Two Worlds of Oblivion

by Angelina J. Steffort

  She could see herself in his eyes, and what she saw wasn’t any better. She looked less than ever like the confident young woman she’d wanted to be but more like a deer in headlights. She pulled away, embarrassed, and leaned against the bars, facing her parents instead.

  “How could Scott betray us like that?” Jemin asked behind her. She could feel the iron bars shudder in his violent grasp and wondered if that was what it was. Had Scott truly betrayed them? She couldn’t believe it. Not after everything he had done for them.

  “He didn’t,” Laura informed him politely, and Heck chuckled to himself. He had been unusually quiet. Honestly, Maray was surprised that he hadn’t mocked the guards on their way down to the cells. But this was a serious situation, and they were all in it together.

  “Why did he personally deliver us to the dungeons then?” Heck finally commented, his chuckle dying with his words.

  Laura smiled graciously, making Maray feel like a child with her gesture. “Scott will make sure we get out safely,” she explained. “Scott has been serving Rhia but secretly gathering intel for the revolutionaries, and we need Rhia to believe his loyalties haven’t changed.”

  Maray could picture it—vividly. Scott coming to their rescue when the rest of the palace was a sleep.

  “And then what?” she asked into the earthy room, rubbing her hands to relieve the remaining stinging from her palms. It wasn’t hard to understand that if Rhia had convinced an entire room that Laura was a traitor, she would find enough supporters if she showed her face. People did love her, and the few who knew about her hidden tyranny had either been silenced by her, or her craving for Maray’s magical blood had pitted those against each other. The one chance they’d had to convince the court officials had been ruined by Rhia with her sudden appearance, and she had suffocated what little ground for doubt their audience had offered. Now, they were caught in this filthy dungeon, and even if they did escape, where would they go? How far could they run? Rhia wasn’t going to give up. Her cruel grasp on Maray’s neck, however brief it had been, had shown Maray exactly that. She was within Rhia’s reach, in her clutch, at her mercy.

  “And then, we go to the other world,” Laura said calmly, “and go into hiding.”

  Maray felt Jemin tense behind her simultaneously with her own tightening muscles.

  “Run away?” he said as if someone had suggested saving his own life was something to be ashamed of.

  “I’ve done it before, and it is not as disdainful as you might think, Jemin.” Laura gave him a look that was more motherly than that of a monarch to her subject, but when Maray turned around to face Jemin, it was clear as the lacking daylight that Jemin’s mind worked very differently from hers.

  He glanced at Maray, dark shadows clouding his usually bright gaze.

  “You would rather be executed for a crime you didn’t commit than run away?” she asked, verifying she had picked up the right vibes, and his single nod wasn’t at all satisfying. Why couldn’t he be sensible?

  “It’s not as if I were the first one in my family,” he said with a frightening portion of dark humor that made even Heck cough an offended gust of air.

  Maray swallowed whatever accusations she wanted to throw at him and took a deep breath to steady herself. Fighting wasn’t going to get them anywhere. Especially not Jemin, who would put his honor before his life—even if dying a traitor wasn’t considered an honorable death. But as long as he knew the truth, he would consider it honorable; Maray was certain of that.

  “No one is going to die,” Gerwin stopped the boiling volcano before it could erupt. “Parsin is going to get us out of here, and the first place he’ll take us is to Neelis LeBronn’s safe house.

  Maray wasn’t sure about that, and judging by both Heck’s and Jemin’s glares, their thoughts were similar.

  “How do you know he hasn’t switched sides?” Maray asked before one of the boys could and earned a sideways glance from her mother.

  “Judging by Langley’s fast turn on us, I don’t know if I trust anyone,” she said and tossed her grey braid back over her shoulder with an energetic motion.

  “Except for Scott,” Jemin challenged.

  “Scott has never disappointed me.” Laura’s words didn’t leave any room for doubt.

  “But what about LeBronn?” Jemin asked, again with the same challenging look on his handsome face that made him look less human and more like a trained fighting machine.

  Heck grabbed his shoulder in an attempt to calm him. “Neelis and Seri have helped us before,” he reminded.

  “They defied Langley,” Jemin pointed out with a grimace. “Doesn’t mean they aren’t playing their own little game. Now that Rhia is back…” He leaned against the closest wall and folded his arms across his chest, reverting into the same cold self he’d been when Maray had first met him.

  “If what Neelis says is true, he, more than anyone, has reason to hate Rhia,” Maray interjected. He had accidentally turned his own daughter into a Yutu. “Rhia and Feris turned him, and he has no proper place in society now, does he?”

  “He would under my rule,” Laura commented. She sounded so much like the mother Maray remembered from her childhood, and yet, in her elegant robe and her straight posture, she looked like the queens from the picture books they had read when she was little. “I want an Allinan of peace and prosperity. An Allinan the way it was before Rhia let in the demons from the other world.”

  Maray stepped further away from the iron bars, hoping that moving around would help her sort her thoughts. “Demons. Can anyone explain what they are?” Heck’s explanation that they were beings that fed off negativity wasn’t nearly figurative enough for her to think of a form or a shape.

  It was Jemin who responded first, his face changing into a smooth and dangerously unemotional mask. “When you think of the world you grew up in, the wars, the scandals, the intrigues and betrayal—”

  “It’s not like we don’t have our fair share of those here, too,” Heck inserted into Jemin’s sentence. Jemin frowned at him before he continued, face more serious this time.

  “War, betrayal, intrigues, scandals. All of them feeding demons, making them stronger, more powerful, more influential.” Jemin pushed away from the wall and walked to the iron bars that were separating the two cells and wrapped his hands around two bars the way he had in the beginning. “They start out as mere shadows, hatching from the darkness, and as they feed on their environment, they grow stronger with every little quarrel, every negative thought, until they are strong enough to use a form.” He gave Maray a significant look. “Even human shapes sometimes when they are strong enough.”

  Maray felt herself stiffen at his words. Her world—the world she’d grown up in—was full of negativity. She could only guess how many demons had been feeding off her direct environment. The years of anger toward her own mother when she’d left them…

  “Rhia must have partnered with some very strong ones to open that rift between dimensions. She never could have done it on her own,” Laura continued when Jemin remained silent, apparently busy studying Maray’s shocked face.

  “Plus, she said the demons helped keep the people happy,” Gerwin pointed out. “She must have her own network of demons here in Allinan. Some must have slipped through the borders before the rift was closed…”

  Maray paced for a while, trying to make sense of the words, but it all condensed to the same thought over and over again: who could they trust but themselves? She stopped at the bars, staring into Jemin’s bright-blue eyes in hope of finding an answer there, but all she spotted was the same fury as before when he had charged across the table in an attempt to protect Maray.

  “I’m glad I am here with you,” he whispered absently, triggering the urge in Maray to ask if he had lost it. But she didn’t need to say a word. It was there in his eyes that he understood she didn’t know why he would be glad to be locked up in this filthy place.

  He reached through the iron bars with one han
d and touched her face with his thumb, running it along her cheekbone and down to the corner of her mouth. Maray’s stomach fluttered, a sensation she was used to by now, and yet, every time he touched her, it felt as if it was the first time; his fingers so gentle it let her peer through all the layers of protection he had built around him. Instinctively, Maray inched up her chin just enough that it would take him no effort at all to lean in and kiss her. But his eyes, gazing into hers one moment, were now glancing past her face at the two people right behind her; the last people she wanted to see her kissing him—and being Jemin, he knew.

  He didn’t lower his face to hers but pulled his hand away and returned it to the iron bar instead. His eyes spoke volumes, and Maray completely forgot she had been wanting to ask something.

  Footsteps tore all of them from their thoughts; light, elegant footsteps. They were most certainly not Scott’s.

  Jemin cursed under his breath, laying eyes on the arrival before Maray was ready to turn around.

  “Isn’t that adorable?” Rhia’s voice commented on the scene as her footsteps drew nearer. “And a little sad.”

  Maray found the strength to tear her gaze away from Jemin’s features and turn around to face her doppelgänger even though she knew her being down there meant Scott must have failed—or abandoned them.

  “Mother.” Laura had stiffened. The confidence of her former speech had slipped away as she faced her torturer; a mother who should have been loving and supportive, but instead had tied her up in the dungeons and treated her like a living blood bag. The pain was there in Laura’s eyes as obvious as the anger in Gerwin’s.

  “So, you have been planning to take my power in my absence.” Rhia ignored their upset faces; Jemin, who was struggling to hold himself in place with clenched fists, Heck’s suddenly returned grin of mockery, and Maray’s widening eyes as she realized Rhia was going to make good on her threat of executing traitors.

  “Not exactly,” Laura said, sounding more like a teenager than Maray. “I’ve been trying to clean up your mess.”

  Rhia’s fake smile slipped at Laura’s hostility. “I was planning to be merciful on you, daughter,” she informed her. “But now…” She turned her head to the side and scanned the rocky ceiling as if she was thinking hard. “I am not sure I can.”

  Maray woke from her petrification and looked around at the stone walls and iron bars. There was no way out of there but the way they had entered—and the way she and Jemin had come to save her mother what seemed like years ago. But before she could even consider taking that route, they needed to get out of the cells.

  “Why don’t you kill me and be done with it?” Laura spat, triggering an oddly soft expression on Rhia’s face. It came with a sudden aging that made her look more like Laura than Maray.

  “That’s what you think I will do?” she asked, wiping her palms on the skirt of her midnight-blue gown. “I am not the monster you think I am, Laura.”

  “That’s the monster I know you are,” Laura bit back.

  Rhia ignored her and turned to Maray instead. Her face had gotten even older as she glanced at Maray, looking, finally, like a grandmother and not like a reflection in the mirror.

  “I don’t know what your mother has told you about me, Maray,” she smiled, “but I am not that monster at all.”

  “You held my mother—your own daughter—imprisoned for her blood,” Maray said coldly. Behind her, she sensed Jemin mentally beheading Rhia simply because she had turned her attention on Maray.

  “Technicalities.” Rhia made a belittling gesture with her hand. “What is important is that you are here, Maray.” She stepped forward, close enough for Maray to reach through the iron bars if she wanted. But she had no desire whatsoever to be even one inch closer to her grandmother than she needed to be.

  Rhia lifted her hand again, and two guards trotted in together with Scott. The dungeon guard Jemin had knocked out last time wasn’t with them. “Parsin, send the Ambassador back to the other dimension. We won’t be needing his services any longer.”

  As the guards unlocked the cell and grabbed Maray’s father, she felt the impulse to light a flame in her palm and launch it at them, but she didn’t dare to even think about what could happen. She could accidentally kill her entire family—and the boy she loved along with her friend.

  Gerwin didn’t fight as Scott took over and escorted him out. He still trusted Scott as did Laura. Behind Rhia’s back, Scott turned to them and winked; just a tiny blink that was enough to reassure Maray he hadn’t jumped ship.

  “He’ll be safer in his own world,” Rhia explained at Maray’s aghast look. “Your father doesn’t belong here. This world is more dangerous than his could ever be.”

  “If he doesn’t belong here, I don’t belong here,” Maray objected, finding it worth a try to provoke Rhia into sending her along with him. But she wasn’t that easily fooled.

  Jemin

  Jemin’s heart threatened to burst with strain as he kept himself in place, hands all but breaking apart the iron bars that were separating him from Maray. What would he give to be able to simply grab her and flee? He wasn’t going to run away from his execution, but he would do anything to keep her safe, and if that meant dishonorably disappearing from the dungeons, that was what he was going to do—or had been about to do. He had been straining his mind to figure out a way to escape without the help of both his weapon and his magic bracelet when Rhia had interrupted. Now, Scott was taking away Ambassador Gerwin Johnson, Maray’s father. Over the past weeks, he’d grown surprisingly fond of the ambassador, and it wasn’t just because he was the father of the girl he loved but because he was a good man—better than his own father. Gerwin hadn’t abused his daughter by making her spy on others. He had given her a well-protected childhood, far away from the madness at court.

  His own thoughts surprised Jemin. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t adored Rhia for years when he’d sworn his oath to the crown—back then meaning the beautiful image of the ever youthful queen—and had only recently learned the truth. Less than a year ago, he would hardly have believed it if someone had told him that Rhia was consciously harming Allinan and its people. Today, he was convinced sacrificing his own life for the truth—if the truth helped Maray—was the right way to go. He glared at Rhia’s aging face, seeing the person who had killed his father—given the order to kill him—and held the crown princess of Allinan prisoner. How could she have Allinan’s best interest at heart when she sabotaged her own bloodline?

  Maray shifted uncomfortably in the other cell. Her dress was dusty from where she had stumbled to the ground, and her face was a shade paler than usual. Jemin ground his teeth.

  “If he doesn’t belong here, I don’t belong here,” Maray reasoned as Rhia sent the ambassador away—banned him was probably the better word. He was free of his bracelet, no key to return to Allinan. It was clear he was no longer welcome here—not while Rhia was still in power.

  Laura understood that, too. Her face had changed. She was no longer the smug, defiant princess who could deal with anything, but a mother, desperate to get her little girl to safety. And it dawned on Jemin that this was the one thing all of them had in common: they wanted to see Maray safe—for different reasons, but still…

  “She’s right, Your Royal Highness,” Jemin agreed with Maray, not leaving enough space for anyone else to respond. “She shouldn’t be here.”

  “This girl hasn’t even tasted the traditional Allinan dumpling dishes,” Heck added from his position in the corner. It wasn’t exactly what Jemin had had in mind, but it gave him an idea.

  He restrained his impulse to plea for Maray’s life. Negotiating was always better from a position of strength; he didn’t need to be a diplomat’s child to understand that. Letting Rhia think he didn’t care about Maray but that his behavior came from his love for Allinan might give him an advantage. “She doesn’t know the people. She doesn’t even dress properly for an Allinan royal.” What good was it going to do anyone—es
pecially Maray—if he told her now how he felt? That he felt he would no longer have a heart if anything happened to her? That seeing her leave, and knowing she might never return, would close the door to his emotions forever? Not even Maray’s hurt expression could convince him otherwise. “She should go back with the Ambassador.”

  Jemin’s skin felt like a second armor, additional to his Thaotine shirt; an armor that withstood the strongest of emotions, whether they were coming from outside or in.

  “You will be surprised to hear that I have quite different plans for my granddaughter.”

  Jemin was the opposite of surprised when Rhia ordered the two men at her side to seize Maray and pull her from the cell. It didn’t matter how much Maray struggled. She didn’t stand a chance against the guards. It would have been hard for him to escape their grasp when he wasn’t in possession of his weapons, but he would have found a way. Then again, as a trained guard of dimensions, odds were always in his favor when it came to winning fights. Jemin glanced over his shoulder at Heck, who was just as ready to tear the cell apart as he was.

  “Oh, no need to worry, dear Jemin,” Rhia said sickeningly sweetly. “You’ll be tagging right along with her.”

  Something about the way Rhia looked at him made his hair stand up on his neck. Whatever it was she had in store for them, it couldn’t be good. With a quick glance at Maray’s frightened face, he confirmed he wasn’t imagining things.

  The second his gaze locked on hers, something clicked inside of him, and he was ready to admit to himself that in reality, it didn’t matter what Rhia had planned for them. He would go anywhere Maray went, even if it was to his certain death.

  It was Laura’s voice that tore him out of his revelation as she screamed at Rhia without regard for what the evil queen might do in return. “Take your hands off my daughter! I swear, if you harm her, I will…”

  “You will what exactly?” Rhia cut her off with an emotionless tone, and without giving Laura a chance to speak, she threw the door of her daughter’s cell shut and turned around on her heels to march away like a Valkyrie.