Read Lichgates: Book One of the Grimoire Saga (an Epic Fantasy Adventure) for Free Online

squared: his jaw, his head, even his shoulders. He muttered something, his words rolling together too quickly for her to understand, and then he shouted in a foreign language to a group of soldiers nearby. They all looked over to where she sat in the mobile jail and laughed.
    She draped her tied hands around her knees and tried to calm down, but she was thrown off balance when the crack of a whip sent the trolls and their cage lurching forward. Her cellmate stifled a groan and leaned against the bars, his dark hair sticking to the edges of his olive face.
    He was at most a few years older than her but in much better shape, with broad shoulders and toned arms. Though his clothes were torn, there weren’t any scratches or cuts on his skin. He caught her eye and cocked an eyebrow, and it was then that she realized her uncontrollable breath came in quick, shallow bursts. She was hyperventilating.
    “Hey,” he muttered. “Calm down. You’ll be fine.”
    “Like hell!” She stared out at the throngs of soldiers marching, steam oozing from their pores. “We’re going to die, aren’t we?”
    “Relax. We might not. Look at me.”
    She glared at him, fitful butterflies dancing a tarantella in her gut.
    “Good. Tell me your name.”
    “Kara. Yours?”
    “Braeden. I don’t mean to be rude, Miss Kara, but what are you even doing here?”
    “I was hiking! And then there was this door, and these roots—”
    “Wait,” he interrupted, his eyes flitting once over her. “You’re not a yakona? What are you?”
    “I’m human! And you’re what, an elf? Are you a yakona?”
    He chuckled, but the laugh didn’t make it past the thin wrinkle at the corner of his mouth. He shifted his weight without answering and brushed her leg with his boot.
    “Sleep. You’ll need your energy.”
    “I couldn’t possibly—” She yawned and rubbed her face.
    A sudden rush of exhaustion swept from her toe to her head, as if his touch had summoned it. She leaned into the bars. Her breathing slowed, and she heard him mutter something as she pressed her cheek into the iron. She slept.
     

    A beam of light broke through the corner of Kara’s eye. Her skin prickled with cold, and bits of ice stuck to the ends of her eyelashes. She shivered, and her body swayed, but the cold metal of a rod against her face kept her from falling over in her half-asleep stupor. It was almost like she was still in that cage.
    She jolted awake.
    A snowcapped dirt road faded into trees behind her, visible through the thick bars of the jail. A white blanket coated the forest to her right as the hot wisps of her breath froze on the air. She shivered.
    Her cellmate remained curled in his corner. Behind him, the road dropped off in a sheer cliff shrouded by the fog of a low cloud. The gorge was hundreds of feet deep, its floor masked by a black mist that convulsed and spun. Giant shadows with no shape sped through the haze, churning it.
    Braeden stirred, shifting his weight in his sleep. Dark smudges lined his jaw and neck, and he wore a green tunic with dark pants. His clothes definitely weren’t something Kara could find at the mall.
    The cage rocked and thudded. The wheels clattered over cobblestone. They passed a tall gate, and its broad doors shut behind them. More gray-skinned men walked along a battlement above the gate, shouting to each other.
    Crowded black buildings dotted the edges of the new road, each a dozen stories tall and squished beside its neighbors. Frost sprawled across every window.
    Braeden shifted away from her so that, for the first time, she could see his hands. Thick metal shackles dug into his bruised wrists. Trails of a black liquid coursed over the handcuffs, dripping from his fingers onto the wooden floor of their prison.
    Something rustled in the far corner. She spun around, but instead of a gray soldier or the brunette woman, she saw only a small white fox. The little creature leaned against the bars and cocked its head, eyeing her as