The Nightborn Read online

  Also by Isabel Cooper

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  No Proper Lady

  Lessons After Dark

  Highland Dragons

  Legend of the Highland Dragon

  The Highland Dragon’s Lady

  Night of the Highland Dragon

  Dawn of the Highland Dragon

  Highland Dragon Warrior

  Highland Dragon Rebel

  Highland Dragon Master

  Stormbringer

  The Stormbringer

  The Nightborn

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  Books. Change. Lives.

  Copyright © 2021 by Isabel Cooper

  Cover and internal design © 2021 by Sourcebooks

  Cover art by Kris Keller/Lott RepsInternal art by NataliaBarashkova/iStock

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

  Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  sourcebooks.com

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Part I

  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

  Part II

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Part III

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from the Epic Conclusion of the Stormbringer Series

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  To Pedro Wrobel, who once played my inspiration for all good-hearted noblemen in fancy clothes.

  Part I

  Call: What was the First Betrayal?

  Response: Gizath, secondborn of the younger gods, slew his sister Letar’s mortal lover by ambush and deceit.

  Call: How many times was he a traitor in that action?

  Response: Three, for he was false to Veryon in the attack, to Letar in believing himself right to do so, and to the better self he had been before he struck the blow.

  Call: What was his fate?

  Response: He was cast out beyond creation, where he nurses his hatred for mortals.

  Call: Does he still seek to harm us?

  Response: Always.

  —Litany of Letar’s Blades, Part I

  No, I must dispute the conclusions of my learned—I will not say biased, though it’s known to all that his mother was from Criwath—colleague. It is true that we in Heliodar, by good fortune and geography, were able to preserve ourselves from the worst of the storms: it is a fact that my countrymen thank the Lord of the Wild and the Golden Lady for each day. Nor would I wish to be thought unsympathetic to the great devastation others faced. Letar has taken many souls into death, and each is mourned. But I will maintain that it is good fortune, nothing more. Thyran, the creator of those storms, may be the foulest blot on our fair city’s history, but nobody can imagine that he bore any love for the land that bore him. I submit this: he had no scruples when it came to killing his bride, her paramour, and ten servants. Why would he be more merciful to his city than to his own house?

  —The Honorable Baniki Yansyak, speaking at the

  Midsummer Debates, Year 55 after the Storms

  Chapter 1

  She was going to die.

  Yathana would have reminded her that everyone was going to die. But Yathana was leagues away, where the spirits that charged the magic of each Sentinel’s sword-spirit went to rest after exhausting themselves channeling the gods’ gifts. That burst of magic had left Branwyn with temporary metal skin and an absence at the back of her mind—which was normal—while facing a horde of malformed, malicious creatures.

  That had become normal, too, over the last few days.

  Now the twistedmen came on, pouring through the shattered gate of Oakford. They swarmed past the colossus of warped bodies that shambled across the yard, a moving charnel construction that held their leader, Thyran.

  Branwyn knew the name, a shadow from the past given horrible life. She’d glimpsed the man himself, but her more immediate concern was his army.

  Together, they formed a writhing mass of oversized claws and skinless-seeming red flesh. Some looked as though their faces were melting. Others had the beaks of birds, full of teeth and traps for the unwary who viewed them too closely.

  She threw herself at them. Talons screeched as they ran along her arms. Black blood hissed in the air. The enemy never became individual bodies, simply one entity with lines of vulnerability: a leg here, a neck there. Branwyn carved a path through the shifting wall of flesh, Yathana slicing away what obstructed her.

  Hallis’s voice rose above the shrieking of Thyran’s troops, yelling the signal that Branwyn had been waiting for.

  One of the beaked creatures had caught her by the wrist when the word reached her. It yanked her forward, opening its mouth too wide. The shifting gray presence within had entranced more than one of Branwyn’s companions to their death—but now the sigil on her forehead let her mind turn the charm as easily as her metal skin turned claws. She spun into the monster’s grip, let Yathana’s edge take its head from its shoulders, and then, when she’d made a half circle, started running.

&n
bsp; She wasn’t alone. A dozen others, soldiers stationed at Oakford and half-trained peasants who’d stayed to face the siege, kept pace, leading Thyran’s troops on. They raced for the middle of the shattered town, where archers hid behind piles of rubble and the ground concealed a dozen sinkholes.

  The twistedmen followed. Arrows did take some, and others stumbled, becoming easy marks for the archers’ second volley or simply having to slow down, letting Branwyn and her companions gain a few precious feet of space.

  More to the point, they had followed, away from the rest of the troops, away from the walking abattoir that carried Thyran. Branwyn saw the construct off to the side as she turned to fight. It lurched onward, crushing the wounded beneath its rotting feet, and Amris var Faina, Thyran’s foe from a hundred years before, charged forward to meet it.

  One of Thyran’s wizards raised its boneless hands and sent a bolt of icy power screaming toward Branwyn. She threw herself sideways to avoid it, crashed against a pile of rubble, and staggered backwards, slashing out at a twistedman that was grabbing for her.

  She regained her footing in time to see Katrine, her fellow Sentinel, and Sir Olvir, an earnest draft horse of a man who served the god of justice, rush Thyran’s mount from behind. It staggered as two swords sank into the backs of its knees; in that instant, Amris leapt with all his strength. His blade hit the center of the colossus.

  Then three of the twistedmen were on Branwyn—an arrow had taken out the wizard, thank the gods—and she turned her full attention to them.

  Yathana pierced the rib cage of the first with her usual ease, the metal of a soulsword divinely sharp even when the inhabiting spirit wasn’t present. One of the soldiers jabbed the second in the side with a spear—not a fatal wound but enough of a distraction that Branwyn had time to yank her sword free and plunge it into a more vital organ.

  She simply slammed her head into that of the third. Its gaping maw sought purchase on her face for a futile second before Branwyn’s full weight hit it, knocking it backwards and into a hatchet that had only cut firewood a few days before.

  For a few heartbeats, the world was clear around her. The construct had collapsed into a pile of corpses. The air was heavy with blood and smoke, much of it acrid. Darya, who was immune to poison, had led a squad of the twistedmen into a building and then set fire to a nasty packet of herbs.

  Branwyn inhaled deeply anyhow.

  There were still too many of the twistedmen, she realized. Only eight of the people she’d led still remained. She knew that she had only a few more minutes until she became flesh again, with the enhanced strength and skill of any Sentinel but no more.

  And Thyran rose from the mountain of dead meat glowing with sickly fire. Olvir and Katrine stood below him. They’d been helping Amris to his feet, but now all three were still. Branwyn saw Darya start running toward them and knew that she herself was too far away to possibly intervene.

  She was going to die.

  Everyone was going to die.

  There was nothing to say to the soldiers around her. There was nothing to do but face her death as bravely as she could. More twistedmen were running toward them already. Branwyn braced herself, lifted Yathana—

  —and saw the twistedmen freeze in place, staring at the same multicolored radiance that Branwyn glimpsed from the corner of her own eye as it surrounded Katrine, Olvir, and Amris. Thyran’s flame froze, too, when it struck the shimmer, and then went hurtling back at its creator.

  They had a moment. Branwyn didn’t know why, but she knew they’d better use it.

  She broke into a run, crossing the distance toward the nearest still-distracted twistedman, saving her breath but shouting a battle cry in her mind.

  From beyond Oakford’s walls, she heard the clear, sonorous sound of a war-horn.

  Reinforcements had arrived.

  Chapter 2

  Star Palace of Heliodar, five months later

  “Madam Branwyn Alanive, liaison from Criwath.”

  The better part of the name wasn’t hers, but Branwyn stepped forward.

  The polished marble floor of Heliodar’s Star Palace was smooth beneath her boots. She moved slowly as much to avoid a humiliating slip as she did to lend the proper ceremony to her entrance. All eyes fastened themselves on her.

  There were sixteen in all. Four belonged to the footman who’d announced her and the scribe in the corner, a weary middle-aged functionary. The other six sets were all from Heliodar’s High Council, the assortment of strangers that her mission depended on impressing.

  Branwyn bowed low, studying the faces that regarded her from the dais as best she could. Reflexively she categorized their owners by likely physical threat. Three—a fox-featured, dark-haired woman; a plump councillor in spectacles; and an oily man in more concealing, plainer clothes than the others—were negligible to average: healthy but unused to physical work, and with no evidence of any experience in combat. The one in a purple surcoat, with gray hair and a similarly gray mustache, bore himself like he’d been trained for war at one point, but his age would work against him in a fight. Seated next to him was a man of about Branwyn’s thirty-odd years and, as far as she could tell while he was sitting down, roughly her height, whose sleeveless russet-colored doublet showed arms that tended toward sinew rather than bulk, but that were firm and clearly muscled all the same.

  He’d be a quick one, Branwyn judged, and his dark eyes were keen. He and the footman would be the ones to watch, assuming that the latter had taken some lessons to go with the silver-hilted sword he wore.

  A lifetime of Sentinel training sorted her opponents in a heartbeat. It took longer for her to remember that none of that applied.

  Her fight wasn’t physical this time. The sixth member of the High Council, the one in the gold circlet who looked like a skeleton with half an ounce of flesh stretched over it, had more power than any of the others in the chamber. Even he, High Lord Rognozi, had no absolute authority.

  The marble beneath her feet, and the earth that lay below it, were foreign ground in more than one sense. Branwyn spoke with more conscious awareness of each breath than she’d needed in any fight over the last fifteen years.

  “My lords and ladies,” she began, voice coached to a pleasing cadence and words long since memorized on her journey. “I come with these messages from King Olwin.”

  With a gesture she knew to be smooth, she proffered two sealed letters. The contents would repeat her message and confirm her identity, provided that the council didn’t think she’d murdered the real Branwyn Alanive on the road and taken her place.

  The footman, resplendent in a purple coat with gold braid, took the letters from her and transported them the entire twenty feet to the platform where Heliodar’s rulers sat. Branwyn waited.

  She felt overdressed in her wool gown and bronze torc, and not in terms of finery. Most of Heliodar’s council wore gemmed circlets, rings on many fingers, and an assortment of silk and velvet that would have made tailors and courtiers in Criwath weep with envy. They wore the silk thin, though, and the velvet slashed open. Rognozi’s violet and silver brocade was long-sleeved and his only ornament was the circlet, but age and frailty likely played a part there. Branwyn didn’t know what lay behind the long, plain black sleeves and high collar of the oily man, but even his clothing was far thinner than she would’ve expected in the Hunter’s Month, midway through autumn.

  She should have expected it, though. Heliodar, out of all the human kingdoms, still had the magical strength for fireless heat, as well as for the pure white globes of light that illuminated the council’s private audience chamber. Those who had power generally weren’t shy about showing it off.

  Rognozi opened the letters with a silver knife and a shaking hand. He read slowly while Branwyn waited, ignoring the way sweat was making her back itch.

  “Likely their war,” the fox-faced woman whisper
ed to the mustached man, confident that her words wouldn’t carry.

  Normally, she would have been right, but Branwyn had gotten her minor blessing from Tinival, god of justice and truth, when she’d been reforged as a Sentinel. The whisper and what came after reached her ears clearly, as on an unfelt wind.

  Their war. She stifled her response.

  “Good to have real word instead of rumors,” the lord with the mustache muttered in response.

  “Official word, at any rate,” said the woman.

  The ostentatiously plain one was eyeing Branwyn as though she were a dog that might bite—or had just not been house-trained. The one in spectacles was blinking, frowning either in nervousness or perplexity. The youngest was simply watching, his pale, narrow face alert. He wore a bronze circlet on his shoulder-length dark hair, unlike Rognozi’s gold or the others’ silver: Branwyn wasn’t sure what that meant.

  Criwath and the Order had been able to tell her very little. Heliodar, being the least affected by the winters that ravaged the world, needed few Sentinels, and those who went there didn’t have much to do with the nobility. The High Council and King Olwin carried on sparse correspondence, as became countries that were neither allies nor enemies, and what few traders went between the two didn’t often meet with the city’s rulers either.

  Finally, Rognozi folded both letters and handed them back to the footmen, who put them on a small table to the side of the dais. “I’m convinced of your identity, Madam Alanive,” he said, which should have made Branwyn wince, had she been a more honest person, “and the message you bear is dire. Say it now, please, so that we can all hear at once.”

  The moment was upon her.

  “Thank you, my lord,” she said, and drew a deep breath. “I come to beg the aid of Heliodar, in an hour when Criwath’s need might become that of the world.”

  “The war?” It was the youngest lord, who leaned forward in his chair as he spoke. “The Skinless Ones?”

  That sounded like another name for the twistedmen, the ordinary—if one could call them that—forces arrayed against humanity. Certainly it described them well enough.