Page 3 of Queen of Shadows and Ruin

Aravind could feel it. His magic burrowed down, funneling into another world where darkness and power reigned.

It took a few minutes before they heard the screams.

Their eyes met, and Aravind smiled before Manish returned it with a grin. They turned and ran for the door, stopping at the temple’s steps.

The city had erupted into chaos. The sky was black, churning with smoky clouds as lightning, red as blood, flashed across the horizon.

Stars glowed like a million silver flames.

Taaranas echoed with fear and screams.

Then something appeared high in the mountains.

Light flashed across the stone as a portal of blackness darker than night opened and then spread to form a door large enough to accommodate a monster.

Or rather, a demon. Thousands of them.

Aravind could have wept.

They’d done it. After so many years of planning, they’d done it.

He met Manish’s wide-eyed gaze as they returned their attention to the portal. As one, they raised their hands, filtering out streams of nightfire, channeling their magic into the world they sought.

Aravind felt it—the presence existing beyond this plane. The dark things living in a world that had been lost to time and memory but would soon reign again.

He called them. Invited them in.

There was a shift, and then came the moment when he knew everything was about to change.

Finally they appeared.

Larger than life, covered in armor, their sharp teeth glinting in the light. Fierce, deadly, and even more terrifying than Aravind’s most vivid fantasies could have imagined.

The nairatta marched from the portal, forming a sinuous line as they wound down the mountain. They beat their chests and clanged their swords against their shields, the sound echoing through the barren landscape.

The people screamed—their cries rose over the sounds of thunder and the wet snarls of an army of demons arriving to destroy everything in their path.

Aravind dropped his hands, mesmerized by the sight. Then he looked at Manish, who stared into the distance, his mouth slack.

A moment later, he turned to Aravind, and their gazes met.

“We did it,” he whispered.

Aravind nodded. “And now we will rule the world.”

ONE

Zarya’s hands gripped cold, slick scales as the soaring spires of her father’s dark castle appeared in the distance. It stood in miniature, nestled into the mountains, contrasting rivers of pure white snow.

Rabin banked left, swooping over the crystalline landscape, and she clung on tighter as the wind tangled her hair and whistled in her ears. Ducking low, she shrugged deeper into the warmth of her hood.

Yasen and Miraan sat in a row behind her with Miraan’s arms around Yasen’s waist. They’d been flying for days as the sun had set and risen, taking only short breaks for Rabin to rest. Despite Miraan’s best efforts to warm them with his magic, Zarya was frozen inside and out. Even her blood felt thicker, idling through her veins as she dreamed of wool blankets and roaring fires.

Rabin angled into a gentle descent, skimming over ice-capped lakes and an endless expanse of sparkling white. The sun hung low in the sky, a white orb glowing softly against a pale blue backdrop. The barest wisps of clouds hung in the air like the puffs of a giant’s breath.

The endless Pathara Vala Mountains surrounded them like a wall—soaring peaks of dark grey stone streaked with veins of shimmering ice and jagged summits climbing so high they were lost to clouds of mist and fog.

Zarya had only viewed them at a distance from her balcony in Ishaan, and though they’d always been imposing, now they loomed larger than life. How could anything so colossal just exist without the entire continent collapsing under their weight?