Child of Fire, Child of Ice-A Sci-fi Romance Series Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 JB Trepagnier

  ISBN-13: 978-1984240798

  ISBN-10: 198424079X

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means – by electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise – without prior written permission.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Prologue

  Cendis and Avala, a planet of fire and a planet. Two different people who have gone through supernatural and physical changes since fleeing Earth centuries ago. Locked in their hatred and mistrust of each other, Cendis finally attacked Avala. As the wars continued to rage and people taken into slavery, the Gods began to punish the Cendians and Avalians. The Cendians lost their fire and the Avalians lost their ice.

  A truce was called, but secret factions began to crop up on both planets that thought they should work together to fix Avala’s toxic water and Cendis’ rapidly growing pest problem. The solution came in the form of a paradise planet through a previously unnavigable wormhole between Cendis and Avala.

  King Henrick of Avala was in a council meeting planning to break the truce and destroy Cendis. King Ence of Cendis and the rest of his council were asleep in their beds. A faction member on Avala was waiting outside the council room door hoping for an audience with the king and a faction member on Cendis was hoping to speak to the king over breakfast.

  Before any faction member could approach the king and their council on either planet, the entire ruling monarchy suddenly dropped dead all at once. Even more curious, the wives of the kings and their council suddenly fell pregnant, no matter what their age was or how hard they had previously tried for children before.

  The faction kept the paradise planet secret. Avalians and Cendians were too set in their ways to work together. The faction put all their hopes in these children. Maybe the gods made them and they would bring them into a new age

  Chapter 1

  Isolde had to wait for the Cendian slave to finish brushing out her long, black hair. If her Uncle Jovin’s plan went accordingly, no Cendian or Avalian would ever be a slave again. Yani, her slave, didn’t know all her secrets, but she knew Isolde didn’t like having slaves. They chatted like old friends and when Yani was done brushing her hair, Isolde turned right around and brushed hers before telling her to make herself at home in her chambers while she was gone.

  All of this pressure was put on her and the other children the gods put in those women’s bellies that night. Her mother and the rest of them had all these hopes she would be special and return their planet to glory. Her mother didn’t know this and the Avalians didn’t have this gift before except with bond animals, but Isolde could read her thoughts. She blamed everything on the Cendians and if she could turn her daughter and the other fifteen children into weapons, she would.

  It hurt when she heard Fjola constantly wishing she was a boy. She wasn’t supposed to be a boy. The Cendian queen had a prince that night and she was a princess like she was supposed to be. Uncle Jovin had been teaching her in secret with Intel about the Cendian prince. She knew the Cendians had been fierce warriors before, but their new prince was coddled. He was seventeen, just like her, and he still played with his toy soldiers rather than plot against any type of danger. From what she had been told, he did nothing without his mother’s approval.

  As soon as Uncle Jovin knew she could read minds, he didn’t help her try to turn it off. Being in the main hall with that many people gave her a headache. He kept pushing her to see if she could use it like she was guiding a bond animal. Uncle Jovin was born after the attacks and didn’t even have the ability to bond with an animal, so she didn’t think he could teach her.

  It turned out, she could get into people’s minds and influence them a little. She thought she should just influence the entire council and her mother to work with the Cendians and go to the planet. Jovin started yelling at her, asking if he’d taught her nothing.

  “Don’t you think I’ve thought of that? We don’t know how long it lasts and I don’t want you experimenting with something that important. Do you want us to all migrate there and have it reduced to a half burnt, half frozen waste because everyone starts fighting?”

  He slapped her when he corrected her that time. She’d already conditioned herself not to feel pain or react to slaps or the rod. They weren’t immune to the cold like she was, nor the ice dagger she could have shot out her hand at them when she was being punished. Fjola didn’t even know Uncle Jovin planned to sneak her to Cendis as a slave so she could get close to the Cendian price. Her Qunelope, her bond animal, told her when she was just seven and they completed the ritual where they could hear each other’s thoughts that she and the Cendian prince would have a closer bond than they did.

  Her Qunelope told Isolde that her name was Soelva once they could speak. Soelva refused to tell her how to complete the bond with the Cendis prince when she was seven. All she would tell her was that she was too young to hear it and it was much different than hunting together and eating their prey raw. Soelva claimed when she was seven she would enjoy it more, but Isolde couldn’t understand what could be more fun than stalking a mountain beast in the snow then ripping its flesh with your teeth while your entire body tingled as the bond completed.

  Uncle Jovin must have been plotting while her mother was pregnant. All sixteen children from that night had one of his faction next to them, guiding them. Some had stepped in and married into the family and some were already family, like her uncle. The faction was guiding the sixteen and knew everything about them, but Isolde kept getting upset that she didn’t know everyone in the faction and she still hadn’t seen this mysterious paradise planet she was supposed to get everyone to and rule.

  She thought Soelva was mistaken when she finally told her how she was supposed to bond with the Cendis prince. She was fifteen and understood how sex worked. She thought it was some massive breeding experiment they hadn’t tried with the slaves because they didn’t have enough power. People had sex every day and there was nothing s
upernatural about it. Her Uncle Jovin was married, but had four courtesans. He wasn’t bonded to any of them.

  She told Uncle Jovin exactly what she thought and if she did go undercover at Cendis like he planned and he expected her to try it, she wanted the same capsules the courtesans used so they weren’t having babies all the time. She told him she wouldn’t go and ruin everything if he didn’t get her the capsules. She was shocked when he agreed right away and told her she didn’t need to be having babies until her rule was secure on the new planet.

  That was the only complaint she ever voiced. She took her beatings without even a grunt and when her eighteenth birthday was approaching, she ate reduced portions so she would be thin, like a slave when she got to Cendis. None of the other fifteen could resist the suggestions she planted in their head, so it would be easy to get the Cendian prince to announce in public he was taking her as a plaything.

  The problem was going to be getting him away from his mother and toys to get him on board. All she knew about the Cendian prince was that his name was Elan and he hadn’t been trained by a faction member. His mother wouldn’t let him out her sight long enough. He still had a nanny who played dollies with him and apparently, he liked hide and seek in the woods. How was she supposed to work with that?

  Fjola had a weapon in her hand as soon as she started walking. Fjola hoped for a son with all sorts of gifts they had never seen before. She was expecting to give birth to a god since she was one of the ones who claimed she couldn’t possibly have been pregnant when her bleeding stopped. Isolde later learned her father married Fjola because it was arranged, but there was one particular courtesan he had always loved. It was expected, on Avala and apparently Cendis as well, that royalty would start taking courtesans as soon as the urge hit them.

  Her father fell in love with his very first courtesan. He consummated his marriage with Fjola on their wedding night, but spent all his time with Marinella, the woman he really loved. Fjola was pretty bitter when Isolde was old enough and she would complain that he only visited when he thought he might put a child in her, but he had missed that month because it was Marinella’s name day and he held a three-week celebration for her.

  Isolde knew Fjola really wanted the ice daggers Uncle Jovin was teaching her to use, but she learned to use the freeze gun they had developed when people started losing their powers. What was the point of the freeze gun now? Cendis wasn’t going to attack again because both planets thought they had been cursed. She knew why Jovin beat her, but she still didn’t understand why Fjola wanted her to be a fighter so badly.

  Fjola knew Jovin trained her, but not why. Their training was always limited when Fjola wanted to watch. She couldn’t use any of her real gifts and had to learn to use those clunky weapons that were developed later. Those weapons would be useless against one of the Cendian sixteen if what Jovin said was true. They could just look at something and start a fire.

  Jovin tested her with that too. They didn’t have fire on Avala, but they had devices that made heat. Intense heat to cook a hunted beast in seconds while sealing the juices in. Isolde thought that was way better than cooking it over a spit and fire like she was told they did in Cendis. Jovin could have killed her when he made her go sit in one of the flash ovens to see what happened.

  She heard him click a button to ignite the burners and let the blood in her veins turn to ice. She wasn’t instantly cooked like their food, but the heat was slowly wearing down the shell of ice she had made and it didn’t look like Jovin was going to turn that bloody oven off. The cold never bothered her, but she could feel cold water streaking down her back as the heat in the oven was getting closer to cooking her. She needed to do something or she was going to die in there because Jovin pushed a test too far.

  She was ten then and had only ever thrown ice out her palms. She was curled into a ball in that oven getting angrier and angrier at Jovin. She focused on that rage and sent ice out everywhere. When she finally opened her clenched eyes, the metal of the ovens was bent back and ripped open. Jovin was by the button he failed to press to turn the heat off ducked down and covered in debris and smoke.

  She didn’t even get a chance to yell. He picked her up hooting and hollering she had passed this stupid test. She had no idea how he explained the completely destroyed ovens. Fjola couldn’t have known, but she eyed her with some sort of new respect after that. She even asked Jovin for the millionth time if Fjola knew this entire time and he swore again she couldn’t know because she would use the sixteen as weapons without hearing them out.

  She was fully trained now. She could kill anything that came against her. She could stand there and be beaten and degraded with her head down like she was a slave and not a princess. Jovin told her she couldn’t do anything she learned until she was alone with Elan and he was on her side, but he had her meet with several courtesans on how to please Elan when they went to bond. She was more worried about a sissified momma’s boy pleasing her. Was she supposed to just not enjoy herself?

  Fjola only commented once about her reduced portions as her eighteenth birthday approached. Isolde always thought she hoped for a boy instead of her, but Fjola muttered something about her body being even more boyish if she didn’t get this foolish idea out of her head she needed to lose weight. Fjola muttered the entire meal about trying to arrange a husband for her when she spent all her time hunting in the woods like a boy and couldn’t even dress like a proper princess.

  Isolde had no idea where that was coming from, but once Jovin thought she was thin enough to pass for a slave, she was leaving everything she ever knew and trying to seduce a stranger.

  Chapter 2

  Botak watched the celebration for Elan’s name day with a pit in his stomach. Jovin had better be giving out a good story on Avala as to why their princess wasn’t at her own celebration and would disappear for a while. All the Avalian slaves were bringing food out to the table. Botak knew what to expect, but he had no idea what this Isolde looked like. He had been sent an image when she was a child, but the Avalians all looked the same to him.

  The slaves all lined up behind the ornate pastry they had just brought out. Botak couldn’t even pick her out then. He was getting no vibe any of the slaves were upset because one didn’t know what she was doing. They were all thin from eating scraps and they all had their heads bowed and looked no Cendian directly in the eye. Either this girl was dedicated to her mission or Jovin broke her in so she’d be more of a slave and less of a princess. If she was too meek to rule, all of this was for nothing.

  He wanted to be there when her pod landed in an area of the forest no one went to anymore because of the swarms of insects. He needed to be with Elan. When he finally left Elan’s chambers, he went to find Duwata. Duwata was already back inside the obsidian palace with Karta, his niece and one of the sixteen. In a perfect world, everyone on the planet would have the same gifts as Elan and Karta, they wouldn’t have to worry about attacks and bugs, and Elan and Karta would be betrothed.

  Duwata claimed he spoke with Isolde as he was sneaking her inside the castle. Duwata claimed she tried to help, but Botak thought she just wasn’t into bugs. Duwata wasn’t used to it and wasn’t dressed for it, but she made the entire air around both of them so cold, it kept the bugs away on their walk. She even told Duwata they knew on Avala that bugs are attracted to heat. They could try building some sort of heat device that attracts them and kills them.

  Duwata didn’t learn much about the girl herself, just that she already had ideas on how to make Cendis better, even if the end goal was an entirely different planet. She was well spoken and even though she had made herself thin to look like a slave, her body was young and firm, like a warrior. Duwata claimed she was very pretty and would get Elan’s attention, but Botak didn’t think Elan could tell the difference between their slaves any better than he could.

  He eyed the line of black-haired women behind the cart with the pastry. They were all dressed the same, in old cl
othing the high born no longer wanted. The high born wouldn’t have given them a gown or something important, but they would have given them hunting clothes or clothes for just lounging around their chambers.

  All of the slaves had black hair hanging in their face. He knew underneath it was green eyes and unnaturally red lips, but he realized now he should have paid more attention to the slaves they had knowing Isolde was coming in the guise of one. This girl was good. She grabbed whatever clothing was available and he couldn’t pick her out by clothes either. He tried studying their bodies, looking for one that might have warrior training. Had this little princess prepared for that too and grabbed clothes that hid everything?

  Elan stood and addressed everyone after the pastries were served. The slaves were all lined up against the back wall in case they were needed. Elan knew what he was supposed to do and so did the girl. Botak looked back at the slaves. Surely, there needed to be eye contact for what Jovin said Isolde would do.

  “I want to pick my own toy this year,” Elan said petulantly. “I’m eighteen now and no one can stop me. I want her to play with,” he demanded, pointing towards the back of the room. Botak waited to see if he would have to throw a fit.

  The guards hesitated, but they finally moved forward to drag the girl Elan pointed at from the back of the room. He expected her to ruin it when they threw her at his feet and forced her to kneel. She just stayed down, obedient, with her eyes averted.

  There weren’t as many gasps from the high born about Elan’s new toy as there would have been if Botak hadn’t been preparing him for this moment since before he was born. They had no idea what Elan and Isolde would be doing. Some of them guessed, but most of them thought Elan really only did want to play games with her and anything else would need approval from his mother.

  Botak and Elan’s bond animal, a Pawswearsea named Tati, had to tell him he would bond with this princess like he had bonded with Tati and he couldn’t ruin that with courtesans. By Jovin’s reports, Isolde’s bond animal had told her the exact same thing and she thought it was a pile of beast dung. She agreed to do it and learned how to please Elan, but she thought both Jovin and her bond animal were lying to her.