Venom and Vengeance : A Shattered Source Novel (The Shattered Source Series Book 2), page 1
Venom & Vengeance
BOOK TWO
THE SHATTERED SOURCE SERIES
HANNAH DANIELLE
HD PUBLISHING LLC
Copyrights
Copyright © 2024 by Hannah Danielle
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Hannah Danielle asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Sensitivity read conducted by Jamecia Bellamy
Line edits by K.F. Starfell
Copy edits by Norma Gambini
Internal portrait art by @emmabovel
Cover design by Hannah Danielle and K.F. Starfell
HD Publishing
ISBN: 9798985751635, 9798985751642
This one is for my mom. (Except for chapter 55. That would be weird. That chapter is for everyone whose favorite is always the snarky side character.)
Mom - You have always been my best friend and biggest supporter. I love you.
Contents
Content Warnings
1. Aurelia
2. Aurelia
3. Aurelia
4. Brenwyn
5. Callista
6. Atlas
7. Aurelia
8. Mage
9. Brenwyn
10. Callista
11. Brenwyn
12. Brenwyn
13. Atlas
14. Aurelia
15. Mage
16. Mage
17. Callista
18. Aurelia
19. Aurelia
20. Atlas
21. Brenwyn
22. Mage
23. Aurelia
24. Aurelia
25. Brenwyn
26. Aurelia
27. Brenwyn
28. Aurelia
29. Callista
30. Aurelia
31. Mage
32. Atlas
33. Aurelia
34. Atlas
35. Aurelia
36. Atlas
37. Aurelia
38. Aurelia
39. Mage
40. Brenwyn
41. Callista
42. Atlas
43. Aurelia
44. Brenwyn
45. Aurelia
46. Atlas
47. Brenwyn
48. Aurelia
49. Atlas
50. Aurelia
51. Brenwyn
52. Atlas
53. Aurelia
54. Brenwyn
55. Aurelia
56. Brenwyn
57. Atlas
58. Mage
59. Aurelia
60. Brenwyn
61. Mage
62. Brenwyn
63. Callista
64. Asteria
Book Three Awaits
Also by Hannah Danielle
Stay Up to Date
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Content Warnings
Torture
Restrained against will
Grief after child loss
Substance abuse
Sexually explicit content
Violence
Fire
Genocide
Blood
Acting under duress
Mention of attempted self-harm
Explicit language
Themes of human trafficking (mentioned in a memory)
Panic attacks
Chapter 1
Aurelia
Thick ropes of dread coiled between my ribs and pulled taut, caging my lungs as I roiled against the familiar blackness. Just as every time I had been forced to endure this nightmare, this in-between space, I lay flat on my back, ropes of dark magic binding my limbs to a stone surface.
I must have drifted off. I had stopped hiking to rest my aching legs. I had only needed a moment. Just a moment to gather my exhaustion. I had done so well at avoiding sleep, fighting to remain conscious.
Until now.
A frigid kind of dread sluiced through my core as the weight of reality settled in. The pain of dredging through another endless forest was nothing compared to the agony I was about to endure. Bile rose in my throat as bitter terror coated my tongue. The stench of my own blood in this space still burned my nostrils from the last time I had fallen victim to this nightmarish dreamscape.
How was he doing it? How could he pull me into that space? Touch me, make me bleed while my body lay behind in that forest?
The soft pad of the false king’s footsteps sounded in the distance, shaking my frantic train of thought and alerting me to his presence as he drew nearer. The last time, it hadn’t just been Ragnor. He’d somehow brought Oberin with him, the soulless emissary to his courts and apparent torture master.
Much to my miserable surprise.
Not only could Ragnor taunt me here, but he had the ability to bring others. Use the will of them to break me.
Fuck that.
It would take more than knife wounds to shatter my resolve after what he’d done to make the realm suffer. After what Celvaria’s citizens had had to endure because of his actions.
My carelessness.
That familiar pang of guilt threatened to choke me, but I swallowed it, focusing my thoughts on the dire circumstances at hand.
Surviving it was simply a matter of endurance, and I would need all my mental faculties to withstand this place. I could do nothing to defend myself here, as I was barely a whisper of my former power. My soul—torn from my body to hover here only until I blacked out from the pain. My consciousness—sent back to my reality with physical evidence of Oberin’s wrath.
Somehow his blade had not only scarred my mind, but my flesh as well. The wicked magic of this source-damned place was not like any I’d ever seen. Oberin’s vile form of torture was the precise reason I had done my best to evade sleep so desperately for the past weeks, trying to avoid any more hideous scars to remind me of the time I had spent in the dreamscape.
But I’d failed. I’d fallen asleep by that river with my back pressed up against a great oak tree. The sound of the wind through the leaves had lulled me into unconsciousness.
That was all it had taken for Ragnor to reach me again.
Only a few stiff moments passed before one set of footsteps turned to two separate beats echoing off the endless black walls of the dreamscape. I ground my teeth against icy panic as it flushed my neck. My eyes stretched wide, and my nostrils flared through quick and shallow breaths before I found the pair of gruesome males in the shadows.
“You’ve been hiding from me, Dove,” Ragnor crooned. The cold slither of his voice moved over my skin like frigid water, raising gooseflesh along the way.
The false king’s silhouette sharpened as a faint glowing light burning behind him illuminated the nightmare space enough to give me a clear view of the males. Oberin stood at his shoulder, digging at the grime under his fingernails with the tip of a blackened blade. The healing wound on my stomach from our last encounter twinged at the sight of the poisonous weapon, and I ground my teeth against the flutter of fear-twisted rage as its wings beat against my ribs.
“Not well enough, it seems,” I hissed through gritted teeth, the resolve under my voice surprising considering the trembling beginning in my hands.
I clenched my fists against swelling panic, its ferocity moving through my veins at an alarming pace.
“No. Not well enough.” Ragnor stopped near my head and trailed a cool finger along my cheek, his gaze predatory as it roamed the length of my body.
I shuddered at the contact, its intimacy causing a curl of nausea low in my core, and I fought the urge to flinch away as a crawl of disgust moved over my exposed skin. I could not refrain from jerking my chin away from his grasp, my breaths heaving through flared nostrils.
“You seem fatigued. Not sleeping well?” Ragnor taunted, a flare in his obsidian eyes.
Those eyes had once been so bright, an emerald to rival that of any other creation fae’s.
“Fuck off,” I spat as Oberin rounded the table to stand on my other side.
A frenzy crept over my breastbone as the torture master drew closer, but the invisible bindings held firm. I could not move so much as an inch.
I kept my attention on Ragnor, refusing to allow my attention to fall on the dark blade Oberin twirled between his long fingers. The blackened weapon had been touched by corrupted source magic. I had felt it in every wound, every trail of the poisoned iron as it had severed my flesh.
I would know that cursed magic anywhere. It was not something I would have the privilege of forgetting in this life, as much as many of my other memories still evaded me.
The corner of Ragnor’s full mouth twitched in amusement, the expression only flaring a vile kind of fury in my core. I blew a heated breath through my nostrils and ground my teeth further against the rage boiling in my blood.
How prevalent had they been before? They seemed darker now. Were they getting worse? Was the source draining him faster somehow? Unless my memory was deceiving me, the veins stemming from the shard of source embedded in his chest seemed more severe.
My thoughts spun quickly as the small flicker of hope pulled my attention into an endless spiral of possibilities, a brief distraction before Ragnor’s voice cracked the din of my imagination.
“Are you ready to deliver yourself to me, Dove?” Ragnor asked coolly, his voice centering me in this nightmare again.
The tainted pet name curled a fury within me I found impossible to ignore.
“I don’t think you heard me clearly,” I began as I bored my attention into his again, forcing venom through my tone. “Fuck. Off.”
“Pity,” He sighed and brought his lazy gaze up to meet Oberin’s eye. “Break her if you must.”
The words fell from his lips as easily as his fingers fluttered through the air to deliver the command. My eyes stretched wide as a frenzy of horror spun my mind out of control. Without so much as a moment’s hesitation, Oberin trailed the tip of his blade along the length of my arm, only applying enough pressure for me to feel the cool metal.
Teasing me. Toying with his prey.
“She can see you, you know. Your fated,” Ragnor called flippantly, his voice an echo trailing through the dreamscape now, already on his way back to the comfort of his stolen palace.
Unfiltered panic gripped my entire being, and the dream world seemed leeched of oxygen as the ability to breathe left me.
“I know it’s unlikely Oberin will be able to break you, but this will surely break her,” his voice rattled off the distant walls. His taunt haunted me, coiling my fear into whorls of raging fire.
My heart thundered in my ears, and the edges of my vision sharpened as I whipped my head around to find Callista. The need to see her overwhelmed my senses, but she was nowhere I could see. Likely, she was with Ragnor, watching on the other side of a veil.
“You won’t find her,” he called, “but you can be sure she’s watching every moment of our fun.”
“Callista.” Her name cracked the air as I choked on my own voice. The tip of Oberin’s blade hooked under the hem of my tunic to expose my already scarred stomach.
“Callista, don’t.”
“She has no choice, witch,” Oberin sneered, his voice a darkened gravel.
The sound of his snarl snapped my attention, an expression of burning fury twisting my features.
“I am no witch.” I lurched for him, straining against my magical bindings, but they held firm.
The torture master leaned in, the heat of his stale breath washing over my face. I recoiled as nausea rolled through my core.
“I don’t care what you are as long as you scream.”
He dug the edge of the blade into the sensitive flesh of my stomach without warning. I gritted my teeth against the wail of agony building in my throat for only a moment before the fire of poison released my voice. The edges of my vision darkened as pain thundered through my nerves. He took his time carving his lines, crisscrossing the already raised flesh.
As miserable as the source-dipped blade felt, I would not pray for relief. I would endure. It was the least I could do in the aftermath of all that I’d caused.
I closed my eyelids against the torture and allowed my mind to fall victim to my own endless screams of misery as he carved the same word into my abdomen he always had. I held on for as long as I could manage before my consciousness fell into the blackened void of release, relinquishing me from this twisted prison.
I am on my knees. A throbbing in my head makes it impossible to focus my thoughts. Or center my spinning vision. It’s cold. I can’t hear anything outside of a miserable ringing, a high-pitched squeal coming from deep within the recesses of my soul.
I look down to see blackened skin stretched over quaking hands, veins of death stretching up to my elbows. My fingers are trembling, my heart is racing, and I don’t think I have any oxygen in my lungs. I try to breathe, but my chest aches; a pressure there prevents me from finding relief.
The ground under my knees is damp but hard, and it’s dark. Only a dim, blue-black glow illuminates the rocky earth.
I manage to focus my attention long enough to pick out jagged shards of black crystals in the darkness. Five of them are scattered on the ground in front of me. I move my sights higher and see Asteria, her small frame poured over Aeson’s lifeless body, her chest heaving, her expression twisted into one of agony, her pale blue cheeks streaked with glistening tears.
I cannot hear her, but I know she’s crying, screaming, wailing.
His eyes are open, staring up at the cove’s ceiling, his blond hair muddied with damp earth.
I try to pull myself to my feet, but I am weak. My muscles cannot support my weight, and I topple over, landing hard on my hip, loose gravel scraping my elbow. The ringing in my ears only intensifies. My vision spins. The impact causes pain, but it is nothing in comparison to the torrent raging in my chest.
I try to say her name. Call for her attention. It is as though I am not here. She cannot see me. Her grief is a living beast flooding the space between us.
Chapter 2
Aurelia
Dove.
The word carved into the soft skin of my abdomen reeked of Ragnor’s obsession with claiming me as his own. My stomach turned over on itself at the thought. It had once been an endearing pet name given by a lover, but he’d twisted it into a reminder of my mistakes. For my inability to contain my own desires, to think about my actions.
I traced the jagged lines of the fresh wound with a gentle trail of my nail as I watched the water gurgle over the boulders in the stream ahead. They had already begun to scar over. My fae body’s ability to heal aided in that process. But the scars would remain. The source magic within that blade made sure of that. They paired with the existing scar over my breastbone, a mirrored trauma.
Just as each time I had been made to suffer the horrors of that realm, I did my best to separate myself from reality. To tuck the visions of torture into the recesses of my mind to deal with another time.
With my back pressed to the trunk of a large oak tree, I could almost lose my anxieties in the way the water flowed, turning over on itself at every obstacle, adapting to the rocky path ahead. A gentle breeze rustled the copper curls loose around my face, and a knot in my chest tightened as the memory of Oberin’s blade in my flesh sent a shudder through me. It seemed I was never able to keep my thoughts from the pain for very long. The horror of his intentions were too severe.
Ragnor wanted me branded. Marked.
Who has marked you?
You are ruined.
His venomous words burned hot in my memory. I ground my teeth against the heated rage swelling in my chest and yanked the hem of my tunic back down over my stomach, pulling myself to my feet. My muscles creaked and ached at the sudden movement. With so little sleep, I was growing weak, but I needed to press on. There was no time to waste, and I had already blown through three months of travel with no success in regaining my strength enough to save Callista.
That was surely what the false king wanted. I could not allow that male to derail me from my journey to the remaining shards of source crystal, hopefully still hidden from Ragnor’s grasp. Most of my memories from before were still foggy at best, a distant life I only had impressions of. What I could remember of the crystal shards told me they should have been hidden under the major trade cities acting as extra magic sources for travelers there.
The scattered pieces of source crystal were my only hope of bringing my near-dormant magic back from the pits of the underworld it had surely taken refuge in.
I shook out the drowsiness in my muscles and reached for the small leather pouch I’d kept tied to my hip, always full of dried viva berries. The small crimson fruit had been used by fae and witch alike for centuries to prevent sleep. It hadn’t taken me long to find them, as they were common in the woods across most of the continent and most stayed clear for fear of the sometimes nightmarish aftereffects of their potency.
