Read Online The Brush of Black Wings by Grace Draven - Free Book Online

spirit, bound to
the sword.
    The king is the sword. The sword
is the king.
    Wraith Kings.
    His heart, already knocking against his
breastbone, stopped for a moment, then restarted on a hard gallop.
Wraith Kings. Bursin help them, let that translation be
wrong.
    She’d listed all five of their names. They
meant nothing to him except one—Megiddo Anastas.
    Megiddo. The word Cael had carried back with
him to the manor, along with the terrified “Run!” that followed it.
Not just a pesky demon lurking about but a fucking Wraith
King!
    Silhara snatched up the half empty inkwell and
hurled it at book shelf. “Gods damn it, Martise!” He glared at the
black stain splattered across book spines and the ink pot rolling
across the floor. No wonder the woman had shrieked loud enough to
bring the rafters down when he’d startled her awake. She’d
discovered the origin of her temple nemesis and fell asleep with
that knowledge humming through her mind.
    Bursin’s wings, all he ever wanted was to be
left alone to live his life in peace! Instead, he’d dealt with
meddlesome priests at his door, an exiled god bent on possession
and world domination and now a demon king traipsing off with his
wife who harbored a reawakened Gift more curse than
blessing.
    A box of quills met the same fate as the ink
pot, shattering to splinters when it struck the wall. Silhara
paced. Demons didn’t scare him. He’d battled a few in years past,
controlled an equal number as well. He’d even summoned one to
frighten Martise in those early days when they’d first met and
viewed each other as adversaries.
    This was different. Far, far different. These
weren’t gibbering toadies serving a greater, more intelligent
force. The Wraith Kings were ancient, powerful beings. Neither
Elder nor human, they were gods in their own right—dark ones who
once led legions of demons across the earth. Warring kingdoms had
united to stop them, the loss of life catastrophic in the
aftermath.
    Knowledge of their existence had faded from
memory and legitimate record as if an entire epoch had chosen
forgetfulness in order to heal. What few tomes spoke of them were
jealously hoarded and guarded by those who traveled the necromantic
path or were stashed away by crow wizards like himself who dabbled
in the black arcana. Silhara was not at all surprised to find that
Martise had made her discovery of the kings in grimoires stolen
from a lich’s barrow.
    Her ability to uncover the most obscure
information was as astounding as her luck was abysmal. Silhara
muttered under his breath. Leave it to his hapless wife to go out
for a morning jaunt of mushroom-hunting and end up drawing down a
damn Wraith King!
    Gurn strode into the library, hands in motion. “Did you find anything?”
    Silhara scowled. “Of course, and it’s
predictably a hundred times worse than I anticipated.”
    He forced himself into a reluctant calm.
Marching back to the temple and leveling it to the ground might
make him feel better, but it would be a brief respite and
ultimately make his task of retrieving Martise much harder.
Instead, he seated himself at the table stacked with her notes,
ordered tea from Gurn and set to work reading what she’d gleaned
from his library.
    One line in her translation drew him time and
again. “The king is the sword. The sword is the king.” Martise had
told him she believed the entity was drawn to that particular
structure by an artifact buried beneath it—a sword that acted as a
tether connecting one world to another. After reading several more
pages of her research, Silhara agreed with her. Beneath the ruin
lay a sword wielded by an abomination long forgotten by all but a
few.
    He tore down half the library shelves,
scattering books and scrolls across the floor as he searched for
gate and lock spells, traveler incantations that bent the space
between worlds and hurtled the luckless and the malcontent into
times and places not their own. Every one of them warned of