A War of Silver and Gold-Book #1 - Minerva J. Kaelin(ang.)

A War
Of Silver
And Gold
Book One
M i n e r v a J. K a e l i n
Copyright © Minerva J. Kaelin 2018
The right of to be identified as the Author of the
work has been asserted by her accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may
be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means without
the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be
otherwise circulated in any form of bindings or
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without a similar condition being imposed on the
subsequent purchaser.
ISBN 9781977065940
To my Sister, my mother and to my father
But wishes are only granted in fairy
tales.
Simone Elkeles
The City
1
Once, an old priestess said that death keeps no
calendar. For Cassia though, Death kept drawing
white curlicues on black paper counting her days,
one by one carefully.
She grunted, her arms and legs sore from
running hours before the sky turned cerulean, but
still, no sunlight broke through the forest. She
cursed and the trees around her hummed in
disapproval. She needed to stop and draw a breath.
She couldn’t stop, though. Not when the
growling lycan approached her, snarling and
barking like a feral beast. The wounds on her legs
stung like ice rubbed on skin; her silver blood
marred the white snow, leaving a trail of blood
whenever she took a frantic step.
Fangs, sharp of knives, enveloped her right leg.
An animalistic growl echoed from behind her. She
fell forward, landing hard on her front, bones
crackling underneath her heavy clothing and the
daggers strapped on her belt. The lycan squirmed at
her feet, pawning and dragging her further down on
the snow. She thrashed and twisted onto her side.
Pain.
So much pain enveloped her.
Her blood fought against the lycan’s bane
struggled its way through the wounds on her legs.
With a yelp, she kicked the creature’s face. She
winced, feeling the wolf’s bane coursing through
her.
She raised her head, looking skyward, praying to
Ramos, the God of Afterlife and Sunlight. The
soreness spreading through her leg up to her hip.
The prayers, mere grunts on her lips.
A hawk’s gnarl reverberated through the forest.
The brown feathered creature flew over them
eastward.
Her eyes followed the bird. The hazel hawk gave
another final snarl before it disappeared through the
forest.
To her left, a noble tree had freed its roots from
the ground as if the gods had finally listened.
She grabbed onto the roots, the hard bark cutting
her palm through her leather gloves. The wolf
barked and pawed the wounds of her leg. She
braced for another assault. She didn’t give up; she
couldn’t give up no matter how bone rumbling the
pain was. She threw a tentative glance at her belt,
searching for proof that her daggers were still safely
strapped on her belt.
The silver shone under the fading light in the
forest, but she couldn’t reach them.
Her mind shut down, enclosing itself in a cocoon
of white spider threads. Instinct took over her,
overwhelming her senses and warming her chest.
She hit violently its face with her boots, praying not
to die a disgraceful death on a lycan’s fangs. She
swallowed the nasty essence of death that grasped
around her.
The cocoon around her broke.
She snarled at the creature.
It was either the lycan’s life or hers.
Sweat ran cold down her spine, on her sides and
over her gloved, bloody palms. The breeze
composed a foil of frost over her skin. Her breaths
clouded around her in white pillows of mist.
The roots in her palms gave away slowly. The
wood cracked and broke in several places as
the lycan grabbed her leg tighter between its teeth
and gave her skin a violent bite.
Her mind snapped.
The sound of hooves and paws pulsed through
the forest ground. The breeze carried the awful
smell of lycans over to her. She winced again. The
stench came closer and closer to her.
She prayed. She prayed again to Nature and
Ramos. She could barely do something else. She
prayed that dawn would come sooner and
the lycans would stay away, would burn on the face
of daylight, and would turn to iridescent stone. The
thrumming of her heart, a stentorian drum inside
her chest, was barely audible as the lycan’s growls
seemed to blend with her own.
She let go of her one hand around the root of the
tree in an attempt to save herself. She grasped
frantically around her waist, fumbling on her belt.
Her fingertips wrapped around the dagger hanging
from her left side.
The beast growled and glided her on the forest
floor. She flexed her muscles and took a
faltering breath, trying to find equilibrium in her
thoughts.
My life, or the lycan’s.
She reminded herself.
It was the honour of a witch against the honour
of a beast.
Kill or be killed.
She clawed onto the walls of her remaining
strength, urging it to surface and spare her.
She bent her body up, her moves swift as the
winds around them, and planted the dagger firmly
onto the lycan’s heart. The creature screamed,
growled, winced, and dug its teeth further into her
skin, but she remained unmoving.
She could feel her dagger treacherously
sheathed into the furry flesh of the beast.
The piercing of the flesh and the crushing of the
bones sent a surge of old, withering memories back
to her mind. She growled as the skin tissue ripped in
two, felt the blood as it ran abundantly onto the
land. She smelled the thoughts that emitted from
the stench of the monster’s blood.
She smelled it. The odour of death.
The monster stopped moving and its jaws
relaxed around her leg. Its blue eyes lifelessly
stared up at her and cold breeze rushed to her side.
She exhaled and pulled the dagger from its heart.
Her eyes fluttered closed for a moment at the
realisation that she cheated meticulously on Death
again. She cleared the blade against the creature’s
grey, furry flesh.
Filth. Monster. Beast.
It was another sacrifice before Death’s altar, a
sacrifice that spared her another day. Time, out
there in the wild, was of the essence.
She sheathed her dagger, kicked the monster one
last time between the eyes with her good leg and
stood, wincing at the pain that shot through her
right leg.
The snow began to shimmer like little diamonds
around her, sparkling like precious gems, the gems
of Nature.
Dawn had come at last.
It had come.
She shook her head and reached for her satchel.
The pack of lycans was moving away, attempting to
hide in their caverns until nightfall again. A never
ending circle.
They were afraid of the Sun and for that, she
could not have been more grateful. She pulled the
satchel over her back. There was no time for taking
a look at those nasty holes where her skin was
ripped.
She twisted on her feet, glancing at her writhing
prey on the snow. The lycan had transformed,
turning back to being a man, golden haired and fair
skinned and broad shoulders and long limbs. His
eyes must have been blue like his lycan’s.
Lycans were a threat to her territory, a threat to
her, to her temple. They were savage monsters.
The castle was near.
She could listen to her courtiers singing prayers,
to the running waters of the waterfalls, to the fuss
of the halls, to the twittering of the morning bird.
She could see the first dark smokes of the
chimneys; see how the roofs glittered with the
remnants of snow.
She shook her head again, dissolving every
thought of peace. She bent down, placed her hand
on her injured leg and concentrated her energy on
healing the sliced flesh. She stood and lunged
forward, grabbing the dead flesh of the lycan’s legs,
willing herself to harden and not pity the creature.
Through her mind, the words of her mentor
priestess echoed. ‘A monster must always be
returned, dead and hanging upside down from the
hunter’s hands to the altar.’
It was a way to preserve that her power was to
last above all the elves in her court. Human, lycan,
fairy, elf, dwarf, a monster of the night, a monster
of the day, all were a threat if they roamed around
her territory unannounced; all were to face death
from her blade, from her hands. Cassia had to kill
to let her people know that she was their ruler, that
they were safe under her careful hand.
She had never failed to kill a monster.
She was a general of the King, a cold-blooded
killer.
She grabbed the monster from its legs, bound
them with a silver rope and pulled it over her
shoulders. The blood dripped from its mouth onto
the snow, leaving a trail of red filthiness. She leant
down and grabbed her silver sword. The leathery
grip of her sword felt clammy and slippery in her
hand from all that sticky blood coating her skin.
She pushed the sword into the sheath hanging
from her waist and began down the path to the city.
She could listen to the blood of
the lycan drizzling onto the snow, drop by drop,
freezing everything around her. The trees were
uneasy as they woke up from their night slumber;
the winds were cold, colder than they should have
been.
That was enough, she had enough. It was the
fifth lycan for the month that she had to kill.
The curse of the North had been unleashed
onto the lands.
The gods were plotting something.
2
Cassia winced. The path back to the city was not
an easy one and her leg was throbbing.
She was the Great Huntress of the Northern
beasts.
Blood caked over her clothes and skin. That title
was nothing more than a child’s dream.
A few years ago the King of All Nevdori
Elves had given away this territory to a female elf.
Had she not proved herself to the King and she
would have rotted in some random elven prison.
Her kin, amongst the most despised of Elves.
The gods called them Nevdori meaning darkness in
their language.
Cassia was a mere half-breed though, shunned
from most territories of the Adanei –the Elves of
Light- because of the Dark Blood running in her
veins. She was darkness remade.
She shook her head, disgusted from the turn that
her thoughts had taken. Her leg gave another throb.
She stifled the pain and took another glance
towards the city.
The sun gleamed over it, splaying its brightness
over the walls and the high roofs of the buildings.
She was the only female Nevdor that had ever ruled
over a city, a pang of pride rose in her throat, but
she swallowed it and continued down her path.
She pulled the decaying beast behind her, she
walked past the Iron city gates; the few elves that
had woken up and decided to have an early start
about the city roads turned their eyes towards her.
A Lady bathing in the strange miasma of lycan
blood and her own blood. They glanced at her from
afar, myriad emotions flaring towards her.
She cleared her throat and tipped her chin up in
an attempt to suppress her fractious nervousness. I
had killed, she reminded herself and she continued
to do so fearlessly of the consequences that might
befall on her soul. She ventured out, every morning,
patrolled the lands about the city and killed
potential threats in the dark. Darkness never
terrified her; it never made her crawl away. Instead,
it allured her and called to her with a sweet voice
and tender hands.
The males around her wore their everyday
uniform of leather and iron; they clapped every
time she returned to the castle with the body of a
lycan or a beast clinging at her feet. Their culture
was savage, savage and unyielding. None of them
would have endured the cold and desolate place of
these lands if it was different. They would have
died from Adanei blade, a most ungrateful death.
Cassia was brought up in court, with ladies and
lords and silks and gold. Deep down, though she
hated every moment of it, waited until the end of
her tutoring with alacrity. She had been afraid that
tomorrow was not to come. She knew what it felt
like to be imprisoned. She knew how death smelled
and tasted.
She stepped towards the white, circular altar in
the centre of the City. The windows of the temple
were open to welcome the sunlight. The old
building shone like ivory against the light. The dark,
yellowing marble seemed estranged that day, like
something dark lurked inside.
Cassia lowered the lycan onto the ground before
the altar. The heavy restraints around his legs
landed with a thud. She grabbed the dagger from
around her waist. She could have skinned the
creature alive and never come to care, but her
hands guided the dagger back to her belt as if
something nudged her inside and prevented her
from further hurting the wilting creature.
It was the easiest kill she had in a while. Other
lycans would crawl after she had sliced them with
her daggers, they would scream and howl and gnarl
for their pack to save them.
The blond male before her had done no such
thing.
The City around her awoke slowly, the small
streets bursting to a silent form of life, then the
buzzing of people took over the land, and the
warmth of the sun approached Cassia. The glow
spread over her face, seeped into her skin, calmed
her soul. She stood towards the sun, collecting the
lingering rays of contentedness it sprayed over her.
The dark, tall walls of the houses and shops
illuminated against the gentle light of the morning
sun and the incandescent blue of the sky.
The temple’s heavy door grunted open, gliding
against the ground. The skies above were silent that
day as if something had happened, or waited to
happen, Cassia’s instincts told her and her soul
whispered to her ears.
“Catastrophe!”
Cassia’s eyes snapped at the approaching
priestess wearing her pure, white frock. She
debated whether she should draw her dagger and
attack the priestess instead, but she shook her head,
dismissing the thought in an instant.
“Tragedy, my Lady has befallen our bright City.”
Her white legs unafraid of the cold morning bite
flashed from her long chiffon dress. The necklace
around her neck shone as the sun’s rays hit the red
garnet in the middle. She walked, skimmed the
stairs before the temple and stood before Cassia,
her staff at hand, the top of the wood carved and
shaped to resemble a serpent head with green eyes.
The blond hair at the priestess’ head billowed
with the winds, her flawless features, sharp and
devilish, made Cassia’s stomach turn. Priestesses
as Nadeer had no position in Cassia’s noble court.
She had never been religious, never, not once,
but having a temple full of those charlatans in every
Nevdorian City was considered a blessing from
Nature.
“Tragedy!” Nadeer shouted. “Nature spare us!”
She fell on her knee, grabbing the lycan by the hair,
smoothing back the dirtied blond locks like a loving
mother. “You killed a creature of Nature again, my
Lady.”
Cassia clenched her jaw, her hands idly
searching for her dagger again, and said, “It’s the
tradition, Nadeer.”
“Tradition or not, I do not know how this
monstrosity was achieved.”
Nadeer bowed her head in a silent prayer and
extended her hand towards Cassia. Her breath
hitched as Nadeer’s intentions dawned on Cassia.
She was going to save the lycan. Hot, willing rage
flashed over Cassia’s mind. She would have never
allowed such a thing, not in her city, not in her
court.
“Lady, give me your dagger.”
Cassia shook her head again, a snarl surfaced
over her lips, trying to intimidate the priestess.
“Now, that is something I cannot do.”
“He is alive, Lady, whether you like it or not. He
is alive, a miracle, but he is.”
Cassia gripped the handle of her dagger tightly
between her fingers and gritted her white teeth.
“These beasts do not deserve my kindness.”
“But that is something that must be done, or else
our city will perish. It’s gods’ will.”
Cassia grabbed the dagger from her waist,
infuriated at the priestess pestering around,
throwing her religious hogwash towards Cassia’s
citizens and award curses to the elves that refused
her shelter. Cassia meticulously nudged the edge of
the blade at Nadeer’s chin, she pressed slightly, the
skin didn’t break, but Nadeer winced. It was all
Cassia needed to see and understand that her
message was rooted in that brainless blond head.
“Then your gods better not mess with me,
Priestess.” Cassia flickered her wrist and
straightened her back, the dagger safe at her hand
out of the vile creature’s reach. “Cry for the
monster all you want, but if you dare heal its
wounds, or preserve it in the temple, I will know
and your world would stop being as prestigious as it
is now.”
Nadeer glanced up at Cassia, spite filled her
senses and her soul. “Cruel you are, cruel your way
may be, Lady Cassia.”
“Then may it be. It had never been easy
anyway.”
3
The feral, silver crown on Cassia’s head irritated
her scalp and she fought the urge to move it away,
dispose of it from her head and hold it in her hand.
The council chamber had been silent,
unnervingly silent. The eyes of the Stewards in the
chamber were glued upon their Lady, sitting on her
throne in the middle of the room. Cassia could feel
their heated, hateful glances pawning all over her,
infecting and infuriating her.
She pulled her eyes away from the ebony floor
and looked back at the elves, the embers of hatred
burned fiery in her glance, dark and uninviting.
After all, she had a reputation to uphold.
Most people in the room had seen the
heinousness she had committed during the Great
War. She couldn’t remember a time in her life
where she possessed clean, unbloodied hands. Her
palms had ever been coated in crimson and brown
hues of dried blood. She had taken enough lives to
make her live for an eternity.
The Stewards around her bowed, but only when
she looked at them and almost snarled, baring a pair
of ivory, elongated canines. She was the notorious
Hybrid Lady, fangs, wings, monster and half blood
human.
The marmoreal throne donned a welcoming
stiffness to her back, reminding her where she was
and of the crows that glared at her from the back of
the chamber. Her hands gripped the marble
armrests. The silver, curved talons on her fingertips
gouged onto the red velvet coating. She crossed her
legs, the white, scarred skin shone underneath the
zibeline, red gown.
The green and blue mismatched petrifying shade
of her eyes snapped at the elves, irritated that the
meeting had still not started. No one spoke.
For many years, she fought with claws and
talons to beat the Stewards into submission to her
crown. She was a female and back until the King
gave her the city, she-elves had no position in court.
She thrust the talons on her fingertips against the
velvet, tearing the fabric apart. A few Stewards
winced at the sound.
She was the Lady there. She had been for over
two hundred years, she had slain creatures in the
woods, and she had more blood spluttered around
her soul than they had all together. She knew death,
she knew what it felt like to be imprisoned, and she
knew what it felt like to be the prey of other
creatures. No one could belittle her. No one would
dare.
Cassia eyed the blond elf –Lord Devon- at the
front row of Stewards around her, his eyes intent on
devouring the sight of her legs. She said, her voice
was cold, but it burned deep like incandescent iron,
“When you are done looking at my legs, Lord
Devon, you can speak.”
That old lecher. Cassia was almost certain he
had taken more mistresses in his bed than lives with
his sword. He flinched at her voice and shook his
head. “I didn’t stare, Lady.”
She narrowed her eyes at him and gripped the
throne’s armrests tighter in her hands. “Let’s
believe you this time, Devon. Just this time.”
He nodded curtly, his head bowed low; his
pointed ears peaked under the golden circlet on his
head. “My Lady Cassia, apart from a few lycans
there had been nothing else to report.”
“No Adanei, or human crossed our borders?”
“No, not that I know of.”
“I hope you do,” she tilted her head, her lips
pursed and raised a stubborn eyebrow. “And the
lycan that I slaughtered today?” She shook her
head and pursed her lips. “No one knows
apparently of these creatures, no matter how many
times I inquire about them.”
“Lady Cassia,”
She raised her hand, and glanced away from
him, silencing Devon. Cassia had no need to quarrel
with the insolent elf, but she would prove that she
wa...