Dark heir, p.1
Dark Heir, page 1
Praise for Dark Rise
‘A propulsive new fantasy. I simply couldn’t put it down.’ – V. E. Schwab
‘A story rendered with devastatingly brilliant detail. You won’t be able to look away.’ – Chloe Gong
‘Intricate and immersive. A wonderfully tangled adventure story with a Chosen One who keeps you guessing.’ – Rainbow Rowell
‘Beautiful, classical, and deliciously dark.’ – Jay Kristoff
‘Abundant action and a profusion of plot twists fuel an adrenalized pace.’ – Publishers Weekly
‘Classic. Pacat’s writing is atmospheric and full of intriguing, complex characters.’ – Kirkus Reviews
‘Pacat is a master at character design, and you’ll instantly fall in love.’ – Tor.com
‘Lush, dark, and dangerous. A YA fantasy that begins breathlessly and rarely lets up.’ – Books + Publishing
‘Will hook readers until the last page. Characters entice you on one page, and then stick a knife through your heart on the next.’ – The Nerd Daily
First published in Australia and New Zealand by Allen & Unwin in 2023
Text copyright © Gatto Media Pty Ltd 2023
Map copyright © Svetlana Dorosheva 2023
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.
The author asserts their Moral Rights in this work throughout the world without waiver.
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Cover illustration by Magdalena Pągowska
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cspacat.com
For Johnny Boy,
You nosed your way in
and changed my life
I’ll miss you
CONTENTS
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
THE REBORN
WILL KEMPEN
The Dark King reborn.
JAMES ST CLAIR
Raised believing he was a Steward, James’s true identity was discovered at age eleven: he was the Dark King’s deadliest general, Anharion, reborn. James escaped the Hall of the Stewards to serve Sinclair in his quest to return the Dark King to life. There James learned Anharion had been a warrior of the Light, enslaved to the Dark King by a magical Collar. After Will killed Simon and returned the Collar to James, James swore to follow Will.
DESCENDANTS
The Blood of Lions
VIOLET BALLARD
The daughter of John Ballard and his Indian mistress, Violet was brought to London by her father. Escaping Sinclair with Will, Violet learned that she possessed the Blood of Lions, and that her father raised her so her half-brother Tom could ritually kill her, to gain his ‘true power’ by killing another Lion. Violet has sworn she will not serve the Dark King like her Lion ancestors.
TOM BALLARD
Violet’s older half-brother, and a mentor and protector to Violet during her childhood. Tom serves Sinclair and took the S brand to prove his loyalty. He has a close relationship with another of Sinclair’s pseudo-court, Devon, the last unicorn.
JOHN BALLARD
Violet and Tom’s father, John Ballard works for Sinclair.
The Blood of Stewards
CYPRIAN
Cyprian was a sheltered novitiate weeks from taking his test to become a Steward when his brother Marcus, in shadow form, attacked the Hall, massacring its inhabitants. Cyprian is now the last of the Stewards, but has never drunk from the Cup.
MARCUS
Cyprian’s brother, Marcus was on a mission with his shieldmate Justice when he was captured by Sinclair. Kept alive in a cage until his shadow overwhelmed him, Marcus was unleashed by Sinclair on the Hall of the Stewards.
JUSTICE
The Stewards’ greatest fighter and champion, Justice rescued Violet and Will from Simon’s ship the Sealgair and brought them both to the Hall. When Justice’s shieldmate Marcus became a shadow and attacked the Hall, Justice died fighting him.
EUPHEMIA, THE ELDER STEWARD
The Elder Steward tried to train Will to follow the light, but died before the training was complete. She defeated Marcus during his attack on the Hall, then asked Cyprian to kill her before her shadow could take over.
JANNICK, THE HIGH JANISSARY
James’s father, and adoptive father of Cyprian and Marcus. As the head of the jannisaries – the non-military side of the Stewards – Jannick was a man of great knowledge but also exacting standards. Jannick was killed by Marcus in the massacre at the Hall.
GRACE
Grace was one of only two survivors of Marcus’s attack. Grace’s role as janissary to the Elder Steward gives her unique knowledge and insight into the secrets of the Hall.
SARAH
Sarah was the second survivor of Marcus’s attack. A janissary whose role was to tend the plants in the Hall.
The Blood of the Lady
KATHERINE KENT
Pressured by her family to make an advantageous marriage, Katherine was engaged to Simon Creen, son of the Earl of Sinclair. Discovering Simon was killing women, Katherine fled to the Hall of the Stewards with her sister Elizabeth. Katherine died at Bowhill, after learning Will was the Dark King and drawing Ekthalion to challenge him.
ELIZABETH KENT
Brought by her sister Katherine to the Hall of the Stewards, ten-year-old Elizabeth learned that she possessed the Blood of the Lady when she touched the Tree Stone during the attack on the Hall by the Shadow King.
ELEANOR KEMPEN
The mother of Katherine and Elizabeth, who gave them up to hide them from Sinclair, she raised Will as her son knowing he was the Dark King, but tried to kill him before her death.
The Blood of the Dark King
EDMUND CREEN, THE EARL OF SINCLAIR
One of the richest men in England, with a trading empire that spans the globe. Sinclair is the head of a ‘pseudo-court’ of descendants with powers from the old world.
SIMON CREEN, LORD CRENSHAW
The son and heir of the Earl of Sinclair, Simon planned to raise the Dark King from the dead by killing all the descendants of the Lady, including Will’s mother. Simon was killed by Will at Bowhill.
PHILLIP CREEN, LORD CRENSHAW
The second son of the Earl of Sinclair, Phillip inherited the title of Lord Crenshaw after his brother Simon’s death.
IN THE OLD WORLD
SARCEAN, THE DARK KING
The Dark King, and leader of the shadow armies, Sarcean swore to return to the world after his death, and ordered his followers killed in order to be reborn with him.
ANHARION, THE BETRAYER
Light’s greatest fighter, Anharion swung the course of the war when he changed sides to fight for the Dark King. He was known as the Betrayer, but had been ensorcelled by a magic collar.
THE LADY
Legends say she loved the Dark King, and then killed him. When the Dark King died and swore to return, she had a child so that her line would survive to fight him on his rebirth.
DEVON
The last unicorn. When humans hunted unicorns almost to extinction, Devon was captured, and his tail and horn cut off. In order to survive, Devon transformed into a boy. Thousands of years later, he is a member of Sinclair’s pseudo-court.
VISANDER
A champion of the old world.
PROLOGUE
VISANDER WOKE CHOKING. His chest was constricted. There was no air. He coughed and tried to heave in breath. Where was he?
His eyes opened. Blind, he saw nothing. There was no difference between his eyes being open or closed. Panic lifted his arms and he tried to push up, only to hit wood a handspan above his face. He couldn’t sit up. He couldn’t breathe, his nose clogged with the cold, heavy smell of earth.
Instinctively he groped for his sword, Ekthalion, but he couldn’t find it. Ekthalion. Where is Ekthalion? His numb, cramping fingers found wood on all four sides. His shallow breathing shallowed further. He was lying trapped in a small wooden box. A casket.
A coffin.
Cold fear at that idea. ‘Release me!’ The words were absorbed by the box as if swallowed. The sick, terrible thought came: this was not just a coffin. It was a grave. He was buried, his sounds smothered by earth above and around him.
‘Release me!’
Panic crested. Was this it? His awakening? In a sightless, soundless cavity, while no one above knew he lived? He tried to remember the moments before this, disjointed fragments: riding his bonded steed Indeviel; the Queen’s cool blue eyes on him as he spoke his vow; the sharp pain as she ran the sword through his chest. You will return, Visander.
Had she done this to him? It couldn’t be, could it? He couldn’t have returned into a grave, awakening buried deep beneath the earth?
Think. If he was buried, there would be wood above him, and then earth. He had to break the wood, and then dig. And he had to do it now, while he still had air and strength. He didn’t know how much air he had left.
He kicked at the roof of his prison, a jarring pain in his foot. The second kick was part panic. A sharp cracking sound meant he had splintered the wood. He could hear his own gasps of breath, dragging in what was left of the thin air.
Crack! Again. Crack! Earth spilled in like water breaking through a leak. For a moment he felt a burst of success. Then the leak became a collapse, a cave-in, cold earth rushing in to fill up the coffin. A desperate panic exploded in him, his hands flying up to cover his head at the thought he would be smothered. He coughed, the dust particles so thick that they choked him. When the dust settled, the cave-in had reduced his space in the coffin by half.
He lay in the small, lightless pocket that was left to him. His heart was pounding painfully. He remembered the moment when he had gone to his knees and sworn. I will be your Returner. The Queen had touched his head as he knelt. You will Return, Visander. But first you must die. Had it gone wrong? Had he been buried by mistake, those around him believing him truly dead? Or had he been discovered by the Dark King? Buried as punishment, knowing he would return, only to awaken trapped?
He imagined the Dark King’s pleasure at his suffocating panic. It would delight that twisted mind to think of Visander buried alive, his terror unseen, his shouts unheard. The spark of hatred in Visander ignited, the burn bright in the dark. It drove him, stronger than the need to live, his need to kill the Dark King. He had to get out.
He reached down to the front of his garments and tore at what felt like silk. He tied the silk around his face, to protect his mouth and nostrils from the earth that would rush in to cover him. Then he drew in a breath, all the air he could gather, and this time punched with every bit of his remaining strength at the splintered wood above him.
Earth collapsed down onto him, filling the last of the space. He forced himself to push upward into it, trying to claw up through the dirt. It didn’t work. He didn’t break the surface, and now there was earth all around him, and no air, just the stifling press of the soil, a putrid petrichor that threatened to force its way down his throat.
Up. He had to go up, but felt total disorientation: surrounded by pitch-black earth, he lost all sense of down or up; digging, but in which direction? Horror overwhelmed him. Would he die, a blind worm travelling the wrong way in the dark? Pain stabbed his lungs, his head dizzy, as though he’d inhaled fumes.
Dig. Dig or die, think of his purpose, the only thing that drove him, past the panic, past the dimming of his thoughts like the closing of a tunnel—
And then his grasping, reaching hand broke out into space. His lungs screamed as he pushed desperately towards it, breaching the muddy ground in a grotesque rebirth, pushing out his face, his torso, dragging himself from the earth.
He heaved in air – air! – great, gasping heaves that coughed and retched out a black substance, the dirt that had found its way into his mouth and down his throat. It took a long time for the retching to stop, convulsing tremors in his body. Vaguely, he was aware that it was night, that there was turf under his fingers, the empty branches of trees over his head. He lay sprawled on the ground that had just entrapped him, reassured that it was beneath him, a joy he had never appreciated before. He lifted his forearm to wipe at his mouth, saw the tattered silks that clothed him, and felt a strange wave of wrongness.
When he looked down at his hands, they were not only torn and bloodied but – they were not – his hands—
Everything spun around him dizzily. He was dressed in strange garments, thick skirts that dragged down from his body heavily. He could see himself in the moonlight – these torn, muddy hands were not his own, these breasts, these tendrils of long blonde hair. This was not his body; this was a young woman whose limbs he could not easily control, an attempt to stand sending him stumbling to the ground.
Light flared, and at first he flung his arm up to shield himself from it, his eyes unused to anything brighter than the dim moonlight.
Then he looked up into the light.
There was a grey-haired older man standing in front of him holding a lamp aloft. He was staring as though he had seen a phantom. As though he had seen someone die and then met them again after they had clawed their way back up from out of the earth.
‘Katherine?’ said the man.
CHAPTER ONE
WILL CRESTED THE bank of the River Lea and felt his stomach drop with dread.
All he could see on the marsh was desolation. The scented wet green of the moss and the undulating grasses were gone, replaced by a crater of ruined earth with the broken arch at its centre, like a gateway to the dead.
Was he too late? Were his friends all dead?
James reined in beside him on the snowy white Steward horse Katherine had abandoned. Will couldn’t help glancing sideways to see James’s reaction. With his blond head hidden by the hood of a white cloak, James might have looked like a Steward of old, riding through ancient lands. Except that he was young, and dressed in the height of London fashion under the cloak. His face gave nothing away, even as his eyes fixed on the destruction that had been the Hall.
Will couldn’t let himself think about what he was doing here with James beside him. He shouldn’t have come back. He shouldn’t have brought James with him. He knew that. He had done it anyway. The wrongness of that decision rose with every step. He forced his eyes forward, and kept his mind on his friends.
At the edge of the ruined earth, the horses baulked, Will’s black gelding Valdithar jerking his head up and down, nostrils flared wide, sensing twisted magic. Beside him James was trying to force his white Steward mount onward, while his London horse reared and plunged on its lead behind him, trying to break. The spooked, resisting horses were the only living things to walk the charred ground lit by sullen embers, a deep silence enshrouding them because there were no birds or insects alive.
