Shadows Before the Sun Read Free

feminine tone flowed through my mind, relaxing some of the tension in my shoulders.
    Ahkneri’s words were usually too distant to understand, and they were brushed with a sadness that made me ache. I had a strange connection with the divine being hidden beneath the lake—weird dreams, the ability to sometimes sense her emotions, understand her language. The First Ones were supposed to be a myth and to most people they were. But to some, like Grigori Tennin and the Sons of Dawn cult, she was their ticket to starting a three-world war. He’d stop at nothing to find her.
    The First Ones were the ancestors to humans, Elysian Adonai, and the Charbydon nobles. Their existence would prove to the worlds that the nobles were related to the Adonai, and that they were indeed cast out of Elysia in the forgotten past. If the nobles were to learn the truth, they’d launch an all-out war against the Adonai to take back their true homeland. It would leave the jinn in charge of Charbydon, free from noble oppression, and Earth in the middle of a war we’d no doubt get sucked into.
    For the sake of all three worlds, Ahkneri had to stay hidden.
    If Rex said there was no jinn signature anywhere near the body, one crisis averted. If not, I didn’t even want to think about it, especially since I was supposedto be leaving for Elysia and the siren city of Fiallan tomorrow.
    As we drew closer to the colossal wooden structure rising up through the trees, the temperature dropped slightly and the air became cooler and scented with lake water. Rex whistled in appreciation, his steps slowing as he ogled the nymphs’ temple with its huge wooden columns the size of California redwoods. I kept moving, going through the structure, the main courtyard, and to the dock that stretched out over the lake.
    Liz and her crew were already on the shoreline near the dock. “The chief fill you in?” she asked as I approached.
    “A little while ago. I hear we have a body in the lake and one highly uncooperative Druid King.”
    The ITF’s lead medical examiner and gifted necromancer snorted at that. “Highly uncooperative is being nice.” She glared at the figure at the end of the dock through horn-rimmed eyeglasses.
    “Careful,” I said, smiling. “You keep shooting eye missiles at him like that you’re going to melt your lenses.”
    Liz frowned, and then shoved her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “He irks me.”
    “I noticed. If it makes you feel any better, he does that to everyone. Here, hold this.” I handed her my coffee cup, which she took but didn’t know what the hell to do with, and said, “Wish me luck.”
    My boots echoed on the wooden planks as I approachedthe Kinfolk’s spiritual leader, enforcer, protector, and all-around badass. And those titles were more than accurate to describe Pendaran.
    He stood at the end of the dock, alone, hands tucked into his pants pockets, a white T-shirt stretching over his broad back, and his black hair just touching the collar. His focus was on the scene in the lake as two search-and-rescue officers in a dinghy pulled a corpse to shore. Liz hurried closer to the waterline.
    A soundless flash of green in the undulating gray mass above us illuminated the dark water and its corpse for a split second. I felt for the nymphs. The Grove was a sanctuary, a home with defined borders patrolled day and night. One of their own had been killed within those borders. And as far as I knew, that had never happened before.
    I walked into a thick wave of rage, strong enough to knock the unprepared back a few steps. But I expected Pen’s wrath. I stopped next to him at the end of the dock, watching the scene unfold for a moment, letting him get used to my presence. “I’m sorry for your loss, Pen. The chief said you have an eyewitness?”
    At first he didn’t reply. He continued to stare at the scene, his profile hard as granite. The winding Celtic-style tattoo, which I knew to encompass the entire left side of his