Algardis Series Boxed Set Read online

  Algardis Series Boxed Set (Books 1-3)

  Terah Edun

  Contents

  Copyright

  Mages By Chance: Algardis #1

  Mages By Chance Summary

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  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

  Mages By Fortune: Algardis #2

  Mages By Fortune Summary

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  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

  Mages By Assembly: Algardis #3

  Mages By Assembly Summary

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  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

  Courtlight Series Boxed Set: Books 1-3

  Courtlight Series Boxed Set Books 1-3 Summary

  Sworn To Raise: Book One, Chapter One

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  About the Author

  Copyright © 2019 by Terah Edun

  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.

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  Mages By Chance Summary

  The first book in a new series that follows a young woman destined to destroy every edict her people live by and the boy who would do anything to be accepted by his. Journey along in a spellbinding story of conquering fear and overcoming love as they become Mages By Chance.

  Maeryn ‘Mae’ Darnes is a young woman torn between two worlds…life or death. She has watched her siblings slowly wither away just like all the others blighted by the cursed Darnes bloodline. Now its the two youngest that will be dead within days.

  Desperate to find a cure Mae does the unthinkable and breaks her family’s code of honor to practice dark magic. If she can find the cure and convince a band of rogue relatives to join her cause, she might even be able to activate the most powerful casting ever seen.

  But in her attempts to circumvent her elder’s powerful rulings, Mae stumbles upon a plot to prolong the suffering of the afflicted. Now she not only needs to throw off the yolk that bounds her to her family, but carve out the darkness that is hiding within.

  Blood and family have always been a constant in Mae’s life, but as the wasting sickness is being masterminded for other’s desire, Mae becomes determined to risk everything to reveal the truth. No matter the cost.

  1

  Mae’s chest felt so tight that it was like she was going to burst from the inside out. That was because it was decision time, and this wasn’t a decision she could make lightly: confront her parents or walk away. She had already broken the covenants of the commune by even considering using dark magic to save the two lives that hung in the balance. But according to the useless sages the elders had tracked down, they didn’t have long left to live, and the little magic her family did have on its own…wasn’t enough to save them.

  So dark magic would have to do.

  It was a desperate ploy, and uncertainty roiled through her. Even a little rage that she needed to go this far…but mostly, she was filled with weariness. She had been tossing and turning over what she would do for almost a full week, and now that the moment was here, Mae hesitated. She needed to do this before she confronted her parents, but even gathering the mental acuity to focus on the task at hand instead of the suffering permeating throughout the greater holding was hard.

  So, so hard.

  Biting her lip as she stood in the hallway, Mae was trying to pull it together, but found herself unable to put anything past a semblance of grief on her tired face. Mainly because she only had a hope and a prayer of her illicit effort working. There was only so much searching she could do before she acknowledged the fact that she wasn’t getting anywhere, and much of the literature she had found was worse than useless for solving the problem at hand. But if she gave up and just admitted failure, considering how far she had already come…not only would she be punished, but they would all be heartbroken once more. She feared the latter far more than anything else. Everyone in the greater holding had already been through so much that one more failure on top of the dozens of other desperate attempts they had made over the last week was a blow she wasn’t sure their close-knit family could take.

  They weren’t rich like the landowners closer to the capital city. Her family was merely a large one, barely considered more than poor and wholly relying on subsistence farming in addition to the occasional sale of meat and fleeces at the seasonal markets to make their way. Out of the six families that had long ago domesticated their tiny province in the eastern region of the kingdom of Nardes, hers had the most magic.

  Which wasn’t saying much, because the little they had wasn’t curing the most vulnerable population among them—the children.

  Which was why she was sitting on the floor, desperate to keep looking. She’d been at this a few days already, but she would keep going…for them. Mae was determined, and she had this gut feeling that all her hard work was going to pay off. She just had to have something in place to make it happen before she went to her parents demanding their assent. And it would take quite a lot for them to agree to support the dark incantation she wanted to cast, but if she had the proof that it worked, then everything else would fall into place. So, Mae sighed, tilted her head back while ignoring the misery threatening to cloud her mind, and aimlessly reached down by her side to pick up the heavy tome once more. With weary eyes, she blinked down at one of the many forbidden texts of her family. She wasn’t supposed to have her hands on it, but they had already tried everything else. If she had to work with a text that singed her fingertips the moment she’d touched it then she would. She remembered it well because she hadn’t always been willing to be this risky. A week ago, she’d changed who she was—that wa
s the week she’d decided to take the leap from worried sister to defiant sibling. She was putting a lot of her own goodwill on the line. Goodwill she had meticulously stored up over the year by staying out of most troubles, running to the market whenever her older relatives needed it, and even cleaning unbidden. Which for Mae was a minor miracle in and of itself. Of course, she hadn’t done any of those things without a goal in mind. Namely her parents’ permission to go to the midsummer’s fair with a certain someone without supervision. She had imagined winding ribbons in her hair and wearing a pretty courting dress styled with damask. Instead, she was now sitting in a dark hallway with illicit materials in her hands while she prepared to spend all that hard-earned favor in one fell swoop, and not for her own enjoyment. But right now, something mattered more than that. Lives were in the balance, and it was up to her.

  Because if anyone else was capable of solving this death spiral, they would have stepped up already, wouldn’t they? Mae thought bitterly.

  It wasn’t that Mae thought anyone in the collective community that shared knowledge and resources between the holdings was holding back. Quite the opposite. Each of the families, Mae’s being the largest, had something to fear from the deaths—past and present. And they also had a vested interest in finding a cure as soon as possible. Before Mae’s siblings died. Before more lives were taken. But it was also clear that they were running on fumes.

  The elders, as far as Mae knew, had already gone through quack brush healers, prognosticates, sages, and temple clerics. All had promised that with their proprietary knowledge and faith in the gods, their families would get through this. And some had.

  Oh, the children never survived more than a few weeks under the wasting sickness’s grip. But sometimes, for a day or two, the mystics who paraded into the holding on their proud steeds seemed to be able to arrest the progress of the illness. Hold it in their grips so that, for a morning, the children woke up without screams. The sweat that formed on their brows like dew did not flow. And they were able to take down more than just soup and water.

  But it never lasted for much longer than a fortnight of sunrises, and those new individuals who promised miracles were summarily kicked out of the holding gates to go off and convince another suffering family of the miracles they could bring. Never a cure. Just a respite.

  But Mae and her family had long since decided that they wanted complete relief. Unfortunately, it seemed like it was a never-ending cycle of children failing ill, dying, a few years between these unnatural deaths, and then more fell to the same spell. And the wasting sickness wasn’t something that could be left behind by abandoning the land her family had watched over for generations. Because if that was the case, Mae knew her parents would have sent herself and her siblings on the first boat to a new home in a new city, no matter what it cost.

  But reports from all over the kingdom told of families facing down the same deadly curse and even more losses in the true cities many times greater than her small holding. So instead, the Darnes clan focused on what they knew and the children they could provide for. And at the moment, the two girls stricken by the wasting sickness were just harbingers of death for the rest who would succumb. Those ill now were the oldest of those under the age of ten. At least a dozen more children, Mae’s relatives all, could be cursed by this blight. And she couldn’t let that happen. Even just thinking of them all wasting away like Samuel and Rachel made Mae sick with anger. If she had anything to say about it, these two would be the last of those drained of their life forces and left to whimper in agony for weeks at a time. It was too hard to watch them suffer, and it was even harder to listen as their intermittent screams bounced across the holding walls and echoed down hallways like some macabre morning bell. Even though she had to. They all did. Every day and every hour, the illness kept up its scourge. Even now, the howl of a distant scream rose. Mae knew it was them, even as far away as she was. It was hard to mistake the howl as anything else. The sound rose and peaked into a sharp staccato, and Mae shuddered in commiseration. It was as if she could feel their pain, the pain that was carried in every harrowing gasp and cry.

  Time began to still, and Mae felt the beat of her heart slow as she listened to it start up again. She thought it might be the older of the two victims this time. And as they joined together in one cry, it was as if the world stood still while she listened. Mae couldn’t escape it; it was as if she herself was strapped to a bed and filled with pain in those moments. But the strength of the cry faltered when one voice dropped out abruptly, a rest period that Mae knew would have the girl slumped down from where she had lain almost unnaturally arched off the bed, family members frantically reaching over to wipe off the cold sweat on her head. Finally, after what felt like eons but was only seconds, the second of the two screams trailed off. It was sickening but also a relief.

  They could rest together, just like they did everything else together.

  Miserably, Mae wiped away some wetness from her eyes and said, “Though no siblings should have to do this together.”

  She wasn’t just referring to the wasting sickness, either. Her older sister and the rest of their family were all participating in this haunting wait, their lives on hold, their emotions strained while they hoped and some prayed.

  Most cried at some point. Whether it was the beginning, when they realized that the blight had struck the most innocent of them all, or when they were weeks into watching the progress of the debilitation. Or just whenever they heard a pain-filled scream that echoed down the corridors.

  It could be cathartic to cry in sympathy, like Mae was doing now.

  But she refused to admit that it was an emotional response to the pain. No, it wasn’t just that.

  She was crying because she was furious, frustrated, and damned tired.

  They all were, and the physical toll was hard on a body. It didn’t help that her stomach was turning into knots as she waited to see if the two girls would pick up screaming again. Sometimes they did. Sometimes they waited, giving all of those around them a slight respite. If you could call it that. For Mae, the tense wait in between the screams was just as horrible as listening to it in an echo.

  It made her so upset that she might just hurl all over the floor.

  Instead, she forced back her nausea and tightened her jaw. Willing back both tears and rage. Neither would help her here, and screaming wasn’t something Mae did—not unless she had a damned good reason. Licking her lips, Mae looked down at the vellum that was creasing under the grip she had reflexively tightened when she heard the screams.

  She only said one thing to the object, in a voice hoarse with hurt: “You’d better work.”

  But she meant that with all her heart. Because if it didn’t, she was out of options. They all were. And that didn’t sit well with Maeryn Darnes. It made her ballistic just thinking about it, a fury she was desperately trying to control so that it didn’t control her. She had the legendary Darnes temper. It came out in different ways, but for Mae, it had always been with fiery consequences. Usually some terse words in the local market or a scuffle with a brash cousin. But lately even stranger things had been happening.

  As if it was reading her mind and didn’t like the anger it felt, it heated up so hot and fast that she barely had time to yelp before dropping the tome on her bare feet, making her one of the only people in the commune most likely howling at the top of her lungs while hopping on one foot and sucking at her burning fingertips simultaneously.

  Things like that, Mae thought miffed.

  “What did I do that has all the demigods in the kingdom trying to break my foot?” she howled as she leaned back against the wall, clutching her abused foot.

  As the pain of the heavy hit died down to a throb in her big toe, Mae glared down at the tome lying on the floor innocently, as if it hadn’t just wounded her twice—once on its way up and another on its way down.

  But that wasn’t the last of her troubles by a long shot. Mae heard a noise down the hall
that had her hastily straightening up and hoping whoever was coming up the back stairs didn’t look too closely in the shadows.

  Seconds ticked by and no one emerged.

  Slight relief began to filter through Maeryn’s head. “Maybe it was just my imagination.”

  Then she heard another sound…like a step. But she wasn’t sure. Still better to be safe than sorry. So she reached down to frantically put out the candle she’d been hoping to read by with her left hand and kicked the tome against the wall with her right foot.

  She may have been hoping, but she was no fool. Besides, keeping the candle going would only attract attention, not turn it away.

  Not a few seconds later, Maeryn’s worst possible nightmare was confirmed.

  An explosion of light hit the corridor as a young woman screeched down the hallway, “What is going on here?”

  Mae had been found.

  2

  Oh no.

  Mae recognized the voice, but she also knew that there was a faint chance the young woman would go away.

  She hadn’t sounded like she would want to, but Mae knew every single member of her family, and with this one, wariness would push her to get guardsmen before she thought of investigating a darkened hallway alone. Even if that hallway was in the middle of the family holding. In a way, Mae didn’t blame her. The instinct for self-preservation was a powerful one and would no doubt keep her alive for a long, long time. Only fools sauntered in the dark when the wary made sure they weren’t being herded into a trap.

  Still, Mae couldn’t be sure, so she instinctively willed the dropped tome to be silent and stay hidden behind her. Not that it seemed like it was any more sentient than a vicious object bound by a protection casting could be. But you never knew how it would react now that it was active in some way. Mae just hoped the tome would choose to stay quiet and passive in its corner, seeing as she wasn’t touching it anymore. As the fiery text did nothing for the moment, she assumed it worked.