Kingdoms of Ether (Kingdoms of Ether Series Book 1) Read online

  Kingdoms of Ether

  Book 1

  Ryan Muree

  Kingdoms of Ether © 2018, 2019 by Ryan Muree

  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, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  ISBN-13: 978-1791596446

  ISBN-10: 1791596444

  First Edition: December 2018

  Ryan Muree www.ryanmuree.com

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  Also by Ryan Muree

  The Last Elixir Series Boxed Set

  The Last Elixir (Book 1)

  The Fallen Gate (Book 2)

  The Shattered Core - Zoi and Aramil's prequel novel

  What Blooms in the Dark – Shenna’s prequel novelette

  What Rises from the Ashes – Izan’s prequel novella

  Fairytale Retellings

  In the Garden of Gold and Stone - Beauty and the Beast

  Kingdoms of Ether Series

  Kingdoms of Ether (Book 1)

  Architects of Ether (Book 2)

  Paragons of Ether (Book 3)

  To Seth,

  the best husband in all worlds and timelines. Pack it up, ladies and gents. He’s taken.

  Map of Izan

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Architects of Ether Preview

  Pronunciation Guide

  Chapter 1

  Great Library — Stadhold

  For the third time in her life, Emeryss lifted a page of her grimoire with only her mind.

  Her eyes shot open.

  The evening sun beamed its warm light through her window and onto the bare walls of her suite, splashing pinks and oranges into her otherwise colorless room. Usually, she opened the window to let in the breeze, but not this time.

  Thumbing the grimoire’s lush, hol-hide cover, she inhaled the light and flowery scent of the m’ralli paper. The glittering scarlet sigil hadn’t lifted off the page and gone into her hand like it was supposed to, but the page had lifted, and that was something close to progress—for her. There might have been a million other Revelians who could do this—children included—but she would too, eventually.

  She flexed her hand and held it above the page again.

  I can do this, she told herself. I can grab the ether. It wants to go into my hand. I control the essence of this ridiculous universe.

  Her palm tingled and burned. Heart racing, she held her breath.

  I can grab the ether. I can do this.

  The page fluttered up against her palm again. This time it was accompanied by a stifled chuckle from behind and the slow burn of humiliation.

  A hiss escaped her lips. Only two people ever visited her room, and considering the person was laughing at her and not screaming that she’d broken yet another rule, it had to be her assigned guard—her Keeper—Grier.

  She smoothed the front and back panels of her raclar—a hideous, beige-gray bed sheet for a uniform—and turned to face him.

  Grier stood in her doorway gently waving his black crystalline shield. He must have used it to create a draft to lift the page. At her glare, he let the shield dissolve away into inky smoke before dropping his smile.

  “You’re an ass.” She closed the book, clasped it to her chest, and sank into the pale linens of her bed.

  “Sorry. I had to.” His boots thumped across her nightstone-tile floor in his slow approach from her doorway. “If it helps, I didn’t make it move the first time.”

  It didn’t help. She should’ve been more hurt that he’d teased her like that, but the sting of failure hurt worse. Four years and barely any progress was a joke. Immolations and Ignitions shimmered in pretty red foil on the cover.

  “They’re not even Scribes,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Casters.”

  “Isn’t that the point? You write the ether onto those pages, and Casters pull it off and use it.”

  “Exactly.” She rolled her eyes. It was a cruel universe to dole out destinies without any care as to what people wanted to be. “I’m the Scribe. I put all of those sigils in this book. You’d think to call them back into myself to cast a flicker, a flame—anything—wouldn’t be this hard.”

  Grier, with his messy blond hair and abyssal-blue eyes, leaned against the wall beside her. His thin, quilted padding under a few pieces of silver plate were pristine in its lack of real use. Even so, the grimoires and their Scribes were precious to society and required protection from any would-be infiltrators. It was why she and every other Scribe had been assigned a Keeper to escort them to and from the library when it was time for their shift.

  He crossed his arms. The silver bracer on his shield-arm gleamed orange in the sunset filtering into the room. “It shouldn’t be this hard, and yet, here you are.”

  And yet here she was—the first Scribe born of the non-casting people of Neeria and nothing more. On the north shores of Revel, Neeria and its lack of Casters were an embarrassment to the country, a smear on the bottom of Revel’s gilded shoe. These years living and training in the Great Library was supposed to make her gracious and humble with her elevated circumstance. She was not supposed to spend the time believing she could become something she wasn’t.

  He extended a hand to help her up. “Come on or we’ll be late. You can go right back to waving your hand over grimoires when your shift is over.”

  She groaned and accepted his help.

  Night shifts were the worst. The drawing room was practically void of life during late scribing hours. Much more lonely and silent than libraries tended to be.

  She looked to her open door and then back at Grier beside her. He’d actually come in this time, and she hadn’t even noticed. “You’re in my room.”

  He straightened his head. “So?”

  She couldn’t help but smile. “You never come into my room.”

  His skin went pink under his clean-shaven j
aw. “Well, I felt bad, and you looked like you could use—”

  “Grier Rinnegan IV.” She put her hands on her hips. “I’ve invited you in a million times, and you’ve always refused.” Much to her frustration.

  “Because Keepers and Scribes aren’t allowed to—”

  She feigned shock with a hand to her chest. “You have a dirty mind.”

  “No, I’m—”

  “Saying that you can’t even walk into my suite without falling in love with me and throwing your entire career and family line away?”

  He huffed with a smile and a shake of his head.

  Keepers weren’t allowed to get involved with their Scribes, but considering all other Scribes were on the upside of seventy-five years of age, it was an archaic rule. Still, so long as he poked fun at her inability to cast, she’d flirt with him to watch that pink bloom up the side of his neck.

  In truth, she could have been assigned someone much worse. It could have been someone several years her senior rather than a couple. Someone who liked to remind and annoy her of proper uniform use or ether-visualization techniques. Instead, they’d given her someone with enough sense not to spout too many rules at her. Someone who treated her as an equal rather than her famed moniker—the Neerian Scribe.

  It also helped Grier was beautiful. All Keepers were, but Grier had depth. He had an undercurrent to the trained weapon he’d been made into, and she could easily get pulled in if she let herself.

  “As much as I’d love to watch you drive yourself crazy over casting, we need to head in for work.” He held his arm out toward the door.

  “Work?” She faked a laugh and leaned in. “I don’t call standing around and watching me commune with the universe, so you can hurry back to sleep with your commander’s daughter… work.”

  His cheeks flushed bright red. He leaned in, too, and whispered, “Now you’re stalking me?”

  “Stalking you? Everyone in your barracks knows it, and it’s because they heard it. They’re the ones talking about it, and I’m not the one peeping in women’s doors.”

  They stared at each other for a few seconds before he cracked another smile.

  “Grier.” Captain Lerissa’s voice cut through the room from the doorway.

  He went rigid, snapping to attention and gaining distance from Emeryss. She straightened, too, managing to slide the grimoire behind her before his captain approached.

  Lerissa’s graying hair still held remnants of rich gold in her perfectly twisted bun. Her armor was as unscathed as Grier’s, but her gait and presence were much more commanding. She stopped when her nose was only a few inches from his and trained those dark-gray eyes on him. “I’m not sure what’s happening here, but Keepers and Scribes are not permitted—”

  “Nothing’s happening.” Emeryss went to place a hand on Lerissa’s bracer but retracted it. A Keeper’s shield-arm was their lifeblood. It connected them to the ethereal plane as much as her Scribe trances connected her. It allowed them to call up weapons and shields to defend themselves and their Scribes. And from Lerissa’s flared nostrils and tightly pursed mouth, it was also something not to be touched. “Nothing like you’re thinking was going on, anyway.”

  Lerissa remained. Grier would pay the price for simply being friendly.

  “It’s my fault for it looking that way,” Emeryss added.

  Finally, Lerissa’s eyes shifted to hers.

  “It’s my fault,” Grier announced, deeper and stronger than usual.

  “No,” Emeryss corrected. “I… was… asleep before my shift, and Grier was doing his job. He was concerned about me being late, and he came in here and woke me to get me there on time.” She took a deep breath, and Lerissa squinted at her. “That’s all.”

  Emeryss didn’t answer to Lerissa when it came to Scribe things, but that didn’t stop her from wanting to shrink or become invisible whenever Lerissa was around. Either one would have been helpful.

  “Maintain expectations. The rules are in place for a reason.” Lerissa eyed Emeryss’s arms. “Grier, be sure to remind your Scribe that her hands must be inside her uniform as she’s walking into the library. She seems to forget too often that her ability to scribe must be protected at all times.” After one last lingering glare, she left the suite and took the air with her.

  “Sorry,” he exhaled. “I shouldn’t have come in—”

  “Don’t apologize.” Emeryss reluctantly slid her arms inside her raclar and stepped outside into the evening. “Your captain is oddly obsessive about the rules. Everyone is. It’s infuriating. Does she know about you and the commander’s—”

  “No, and I’d prefer it that way.”

  “Well, you didn’t know that I knew. Maybe she knows—”

  “Stop. And no, you’re just nosy—”

  “Curious. I was curious.”

  He grinned and followed her out. “You didn’t have to take the blame, though. I chose to come in.”

  She shrugged it off. After a year of working together, it was just nice to see him finally step inside.

  A cool gust of wind blew a few strands of her hair across her face. It was almost autumn.

  In Neeria, where grimoires, Keepers, and Scribes were the furthest things from her people’s minds, every sunset brought a chill off the waters. It’d shake and nibble at her bones. It’d refresh her tired frame and remind her that the waves of the Endov Sea would be there, waiting to challenge her each day. It’d demand she be grateful she was alive and jealous of the dead in their final sleep.

  But in the south at the Great Library of Stadhold, where the only thing that mattered was creating and storing the world’s grimoires, most breezy sunsets felt like a sleepy yawn. Damp and warm, the weather gave the perfect excuse to sleep the afternoon off and lounge the day away.

  The work in Stadhold wasn’t even the spearfishing or trawling nets type of work. It was easy sitting at a table in a quiet library, conversing with the ether of the universe, and then writing it on paper. It was only challenging when she remembered she only did these things for someone other than her to cast.

  Grier closed her suite door behind them. “Ready?”

  “No.”

  He smiled. “How many more night shifts do you think they’ll give you?”

  “After this month?” She toed the edges of the tile in the pale mosaic path with her black slippers. “We either scribe faster than ever and catch up to the demand, or Revel makes a miraculous attempt at peace with Ingini.”

  Of course, peace hadn’t been considered for several decades. Not since Ingini tried to commit genocide on Casters in Revel. And until peace came, the Scribes of Stadhold were held to the treaty requiring them to make grimoires for Revel’s Caster army in exchange for added protection against the Ingini.

  She turned for the cream-colored stone bridge leading from the cluster of single-occupant Scribe suites. Grier followed a pace or two behind her until they reached the crest of the bridge, and then paused to look outward.

  The plains of Stadhold were bathed in the same warm glow that had lit her suite, and as the light receded, it painted the cream skystone of the Great Library and its surrounding multi-level campus in a swath of pale pink. Together, they waited until the last rays of heat and light disappeared somewhere beyond the edge.

  “As the light fades, I, too, shall fade and meet all our brethren in the otherworld. Blessed life to a blessed night,” she prayed aloud.

  Grier merely dipped his head in respect.

  The Goddess took many forms. In some prayers and shrines, she was young and merciful, in others old and wise. And while Grier and other Stadholdens usually chose to honor her as the Goddess of Redemption, Emeryss honored her in the only way her people knew—the Goddess of Death.

  Emeryss’s gaze followed the lines of Grier’s uniform to his face. Broad-shouldered and a head taller than she, he stood by her for every sunset and sunrise they’d caught for the last several months. It was fun to ponder how he’d fare in Neeria on the water.


  His eyes met hers for a brief second before she looked back at the plains. “What’s wrong?”

  It shouldn’t have been plains, but ocean—her ocean. It should have been her wind. It should have been feasts and fishing she was getting ready for, not a night shift of scribing. It’d been years since she was home, ever since she’d become a full-fledged Scribe, and she was forgetting the ebb of the ocean currents.

  She shook her head. He wouldn’t understand.

  “Come on. You never run out of words.” He smirked.

  She closed her eyes and longed for the smells, the feeling, the sights of her small village. “I miss my home, Grier. I miss the waves, the pull of the tide. I miss my family. My oldest sister should be married by now. I miss… I miss the color blue. I miss sand under my toes.” Even the fur-lined boots in the winter were better than the year-round slippers Scribes had to wear.

  “Isn’t it this time of year that the waves get so high that they slip over the breakers and steal small children swimming out too far?” The soft even-keel in the way he’d asked was teasing, but not in a way meant to offend her.

  And for that, her heart skipped a little. He’d always listened to her Neerian stories, remembering inane details about her home—a place he’d never even seen.

  “That’s what we tell them,” she said. “And then we tell them they should be so lucky to have the Goddess reach up and take them to the otherworld.”