The Exiled Prince

  © 2017 Alyson Peterson

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form whatsoever, whether by graphic, visual, electronic, film, microfilm, tape recording, or any other means, without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief passages embodied in critical reviews and articles.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, names, incidents, places, and dialogue are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. The opinions and views expressed herein belong solely to the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions or views of Cedar Fort, Inc. Permission for the use of sources, graphics, and photos is also solely the responsibility of the author.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-4621-2792-4

  Published by Sweetwater Books, an imprint of Cedar Fort, Inc.

  2373 W. 700 S., Springville, UT 84663

  Distributed by Cedar Fort, Inc., www.cedarfort.com

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Peterson, Alyson, 1979- author.

  Title: The exiled prince / Alyson Peterson.

  Description: Springville, Utah : Sweetwater Books, an imprint of Cedar Fort, Inc., [2017] | Series: Ian Quicksilver; book 3 | Summary: “Ian Quicksilver has returned to Bankhir and is put to the test to see if he is worthy of the throne. When he is found lacking, and exiled, he discovers that his nemesis Silivus has not been quietly enduring his banishment. Ian must find a way to save his princess, his birthright, and his kingdom all in time to vanquish the evil magician”-- Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017017878 (print) | LCCN 2017026708 (ebook) | ISBN 9781462127924 (epub and moby) | ISBN 9781462120352 (perfect bound : alk. paper)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Magic--Fiction. | Princesses--Fiction. | Magicians--Fiction. | Life on other planets--Fiction. | LCGFT: Novels. | Fantasy fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.P45 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.1.P45 Ex 2017 (print) | DDC [Fic]--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017017878

  Cover design by M. Shaun McMurdie

  Cover design © 2017 by Cedar Fort, Inc.

  Edited and typeset by Jessica Romrell and Nicole Terry

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  Also by Alyson Peterson

  IAN QUICKSILVER: THE WARRIOR’S RETURN

  IAN QUICKSILVER: THE CURSED DAGGER

  For Robert.

  Heaven is lucky to have you.

  Aaron, just read the stupid books already!

  And for Buddy who inspired me to write about the Warriors in the first place.

  Semper Fi!

  1.

  The dim triple suns dipped low over the wavering, smoke-filled horizon on the planet Ulath. Soon we would be plunged into darkness on a hostile planet that belched sulfur fumes and neon-yellow lava out of crusty black mountains. Sound weird? You have no idea. What made the situation even more surreal was that we were defending this miserable lump of rock.

  Sort of defending it, to be exact. We were doing a crap-shot job at it. I was running from boulder to boulder, trying to keep one step ahead of getting blown to smithereens. Not to mention we were being chased by a few hundred Horbryn, the scourging scum of the galaxy. They invaded Ulath five days ago. Their strategy was to spread out and cause as much mayhem as possible while picking us off one by one, which I really wasn’t in the mood for.

  “Corbin!” I yelled his name like the filthiest curse word I could think of. “If you leave me on this burning hunk of rock, I’m going to knock your head off!”

  Corbin barked out a mirthless laugh as he bounded ahead of me, skipping from one half-solid rock to another. Any second and I would drop flat on my face and burn to a crisp in a puddle of neon lava. I was dog-tired. I had broken in my battle leathers last week, but any leather combined with sweat, soot, and blood will always chafe. The inside of my thighs were going to be a pretty picture once I peeled my leg guards off of my skin. I swore under my breath.

  There had to be a better way to do this.

  I had been back on my home planet of Bankhir for three weeks. Before that I had been living on Earth in the dusty town of Puckerbush, Nevada, taking on an entirely different kind of war. A curse had been placed on me at birth by an oil-slick, psychopath magician who flushed me down his big obsidian toilet and shot me across the galaxy. To get back and save my planet—and by extension, the entire galaxy—from Silivus (Mr. Psychopath) the magician, I had to fall in love with my betrothed and break the curse.

  In retrospect, bumbling around like a romantic idiot was a piece of cake. Heck, I battled a dragon, a dozen Horbryn assassins, and Ari’s wicked bout of Hashlops Fever. Not to mention that when I got out of the dreaded friend zone with her, I found out that the very thought of kissing me made her vomit. I even came close to dying a handful of times. Which is why hindsight is always an annoying, crystal clear, twenty-twenty.

  Corbin and I had been battling on the fiery planet of Ulath for three days, and about two days ago I would have gladly surrendered the entire lava pit we were fighting for over to the Horbryn if they wanted it. Huffing heavily as I ran, great plumes of yellowish ash puffed out my mouth. I was sure my lungs could glow in the dark from all the brightly colored ash I’d sucked in over the last seventy-two hours. The rest of our small band of Warriors had already left to defend a few towns on the rim of flaming lava. All that was left was Corbin, me, and, funnily enough, a motley band of Horbryn soldiers.

  Yeah. In other words, we had a couple hundred bloodthirsty alien mercenary rats chasing us as we ran right into the middle of a ring of active volcanoes.

  In comparison, courting a Garfelian princess was a walk in the park.

  Corbin vaulted over a pile of boulders and dropped out of sight. I was a few steps behind him and followed suit. I had barely cleared the boulder when Corbin’s arm shot out and grabbed my breastplate.

  “Holy stars, you’re loud when you run,” he cursed as he pulled me to the ground next to him. “The idea was to lead them away from civilization, not let them know exactly where we’re at so they can pick us off at their leisure.”

  “I think I was more concerned with not falling into a fiery pit of lava than I was with stealth,” I hissed back. The ground shook beneath us as one of the fissures in the mountainside split and spurted out blindingly bright yellow magma. “Did we lose them?”

  Corbin half stood and peered over the boulder. “Yep,” he said, dropping back down next to me. “Looks like they took the bait.”

  I snorted out a caustic laugh. “Why is it that I always end up as the worm on the hook?” I said. “You did it with the dragon, and now you’re doing it with the Horbryn. You must really want to get rid of me.”

  “Not at all, Sire,” Corbin said. “It just so happens that the Horbryn find you particularly desirable. I’ve said it before. You have an unusual talent for ticking off dangerous people.”

  He was bringing that up now?

  “How was I supposed to know that the funny-looking dude in the front of the pack was their Holyman? And why do I have to be the one to lop off the head of their deity?”

  “Because that is the way it is done when warring with the Horbryn,” Corbin said. “Sire, how many times did I tell you that the gray-haired guys with the teeth necklaces have to be killed first?”

  “Once,” I said.

  “Which is more than plenty for a Warrior,” Corbin said, “thanks to our perfect photographic memories.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” I grumbled. My insides squirmed when I thought about it. The Horbryn sent in older fighters who had survived too many wars to be killed first. They stood at the front with no armor and no weapons. Call me crazy, but I just couldn’t do it.

  Horbryn Holymen were rare. Most Horbryn mercenaries didn’t survive past thirty due to their violent lifestyle. Forty was considered admirable, and sixty was bordering on godlike status. The Holymen didn’t do much beyond begin the war. They were the ritual sacrifice. At least that was what I had been told. I’d never seen one before and had no clue what to look for, which explained a lot. I felt like a complete idiot.

  The Holyman I left alive wasn’t that ancient. I’d guess he was teetering on barely thirty. In my defense, I didn’t see the necklace of teeth until after I’d run past him.

  Needless to say, I pissed off a whole lot of people for my first time in battle, Bankhir Warriors included.

  “Are you ready for this?” Corbin said. He seemed almost excited. Then again, I couldn’t tell. Corbin wasn’t the overly expressive type.

  “You mean am I ready to stand on the edge of an unstable crater so the Horbryn can take a few swipes at me?” I said, swinging my sword, Danthis, in a tight circle in my hand. “Sure.”

  Corbin shook his head and sighed. Somewhere in his thick, muscled skull he was counting to ten and praying for patience.

  “Good,” he said. “Stick to the plan and maybe we’ll all be able to get home in one piece.”

  “That would be nice.”

  “What I wouldn’t give for an AK-47 right now,” Corbin muttered to the stars.

  “A machine gun?”

  “I am ju
st saying that sometimes, fighting with a sword is a little outdated.”

  I stared at him, open-mouthed as he added with a shrug, “I wasn’t always a gym teacher on Earth, Sire.”

  “Apparently. What else don’t I know about you, Corbin?”

  “Plenty.”

  We peered over the top of the boulder to get the twenty on the Horbryn army in pursuit. Good gravy, there were a lot of them. I thanked the stars that Warriors were fast sprinters, because there was no way we would be able to fight off the few hundred mercenaries on our own. The Horbryn ran over the half-solid landscape in groups of twenty. A few weren’t so lucky as a handful of Horbryn slipped into lava bogs and disappeared. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough that we would have a fighting chance at survival.

  We waited. We needed them closer before springing the trap. I hated waiting. It made me antsy, and nerves mixed with Battlelust was a scary combo. I hunkered down behind the rock and concentrated on breathing.

  Battle didn’t bother me. Keeping a cool head was part of having Warrior genetics. Fighting flipping rocked … for the most part. I seemed to have a problem killing certain people.

  War was our job. The Warriors of Bankhir only did one thing for the galaxy: we went to war to protect those who could not protect themselves. After sixteen years of being blocked off from the rest of the galaxy, there was a lot of catch-up warring to do. The Warriors were overloaded with requests the moment our doors opened for business. It seemed as if every planet in the galaxy needed us. War was never going to end for me.

  Again, I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. I reached for my dog tags strung around my neck. The old chain had been replaced with Bankhir steel links, and from it dangled Ari’s silver crescent pendant and ID tags she had made for me back on Earth. The pendant was like a physical contract when she bound herself to me. It sounds romantically gross, but it’s not. It was used strictly for communication purposes. In exchange, I gave the essence of my Warriorish-ness to her. There were times, like right now, that I wished I hadn’t given to her who I was because it was really hard to trigger the fighting side of my personality when she wasn’t around. However, the bond we created opened verbal doors between us. We were able to talk via thought, sending messages to each other on the palms of our hands. It was like texting, but with my brain. That part was pretty cool.

  I didn’t feel like sending Ari a message though. I wanted her there with me. Not that I wanted to put her in danger waiting to be ambushed by Horbryn mercenaries. I just felt better when she was around.

  Geez, that sounded mushy.

  Corbin whacked me in the shoulder, jogging me out of my thoughts.

  “You ready?” he said. “They’re close.”

  I nodded and sprang into a low crouch next to Corbin.

  “Let’s do this,” I said.

  “Light up, Sire.”

  Quickly, I kissed Ari’s silvery pendant for good luck and tucked it under my shirt safely behind my breastplate. It was a weird habit that worked … sometimes. My trigger to turn on Warrior Magic worked better when I wasn’t half a galaxy away from home. I sputtered sliver magic out my arms like weak static shooting misfiring bolts. No matter how hard I concentrated, it wouldn’t stay on.

  “Uh … Corbin?” I whispered. “We’ve got a problem.”

  Corbin didn’t turn back. “No time for it now, Sire,” he said. “Attack!”

  Right. Good thing I wore brown pants. I guess the best I could do was fake it.

  Corbin and I burst out from behind the boulder, swords waving and yelling as if we really were going to take on the entire Horbryn army by ourselves. All we needed was to get the Horbryn to cross the crater directly in front of us where only a thin crust of cooled magma separated them from certain death.

  It was a perfect plan. What wasn’t so perfect was that there were no Horbryn to fall into our carefully laid trap. The fiery landscape was empty.

  “Uh, where did everybody go?” I said, deflated. This was supposed to be our big moment.

  “Don’t tell me we missed seeing them drop into the crater,” Corbin said dejectedly. “I hate being late for the big finale.”

  “Perhaps you were too early,” a thick guttural voice said from behind me.

  Corbin spun to his left, protecting my back, his sword whistling in a blur at his side. Not that it mattered if my back was exposed. Out from behind the rocks, the Horbryn slithered closer, ten deep and closing in a tight circle around us.

  “Looks like they found a way around the crater,” I muttered to Corbin. “Got any brilliant ideas to get us out of this mess?”

  Corbin’s responding laugh was a lustful keen. “We’ll have to fight our way out, Sire,” he said. “This will be fun.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at him. “You have a warped sense of fun,” I said.

  “Warriors,” barked the head Horbryn leader. “This day is given for your death. What say you?”

  “Uh, no … obviously,” I said. What kind of question was that? It’s not like I was going to walk over and let them cut me in half just because they asked nicely.

  “So be it,” the Horbryn leader said and bowed. He lifted his curved sword over his head and bellowed, “Today you will meet Death!”

  “You really need to work on your negotiating skills,” I hollered back. Corbin stifled a snigger.

  “Remember, Sire …” he said.

  “Always strike twice,” I said, finishing for him. Curse those double hearts. I learned the hard way that a Horbryn can keep on fighting with one heart down. I had a nasty sword-sized slice across my shin to prove it.

  The Horbryn moved as one, closing in on us from every direction. My magic kept blinking on and off like a silvery strobe light. I hated to fight without it, but the best I could do was slip into Battlelust and go crazy. There wasn’t a chance only Corbin and I could fend off a few hundred, but we were going to give it our best.

  I gripped the hilt of Danthis and sent a quick message out to Ari.

  I’m about to die, so I should probably say …

  My brain stalled for a brief moment. What did I want to say? Uh … goodbye, I guess.

  Nailed it.

  I didn’t know if she’d get it before or after I kicked the mortal bucket. Heck, I hadn’t tested to see if I could send messages over long distances. I was half a galaxy away from her. She might not get it at all.

  Corbin was practically dancing with anticipation as I let Battlelust fill me up and coat my vision in red. The Horbryn were a good fifty feet away and running straight at us. I was as ready as I’d ever be.

  I was about to run out and meet the first pack of Horbryn head on when my right hand exploded in flaming aquamarine magic.

  DON’T YOU DARE DIE!

  Apparently, Ari got my message. I was on the verge of replying when the sooty atmosphere erupted in bluish light and Ari marched out of thin air. Thank goodness for it, too. I hated to admit it, but I was going to be slaughtered without her help. My sputtering magic kicked to life and lit up the ashy atmosphere. Now I could fight!

  “What is wrong with you?” she bellowed, pointing her finger accusingly at me. “‘Goodbye, I guess’! What the heck is that supposed to mean? That has to be the suckiest, if not the lamest, farewell ever.”

  “What … ?” I blinked a few times to make sure my eyes weren’t tricking me. Princess Arianna was in the middle of what was to become a snarling battle, and she was yelling at me like I was trying attempt sky diving without a parachute.

  Corbin gripped his sword as he scanned the advancing army, looking for the easy ones he’d pick off first.

  “Greetings, Princess, I see you are well. That being said … must we argue?” he said companionably. “I hardly think this is the time.”

  “Oh, this is the perfect time,” Ari said. As her magic charged, her jet-black hair began to float and crackle with static electricity. “Right now, you can’t get away from me, which means it’s the perfect time to ask you why you are constantly trying to get yourself killed.” She jabbed a glowing finger into my chest as she glared up at me with fire in her bright green eyes. “Warriors are all the same! It’s fight, fight, fight all the time, not thinking for a second that somebody, somewhere my have an issue with it.”

  “I-It’s kind of like … my job, Ari,” I said as Battlelust began to drain out of me. It was impossible to stay in the mood for battle when a super hot girl was yelling at me.