CHAPTERONE
READ BEFORE STARTING
Iknow readers skip author notes, BUT DON’T SKIP THIS ONE.
I intentionally listed this as chapter 1 so it doesn’t get lost in the front matter of the e-book. YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS BEFORE YOU READ.
This book contains spoilers to Eluding Destiny and Origins of the Gods. Honestly, you can’t understand this book unless you’ve read at least one of those series (but preferably both). If you’re just discovering me, I do not recommend reading this book first.
That being said, this book killed me. I put off writing it for almost a year. It’s not a happy book. It isn’t a romance. Even though it does have a (kinda) happy ending, and it revolves around soulmates, it’s a tragic fantasy love story.
The love, however, isn’t the primary focus. There is very little sex as well. This is a story of death, betrayal, and war.
Part of me considered not writing it at all because it’s sad, not very marketable, and I’m mad at where it went. I still think it’s a great book, but the characters took a different route than I had planned for them.
I wanted Lux to be the villain, and Nix and Véa to be the heroes. Unfortunately, they decided I was wrong. They are each other’s adversaries. No one in this book is infinitely good; they’re all morally gray pieces of shit.
(Love ‘em, though)
But a handful of y’all said you wanted it so I wrote it (,:
Enough of this book will be summarized in Ancient War (the next Eluding Destiny book) that you’ll be fine if you don’t read it, though.
If you read it anyway, I’m sorry in advanced for the emotional turmoil.
I promise I’m trying to write books that are less painful lol
-Charlie
CHAPTERTWO
LUX
This place looked just as it did three hundred thousand years ago.
Lux hadn’t made a visit in some time, close to five-hundred years, but it looked just the same.
The glass domed ceiling overhead allowed the light of the red sun to pour in, giving him a view of the planet in the distance and all its beautiful rings. He missed that about Matriaza. The new world only had one moon, and no nearby planets with rings.
Dozens of chairs were still perched around the circular table, and hundreds more stretched up the amphitheater that framed the Conclave Hall. Each chair was taken, as they always were.
Each one, except for the most important one.
The queen’s.
Lux knew few of the men and women in this room aside from her. Many had come and many had passed since he was king. Now, in his own right, he was king again on his new world. Albeit, on a different scale. Rather than a world, he ruled a dimension.
Regardless, the one thing that’d always stayed the same here was Usui. When Lux and his family had moved to the new world, his brother and sister in-law had appointed Usui to rule in their place. Considering the hellscape of a world that she’d inherited, she’d done well. Better than Lux had when he was king; he could say that much.
So why wasn’t she here?
His feet clapped the marble floors with each step, practically silent compared to the chatter of the lords and ladies. He kept his hand on the hilt of his blade. Not because he needed it. He just looked better with it there. It gave the illusion that he was a fearless warrior.
When he made it to the queen’s seat, the one farthest from the door, he tapped the shoulder of the balding man who sat beside it. Wiping ale from his lip, the man looked up. “Oh, hello, Lux.”
“Hello.” He didn’t use the man’s name because he didn’t know it. He knew none of the people here, in fact. It made sense, however, that they knew him, given his infamous reputation. “Isn’t Usui first to these things?”
The man snickered, a deep belly one that ended with a belch. Lux fought the urge to show his disgust over that. When he was king, he never would’ve allowed such disrespect on this sacred ground.