The FATE BREAKER *exclusive* extra chapter...

...and you can read it right here!

Last year, I was able to include an extra chapter with two of my *favorite* characters from the REALM BREAKER series in the Barnes & Noble and Waterstones exclusive editions of FATE BREAKER. And I’m so excited to now be able to share it widely with readers who missed out on those editions!

I think this chapter hints at A LOT of where I intend to take these characters next, and I’ll leave it at that. ;)

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Domacridhan swam beneath a dark sea. Sometimes light rippled on the surface of the water, close enough to touch. As if he might only lift his head and breathe again, the sun warm on his face. Sometimes the light seemed far away, fading until blackness took hold, and there was only the water. Somewhere in his mind, he wondered how he could swim and swim and swim, and never surface. But also never drown.

A minute or a year passed. The immortal could not tell in the dark. But the light remained, distant at first. Then closer and stronger. Until he realized the light was not the glow of a golden sun. Nor even the flickering burn of a candle.

He awoke to the lantern-warmth of tiger eyes.

Sorasa Sarn stared from across the little room, her body coiled in a chair like a snake on a stone. She was wound just as tightly, legs drawn up beneath her, arms wrapped around her frame. As if the assassin feared she might fly apart, her body held together only by the strength of her own grasp.

Somehow, Dom felt the same. Liable to fall apart at any moment, torn to irretrievable pieces.

Sorasa’s copper gaze fixed on his face, her focus so absolute she did not blink as he stirred. No part of her moved while feeling returned to Dom’s limbs.

At first, only his fingers twitched, each one unfamiliar and slow to respond. He felt pinned to the bed beneath him, so heavy he feared he might crash through the frame to the floor. For a long moment, all he could do was stare at Sorasa, her gaze more piercing than any blade. He expected her to say something. A cutting remark or derisive comment about his inability to die. Even just a sneer.

But her lips never moved. Her face never changed.

His abdomen twinged, pain waking from his wounds. As feeling returned to his limbs, so did the agony. Dom winced against it, the twinge sharpening into a visceral burn. Whatever other bruises and injuries he carried, all paled in comparison. For a moment, he could not breathe, near strangled by the spearing ache.

Through it all, Sorasa kept still. She could be a bronze statue and not flesh, but for the slow rise of her chest and the steady, familiar beat of her heart.

It felt like being examined; a corpse on a slab instead of a living body in a soft bed. Dom could not help but grit his teeth at her silence and forced himself to sit up. Pain ripped through his torso with the motion.

Only then Sorasa flinched, her calm shattering as she sprang up from her chair. Her heart rammed, suddenly racing. Her pulse thrummed; the loudest thing in the little room.

Still, no words ever came.

It isn’t often I find you lost for words, Amhara, Dom wanted to say. But what little sense he still possessed made the immortal hold his tongue. Grimly, he swallowed the jibe.

Once, long ago, Sorasa fell silent and would not speak for many days. It was how she marked the deaths of her kin, the Amhara assassins she slayed to save Corayne. To save me, he knew, remembering the forest clearing. The ring of bodies, Amhara all of them. Dead but for one. Sorasa prayed over each, whispering her last words for long weeks.

She was silent again now. In her pain, in her grief.

Despite the ache in his body, the wound in his torso screaming in protest, Dom eased himself back against the pillows. He moved slowly, deliberately, thinking more clearly with every passing second. It was not like an immortal to think through every inch, shifting precariously as a mortal. Dom felt like a clumsy child, trying not to harm himself.

Sorasa let him adjust, still standing at the foot of the bed. Her eyes ticked over him, noting his movements, halting as they were. Dom watched her read the pain on his face.

“I am alive, Amhara,” he finally said, his voice raw from disuse. Or from screaming.

Perhaps both, Dom thought, wondering how much time had passed since the battle.

Her throat worked, swallowing around something. Sorasa finally blinked, black lashes fluttering against bronze skin. She had bruises too. The worst ringed her neck in a purple shadow, tracing the outline of a hand.

A sudden wave of rage washed over Dom, both icy and burning. He growled low in his throat, remembering the sight of Lord Mercury. Once Sorasa’s master, her maker. And then, her would-be executioner. Like all the other horrific things in the world, he crashed down on Iona too, arriving in the final onslaught. As Taristan and his undead army ravaged the castle, so did Mercury, intent on destroying all Dom held dear. And but for a few seconds, he would have succeeded.

Sorasa felt his scrutiny. She turned her head, allowed her hair to fall loose and obscure her neck. Hiding the tattoos of who she was once, and the bruises of who she had become.

In spite of his wounds, Dom leaned forward, trying to close some distance. Pain laced up his ribs and he hissed through his teeth, flinching.

It was enough proof of life for Sorasa Sarn.

“You should keep still,” she finally said, her voice halfway between a snap and a sigh. With a shrug, she returned to her chair, and a looser position, one leg crossed over the other.

Despite the aches all over his body, Dom lifted a corner of his mouth.

“Somehow you manage to sound both annoyed and relieved by my survival,” he said, matching her tone. “This is survival, isn’t it?”

Whatever annoyed mask Sorasa decided to wear slipped a little, her tiger eyes flashing. For a paralyzing second, Dom wondered if she might simply disappear into a wisp of smoke. It was worse than all the other pains put together, and the air felt stolen from his lungs.

Somehow, Sorasa understood.

“I am alive, Elder,” she said slowly, in the most gentle voice he knew her to possess.

His mouth felt dry. “Haunt me.”

Sorasa said those words on the steps of the castle, before all the realm turned to hell. The same words hung between them now, spoken in his voice. It was a statement as much as a question Dom could not bear to ask.

Are you a ghost? he wondered, eyes stinging.

Am I?

“I am alive, Elder,” Sorasa said again, as if she could read his thoughts.

This time, she left the chair behind, until there was no space between them at all.

Her hand was warm in his own, solid, the bones fragile in his grasp. Bruised and breakable. Mortal.

Dom flinched at her touch. He was more than familiar with Sorasa Sarn, having journeyed at her side for months on end. They bickered and bled together, crossing blades, trading insults as easily as they breathed. But nothing like this. Never like this. Not even on the shipwrecked beach.

His thumb brushed the inside of her wrist. Again, her pulse flared. This time he felt it blazing against his own, both hearts stubbornly still beating.

Then her hand was gone, pulled back, leaving Sorasa to stand awkwardly at his bedside. Her tiger eyes dropped, shifting to look anywhere but at him.

Dom used the opportunity to collect himself, and the little room came into better focus.

He was in the east wing of the castle, in a narrow chamber with stone walls and cramped bookshelves. Across the room, a single window opened to face the rising dawn. The air was cold and fresh, a balm against his fevered skin. Dom knew this place, as he knew all of Tíarma. After five centuries living within the castle, there were few places beyond his memory. Even so, he could not recall a bed here. It must have been dragged in for his use, the small reading room transformed into his personal chambers. Or my grave.

Still hovering, Sorasa let him look. Her sharp edges softened, some tension releasing from her shoulders. While Dom felt run through, Sorasa certainly looked the same. Her leathers and chain mail were long gone, but even her plain clothing was battered, wrinkled from days of wear. Her long sleeves did not hide the bandages around one hand, bits of dried blood peeking through the folds. Her black hair hung ragged, stringy against the tops of her shoulders. Shadows ringed her eyes, and her cheeks were sunken, forming hollows in her bruised face. Dom swallowed down the impulse to ask if she bothered to eat.

There was another question weighing heavy instead, so heavy he could barely ask. It felt like moving a mountain.

“Corayne—” he began, voice going hoarse again.

Sorasa was kind enough not to let him finish. She held up a bandaged hand, her bruised fingers blue beneath the fabric.

“Alive,” she said quickly, fiercely, her eyes flashing. The Amhara was so good at inducing pain but would not draw his out.

The mountain slid. Beneath the blanket, Dom’s chest rose and fell as he released the worst breath he ever held.

There was no word strong enough to describe the relief he felt. It coursed over him, and Dom was happy to be pulled under, his eyes falling shut against grateful tears. The pain was still there, impossible to ignore, but now Dom was grateful for it. The pain was an easy trade for Corayne’s life.

“All of us,” Sorasa continued, and again he felt her hand in his own. This time, her touch was tentative, hesitant. “We are all alive.”

Dom opened his eyes again, her figure swimming before him. Andry. Charlie. Valtik. Sigil. Alive, alive, alive. He recited their names over and over, their faces dancing. It was all he could do to keep from crying.

His fingers closed, Sorasa’s palm flush against his own.

He wanted to ask so many questions, about too many things. The shadow of Taristan lay heavy across his thoughts, the edge of his white face a bolt of lightning against blackness. He remembered the Queen of Galland too, vague through his bloody memories. She rode into the courtyard as his vision failed, his eyes drifting shut.

Another name rose to his lips instead.

“What of Isibel?” he murmured.

His aunt’s name felt like another wound punched through his heart.

Sorasa’s silence, and steady gaze, were answer enough.

Another wave crashed. All Dom could do was let it break, and hope he did not drown. He would not think of his aunt’s betrayal, and the utter pain that drove her to it. He would not think of Ridha among the undead corpses, unrecognizable but for her green armor. Her smile as far away as Glorian Lost.

He could only hope they were together, mother and daughter. He could only pray the beliefs of his people were wrong. That a soul lost in Allward was not lost forever.

Looking at Sorasa, at the rising sun behind her, Dom hoped he had a long time before he found out for himself.

Her palm itched, prickling with the sensation of his skin. Sorasa felt torn. She wanted to run back to her chair and retreat to a point of safety. It was not like an assassin to live so exposed. But she stayed rooted, frozen in place. Unwilling to let go, even though her instincts screamed to pull back.

This is not the first time you’ve touched the immortal oaf, she told herself, chiding her own discomfort. In her head, she saw all the other moments. In battle, on the road, in a clearing filled with Amhara corpses. On the bittercold [ARR3] [VA4] coast, with night rapidly falling, her own body tucked against his for some semblance of warmth.

Her throat worked, swallowing hard.

This is the first time I’ve touched him without death hanging over us. Without the end of the realm on the horizon.

“You are the Monarch of Iona now,” Sorasa forced out, grasping for something to break the heavy silence. Slowly, she pulled her hand back. But her fingers still buzzed, tingling.

Dom blinked up at her from the bed, his eyes round at the implication. His new position was obvious, given the circumstances, but still a shock. On the blanket, his now empty hand flexed, as if feeling Sorasa’s absence.

“I suppose that explains the guards posted at my door,” he muttered. Clearly he could hear the clink of armor, if not the heartbeats of the Elders in the hall. “I’m surprised they did not put me in the Monarch’s wing. And instead chose this closet.”

His green eyes narrowed, taking in the walls again.

“I chose the closet,” Sorasa offered. “I thought you might not enjoy your . . . predecessor’s rooms.”

Judging by the look on his face, it was the right choice indeed. Dom gave her a small nod, ducking his chin against the bare skin exposed above the blanket.

“Thank you,” Dom murmured. Sorasa did not miss the way his pulse thrummed in his exposed throat, or the feathering tightness of his jaw as he clenched his teeth. It made something tighten in her too.

Then his forehead furrowed, brows drawn together. “How long?” he added, near to a whisper.

Sorasa fought the sudden, surprising urge to brush a lock of blond hair back from his face. The long strands were clean of blood again, and they gleamed like spun gold.

“Not so long as I thought it would be until you opened your eyes,” she answered, crossing her arms across her chest. Anything to keep steady. Her voice faltered. “If you opened them at all.”

Don’t dwell on it, she scolded herself, even as her worry rose up again.

“Three days, Domacridhan,” Sorasa said. She felt every hour like a blow to the head. “Three days since all of it.”

All of it. She had no other way to describe the siege of Iona. The killing ground that was the valley floor. The corpses vomiting up from the depths of the castle. Lord Mercury and the Amhara. The dragon. The red wizard. The Spindle burning at the heart of it all. And Dom bleeding to death in her arms, his immortal life spilling all over her.

Her head spun, a wave of dizziness threatening to knock her clean over. Sorasa stood firm against it, drawing a cold breath to steel her nerves.

Dom studied her through it all, his focus unrelenting. She watched as he chewed his words, choosing carefully. It rankled her, seeing the care he took, the way he tried to avoid causing her any more pain.

I prefer pain to the mess I’ve become, she thought bitterly.

“Are the rest—?” he finally said, glancing at the door.

“Injured?” Sorasa finished for him. Again, she spoke quickly, so as not to let him think the worst and suffer more than he already had. “Not like you. The rest of us had the good sense not to lose half the blood in our bodies. It’s an odd habit of yours, Dom.”

The jab landed well, and Dom grinned.

“One I do not intend to repeat,” he replied, trying to sit up a little more.

When he winced, Sorasa felt herself wince too.

“Do you need something for the pain?”

Dom shot her a perplexed look, one she knew too well.

“Do you have something?” he said, sounding surprised.

Despite her now immense experience with immortals, Sorasa could not help but shake her head in dismay. With a few quick motions, she went to her bag tucked behind the chair.

“You Elders are infuriating, you know,” Sorasa sighed, retrieving a pouch. She spooned a measure of ivory-colored powder into a cup of water and swirled, letting it dissolve. “How many thousands of years have you lived, and still none of your healers know how to drug you properly?”

Dom could only shrug as he drank down the mixture. He did not react to what Sorasa knew as a bitter taste, and she wondered if she gave him enough to aid an immortal body.

“We don’t have much cause for healers,” he said, passing the cup back over. “Or we didn’t, I suppose.”

Grimacing, he lifted the blanket a little, exposing more of his sculpted torso to the cold morning air. Sorasa didn’t need to watch to know what he saw. She’d seen enough of his body in the last few days, his pale skin slashed with blood. And now bandages, bruises, little cuts healing over while other wounds still tried to split open. He ran a hand over the worst of them, brushing fingers over a heavy bandage lashed around his body. Beneath was the wound Isibel gave him when she ran him through with the greatsword of Iona. It was a blow meant to kill.

“Was this your handiwork again?” he muttered, eyeing the bandage.

In her head, Sorasa remembered a broken cottage outside Ascal, and an immortal Elder splayed out on a table. She sewed up his wound then, barely a cut compared to the one he bore now.

“Some,” Sorasa said thickly. Her mind flew from the cottage to the castle courtyard, where she ripped apart her own clothes to stop Dom from bleeding out. “It took more than me to put you back together.”

With a will, Sorasa turned on her heel, putting her back to Dom before her mask could slip. But her heartbeat quickened and Sorasa flushed, embarrassed, knowing he could hear her thundering pulse. Knowing Dom could read the pain she still felt, and what more it meant. In the Amhara guild, Sorasa learned to school her emotions, to strangle them until she felt nothing at all. But her lessons felt far away, her grief too much to ignore.

He is alive, you stupid woman, she told herself, glaring out the window to the valley beyond. Army camps ringed the great ridge of the city, like a patchwork quilt against the golden fields. You grieve for someone living.

“Sorasa.”

Dom’s voice rang low and stern. She imagined it to be the voice he would use on the throne, as the Monarch.

Sorasa could only chatter on, willing her voice to stop shaking. “Luckily the Temur travel with healers of their own. They had you in good enough order.”

Good enough order. I watched your every breath for two days straight, just to make sure you never stopped breathing.

The Elder growled again. “Sorasa.”

“Your advisors are coordinating repairs of the city and gathering supplies. Sigil has been doing her best as ambassador between the Emperor’s army and your own, but she doesn’t have the patience for it much longer.” Sorasa felt her heart calm a little, enough to turn back from the window. “You have quite the headache on the other side of that door.”

From the bed, Dom gave her a piercing look.

“You’re headache enough, Amhara.”

In spite of herself, Sorasa felt a laugh rise up in her throat. It echoed through the room and Dom grinned.

“So here we are,” he muttered. “Afterward.”

“Afterward,” Sorasa echoed, half-stunned.

It felt so impossible before; their deaths all but a guarantee. The sudden possibility of life made her head spin, with all the realm spiraling around her. But for one place, one person, who remained fixed and still.

Sorasa took a step toward him. For some reason, she felt her hands shake.

“Your afterward is decided, Elder,” the assassin said softly.

She could see it already, Domacridhan of Iona, seated on his throne. The branch of an ash tree across his knees. Stoic and stern as the statues of his grand halls. Cold, distant, unfeeling. So far from the immortal she knew now.

Dom only tipped his head to one side, watching as she took another step. Sorasa could not hear his heartbeat, but she could see the flutter in his throat, the telltale sign of a hammering pulse.

“I decide when you do, Amhara,” he breathed, extending his hand again.

Sorasa wanted to run. Instead, her palm found his once more, her eyes locked to his own.

She watched as his lips parted, his pupils blowing wide. He looked like an animal, ready to sprint from danger. She knew the sensation too well and tightened her grip. Holding them both in place; holding them both together.

He used the hard voice again, the one better suited to a throne.

“My afterward is yours.”

Corayne expected Sorasa to find her and carry the news herself. Instead, she heard word of Domacridhan’s stirring from a passing guard. Andry was off in the city, helping with repairs to the wall, so she sprinted through the castle on her own. She felt her heart in her throat, too excited to notice bewildered faces as she tore through the halls.

Neither guard at his door tried to stop her. They knew better than to try.

But one did catch her eye, giving her a look beneath his helmet.

“The Monarch is sleeping,” he said, though he did not bar the way.

Corayne answered with a half-mad smile, her hand already pushing the door open to step inside. Only to freeze in the doorway, mouth agape and eyes wide.

Slowly, she took a step backward, letting the door close on two sleeping figures, one on top of the blankets, curled into the other. Glimpsed only for a moment but seared into Corayne’s mind like a brand.

“I told you,” the guard murmured as Corayne ran off again.

Her laughter echoed through the halls for a long time, the first joyful sound in Tíarma since the battle ended. But not the last.

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