Two Worlds of Oblivion

by Angelina J. Steffort

“She didn’t leave us, really,” Gerwin reminded her.

  “In my eyes she did.” Maray looked back into the dark days of her childhood when her mother had disappeared from their lives. Of course, now she knew better. Now she knew that Laura had left to help out her country when Rhia had been sick and had gotten herself into trouble… And yet, the empty years hurt. And as loving as her mother was now, she couldn’t make up for the lost years in a couple of weeks. Her father was the constant in her life, and as he braided her hair, she knew he would be there no matter what was going to happen whereas her mother might put her country first again.

  Maray pulled a rubber band from her wrist and handed it to her father.

  “Done.” He held up the braid proudly. “Like riding a bike.” He turned her around by the shoulders so she could see her reflection in one of the mirrors beside the bed. “You look fine to me, but the Allinan officials will expect something more Allinan when we meet them,” he reminded her of the pending emergency meeting.

  “Do I really need to go?” She was still hoping to hide for a day or two longer before her inevitable introduction to the court officials, the nobles, and of course, the servants. Her father’s raised eyebrows were answer enough. “All right then.” She turned to the closet in the wall. “What do I need to wear?”

  She eyed Gerwin’s blue ambassador uniform—it was almost the same color as her eyes—and wondered if she’d need to choose one of the gowns in the closet.

  “Your mother said ‘something elaborate enough to give you a royal look yet humble enough to make clear you are not who you look like’.”

  “Rhia,” they both concluded in unison, and Gerwin dove into the closet with her.

  The rows of gowns were intimidating. Lace and silk and Thaotine, all of them arranged into ornate patterns and sophisticated cuts. She felt as if she’d stepped into a bridal store.

  “How about this?” Her father pulled out a deep blue dress that looked more like cotton than any of the others but had a structure like raw silk. At least it looked comfortable enough.

  Maray nodded, unconvinced, and her father handed her the garment before he made his way to the door. “I’ll be back in fifteen.”

  Reluctantly, Maray slipped out of her shirt and pants and exchanged them for the long-sleeved dress. It fell easily around her shape as if it had been made for her. She tied the cord-like ivory belt around her waist and glanced at the mirror. The image filled her with amazement and fear. Never had she looked more like her evil grandmother.

  “You look beautiful,” her father said in welcome as she made it to her parents’ chambers before her dad could pick her up. The guards she’d spotted on the way flinched at her sight, but she pretended she didn’t notice. It was embarrassing enough as it was. Walking around in someone else’s face—the iconic face of her grandmother’s youth, which had been glorified for decades—

  “We were just about to come and get you,” Gerwin said with a smile. “The guards didn’t say anything, did they?” he asked, leaning a bit closer. “I instructed them to be prepared for a historic moment.”

  Maray grimaced uncomfortably, searching the sides of her dress for pockets, and found a moment of delight in all of the awkwardness as her fingers slipped into the skirt on the sides. Someone did think of practicality when they tailored this.

  “So, before we go in there—” Laura, dressed in a forest-green dress, hair pinned up at the back of her head, screened Maray with her eyes, probably searching for flaws in the picture, “—don’t speak unless addressed. Don’t offer information. Don’t—” She stopped mid-sentence as she noticed Maray’s face fall.

  “You know what?” Gerwin offered a hand and waited for Maray to come stand beside him. “Be your charming self. I don’t see a reason why the Allinan nobles and officials shouldn’t have the honor of meeting the real you.”

  Laura threw him a dark look, but all he did was shake his head at her. Maray was ready to hug him in gratitude, but he stopped her, offering one more piece of information. “Your friends will be there, too.”

  Maray stopped dead. She hadn’t talked to any of them since Scott had taken her back to her parents. All of them, including Wil, had every right to want to stay as far away from her as possible after what had happened—what she had done.

  “Ready?” Laura asked in a fake cheery tone that made Maray’s hair stand.

  She suppressed the urge to comment on it and stepped forward instead. “Ready if you are.”

  As her mother and father joined hands, Gerwin just one-half step behind her, Laura gestured for Maray to walk behind them. “That’s the official formation for our appearance in court. Your father can’t walk level with me because he’s not royal by blood.”

  Gerwin rolled his eyes as he glimpsed over his shoulder at Maray. “It’s awkward only the first couple of times,” he reassured her. “Gets better with time, and after a while, you’ll forget the eyes…”

  “Eyes?” She hardly had time to think about her father’s words when they set in motion.

  Maray followed obediently, one step after the other, out of the red-tapestried room and into the guarded hallway. When the first pair of eyes met hers—one of the guards from before—he wasn’t surprised and shocked enough to be new, and Maray knew what her father had been talking about.

  At the end of the hallway, two armed men were awaiting them, hands ready on each side of a set of double doors. Laura nodded at them as they approached, and as they pulled the doors open, Maray’s stomach gave a small jolt of nausea.

  About twenty people were sitting around a long table that reminded her of a historic meeting room—most of them in uniform—she could see from between her parents’ shoulders. As they entered the room, the group jumped to their feet as if something had stung them in their butts. Maray almost smiled. Then she remembered that everything she did, every little gesture, every word, every grimace would be interpreted by her assessors, and she suppressed the impulse.

  Laura steered right to the front of the long table where three wide chairs were empty. She stopped next to the chair in the middle, waited for Gerwin to take the chair on her right and then, with a glance over her shoulder, let Maray know that her seat was the one on her left. Maray swallowed a nervous lump in her throat and stepped out of her mother’s shadow.

  A murmur ran through the room, making it difficult for Maray to lift her gaze and actually face the people who were seeing her grandmother when they looked at her. But when she finally found the courage, there was one pair of eyes that she clung to with her gaze, hoping it would save her from drowning.

  “Smile,” her mother whispered without moving her lips, and Maray’s mouth curved at the sides. It felt wrong. Her natural reaction would have been to turn around and run for it, but this time, it wasn’t a test in school. It was reality. It was her new life. A life she would have to get used to.

  As they were still standing behind their chairs, waiting for the noise in the room to cease, a slate-grey dressed man reached past her, lifting her chair aside so she could move toward the table. Her mother led the maneuver, stepping forward, her chair also removed by one of the slate-grey dressed people Maray figured had to be servants, then waited and sat as the person pushed the chair under her. The same procedure was repeated by her father, and then, at last, she mimicked their behavior and gingerly took a step forward as something pushed into her legs from behind, hoping she wasn’t going to land on the floor.

  A soft cushion caught her weight as she half-dropped into her seat, and a familiar chuckle caught her attention. When she looked up, Heck’s chocolate eyes were sparkling back at her with amusement from the other end of the table, until Jemin’s elbow hit him in the side. Maray felt herself turn crimson.

  “Thank you for following my call for this meeting,” her mother started her speech beside her and, from the sound of her voice, not much more confident than Maray. “Some of you have known for a bit longer while others have heard the news second hand through
rumors, and some of you have probably not heard them at all but seen for themselves what this emergency is about.”

  As Laura was placing each well thought out word into the curiosity-dense room, Maray’s eyes wandered back to Jemin’s bright-blue eyes. They were gazing at her over the long, oak table as if there wasn’t any distance between them, the same frown on his brows as he combed back his hair from his forehead. Something about the way he looked at her gave her confidence. He was there. Despite her, he was there. Her magic hadn’t killed him. In fact, if they all—she glanced to the sides, and Corey and Wil were there beside Heck and Jemin—had survived her magic, she could survive this.

  “As most of you know, I left Allinan shortly after the first breach of dimensions. What most of you don’t know is that I did it for love. I have summoned you to officially introduce you to the two most important people in my life: my husband—most of you know him as Ambassador Johnson—and my daughter, Maray.”

  There were several gasps of outrage and some comments muttered under people’s breaths, but Laura didn’t let it stop her.

  “My daughter, Maray Elise Cornay, Princess of Allinan,” she clarified. “Born in the other world and raised as Maray Johnson—” Laura ignored a murmured comment about ‘tainted blood’, “—my daughter, until recently, didn’t know about her heritage. She grew up oblivious to the royal blood that is running in her veins.”

  Maray felt the eyes on her that her father had warned her about earlier, and she glanced past her mother, finding him with a tense face but strong and supportive of his wife’s every word, minuscule nods showing his agreement with her speech. Beside him, Maray found Parsin Scott’s familiar face and then a row of men and women she had never seen in her life, who all eyeballed her like she belonged in a different world—which wasn’t entirely wrong. Then there were Wil, Corey, Jemin, and Heck, who were giving her encouraging looks, and beside them were two faces she in fact hadn’t expected to see again so soon: Seri and her father, Neelis LeBronn, both of them looking almost as uncomfortable as Maray herself. And then, there were more unfamiliar faces, scrutinizing her from the distance. She stifled a sigh of frustration and returned her attention to her mother’s words.

  “…my daughter, who none of you can deny is of Cornay blood, for her face resembles my mother’s as if they were the same person.” All eyes wandered over Maray’s head, staring at something behind her, and when she turned around to figure out what it was, she found herself looking at Rhia’s iconic portrait, and her heart fluttered—not in a good way. “My daughter, who is braver than I could have ever imagined.” Laura bestowed Maray with a mild smile. “My daughter, who saved me.”

  New murmurs and whispers spread in the room, and Scott called the room to order before Laura was able to continue.

  “When I returned to court five years ago, very few people knew about it, and so hardly anyone noticed when I went missing. My daughter and her friends saved me from our own palace dungeons.”

  Maray was alarmed and relieved by the sudden change of topic. It seemed she wasn’t the only emergency.

  “The dungeons where my own mother held me captive.”

  “Outrageous,” a man opposed from the left side of the table.

  “Why would Queen Rhia imprison her own daughter?” another one joined.

  Scott got to his feet. “Silence!” He had one hand lifted as if he were about to slam it onto the table but thought better of it. “Princess Laura is speaking.”

  The assembly fell silent at his demand, and Laura inclined her head as a sign of gratitude before she continued. “My mother, the Queen of Allinan, has fled, my trusted friends and advisors. And I am coming before you, presenting you with the truth of my return. Queen Rhia imprisoned me for my blood, which she needed to become immortal, and Master Feris aided her in her attempts. They fled to the other world together, leaving Allinan to chaos. I am here to help Allinan in this time of need, and my husband and my daughter will be with me to support me in every way they can—” People had started whispering again, but Laura didn’t let them interrupt her this time, “—which is nothing less than what I expect of each and every one of you.” She stared them down with her lapis-lazuli eyes until everyone had fallen silent.

  It was then, when Maray thought the worst was over, that a woman got to her feet and appraised the royal family with a sneer. “Why should we believe a word of what you are saying?” she questioned, glancing around the table for support. “How do we know it’s not you lying to us, keeping the Queen prisoner, and pretending she left our realm? How do we…?”

  “Because I was there,” Jemin’s voice sounded like a slightly annoyed, dark bell in the darkness of the moment, and Maray’s momentary fight for air ceased. He was there for her yet again even when he was out of reach. “I saw it with my own eyes. I fought Feris in the dungeons, and I saw what Rhia... Queen Rhia,” he corrected, “truly looks like.”

  Jemin

  There was new gasping and muttering in the rows along the table, but Jemin didn’t let that bother him now. All his life at court, he had fought to be invisible, to be accepted, tolerated, but today was different. When he spoke up, he didn’t do it to bring down the Queen or to help Laura; he did it to help Maray. Her eyes were glued to his, silently screaming for support. She looked terrified—and beautiful. Her dress, a night-blue gown, simple and elegant, her hair a slightly messy braid falling over her shoulder… He remembered the last time he had held her in his arms, and she had looked similarly frightened back then. It had been moments before Scott had taken her back to her parents after the incident in Langley’s hideout. Now, more than twenty-four hours later, her expression hadn’t changed much, and he couldn’t help but feel compelled to do something about it. Anything. Even if it meant giving up his impeccable track-record since he’d started out with the guard. All that mattered was that she come out of this unharmed.

  “Believe me when I say the Queen is not quite what she seems. The few of you who have seen her lately know that she doesn’t look like that anymore—” He pointed at the portrait behind Maray, “—but much older. And beneath that illusion she has been keeping afloat, to fool those willing to see, is the real Rhia.” Jemin let all of his anger push him, and it felt good to not hold back for once. Laura’s supportive nod might have helped, too. “The real Rhia is slowly disintegrating. Her crimes have left a mark on her, and it’s not making her look good.”

  The room went completely silent for a moment, and Jemin got increasingly nervous that he had insulted someone, but the woman who had openly doubted the words of the crown princess had dropped back into her chair like a mute mule.

  “Jemin Boyd saved my life and that of my daughter,” Princess Laura said from across the table, smothering any grain of doubt. “Without him, the royal bloodline of the house of Cornay would have ended.”

  Jemin knew that wasn’t entirely true. If Rhia had it her way, she’d be forever young and omnipotent. She could rule forever, never in need of an heir—which was probably another reason why she wanted Maray dead.

  He had never attended a royal assembly like this, but something told him that this wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. Weren’t people supposed to be more respectful toward their rulers? They kept staring at Maray openly, not even trying to hide their gazes. It must have been uncomfortable for her beyond words. He noticed Heck’s hand on his wrist and let his friend pull him back into his chair. Maray followed his movements with an intensity that made him want to believe she wanted to close the distance between them as much as he did. But how could he hope, with everything going on, that there was even the slightest chance for them? Now, more than ever, the royal family would desperately need the support of the nobles, and Maray, more than anyone, would be under the observant eyes of the entire court.

  Jemin ignored his thoughts and focused on the people in the room instead, most of whom seemed to be making up their minds whether or not to believe the story. He was just about to get back to his feet
when Neelis LeBronn stood up instead.

  “Your Royal Highness,” he addressed Laura, “if I may,” and she inclined her head with the tiniest smile. Neelis returned the nod, reminding the room of manners. “It’s been almost two decades since the first breach of dimensions, an event most of us—” He looked around the room, his eyes lingering on Jemin and the other youth for a brief second, “—are old enough to remember and not just from history books.” He raised his hand as he spoke, drawing a long line into the air before him. “A rift between two worlds, open for any demon to pass—and Allinan supposedly has been a world of peace where we no longer need to fear such creatures.” He made a theatrical pause, glancing around the table once almost as if to check, like an actor, if the well-rehearsed verse had the wanted effect. “The ones of us who fought, did so to protect our Allinan, our Queen. And few of us knew that the rift wasn’t caused by demons themselves but by our very own queen. A queen who was supposed to protect her realm and fight for her people. Instead, she inflicted a potential catastrophe on us and pinned the blame on someone else. Someone we all remember and who didn’t deserve to be remembered the way we do.” Neelis turned to Jemin, eyes serious and face almost solemn. “Sander Boyd.”

  Jemin’s heart almost stopped beating. Was Neelis trying to reinstate his father’s honor? Was he supposed to say something? Neelis remained silent, apparently waiting for some reaction. But what should he say? That he had seen the queen threatening the Ambassador? And that Rhia had threatened him long before Maray had entered his life? That Rhia had admitted to him that she had killed his father?

  “What’s with the traitor?” the woman from before asked with a sneer under her golden locks, making Jemin go rigid in his chair.

  Traitor. Of course. That’s what everyone thought. Everyone but an elect circle of people who knew—and believed—the truth.

  “Sander—” Neelis turned his head to the side, his eyes two dark daggers shooting at her, “—was everything but a traitor. Sander was my friend and one of the few brave people of Allinan to recognize Rhia for what he truly was—a tyrant.”