Traitors & Tyrants: Book Four in the Crown of Blood Series Read online




  Traitors and Tyrants

  Book Four in the Crown of Blood series

  Gwynn White

  4XOverland Ltd

  Contents

  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

  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

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  The rumble of the Light-Bearer’s engine thrummed through Axel. One boot on the steel floor, the other on the bench in his cabin, he rested his chin on his knee and gazed out the porthole at the twenty airships in his task force. The early morning sun glinted gold off the fans propelling them toward the ice crystal embedded in Meka’s neck.

  Meka and his ice crystal were in Cian, the very heart of the Heartland, where Felix and Lukan concentrated their military might of airships, artillery, and an effective early warning system installed since Axel’s last incursion into their airspace to rescue Lynx. According to Axel’s calculations, they would reach Meka—and therefore Nicholas—in twenty-four hours.

  Axel was under no illusions: Snatching and then escaping with Meka and, hopefully, Nicholas, was not going to be a cinch.

  Blood would be spilled.

  Lots of it.

  It was his responsibility to ensure that his team accounted for very little of that blood. As noble as that objective was, it was fraught with challenges—most of them out of his control.

  Axel hated the vulnerability of being out of control. That was why he had grabbed this moment to gather his thoughts before he briefed his team on the mission’s battle objectives.

  The familiar rasp of boots on the metal floor made him turn.

  Lynx stepped through the hatch into their shared cabin. Her face, like his, bore a spatter of livid scars from Lukan’s Dragon’s Fire.

  In time, they would fade.

  Even if they didn’t, his blond-haired, glacial-eyed raider would still be the most beautiful woman in the world to him.

  She carried two steaming mess tins. She handed him one with a grimace. “Breakfast. Such as it is.”

  Lynx had never gotten used to the indifferent rations served on his airships. He shot her a derisive smile, his face aching from the slowly healing blisters. The food smelled just fine to him, even though he wasn’t quite sure what they were eating. He shifted and made space for her next to him on the bench.

  Lynx plunked herself down next to him. “Magridal,” she said above the roar of the propellers. “She collared me on the way here. Says she wants to speak to you before the briefing. Alone. I asked what it’s about, but she refused to say.”

  Axel sighed inwardly. Since Heron’s death, Magridal had been morose and even snarkier than usual. She’d also become slow in following orders. It was one of the things he planned to address today.

  Clearly, Magridal blamed him for the loss of her love.

  Her judgment wasn’t necessary. Axel carried more than enough of his own guilt for what had happened when Lukan had released the poisonous gas over Oldfort.

  None of that made dealing with his commander any easier. In truth, if Meka’s signal had beamed from any other part of the empire, Axel would not have chosen Magridal to lead the ground force.

  But he needed her skills in Cian too much to risk appointing anyone else. He had to trust that her years of training would come through and that she would not fail him.

  If he turned out to be wrong, he would have a nightmare on his hands when they reached Cian.

  The thought curdled his stomach, making his breakfast unpalatable. Still, he ate it because it was what warlords did—they acted as if everything was normal and under control, even when things were going to hell.

  “I’ll find her when we’re done here,” he said around a mouthful of mush. Hopefully, they could thrash out what was bothering her. “Give her a few minutes before the main briefing.”

  Lynx frowned at him. “Magridal isn’t the only person worrying me. You didn’t sleep again last night. That makes eight days in a row. What troubles you?”

  Eight days since the Burning of Oldfort. Eight days since the death of Heron. And the king of Tarach, Liatl.

  He closed his eyes and considered his words, then he spoke his heart. “Failure.”

  If it had been anyone else he would not have answered so bluntly, but this was his Lynx. He wasn’t just her warlord; he was her lover, her husband. If he couldn’t speak freely to her, then he was even more of a failure than he already feared himself to be.

  “Failure? Is this Axel Avanov I’m talking to?”

  “I killed Heron. I know you disagree, but it doesn’t change my perception. I failed him as surely as I failed Liatl by not getting us all into the burrow well before Lukan fired off the Dragon’s Fire. That’s why Magridal’s anger is threatening this mission.” His voice reflected his bleakness. “Failure is not a strong psychological starting point for my campaign.”

  Lynx stirred her breakfast. “That’s why you need to let Heron go. You and Magridal both.” It didn’t help that tears pricked her eyes at the mention of Heron’s name. She and Heron had been close in the mines.

  “Easier said than done. Magridal is hurting just as much.”

  “Enough of this nonsense, Axel Avanov!” Lynx’s barely touched mess tin crashed down onto the bench. “I understand that Magridal’s bitter and angry—she lost her love. But all this blame is ridiculous. Heron chose to stay with us after you begged him to leave. He knew the risks. Just as we all know the risk of attacking Cian. So, my question: Is Magridal the right person to be leading this heist when we already have Lukan and Felix to contend with?”

  So his Lynx had finally run out of patience with him and Magridal. He wasn’t sorry. Her sharpness centered his thoughts.

  “I wish I had an alternative, but I don’t. She knows Cian better than anyone else in this fleet. She’s been there often enough on intelligence raids for me. That alone makes her the best person for the job.”

  “I get that. But why not let Clay lead? Magridal will follow him, surely?”

  Axel threw his hands up. “You think I haven’t already thought of that? I have. But it will never work.”

  Not even a pocket of air turbulence, which rocked the ship, could shift Lynx’s mulish expression. “Why not? It seems ideal to me.”

  Axel gripped the porthole to stop himself sliding across th
e bench. “Clay carries no rank. He’s my assassin, not one of my commanders. I need him for this because he understands stealth and won’t hesitate to kill anyone who gets in the way of the mission. Magridal is a senior commander—one who’s already murmuring about obeying me. How do you think she will be with Clay? She could refuse to leave the airship, and then we’ll be scuppered because I have to have her on the ground.”

  Braced against the bulkhead, Lynx stared at him for a long moment. “Blackmail. Don’t we just love it?”

  Axel shrugged. “There’s a price for everything. The best I can do is humor her until the mission is over. Then watch me kick her butt for her insubordination.”

  The airship flew into calmer air, and Lynx rested her head on his shoulder.

  He put his empty mess tin and his informa on the bench and wrapped his arm around her. He kissed the side of her head. “Thanks for the support. I don’t know what I would do without you.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you’d find another—less troublesome—wife. There must be dozens of women who would give their right arms to marry the dashing Axel Avanov.”

  “Not in this lifetime. You leave me, and I’ll become a hermit. I’ll go and live with Jerawin and spend my life watching the stars.”

  Lynx chuckled. “You spending a lifetime contemplating your navel? Never going to happen.”

  The Light-Bearer jostled, and Axel’s informa clattered to the floor.

  She picked it up and flittered her fingers through the red beam signaling Meka’s ice crystal. “I hope he’s safe. And that Felix hasn’t reneged on our deal.”

  “That is always a risk.”

  The plan to rescue Nicholas, Lynx’s and Lukan’s biological son but Axel’s stepson, had been simple: inject Meka with a trackable ice crystal, manipulate Felix into jailing Meka with Nicholas to hide him from Lukan, and then simply track Meka’s ice crystal to find both him and Nicholas. Since leaving Oldfort with Felix, Meka’s ice crystal had shown a steady trajectory across Chenaya toward Cian. Yesterday, it had reached the outskirts of the city and had stopped, barely moving at all. It had been almost stationary ever since. Axel could only hope that the young prince was indeed with Nicholas.

  But if Felix had discovered Meka’s ice crystal, that could have changed.

  Or, worse, Meka could have chosen to switch sides.

  Again.

  Meka was a consummate actor. While with Vasily, Meka had been the perfect Avanov supporter of Lukan and the Dragon. The moment he’d arrived in Treven, he’d changed, pledging his allegiance to the Pathfinder Alliance.

  An alliance that had questioned whether Lukan’s poison, Dragon’s Fire, had been real and not some ploy by Axel—who wasn’t above such devious tricks if it served him. An alliance that had doubted Lukan’s planned Burning of Oldfort would actually kill them.

  So Axel had arranged the necessary proof: criminals left in the square for Lukan’s gas to execute. Those deaths had been the only way to prove the poison’s lethality to the monarchs—to persuade them to support Axel in a war against Lukan.

  After the Burning, Meka had arrived in Oldfort with Felix and Lukan, and he had seen the bodies in the square. And he publicly announced that, because the leaders had left people to die to the Dragon’s Fire, he no longer supported Axel and the alliance.

  It had been the last time Axel had seen Meka.

  What had motivated the young prince’s reaction? Shock—or perhaps another change of heart? Which was the real Meka, and where did his true loyalties lie?

  Axel didn’t know.

  If Meka had turned rogue, Axel and his twenty airships could be on a wild-goose chase leading them away from Nicholas. Or, even worse, a trap that would see them all shot down.

  Just one more risk.

  “Maybe you could petition Dmitri to lend a hand with this mission.” Axel couldn’t stop an edge of frustration at the ghostly seer from bleeding into his voice. Dmitri was a capricious ally who only seemed to help the alliance when it suited him. If Axel could have orchestrated the Dmitri Curse without Dmitri’s involvement, he would have done so, gladly.

  Lynx looked at him with a sharp eye. “You need to have more faith.”

  The rap of knuckles on metal spared Axel from gracing that ridiculous notion with a comeback.

  Clay, Magridal, and Farith, the young Trevenite princess and nurse, stood at the hatch. Tension bled off them.

  It seemed Axel’s briefing had come to him.

  Pity his cabin was so tiny. There was barely room for him to stand to greet them when Magridal stepped inside. Pale, with black rings around her green eyes, she held an informa in her hands. “You seen this?”

  Axel frowned at her disrespectful tone. “Looks like a very ordinary informa to me. What’s the issue?”

  Magridal slouched against the bulkhead and thumbed at Clay, who waited at the hatch. “Tell them.”

  Clay grabbed the informa from her and flicked it into life.

  An image of Nicholas blossomed in the air. He scrambled down a drainpipe outside a tall tower Axel had never seen before. The building rose majestically into the air, dwarfing a collection of squat, ugly red-brick buildings next to it. The only clue to its whereabouts were swathes of forest that backed and flanked the compound. Given that the Serreti Forest stretched for thousands of miles down the spine of the Heartland, it told Axel nothing definitive.

  Worse, Meka was nowhere to be seen.

  Axel swore.

  Surely, if the boys had been imprisoned together, Meka would never have let Nicholas escape on his own? Meka had been told that, without his signal, there’d be no easy way to track Nicholas.

  Although Nicholas was embedded with the Final Word in Human Surveillance, its visuals provided little indication of his whereabouts in a world as vast as the Chenayan empire. To make matters worse, once Felix learned of the escape, he would surely shut down the visuals.

  Lynx jumped up next to him, her face wan and her eyes wide. “What do we do?”

  “We stop tracking Meka to Cian. That’s what we do,” Magridal shouted, waving her arms. “For all we know, he’s turned on us. We could be flying straight into a trap.”

  Farith’s spiky red hair bristled. “Meka would never do that. He’s on our side.” Tattooed fists clenched, she stomped toward Magridal.

  “Meka murdered Heron,” Magridal snarled. “Spirits! He happily pulled the canister of poison even though he knew Stefan hadn’t gotten the warning through to us. He could have killed over three thousand people, including all of us. Not to mention every monarch in the Free Nations. And this is the traitor you want us to rescue?”

  Axel opened his mouth to reprimand Magridal.

  “That’s not true!” The red-headed princess balanced on the tips of her steel-tipped boots as she faced the much taller Trevenite commander. “Stefan made it clear that Meka had no choice.”

  Farith would certainly have no qualms about punching Magridal in the jaw—if she could reach it.

  Axel squeezed between them. “Enough! Both of you. This is a military mission, not a fish market. We have a plan, and we will work it. Until we know where Nicholas is, we continue on course. The three of you keep your eyes on your informas.” He glared at Magridal and Farith to make his point. “Do not let Nicholas out of your sight. The minute you have a fix on his location, you report to me. I will issue the command to redirect the squadron.”

  Farith thrust her jaw at Axel in defiance. “You would go after Nicholas and not Meka?”

  Axel didn’t doubt she would thump him too, if she could.

  “You forget yourself, Nurse Farith,” Axel said coldly. “You may not hold a combat rank on this mission, but while on leave from the medical corps, you report to me. I will not be questioned by junior staff.”

  Farith shifted from boot to boot, and then her face settled back into its usual belligerent scowl. But at least her mouth remained closed.

  With Princess Farith, Axel counted that as a victory.

 
As different as the girl was from Lynx in looks and temperament, she often reminded him of his raider. Meka had fallen so hard for the volatile Trevenite princess that he’d even allowed her to inflict a painful tattoo on him. Axel understood exactly why.

  That tattoo was the strongest evidence of Meka’s true loyalties.

  It was time to impose some discipline on all of them. “Back to your posts. All of you,” he commanded. “And no one take their eyes off Nicholas until I call my formal briefing.”

  Magridal continued to slump against the bulkhead.

  Farith dug her oversized boots into the floor as she continued to glower at Axel.

  Clay tugged both Magridal’s and Farith’s arms. Farith resisted his gentle pressure for a moment before allowing him to pull her toward him.

  Magridal ripped her arm away. “Axel, you and I need to talk. Now.”

  Axel almost choked on his shock. He spluttered, “Excuse me? But when do you give the orders around here?”

  Nothing but a glare from Magridal.

  While he understood her pain, her attitude infuriated him. He gestured to Clay and Farith. “Out. Both of you.” As soon as they left, he said, “Whatever gripe you have with me, this is not how Heron would have you solve it.”

  Magridal’s fists bunched. “Don’t you dare suggest what Heron would or wouldn’t have wanted.”

  Lynx stepped between them and shoved both their chests. “I have had enough of this! We are on a critical mission to rescue Meka and my son, who Dmitri promised would help us avenge all our grievances against Lukan. We cannot have this division amongst us. If we do, then Lukan wins. And Heron truly died for nothing.”

  Axel cocked his head at Magridal. “She’s right. I know you’re hurting. So am I. But please can we put this aside until after the mission?”

  Magridal flounced out the cabin.

  Axel watched her go, and then his shoulders slumped. He let out a long, slow breath. Finally, he faced Lynx. “Thanks for trying. Now, I trust you agree that Nicholas is the priority, and that whatever happens, we have to throw everything at finding him, not Meka.”

  She gnawed her lip.

  His heart sank. How could Lynx, of all people, doubt this decision?