lullaby into the darkness of death.
He had little to offer, either in blood or in his soul’s dying light, before his heart stopped.
Athanasia lifted her head and wiped the blood from her lips with the touch of a fingertip. She had hardly swept the digit across her tongue before she realized she was no longer alone.
Frowning, the Immortal turned to scan the field.
There was another woman walking among the dead; another Elysian. Athanasia was the only one of her Immortal kind in her isles, but she was not the only one gifted with the blood of the Elysians. Fae, Lycan, Shifters, and the Immortal offspring of her Imperial siblings had made their home across the world.
This one, this Fae witch, Athanasia knew.
Deirdre, the Witch of the Wilds, was slender and beautiful with raven black hair plaited into two long ropes that touched the bloody ground. The finery and jewels she wore were in the fashion of the British nobility, and a match in the colors and heraldry of the dead lord she cradled against her.
As if she felt Athanasia’s study, Deirdre lifted her head, her eyes flashing with a dangerous, violet glow.
So Deirdre had been the magical watcher Athanasia had sensed. In silence, the Immortal unfolded to a stand.
“You could have stopped this, Empress,” Deirdre said, addressing Athanasia by her title. “Did you not care about their deaths?”
“We both know war is a part of the mortal cycles, Witch,” Athanasia said gently. “You have claimed their realm for your home and hold place among their nobility. Between us both, you had more power to stop this than I.”
“You live among the mortals too, Athanasia!” Blue light burst from her back into six diaphanous wings. They folded into a shelter around her and her fallen mortal, as orbs of light flickered to life around her, swirling through the air on an unseen wind that whipped Deirdre’s hair.
“Deirdre….” Athanasia folded her hands before her. “I am sorry you grieve.”
In an instant, the fight seemed to leave the witch as she choked out a sob. The lights faded and her wings slumped over her shoulders. Deirdre turned her face toward the dead lord’s. Her fingers stroked across his cheek. “I should not have to…. Destruction and death are yours — not mine. And you watched as they died of treachery.” She lifted her head to pin the Immortal again, tears streaming down her cheeks. “How could you?”
