Grave of Words (Fall of Under Book 2) Read online

  Grave of Words

  Fall of Under: Book Two

  Kathryn Ann Kingsley

  Copyright © 2021 by Kathryn Ann Kingsley

  First Print Edition: April, 2021

  ASIN: B08X8Y4D21

  ISBN: 979-8-72797-872-6

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Foreword

  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

  Follow Me!

  Also by Kathryn Ann Kingsley

  About the Author

  Foreword

  I would like to take this moment to inform you all that my publishing agent Nutmeg was very dismayed with the progress on the second half of this book and decided that it needed no less than forty-seven pages of [[[[[[[[[[[[[[4444444.

  She also sent six emails, deleted several files from my desktop, and rearranged my calendar.

  I suppose that is what I get for getting up to make coffee and leaving my very warm keyboard unattended.

  She then proceeded to scream at me, hiss, and dig her claws into my hand as I tried to shoo her away, and frantically undo all her careful efforts.

  To those of you who may be aspiring authors reading this, I recommend not hiring your cat as a publishing agent.

  1

  Evie watched the snow fall.

  She loved snow. She’d never get over how beautiful it was, little drifting flakes that together could change a whole forest into a blanket of white. The birds and insects were quiet, hunkering down from the storm. It wasn’t a windy one, but it certainly was intent on dropping a great deal of the fluffy white stuff down from the sky.

  With a long sigh, she leaned against the stone jamb of the door to her castle. It had taken her nearly four hundred years—but she finally thought of it as her castle. It still felt damn weird when anybody called her the Queen of Flames, though.

  Every time they did, she missed Edu. But that was the way of things. People died. Life moved on. She had a job to do.

  Oh, well. She got used to it in time, like she got used to everything. She cracked her neck to one side and then to the other, popping the bones loudly.

  There was only one problem with the snowstorm.

  It made it harder to see the zombies.

  And things that were harder to see were therefore harder to hit. The shambling dead were just shadows in the distance.

  They’d held off two waves already. And now it seemed like they were due for a third.

  The flakes of white fell atop the bodies that lay in the snow from the first attacks. Evie had learned real fast not to let them get too close. One of her lower-ranked soldiers had fallen from a pack of the bitey things, only to get up a few minutes later and turn on his former compatriots.

  At least the fuckers were slow.

  “Whelp, no time like the present.” Pushing away from the jamb, she summoned her axe, cracked her neck again, and stomped forward into the snow. “Light the arrows! Fire at will!”

  One foot in front of the other.

  That was the only way Ember knew how to live. One more step. One more breath. One more heartbeat. Live for every second.

  In that regard, she guessed not much had changed. Oh, sure. She had traded out one kind of chaos for another. One apocalypse for another, to be more specific, but it was all still chaos.

  It still didn’t stop her from looking up at the multi-colored moons of Under and wonder how in the ever-loving, gods-damned fuck she wound up in her current situation.

  Being dropped into a strange world filled with immortal, magical monsters and creatures that rivaled the tales and legends of the creatures that dwelled in the fiery pits of the afterlife? She could handle that.

  Dealing with the mindless drengil, the hungry corpses that had only one purpose—to kill and eat the living? She could handle that.

  The fact that her world had likely been devoured by the new one, leaving only fragments and pieces of her home scattered around as reminders? She could handle that.

  That she had somehow found herself in the middle of a grudge match between said immortal, magical monsters that resulted in her winding up with one of them poisoned and unconscious and tied to the back of a fully sentient ex-person, who was now an insect horse that she had nicknamed Cricket?

  Not to mention that said poisoned and unconscious immortal, magical monster was somehow able to control the drengil. And was apparently out to destroy the world she had fallen into that wasn’t her own.

  That, she might not be able to handle.

  She shut her eyes and let out a long sigh, lowering her head. At least Cricket seemed to know where they were supposed to go. He had plodded along the road, casually weaving through the crowd of staring, silent corpses, until they found a split in the road. He turned south.

  Or at least, she hoped he turned south.

  Honestly, it was all the fucking same to her. They had been walking for hours. When she checked the pocket watch that Maverick had given her—she hoped that poor man was alive—it said ten. At night or morning, she had no clue.

  Because the stupid gods-damned sun never rose in this stupid, gods-damned world!

  Why? Why me? What did I do? She held the disk of the necklace she wore. It was dedicated to the Grandfather. If you can hear me, gods, forgive me for whatever I did to deserve this bag of nonsense. And here I thought simply dealing with the drengil was bad enough.

  She looked up at the sky. At the stars and the moons she didn’t recognize. They were beautiful…but they weren’t hers. “What am I supposed to do?”

  Cricket glanced back at her and huffed.

  She laughed. “I wasn’t asking you. Sorry. More of a rhetorical question.” She patted the side of his neck.

  It was another two hours before Cricket finally wanted to stop. He veered off the path toward a stream and stopped by the edge of the water, where there was a small embankment. It’d make for a good place to sleep.

  Ember dismounted, slowly getting used to riding a creature that had a hard exoskeleton rather than fur and skin. It was weird, and a little slippery, but at least she had plenty of places to hold in lieu of a saddle and bridle.

  It just felt insulting to steer around a creature that had once been a person. Especially one that knew the world better than she did.

  Once she dropped her pack by a tree, she looked at the unconscious, bandaged man slung over Cricket’s back and sighed. “Can’t leave you here all night. That’s not fair to my friend,”
she muttered. Untying the knots that bound his wrists to his ankles, she slid him off the horse as gently as she could.

  Meaning, she only kind of dropped him. It was more of a crumple than a fall. She’d take it. Even if she did wince when it happened.

  “You’re getting heavier, and I don’t like it.” She grunted as she dragged him over to a tree. He was limp and didn’t move as she put his back to the bark and began to tie him to it. She tied his wrists together again and kept them lashed to his waist. Then, she tied the rope around his waist to the tree, making sure the knot was well out of his reach if he woke up.

  If he was even alive.

  I hope I didn’t kill him. Not because she particularly wanted him to live. He was trying to destroy Under and kill every living thing in it. It was because she didn’t want to be responsible for dooming the world to a slow death, which was what happened if a king or queen of Under died.

  Apparently.

  “This world has a lot of dumb rules.” Feeling for a pulse in his throat, she was happy to find it. Something was thumping. It was an odd, out of sync rhythm. “I guess if I just had my heart ripped out, I’d be a little out of sorts, too.”

  She sat back on her heels and took a moment to examine the poor man. Creature. He’s a monster. And there’s nothing poor about him. He’s no better than the Dread God, trying to destroy Gioll. She reached out and tucked a strand of his unkempt blond hair out of the way of his masked face. He was covered in blood and dirt. The bandages he wore around his upper body and his arms were far past the point of being useful. They hung from him in strips soaked in every color of blood that she had ever seen.

  It looked as though his wounds were healing. He was still in terrible shape—she could see raw, open wounds on his ribs and chest through the strips of bandages. But she could no longer see beating organs and exposed bone. He was wearing a pair of black pants that sat low on his hips.

  There had been such a look of agony in his pale-yellow eyes before he had bitten her. Drengil felt no pain…but it was clear that Rxa very much did.

  Part of her wanted to take his shattered porcelain mask off to see his face again. She wondered what he might look like when he wasn’t suffering. He had shown her his face a few times now, but if Lyon was correct, it was a deeply personal choice. The idea of it felt wrong.

  He wasn’t as thin as she thought he had been at first. While he was hardly bulky and built like Ash had been, Rxa had broad shoulders and the frame to match it. The memory of her friend made her smile sadly. Ash had prided himself on his muscular physique and loved to flaunt his abs to any ladies they found in their travels.

  She could almost hear him flirting with the strangers. With a sigh, she shook her head. “Oh, Ash. I could use some of your stupid showboating right about now. You’d know what to do.”

  Something smacked her in the arm. Something wet. She yelped and jumped, looking down to see a fish flopping around on the ground next to her. “What the f—”

  A horse neighed. Or, well, neigh-chirped. Whatever noise an insect horse made. She looked up to see Cricket standing in the river, laughing at her.

  “What’re you doing?”

  Cricket lowered his head and waited, standing perfectly still. A second later, he dunked his head into the water. When he came up, he was dripping water from his jaws and from the wriggling fish he had between his teeth.

  Ember laughed, impressed. “You can hunt? I guess you would be able to, huh? Since you’re a carnivore and all.”

  Cricket chomped down the fish whole in a few bites before turning his attention back to the water.

  “Well, thanks for the dinner.” Pushing up from the ground, she started making camp. There was plenty of firewood and kindling around, and she had no problem starting a small fire. It would be enough to keep them warm and cook the fish. Unlike Cricket, she had no interest in eating it raw.

  Settling down, she started cleaning the fish that the horse had hunted for her. She shook her head in astonishment again. A sentient, killer, ex-person, insect-horse that hunts. At least it’s my friend.

  Skewering the fish fillets on sticks, she set them over the fire to cook. Cricket lay down by the edge of the clearing, stretching out with a long, contented groan. She chuckled. “You earned some rest. I’ll take the first watch.”

  The horse let out a loud “whuff.” She knew she’d get no complaints from him. He had walked all day, and she couldn’t imagine he wasn’t tired. She was, too, but there was no way she was going to leave Rxa unguarded. Not even if he was unconscious. Not even if he was tied to a tree.

  Lyon could turn into bats. Lydia could transform into a giant flying snake. Ini could blink in and out existence. Who knew what Rxa was capable of?

  And how pissed he’ll be if he wakes up.

  She sat with her back against a tree across from him as she ate her dinner. It tasted like normal fish. Maybe I’m allergic to it. No way to know. But she had no interest in starving herself. She knew that pain far too well—what it was like to have an empty stomach for days, if not weeks.

  Supplies in Gioll were hard to come by. She was skilled at hunting wildlife, but in Under, that was another story. I bet even the squirrels here are murderous.

  Leaning her head against the tree, she looked up at the sky. There were four moons shining down at her. Blue, green, white, and yellow. It created an odd array of shadows that crisscrossed over the grass, mixing with the amber light of the fire. Cricket was snoring. She felt an odd, uneasy peace.

  Quietly, she began to sing in the old tongue of the gods. She used to do it all the time to keep herself company when she was certain there were no drengil around to hear her. She made it two verses in before she realized that Rxa…had moved his head. Not much. Just enough to turn one of the eyes of his shattered porcelain mask toward her.

  She broke off, her eyes wide. Grabbing her knife from the grass, she stood.

  He didn’t move.

  “Rxa?”

  Silence.

  Creeping toward him, she kept her knife pointed in his direction. “Rxa?”

  He didn’t answer. And he didn’t move. Maybe it’s just a trick of the light. Maybe he didn’t move. His shoulders are still slumped.

  Inch by inch, she crossed the distance between them, tightening her grip on her knife as she got closer. She nudged his leg with her foot. Nothing. She nudged a little harder. Still nothing.

  She reached down to touch his shoulder. Maybe something in his neck was healing and—

  “Bwah!”

  Ember screamed and fell on her ass, scrambling away from the bandaged madman.

  Who was laughing at her.

  Weakly, and it sounded as though he were sick with the flu, but he was laughing all the same. “Oh, I wish you could see your”—he wheezed and coughed—“face.”

  Scrambling back to her feet, she pointed her knife at him. “Don’t move.”

  He went to answer but coughed again. When the fit passed, he leaned his head against the tree to look up at her. She could see sweat on the skin of his neck. “I don’t think I can, little dove. You”—he hacked—“you did a number on me.”

  “I’ve seen your kind pull all sorts of tricks. I don’t trust you. And I didn’t do shit to you. You did this to you.” She glanced over to Cricket, who was still lying by the edge of the clearing, snoring. Apparently, he was a heavy sleeper. Great. So much for backup.

  “What…happened?” He wiggled his hands and looked down at them. “Huh. Who tied me up?”

  “I did.”

  The mask turned back up to her, his messy, dirty hair falling along the sides of the porcelain. “Why?” He sounded honestly confused. There was a strange innocence in the question that caught her off guard.

  “I…you’re going to kill people.”

  “But not you.” He wiggled his hands again. “I—I can’t get free. I feel…really terrible. Can you please untie me? I think I need to lie down…” Now he sounded delirious. His head rolled o
n his shoulders, and it looked for a moment like he had passed out again.

  “Rxa?” She edged closer to him again. When he was silent, she moved a little closer. “I’m not falling for this a second time.” But the man only sat there, his head down, shoulders hunched. She reached down and shook his shoulder. Nothing.

  With a sigh, she went back to her side of the fire and sat. Strands of her black and white hair fell from her ponytail as she had tripped. She tucked them quickly away.

  This was going to be a long night.

  Fuck, this is going to be a long couple of weeks.

  If I survive that long.

  2

  It wasn’t the first night Ember had spent without any sleep.

  It didn’t mean she was happy about it.

  Once Cricket was up and had caught his breakfast, she scattered the coals of the fire and got her things together. She looked down at Rxa with a long, heavy sigh. He hadn’t moved. If he was awake, he was good at faking it. She nudged him a few times with her foot.

  Cricket stomped the ground near her, eager to go. She glanced at him. “If he even so much as twitches, break his legs.”

  The noise he let out made it very clear he’d be happy to oblige. Untying Rxa from the tree, she dragged him over to where Cricket was waiting. The horse knelt, making it easier for her to heft the man’s weight up over the horse’s back.

  “Damn it all, are you heavier again?” She grunted as she finally managed to heave his dead weight—no pun intended—in place. Cricket stood, and she tied Rxa’s wrists to his feet once more. She made sure the knot was well out of his reach, and she climbed onto the horse’s back.