The Red Brother (Greatborn Book 2) Read online

  The Red Brother

  Greatborn Book Two

  “The Red Brother” by EA Hooper

  “Greatborn” book series by EA Hooper

  Copyright © 2017 | All rights reserved

  Cover by Ace Book Covers

  Thank you to everyone who has supported my dream of being a writer. Thanks to Ellen for Beta Reading. And a special thanks to my friends Daniel and Harley for the original concepts of Pyre and Radu.

  Content

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  A woman with long, white hair ran with panicked breaths down the twisting passages of a dark castle. She struggled to stay conscious as blood dripped from the vestige of her right arm, which had been severed at the elbow. Even with the injury, she darted at an incredible speed through a long hall, kicking a gust of wind behind her feet. She struck the wall at an intersection and groaned as she fell back.

  The shape of a man far behind her caught her attention just before she turned the corner. She thumbed the handle of the dress sword at her side but kept moving. No time to fight, she told herself. I must save them from this place. Or at least one of them. She pushed her body forward, grunting and breathing like an injured animal.

  Halls and shadows flew past her, and then two figures stepped into the passage ahead of her. She drew her sword, cut them down before they could turn their heads, and sheathed her blade without ever stopping her motion through the hall.

  Damn, I don’t think those were guards, she realized, already spotted with their blood. Was that Molli and Damen? Those poor servants. They helped me through both my pregnancies.

  The angry howls of her pursuer disappeared in the distance as she crossed the passage to the base of the west tower. She charged toward a door with two young guards. Jarim and Arni, she recognized. Jarim had closed his eyes for a second, leaning against the wall, and seemed to have fallen asleep. Arni saw the woman running forward, missing half her arm, and opened his mouth to say something.

  She drew her blade and swiped, decapitating both men before Arni could finish asking, “Ma’am?” Arni gave a look of horror as his head rolled off his body, but Jarim never opened his eyes again.

  She smashed through the door, rushed through a lavish hallway, and reached a blackwood door. The door creaked as she opened it, and she entered a luxurious bedroom with a large crib in the corner. The nursemaids have already left at least, she thought, glancing around the room. She stumbled to the bed and ripped a sheet from under the blanket. The woman bit into the sheet and tore a piece from the rest. She tied the fabric around the vestige of her right arm and used her teeth to tighten it until the blood slowed.

  Tears pecked her cheeks, and she groaned with pain as she covered the injury. I might live yet, she told herself. If I can get to Morris’s Trading Post, he can smuggle me out of the republic. He does owe me a lot of favors. Not to mention, he used to be a physician. I’m sure he can stop my arm from getting infected.

  She approached the crib and stared at two sleeping children. A white-haired baby just a few months old clenched his face like he was having a bad dream. Beside him, his year older brother with black hair slept peacefully.

  The white-haired woman broke into tears as she stared at her sons. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered to the black-haired boy as she reached into the crib for his brother. “I can’t take you both.” The white-haired baby squirmed and whined, but his brother didn’t stir. “Be good, Wyvern. Don’t become like your father.” Tears warmed her cheeks, and she backed away from the crib.

  The silhouette of a man neared the entranceway, and the woman’s body stiffened as his furious face came into the candlelight. The black-haired man limped to the doorframe and held the sides to steady himself. Blood poured from a gaping wound in his chest, staining his regal clothes with red. His pale face, drained of its strength, looked from the crib to her with a vicious gaze.

  A lavender glow rose around the man’s body, and purple aether cackled around him, cracking the door frame and the wooden tiles below his feet. Balls of purple plasma formed around his body, and the center of the plasma darkened until pitch-black.

  Those aren’t like his normal spheres, Amikah thought, eyeing the pulsating aether. Her skin prickled, and the air began to feel heavy. The balls of aether throbbed with power, and the darkness at their cores grew.

  “Honey,” he said. “Put the boy down, or I’ll have to destroy you both.”

  “No,” she said, her face full of defiance and guilt. “You won’t do it. Even if you had the strength left to.”

  “I have more than enough strength,” he replied. “I feel my life slipping away, but I feel a tremendous power rising inside me. More than I’ve ever felt before. I could destroy you and half this castle in an instant if I desired.”

  Purple aether sparked and swirled around him, eating at the nearby walls and spreading cracks along the floors. One of the aether spheres floated too close to the corner, and sparks burned holes through the stone wall.

  “And yet you hesitate,” she said. “After everything you’ve done, you can’t kill me and your own child.”

  “Everything I’ve done?” he yelled. “You’ve killed me, Amikah. I thought you loved me. Why would you betray me like this?”

  “You betrayed the Silver Knights,” she growled. “You and Reaper killed our friends. You killed Looney. He was my best friend, and I even named Valx after his real name. And I heard you and Reaper are planning another war. This republic was meant to be an end to the fighting.”

  “You fool,” he said. “There’s so much you don’t understand. Reaper and I are doing this for the good of Ter’al. We tried to explain to Duster and Trip, but they threatened to turn against us. After that, we tried to keep it a secret, but everyone keeps interfering. I wanted to tell you everything. I wanted to tell you the reason for what we’ve done, but I knew you wouldn’t understand. Just like them. Reaper and I are the only ones that can save Ter’al.”

  A group of soldiers approached from the hall but stopped before they reached the black-haired man’s ever-growing aura of purple aether. The aether spheres had multiplied to a dozen that floated around him with aggressive movements.

  “Sir!” one soldier shouted. “We need to get you to the physician. Please, let us take care of that traitorous woman.”

  “No,” the black-haired man roared. “It’s too late for me and too late for her.” He glared at his wife. “Reaper will succeed. Even without me, he’ll succeed. I’ve already done my part in all this. But what did you think you were going to do? Were you going to revolt against us? Raise my own son as a weapon against the republic?”

  “I only wanted our sons to have a good life,” she answered. “Just let me take Valx someplace far away. Maybe Tunra where I grew up. He can have a happy life away from Reaper’s schemes. He’ll never even know who his father was or the horrors you’ve committed. Please, my love. Let us go.”

  The man raised one hand, and a purple sphere fired across the room. The woman closed her eyes, gasped, and tried to shield the baby in her arm as an explosion rocked the bedroom. The soldiers behind the man screamed and shouted, and when the woman opened her eyes, she stared at what remained of the tower wall. A flood of purple aether had eaten through several walls and rooms, creating an opening to the outside.

  Amikah stared at her husband, and she saw tears in the corners of his eyes. “Go,” he cried. “Run back to the city that you were so eager to escape in your youth. You and Valx can live happily in Tunra, and you can pretend our life together never happened. That you never joined the Silver Knights. That you never met me.”

  “You can’t let her go,” one of the soldiers shouted. “Sir, she’s a traitor.”

  “Let her flee to Tunra, Captain Cydon,” the black-haired man said. “After I’m dead, don’t you dare follow her. Don’t ever search for her.”

  “But sir,” Cydon said.

  “Silence!” the lord screamed at his men, and the soldiers fell backward, trembling with fear. He turned his eyes back to his wife, and they shone with sadness. “Please, go already. I don’t even want to spend my last moment with you.”

  Amikah turned to the gaping hole in the walls of the castle and ran. When she reached the end of the last breach, she jumped to the dirt below. Wasn’t there a garden here before? She glanced at the barren field. A wave of aether had continued after her husband destroyed the walls, and sparks of purple light burned across the field. It ate away the plants and burned the trees black, and even the sky above turned and toiled as wisps of purple light created a haze over the castle.

  She glanced at the hole in the castle. The figu
re of her husband, covered in a swirling haze of purple and black, lurched over the crib and stared at his remaining son. His own soldiers cowered in the corner, too afraid to approach the swirling aether around him. Amikah listened and could hear the whimpering of her dying husband and the crying of her son Wyvern.

  The white-haired woman choked back tears and ran across the dying garden. Overhead, dark clouds tinted with purple swirled over the castle, and then lightning struck in the distance. By the time Amikah escaped into the city, a powerful storm roared over Castle Stoneborn. The hairs prickled on the back of her neck.

  I feel like he’s still chasing me, she thought when she reached Morris’s Trading Post. I feel like he’s standing right over my shoulder.

  The feeling lasted until she crossed the boundaries of the city the next morning. She hid with her son in the back of a covered wagon. When they were a good distance from the city, Amikah peeked outside the cover. The purple haze of storm clouds still swirled in the distance.

  They haven’t gone away, she thought. Maybe they never will. It’s his fury and his sadness. It’s never going to end, and it’s all because of me.

  Chapter 1

  Snow fell over the battlefield, casting a blanket on the two hundred dead men on the hillside. Western soldiers stomped through the snow, slashing the throats of injured Northerners and stealing their clothes and weapons.

  Valx walked down the hill, pulling the hood of his fur coat over his helm to keep warm. He had stolen the coat from a Northerner after the previous battle, and it had kept him warm as they trekked across the border into the Northern winter. His eighteenth birthday had come and passed, and he had celebrated it on the battlefield. The closest thing to a present he had received was a leather tunic and a wooden shield after he and Yahn joined a group of Western soldiers heading north. The tunic had a cut across the front, and the shield had been chipped numerous times.

  I’m lucky to have Yahn watching my back, he thought, staring at his shield. He found a new one in the snow and pulled it from the hands of a dead Northerner. Maybe this will be more useful for me than you.

  He continued down the hillside, passing two young Westerners as they argued over who got to keep the breastplate of the enemy captain. Past them, he found a Northern soldier lying in the snow and holding a horrible stomach wound.

  “My guts won’t stay in,” the dying man wept as Valx approached. “They just won’t stay inside me.”

  A blade of blue aether formed in Valx’s free hand, and the man’s eyes widened. Valx decapitated him before he could finish saying, “Aetherblade.” Word had spread about Valx and Yahn around the border cities where their company had been clearing out Northern camps. Both enemies and allies alike had taken to calling him either Wight or Aetherblade, and Yahn had started using his old marked name, Shiver.

  Valx stared at the body of the man he had just slain. Twenty-two, he counted. No wait, that’s twenty-three. A sick feeling crept into his stomach. I can’t lose count of how many people I’ve killed. I’ll carry that weight to the end of my days. That’s what separates me from people like my father and brother.

  He glanced at the thick, fur boots that the dead man wore and then down at his own shoddy boots. My feet are getting cold, and those look about my size. He pulled the boots off the Northerner’s feet and put them on his own.

  Their captain whistled, and Valx tossed his old boots to the snow and followed the other soldiers as they gathered. Yahn nodded to him as he approached, and they joined the crowd. Altogether, they had maybe a hundred men left standing.

  Captain Yoland looked around at the faces of his men as they gathered. “That could’ve gone better,” he said with a sigh. “I guess most of us are alive, but we lost some good men. Big Jole is still with us, I see.”

  “Of course, I am,” the biggest man in the group replied.

  “We got Shiver and Wight still,” the captain noted.

  “No surprise there,” Big Jole shouted. “Them two are gods-sent. Might as well be asking if the sun come up.”

  A few soldiers chuckled.

  “How about the Lucal Brothers?” the captain asked, looking through the crowd.

  Three men with black hair and crooked teeth pushed their way to the front. “We lost Gibson,” one of the three replied with a disappointed look. “He took about seven men since we joined you guys, though. So, he did better than Anton.”

  “Poor Anton, he didn’t even last two battles,” one of the other brothers said. “Pa would’ve been disappointed if his heart hadn’t of failed in the first one.”

  “You sure you three shouldn’t head home?” Big Jole asked. “You already lost half the men in your family. At least I got a couple sons back home.”

  “Nah,” one brother replied. “Ma said she don’t want none of us to come home. She got tired of us always fighting and threatening to kill each other.”

  “At least this way we’re useful,” another brother said with a snicker. The brother beside him elbowed him, and soon all three were wrestling on the ground.

  “Hey, cut that crap,” the captain yelled. “Save it for those Northern bastards. If you three survive the next fight, you’ll be real soldiers yet. There’s a village north of here that’s been sending supplies to their camps along our border. We’ll take out that supply line, then we’ll have a route to our forces gathering for a counterattack in Lord Wyvern’s territory.”

  “I thought we were just clearing these camps,” a lanky, wild-eyed man yelled from the crowd.

  “Who’s that?” the captain said. “Oh, Geoff. You’re still alive?”

  “He hid behind me the whole battle,” Big Jole noted.

  “I was watching your back,” Geoff replied.

  “I don’t need someone watching my back if every Northerner behind me is dead,” Jole said with a hearty laugh.

  “Sir,” Geoff told the captain. “I only joined this group because I thought we were dealing with the border camps. I don’t care much for joining a suicidal company that’s about to walk into a Northern lord’s domain.”

  “Well, what the hell do you think we’re doing this for?” Big Jole said. “We’re here to kick those Northerners’ buttholes out through their mouths.”

  “I only joined the army to get out of a prison sentence,” Geoff said. “Now, I’m all for killing Northerners and looting their camps and villages, but this counter invasion isn’t going to work. Half our forces will get cut down before we even meet up. We’ve lost two-thirds of our original company since we started this campaign.”

  “And we’ve picked up a couple dozen others,” the captain said. “Defeating the North requires a united West. I’m not going to deviate from the plan. We’re going to capture supplies in the next village and then regroup. Taking Lord Wyvern’s castle is more important than anything we’re doing here. His territory gives the North a direct path to move their forces into our kingdom. If we capture Castle Stoneborn, we’ll have a strong buffer against the North. They might even give up after that.”

  “It won’t happen,” Geoff replied.

  “And why not?” Big Jole asked.

  “It just won’t,” Geoff said. “Nothing ever happens like you think it will. Take it from me.”

  “Enough chatting,” Captain Yoland said, looking at the sky. “It looks like we’re about to see our first Northern snowstorm. A real one. Not like those little snows we’ve been seeing. Big Jole, take a dozen men with you to get the supplies we left behind and bring them to the camp on the hill. The rest of you, start ransacking the camp for food and supplies. We need to be ready to leave in the morning.”

  Big Jole nodded and collected men to follow him.

  Valx and Yahn went to the camp at the top of the hill and searched through tents. “These won’t help us much with the snowstorm approaching,” Valx said, eyeing several tents that had been torn in the battle.

  “That’s my fault,” Yahn told him. “During the battle, I found myself up here facing several men by myself. Since I didn’t have to worry about hurting any allies, I went full force with my power. Been a long time since I got to do that. Felt nice, but I might’ve overdone it. I got that backlash you get when you overuse your power, and I feel like I’m on the verge of passing out.”