The Pale Waters (#1 Reclaimed Souls)
Read The Pale Waters (#1 Reclaimed Souls) Online
Authors: Della Roth
Tags: #romance, #action, #fantasy, #kingdom, #battle, #spies, #aliens, #war, #goddess, #robots, #prince, #psychic, #new world, #sword, #royalty, #beauty and the beast, #alternate earth, #good versus evil, #new adult, #nobility, #deities, #romance series, #who owns your soul
…Summary…
A Conflicted Soul...
Rahda Plesti, a
scientist turned assassin, descends upon the capital city of
Skyscraper City with one goal in mind: kill the Dark Prince and end
the monarchy. Taught to hate everything about Prince Roland Rexus
and the Rexus family, Rahda conceals a ten-year secret that
threatens her success: she's in love with him. Already conflicted
about why he summoned her, everything unravels when she discovers
what the Dark Prince keeps hidden.
A Dark Prince...
Roland Rexus, the mysteriously absent and
secretive dark prince has his hands full ruling a post-royal
revolutionized land inhabited with half-humans, beasts, and robots.
The Dark Prince has his reasons for summoning Rahda Plesti. The
Continent is on the brink of war, one with consequences that not
only impact Skyscraper City, the Dark Prince, and Rahda herself,
but the entire continent as well. He needs Rahda more than she
could ever imagine, but convincing her to go along with his plan
may be his hardest job yet.
A Dark Stain...
The Continent is a place where a dark stain
spreads, the sun no longer shines, where the rain is black, icy,
and laced with metal shrapnel, and where souls are collected and
owned like prized possessions. Together, Rahda and Roland must join
forces and learn to trust each other... or everything and everyone
they hold dear will be lost forever.
[1. Fiction. 2. Fantasy—Fiction. 3. Science
Fiction—Fiction.
4. Romance—Fiction. 5. Deities—Fiction. 6.
Alternate Earth—Fiction.]
Smashwords Edition | License Notes
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of this author. The characters and events portrayed in this ebook
are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is
purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2013 K.A. Shire
All rights reserved.
Cover Design by K.A. Shire
Cover Image: “Fairy” Copyright ©
cokacoka]
[Previous versions of this ebook have been
published with different covers]
[Previous Cover Image: “Dark Beauty”
Copyright © GrenouilleFilms
[Previous Cover Image: “Cosmogony Fantasy”
Copyright © YaroslavGerzhedovich]
Table of Contents
Before
“I wait for the Queen who will restore, who
will reclaim, who will make me whole. Come, I breathe life into
you, but first, I must take it all away.”
Goddess
Preface
“Prophecy says the last daughter of the last
high priestess will reclaim the continent. I both fear and pray for
this truth.”
Fernley Sevradan
ONE
SKYSCRAPER CITY IS NOT USUALLY THIS empty.
It’s a little too eerie for what I expected this evening, which is
a busy, bustling city inhabited with the odd mixture of royalty,
vagabonds, personal pleasure servants, half-humans, and mechanized
robots weaving in and out of the dirty crowds.
“But not today, Rahda,” I say to myself,
clutching my meager belongings even closer to my body as I look
around. Darkness moves in as the daylight fades.
Nothing feels right, not since I left my
mentor yesterday and journeyed here. Turning in the direction I
just came from, I observe the tall trees that lie south and the
mountain range that naturally divides the continent in half. I can
almost see, in the distance, where the Old City sits in relation to
the rest of the mountain range.
A pang thumps my heart. I want to go back,
but I know what’s expected of me, and I must continue on.
I briefly hesitate before I enter through
the metal gates, the doors of which have long been removed, that
separate the Dark Prince’s Skyscraper City and his Palace from
everything else.
I glance up at half-built silver buildings.
Even though their surfaces are coated with dried charcoal dust, the
glinty material still reflects the gloomy, ashy-gray sky and the
weak yellow sun-rays that barely break through the dense and
permanent gray clouds.
It’s been a while since I’ve entered
Skyscraper City, and even though the name is fitting, I’ve always
thought of the place as Gray City. Dreary, rainy, and savage.
A fierce wind picks up, whipping my wool and
metal fabriskin robe angrily at the black boots laced up over my
calves. I jog left, out of the dry, dusty street, and duck under a
shabby, pockmarked awning. I inspect the bright green signs that,
in the Patroxi half-alien language, along with
detailed
pictures, advertise food, clothes, sexual favors, and drugs.
Ah… a Patroxi convenience store.
The wind picks up again and this time, a
clap of thunder crashes overhead. Stepping out from the awning, I
glance up and see the swirling gray-black clouds. Any second now,
it’s going to pour.
Commotion in the Patroxi convenience store
distracts me from the coming storm. The patroness, a tall, thin
Patroxi half-alien, with thick black and orange braids and attired
in a sheer fabriskin robe that leaves nothing to the imagination,
shoos me away from underneath her awning.
“But the storm!” I shout at her in her own
tongue and point skyward.
Dear Goddess
, I think. I don’t
want to be caught in it when it comes down.
“No human step inside,” the patroness says
in broken English as she looks me up and down with a scathing,
black sneer. Her slim, gleaming fingers pluck something from the
belt underneath her thick robe: an amber-colored blade. Without
much of a warning—though I sort of expected it—her long arm swings
at me and I easily jump back, away from the awning and into the
street.
The Patroxi business owner looks up, and I
watch as her features darken. Her face shifts, uncoagulates, turns
translucent, and then hardens into some sort of mask-like shell,
almost like a battle helmet.
Overhead, another crack of thunder vibrates
my insides, and I attempt to reason with the patroness.
“Be gone,” she hisses at me in her own
language, waving her small weapon around.
She sheaths her blade, unhooks the awning,
and brings it flush against the metal wall. I hear a series of
locking sounds coming from the inside just as the first acidic drop
hits my shoulder. Then another. The black droplets scatter in front
of me, splashing into the dust. Bits of black ice
smack, smack,
smack
the ground. The wool and metal fabriskin robe should
protect me against the rain.
Goddess, I hope so.
An electric charge fills the air around me,
and I pull the robe’s hood over my head. Looking into the city, I
can see the topmost part of the Palace Skyscraper blending into
those dark clouds. I’m nowhere near my destination. Even if I
sprint, I won’t make it before I’m drenched. Waiting may not work,
either, since storms around here can last days.
I don’t want to meet
him
looking like
a pathetic dog.
Who am I kidding? It’s rumored that the Dark
Prince has returned to the continent, and even though he’s the
reason I came back to Skyscraper City, I doubt I’ll see him.
Without much choice, I run deeper into the
Gray City as rain strikes me, thunder rumbles, and silver ribbons
of lightning flash overhead like a trifecta of ominous
warnings.
TWO
KEEPING TO THE SIDES OF BUILDINGS, I skirt
around the streets, sprint down alleyways—including the notorious
Widow’s Lane—and make my way through Skyscraper City.
After several knocks at an old friend’s
shoppe, a place I had planned to stop off at before going to the
Palace Skyscraper, I’ve come to realize everyone, including my old
friend Dorni, is
gone
.
And I have a feeling it’s nothing to do with
the storm. As if on cue, a ripple of lightning crashes several
blocks away from me, and it nearly makes me jump out of my own
skin.
Where is everyone?
Pulling my hood further down my face and
cinching my wet fabriskin robe closer to my body, I attempt to
shake off the black feeling of being watched as I leave Dorni’s
silent shoppe, turning corner after corner, but not encountering
one soul.
Up ahead, through the black rain and in the
dark shadows, I see the stone arch like a beacon of hope. Main
street. The Palace is so close.
Almost there
, I think with a
grin. Nervous excitement dances in my veins at the thought of
seeing
him
.
I slip under the stone arch, which is larger
than I remember, and spot the plain, unadorned Palace Skyscraper
door. If I dared look up—no one would be stupid enough to do so in
a black ice rain storm—I would see crooked windows scattered
unevenly around the metallic walls, as if the designer wasn’t a fan
of straight lines or couldn’t be troubled to make the windows
match.
In an odd way, I like how it looks. I’ve
never been a fan of perfection.
I watch the door intently from across the
street.
Should I just knock?
Even though the city is empty,
it never occurs to me to suspect that the Palace Skyscraper might
also be deserted. Otherwise who would have sent the invitation?
A dim yellow streetlight flickers as thicker
bits of black rain hit it. A tinny sound rings out every couple of
seconds. I think I see a shadow dart under one of the windows, but
it disappears before I can get a good look.
Finally, I march across the cobblestone
street, my boots splash in a puddle, and I pound firmly on the
solid bronze door.
***
A fat, dull-silver-colored robot, about half
my size, opens the door. Its tube-like arms block my entrance, but
it hasn’t said anything, either.
I stare mutely before I realize it’s waiting
for
me
to say something.
Honestly, Rahda, this isn’t your
first time looking at a robot. You’ve made dozens of them yourself
over the years.
“Rahda Plesti,” I tell the little robot
servant. “I received an invitation.”
The robot makes a series of clicking noises,
like maybe it’s receiving orders, and, in its eye socket hole, a
thin laser tip comes out and scans my entire body. After a brief
moment it backs up and its arm gestures for me to enter. The door
shuts loudly behind us.