Storm Without End (Requiem for the Rift King Book 1) Read Free

around to lunge at him.
    ~Kill!~
    Kalen obeyed.

    ~~*~~

    "What do you mean, you can't find him?" Breton didn't shout, and he was proud of that. He wanted to, but it wasn't Avern's fault. Not really.
    No one could control the Rift King. Not even Breton, no matter how hard he’d tried. But, almost a month had gone by without word or sign of His Majesty. It didn't surprise him -- he'd learned long ago to trust that quiet, unsettling feeling that told him his charge was far away.
    "I rode as far as Land's End. He wasn't there, and no one has seen him," Avern whispered.
    Breton tried to convince himself he wouldn't get angry. Staring at the cluttered chamber didn’t help. The Rift King’s study was buried beneath towers of letters, missives, and tomes. Gorishitorik was sheathed and placed on top of the piles on the desk, waiting for its master’s return.
    “Put out the call,” Breton said, and then huffed out a sigh. With Avern’s failure, a gathering of the Guardians was inevitable. Invoking it admitted that the bad had gone to worse, and things wouldn’t get better until they found the missing Rift King.
    Avern ran out the door, a streak of black against the pale stone that Blind Mare Run was carved out of.
    Breton slammed his fist against a stack of the parchments and vellum perched on the edge of the giant desk. They scattered to the floor and knocked over several other piles as they fell. “Hellfires.”
    There was no one present to hear him use the Rift King’s favorite curse. He could almost understand the lure of the oath, since he would’ve been more than pleased to drop a torch in the middle of the mess just to be done with it.
    “He’ll flay you when he learns you threw his work on the floor.” A woman’s voice said from the hall. Riran laughed, leaning against the door with her arms crossed beneath her breasts. The hem of her tunic had been pulled down low to reveal her cleavage.
    Breton scowled and ignored the aging woman and her tricks to get his attention. He wasn’t an eager foal anymore. He did not need to prove he was a stallion. While she was talented with horses, he wasn’t about to let her rein him in.
    “You haven’t found him,” she continued when he said nothing.
    “Not yet,” Breton replied. “I’ll be the one to do his work.”
    There was always someone who dealt with the constant stream of messages meant to serve as the Rift King’s prison. The aboveworlders only assumed one man handled it all.
    The aboveworlders were fools, all of them. They were just kings and queens who sat on their precious thrones and vied for dominance while fearing a man they’d never met and worked hard to keep contained within the vast desert canyons.
    Breton clenched and then relaxed his hand. It throbbed. How many times had he taken his frustrations out on the stone desk and its precarious stacks in the past few days?
    “You’re worried,” Riran whispered, weaving her way through the maze of unfinished work. “He’s a strong man. He’s proved that many times.”
    “You only consider him strong because he refuses to spear you and make you one of his Queens,” Breton retorted.
    Riran laughed. “He’s still alive.”
    The confidence in her voice didn’t surprise him. Even if he hadn’t confirmed the truth with her, the Rift Queens always knew. It didn’t matter if they were Queens of the current Rift King. If His Majesty died, they would know. Like him, the Queens had known the moment that Arik had been replaced by the very man who’d killed him.
    That man had only been fifteen years old.
    “What do you want?” he asked.
    “I wish to prove my craft. I would act as a Princess. All of us. All of Arik’s Queens would serve as Princesses to the Rift King.” Riran lifted her chin and her dark eyes were hard with challenge.
    Breton kept his expression neutral. Taking up one of the missives from the floor, he thrust it to her and nodded at the desk. While he couldn’t stop her from trying,