The Omen of Stones Read online

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters and events portrayed in this novel are products of the author’s imagination.

  Copyright 2020 Casey L. Bond

  All rights reserved.

  Book Cover, Map and Interior Formatting designed by The Illustrated Author Design Services

  Edited by The Girl with the Red Pen

  She was born in the river. And in the river, will she die.

  His breath stirred the spirits. And with them, he will live.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Map

  Copyright

  Part One: The Birth of the Fate-Kissed 1: Illana

  2: Lindey

  3: River

  4: Omen

  5: River

  6: Omen

  7: River

  8: Omen

  9: River

  10: Sable

  11: River

  12: Omen

  13: River

  14: Sable

  15: River

  16: River

  Part Two: The Stirring of the Fate-Kissed 17: Sable

  18: River

  19: Omen

  20: Omen

  21: Sable

  22: Omen

  23: River

  24: Omen

  25: Omen

  26: Sable

  27: River

  28: Omen

  29: River

  Part Three: The Rise of the Fate-Kissed 30: River

  31: River

  32: Omen

  33: Judith

  34: River

  35: Omen

  36: Omen

  37: River

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Casey L. Bond

  Part One

  The Birth of the Fate-Kissed

  1

  Illana

  Using my sisters as crutches, we rushed to the river. “We’re not going to make it,” I panted, a sheen of cool, urgent sweat erupting over my skin. “The baby is coming.”

  “We will,” Isla encouraged, urging me forward when the last thing I wanted to do was take another step. Her sunkissed hair whipped in the wind, lashing at my face, tangling with my matching strands. There was so much pressure. A contraction squeezed my stomach, the muscles pushing my daughters toward the earth.

  With a slow, agonized gait, I gritted my teeth and fought for every inch of ground we covered. I stopped only when I could not go on, breathing in time with my sisters until the contractions were over. They were becoming insistent, relentlessly crashing over me and causing me to flounder, weakening my resolve more with each one. My knees were watery, my legs quivering. We’d barely taken ten steps when another agonizing wave battered me. I cried out from the intensity, looking up at the darkening sky above us.

  Twilight was being drowned by a storm’s dark wall cloud. The formation was smooth and stretched high into the sky – just like Jenna had dreamed. Jenna was the youngest of the three of us, with dreams both vivid and prophetic. Last night, she’d dreamt of the birth of my daughters. And she’d come to me at first light with news that today, I would give birth.

  In her dream, my babes were born in the water. They had to be, or else…I refused to think about it. Not while we could still make it.

  We were close. If I wasn’t in labor, I could reach the river’s edge in no time at all. I clung to the feeling of running freely over the grass and focused on the water, listening to it ripple and churn, whispering to the Goddess for her help, for her blessing.

  Ahead of us, the water roared, a constant guide and encouragement, but it seemed with every step I took, the distance between us and the water’s edge lengthened.

  The pain intensified until every second, every step threatened to cleave me in two.

  Overhead, the wall cloud pushed through the sky, going out before us as if heralding our trek.

  Jenna tightened her grip, holding on to my side and urging me to a faster pace. A wash of pain flooded over me and I dug my feet into the soil, my toes gripping blades of grass. Isla and Jenna stopped with me, rubbing my back while whispering soothing spells. The anguish waned, but only for a moment. There was only so much their incantations could do to help me now.

  My daughters were eager to enter this world, and I was equally eager to meet each of them, to see the three I already knew so intimately. To speak the names I would choose for them. To bathe them in their destinies.

  The child who’d settled in the center of my womb had the strongest gift among the trio. It was for her that we rushed to the river.

  My muscles slowly relaxed and we began moving forward again. My feet plodded along, but my sisters had begun to heft more and more of my weight as the three of us trampled the lush grass underfoot. “Almost there,” Jenna announced with a strain to her voice. Her delicate features contorted under the burden.

  Water leaked from my womb and my thighs became slick. My pelvic bones popped as they began to move and separate. It was time.

  I tried to walk, to help them with their arduous task, but the pain…the pain was too great.

  When we passed the ewe barn, Isla gave an encouraging smile. “It’s just there, beyond the tree line. Stay strong, Illana.”

  I had no other choice. I had to deliver them in the water. The water was the only thing that could save my strongest daughter. The water, and Fate, had chosen her and demanded that she be born into it.

  Another contraction tore through, stealing my breath greedily, though this pressure felt different. More urgent. More unforgiving. My sisters whispered powerful incantations, but this pain would not ebb.

  The tops of my feet dragged and bumped along the ground strewn with rocks as my sisters carried me forward.

  A cry tore from my throat. A swarm of black dots flew into my vision, distorting everything.

  “Illana, stay with us!” Jenna rasped.

  I heard my sisters’ hurried footsteps splashing into the water but lacked the strength to open my eyes until I felt cool wetness wash over my skin and rise to the hem of my dress. When the pain slowly loosened its grip, I looked down to find that we had made it. The swarm receded and my vision cleared.

  Relief washed over me as vividly as the blood staining the hem of my dress. I nearly cried when I sank into the cool water. The river began to fade the stain out of the pale fabric as my sisters eased me into a calmer pool, away from the rapids upstream, one deep enough in which to relax.

  Isla settled behind me, her back braced against the bank. I laid my head on her shoulder, taking deep breaths and blowing them out. Gripping her outstretched hands, I relied on her to keep us from sinking beneath the surface as I let my legs float upward. All these months I was terrified I wouldn’t know what to do when this moment came, but the Goddess guided me. She watched over me even now. I could feel her in the wind and hear her in the thunder. She lent me courage and fortitude.

  The contractions came one right after the other, like eager waves lapping at a shore.

  My teeth began to chatter.

  Surviving a triple birth was difficult, and something our own mother hadn’t been able to withstand. But all would be well, I reminded myself. In her vision, Jenna saw me holding the babes.

  Jenna knelt before me, fear and moonlight reflecting in her eyes. The wind tore her hair from her braid. Ever calm and kind, Jenna looked worried. There was a crease between her knitted brows, one that only appeared when she was afraid. I was terrified. Not of giving birth or surviving it, but for my first-born.

  Thunder cracked overhead and lightning forked across the sky as a hard contraction made me want t
o push down. A cry tore from my throat. “It seeks her,” said Jenna, just before her eyes rolled back into her head until only the whites were visible.

  “Jenna!” I screamed. Not now!

  “Hold on, Illana. Do not push,” Isla warned, letting me squeeze her hand through another powerful contraction.

  “I have to push,” I insisted, my voice evaporating.

  “Not yet,” she replied sweetly.

  Was Fate speaking to Jenna again?

  Each of my sisters had some ability to divine. Jenna through cards and the occasional dream, Isla through scrying, and I could read the lines on a person’s palm; however, the power I felt radiating from my daughters was something else entirely. Fate had appeared in Jenna’s dream as a living, breathing being. He had chosen my daughters and called them his own. The Fate-Kissed.

  And he told Jenna that my first-born must be born in water, and that she had an indelible gift.

  I’d sensed her magic the moment I first felt her move within my womb. It was instant and undeniable, a force that must be obeyed. Something…almost frightening. I couldn’t help but wonder and worry what Fate had in store for her.

  I panted, bracing for the next contraction and trying to catch my breath while I could.

  The storm shook the earth, the riverbed trembling beneath us. Jenna’s lashes fluttered over the stark white orbs. She was seeing something no one else could, learning things only she could teach, and she would tell them as soon as the trance she was in faded.

  Jenna began to mumble, then the incoherent sounds transformed into words. “She will be born in the river. And in the river, will she die.”

  A different pain overwhelmed me; precise as a bolt of lightning, it struck my heart. “No!” I cried, gritting my teeth as I bore down. It was time to push. Time for my daughters to claim their magic. “Goddess, please don’t take my daughter! Don’t take any of them from me, I beg of you.”

  Tears streamed down my face as I watched Jenna blink out of the fog of premonition. “What did I say?” she asked, blanching from the sight of my face.

  There was no time to discuss her prediction. A strong contraction came, this one laced with a magic I could taste on my tongue. I held my breath, pressed down, and pushed.

  Lightning lit the sky and the earth trembled as the first and strongest Fate-Kissed triplet was born.

  Just as Jenna was about to raise the babe above the water, Isla screamed, “Don’t! Leave her beneath until the lightning strikes again. You said to wait until the bolt comes!”

  The water in Jenna’s dream had demanded it. Jenna fought her instinct. We looked uncomfortably to the sky, begging the Goddess to send the foretold bolt.

  We didn’t have to wait long. A thick, forked bolt of lightning stretched from sky to ground and struck the grass just behind us, charring the earth and signaling that it was time. When the babe was raised from the water, she clutched something in her right hand.

  A river stone.

  Several moments and another strong push later, the second babe was born. A powerful gust of wind poured over the earth, troubling the water’s surface all around us.

  I caught my breath as Isla guided me toward the bank and I braced myself, holding my head and shoulders above the surface as she held my daughters in her arms. She bent to let me see them. As she cooed and smiled, Jenna told me to catch my breath while there was time. The third would come soon.

  My second daughter was eerily quiet, even as the storm whipped and raged around us. She watched the flashes that seared the evening sky intently, crying only when her view of the storm was blocked by Isla’s head.

  “Is she well?” I asked Jenna. Isla squeezed my palms.

  “They are both beautiful and perfect,” Jenna answered, smiling down at her nieces, tears glittering on her lashes.

  Moments later, the contractions began again. Jenna swaddled my first and second-born and lay them together in the thick grass just behind us.

  The third of the babes came easier than the two before her. As Jenna cleaned her slick body and wrapped her in linen, the babe’s whimpering cries turned into song. A song so lovely, it calmed the skies and chased away the storm.

  The girls were identical, just as I was identical to my sisters. I couldn’t help but smile; my heart was overwhelmingly full. A feeling of relief washed over me, tinged with a hint of worry over Jenna’s ominous revelation.

  I held my first-born, glancing at all three girls in turn, wondering how I’d been so lucky to have been blessed with them. I marveled at the small stone clutched in the girl’s hand. “She’s still holding the stone.”

  Smiling, I tried to tug the stone from her tiny fingers, but the babe would not let go. Even when I pulled harder. Even when my smile fell away. I looked to my sisters, who looked as perplexed as I felt.

  I couldn’t break her hold on it, and finally decided to let her keep it. Her tiny thumb and fingers were pink around the bold gray stone.

  “Before they leave the river, you must speak their names,” Isla reminded.

  I looked at my third-born daughter cradled in Isla’s arms, whose coos were so melodic, they brought tears to my eyes. I reached out to brush her small, delicately soft face. “Lyric.”

  Then I reached toward my second-born, whom Jenna swaddled. The babe still stared into the heavens, fixated on the wisps of clouds trailing the thunderhead moving off in the distance. “Sky,” I rasped.

  Returning my gaze to my first-born, who still refused to let loose the rock, I swallowed thickly and spoke her name. “Omen.”

  The Goddess blessed the trio with a warm breeze that softly flowed over the land, warm currents flooding the waters around us.

  Queen Sable of Nautilus

  In the palace, the air was electric. Not only was the wall of a great thunderhead quickly spreading itself over the kingdom like a dark blanket, I was in labor. And Tauren, the King, was nervous, easily excitable, and slightly terrified.

  I’d been in labor for hours, uncomfortable and irritable. So far, I had lain on my side, sat up to ease my back, paced the floor, and walked the staircase to and from our quarters. Nothing brought my son’s first breath closer.

  Time is its own master and refuses to be ruled.

  My magic was rendered useless. I could neither say nor do anything to progress the process. Not that I didn’t know the reason why. My son would arrive at the exact moment Fate wished him to, and not a second sooner. Fate had resided in me for a time, a sentient being who claimed me as his daughter. But then I was given a choice: remain his vessel or give myself entirely to the one for whom I fell head over stars.

  I chose the prince of my heart, the man who became King and deemed me his Queen, and Queen of the Kingdom of Nautilus.

  Fate left me, only to settle himself in our son. I could sense Fate. Not as strongly as when I held him within my bones, but there was no denying that Fate was in the boy.

  I worried for his future, for what Fate might push him to do, about his innocence and his position in the royal family. The two clashing demands might tear him apart. As his mother, I wanted to keep him safe, for him to be happy and healthy and enjoy life, not be pushed to do things that would harden him or make him as wary of people as I had once been.

  I wanted what every mother wanted: a better life for my son.

  One day, perhaps he would wear his father’s crown. I wondered if that was his fortune, or if Fate had other plans. My thoughts warred with one another as I paced the floor of the royal suite, the occasional contraction making me pause. Tauren stayed in step, refusing to leave my side, worrying more about me in the present, and not what the future held for our son.

  A sudden contraction made my abdomen clench into a tight ball. As I breathed through the pressure and pain, Tauren rubbed my back and spoke soothing words into my ear. His nearness was more powerful than anything I coul
d conjure. The very sound of his voice was enough to calm me.

  As the episode passed and another came quickly on its heels, the physician lingering outside the door eased it open. “Queen Sable, your contractions are getting closer. I think it’s best you go lie down.”

  When another contraction tightened my stomach into a hard knot and a sharp pain twisted through my bones, I nodded my head quickly. “Help me.” Tauren’s golden eyes flashed with worry, but he guided me to the bed.

  He settled behind me and let me lay my head back against his chest. I clutched his strong, steady hands and gritted as another contraction gripped me. I screamed in shock when water flooded the mattress. I looked to Tauren. Fear and anticipation shone in his eyes.

  “He’s coming,” he breathed, kissing my temple and giving me an encouraging smile despite his inability to hide his worry, though I felt it in the ever-so-slight tremble of his hands.

  The storm began to rage just outside the window. Ferocious gales of rain pelted the glass panes. Great veins of lightning flared across the sky as if the storm was a beast, and the fire its lifeblood.

  Pressure gripped my belly and I gritted my teeth, holding tight to Tauren’s hand and listening to his voice. I stared up into his beautiful golden eyes, the ones I’d fallen in love with, though I tried so long to deny it.

  The pain guided me, just as Fate once had. It told me when to bear down and when to breathe, and soon, our son was born.

  Tauren held tight to me as we watched the physician’s assistant assess our newborn’s health. She offered reassuring smiles and cooed at him, but I couldn’t help the stab of jealousy I felt. I wanted to see the face I’d been envisioning for months, to feel his soft skin. Did he have hair?

  Tauren shifted from behind me, arranging pillows to prop me up. “Can I hold him?” he asked, his voice thick with emotion.

  “Of course,” the physician answered. Tauren glowed as he took our son from his assistant’s arms.

  The child was slick with blood, but Tauren used a cloth provided by the physician to wipe it away, silent tears streaming down his face.