Page 2 of ColdIron
Fuck. Three menacing figures were heading straight toward me.
Blackness danced at the edges of my vision, creeping in like smoke.
No!I couldn’t afford to black out, but I’d hit my limit, pushed past it two days ago.
The blackness spread anyway, mocking my weakness.
My last hope was that those beings weren’t monsters. That they were human, or human enough.
My last prayer, whispered through cracked lips as my knees buckled and my world went black, was simple:If they’re cannibals, don’t let them eat me alive.
2
AELINDOR
“Shit, another wild goose chase,” Caspian muttered, swiping at the sweat on his neck. “You two owe me. I was warm and comfortable. There were two very eager blondes in my bed, and I was this close to?—”
The shifter heir had been whining since we’d left the vehicles behind. Seven miles on foot in full fatigues, boots crunching over earth so dry it seemed fossilized. Not even magic-powered machines worked in the Scorched Wastes. And regular transportation—cars and planes running on mortal engines—had been useless for eighty-one years.
“For fuck’s sake.” Nikolai pinched the bridge of his nose. “We get it, Caspian. You’re very popular. But Aelindor and I don’t give an ass fuck.”
“You’re just jealous.” Caspian’s teeth flashed in something not quite a grin. “When’s the last time someone actually wanted to wake up next to you?”
“I have standards, wolf,” the vampire heir sneered. “They involve more than a pulse and willingness.”
Shifters and vampires were natural enemies, but we all had to put our differences aside and work together if we wanted to survive the next year, or even the next week. These two had traded claws and fangs for verbal sparring. My ears were going to bleed, not from the scorched air, still thick with acid and sulfur, but from their nonstop bickering.
“Would you look at this place?” Caspian said, his green eyes still sleepy as he swept a hand at the dead land around us. “This is what we trekked for? Brilliant.”
The land stretched out in endless gray and rust. The sky hung low and colorless, a permanent haze that blocked out most of the sun and turned everything the sickly yellow-gray of old bruises.
Nothing grew here.
Nothing lived here except the monsters. And the desperate.
The Earth had never recovered after the Rupture.
That was the name we gave it—the detonation of the Quantum Bomb that ended the global nuclear war. Billions died from infections, violence, or starvation in the aftermath. Humans and every other species fought over scraps, battling for dominance in a world that had barely survived its own suicide attempt.
The Q-bomb did more than kill. It shattered the Shimmer between mortal and immortal realms. Blended two worlds together in a twisted fusion that belonged to neither.
My home, Evermere, was destroyed in the collapse.Its eternal spires reduced to rubble. Its forests withered to ash. Its lakes vaporized. I’d crossed into the shattered civilization of the mortal realm and formed the Zodiac Covenant with three other heirs—because we had no choice. We needed to find a way to restore what was lost.
And all of it, every step, every hope, rested on a prophecy.
The Fourfold Vow.
Preserved once in the archives of House Scorpio, until its ink faded completely from the ancient pages.
“There is no way the prophesied lost heir from two Zodiac Houses is hiding in this shithole.”
Caspian again. A sudden wind kicked up, tearing at his carefully styled wine-red hair. We lived in wartime, and he still found gel somewhere. Every morning.
More brutal battles were coming for us. I wondered how long he could keep up the flamboyant playboy act before reality crushed it out of him.
“As if you’ve suddenly mastered prophecy.” Nikolai didn’t spare his rival a glance, crimson eyes fixed on the horizon, ever vigilant for threats. “Stick to what you’re good at, wolf. Scenting trails. Chasing rabbits.”
All three of us had superior eyesight, but when the light failed, Nikolai took point. Caspian, for all his complaining, had the best nose among us—which was why he kept sniffing through air that tasted like poison. On this kind of mission, masks stayed off. We needed every sense raw and unobstructed.
