Two Worlds of Oblivion

by Angelina J. Steffort

  Behind stayed a weeping Laura, a furious Heck, and Jemin, his emotions threatening to escape their artfully built container.

  “She is going to bleed her out,” Laura squeezed out between sobs. She had sunken to the ground and was bracing her legs.

  “I wonder where Feris is,” Heck said insensitively, changing the topic and making both Jemin and Laura lift their sunken heads.

  Master Feris hadn’t been with Rhia when she had crashed the emergency meeting, nor had he accompanied her just now in the dungeons. Was it possible the warlock had bolted? Or had she hidden him somewhere safe where neither fraction of revolutionaries could access him and rob her of her ally in her endeavor to become almighty?

  Laura didn’t look up, shoulders shaking and grey hair spreading out of her bun as she rested her head on her knees. “Probably wherever she’s taking my daughter.”

  A layer of desperation settled in the humid place as both Heck and Jemin watched the Crown Princess of Allinan lose all hope.

  “Scott may still come back,” Jemin suggested half-heartedly. It was unlikely anyone would come back for them. And if they couldn’t save Maray, then who would? From the corner of his eye, he noticed Heck shaking his head, so he turned to him and said, “You have given up, haven’t you?” His voice echoed off the rough walls, sounding harsher than he had intended, but Heck didn’t seem bothered by his tone.

  “You know me, Jem,” Heck said and laid one hand on Jemin’s shoulder. “When have I ever given up?”

  Corey

  The room was boiling with discussions about what was real and what wasn’t. Some of the remaining people were too invested in the guessing game to even notice how others were slowly leaving; some of them with shamefully reddened cheeks, others with expressions of confusion on their faces, some simply relieved the show was over. Corey herself was going back and forth between shock and the wish to cast a fire like the one Maray had conjured in Langley’s hideout. To her left, Wil was sitting quietly, pensive. It made Corey want to yank his head off his shoulders with the small knife she had hidden in her boot. Even if the rest of the people in the room had sided with Rhia—whether it was honest loyalty or their fear of her wrath—she had expected that at least Wil would be on his feet by now, making plans for a rescue mission to retrieve Maray and her parents.

  “You know what’s going to happen if we continue to simply sit and wait,” she acidly noted, hoping to provoke a response out of him. But Wil remained silent. He glanced at her with empty eyes, shock apparently settled deeper in him than it had in her. “Wil?”

  “Shut up, and come with me,” someone answered from her other side where two empty chairs reminded her of Jemin’s foolish bravery and the stunt he and Heck had pulled in a hopeless attempt to help Maray. She turned around and looked into Neelis LeBronn’s black, slitted eyes which were indicating appropriate urgency. “Both of you,” he added before he turned around and started walking.

  At Neelis’ request, Wil’s head lifted, and he got out of his chair in slow motion. Corey grabbed his arm and pulled him along as she followed Neelis. Half-way to the door, Seri appeared at her side and wordlessly fell into step.

  “…not surprised. How could she marry that scum in the first place?” Corey overheard a conversation as they passed by a man and a woman in palace guard uniforms. “And that girl… Even though she looks just like the Queen’s famous portrait, she is obviously not the type of royalty we need here.”

  The urge to let fire rain on them returned to her stomach, but as a devil-child, she had learned early in life to keep her head down and endure hateful words. It wouldn’t do Maray any good if Corey got into a meaningless argument instead of taking action to save her.

  “What type of royalty is it exactly that we need?” Wil surprised her with his normally gentle voice, which now resembled the sound of gravel and ice.

  The two guards spun around, hands on the hilts of their swords, and gave him a look that might have put a normal soldier in his place. But Wil wasn’t a normal soldier. He was a revolutionary and proud that he was fighting for the greater good of a free Allinan where people weren’t lied to and power-hungry queens were mortal. He fashioned a smile that made him look dangerously handsome for the smug expression he was wearing as he continued walking without awaiting their answer.

  Seri chuckled beside Corey, giving the scene a surreal humor.

  “What was that?” Corey asked when they had made it to the end of the corridor safely. “The guards could have arrested you. You saw how easily Rhia brought them to her side.”

  “And you forget that I am not new to this traitor-life,” he countered, not losing his smile. “It’s not the first time I am being looked at as if I am crazy, simply because I dare to question something—even if this was more of a rhetorical question.”

  Corey wondered if she should feel bad about having preferred Wil’s earlier silence to his sudden verbal outburst.

  At the door, Neelis stopped and waited for them to catch up. He appeared calm from a distance, but the moment they joined him on the threshold, Corey noticed his restlessness, his eyes wearing the same look of urgency. “Quickly.” He ushered them through the door. “We need to get away from here before Rhia can give orders to arrest us.”

  Corey and Wil followed Neelis together with Seri, and while Wil had an easy time keeping up with their pace, Corey was panting by the time they had made it out of the castle and into the first row of leafless bushes.

  “Where are we going?” she asked just loudly enough to get the two Yutu-shifters’ attention.

  Neelis glanced over his shoulder. “Where do you think we’re going?”

  They slowed down and gave Corey a chance to catch up. “To save Maray?” she suggested. “And Princess Laura and the ambassador?”

  “Clever girl.” Neelis tilted his head to the side, indicating for all of them to turn into the next trail which led away from the graveled main paths and into a wilder part of the park.

  Corey struggled to keep up even though they had slowed down, her feet regularly getting caught on roots and ducking under low-hanging branches. It took them a good five minutes of silent walking before they stopped at the pale-yellow garden wall. Corey eyed the pretty obstacle with momentary concern.

  “I’ll help you,” Wil whispered from the side, reading her face instead of asking what was wrong.

  While Neelis and tiny Seri pulled themselves up effortlessly after a powerful leap to reach the top of the wall, Wil, with a blush, placed each of his hands on one side of Corey’s hips and lifted her high enough to lay her chest onto the foot-wide construction. Corey pulled herself further until she was able to twirl around and sit, hidden behind the highest of the trees’ bare branches and twigs. When she glanced down, Wil was smiling up at her, the crimson of his cheeks faded enough to pass for skin that had been stained from the cold wind.

  “Thanks.” Corey returned his smile and turned around, swinging her legs to the other side of the wall.

  “Hurry up a little,” Neelis urged from below her boots, reaching out his arms to catch her, and she jumped, still lighter than air by the sensation of Wil’s touch and affectionate smile, right into Neelis’ Yutu-strong hands.

  He caught her as if she were a feather before he set her, feet-first, on the ground beside Seri. Corey caught Wil’s athletic shape from the corner of her eye as he descended from the wall as if it was no higher than a fence for herding goats or sheep. She stifled an unexplainable and inappropriate giggle. She had seen the guards’ strength and dexterity on Jem and Heck countless times, and even though it had been impressive—and sometimes inducing a tight sensation in her stomach when she’d been watching Jem—on Wil, it was a whole different story. Everything about the way he landed on his feet and checked on her with a shy glance the second he’d straightened made her want to lace her fingers into his and claim him for herself. With a quiet sigh, she shoved her hands into her pockets and turned to Neelis. “Where to?” She screened the a
rea. “Wait, we’re almost at the safe house.” She recognized the cobbled area where, in the other world, dozens of cars were parking. “We’re going to the other world.”

  “Thank God you figured it out,” Seri commented and disappeared in a cloud of rising, white fog.

  Neelis shrugged. “Kids.” And he grabbed Corey’s and Wil’s wrists in a motion so fast even Wil couldn’t have drawn his sword to defend himself. Wil frowned, but Neelis didn’t seem to want to hurt them.

  Corey thought of Jem. He could have been able to draw a sword so quickly he could have prevented himself from being touched at all. He’d always been exactly that: fastest and fiercest of all of the soldiers she knew, cleverest in fights, and focused on nothing but his mission. For a long time, his missions had been protecting the crown by protecting Allinan’s borders. But these days, his missions had blue eyes and ivory skin and were the most worthy of Jem over all of the girls she’d seen him with. “Let’s go.” Neelis pulled them with him into the other world, wiping the second of concern off of Wil’s face.

  Seri was already halfway along the hidden part of the street which led up to the parking lot in front of the church and the museum. “What exactly are we going to do in this demon-polluted worlds that helps us free Maray and her parents?” She sounded cynical. Not unusual for her but definitely something she normally preferred to use on Jem and Heck when they were getting on her nerves.

  Neelis pretended he hadn’t heard her. He let go of their arms and followed Seri toward the safe house, and Wil shook his head at Corey with a smile before he took her hand, sending a new type of heat into her body, and pulled her forward. “We don’t have any time to waste.”

  As they rushed along the wall and through the parking cars, Corey didn’t worry about who rubber-necked on the street. Neelis, Seri, and Wil were all dressed in light Thaotine armor, and their swords were drawing as much attention as their lack of coats—which was almost none. This area was not as frequented as the main gates of the palace grounds, and what few people were hurrying along did it without looking up, their minds elsewhere; maybe on their grocery list or on their cozy apartments. Corey didn’t shy away from every car or tram that passed by. She had seen them before when they had accompanied Maray back to the palace from Neelis’ safe house.

  The pale-salmon colored building she knew they were headed to had lost its lack of appeal to her. On the contrary, knowing that right under the nose of the palace—in both worlds—someone had created a place where any enemy of Rhia’s would be safe, made it a lighthouse of hope.

  By the time they caught up with Seri, she had opened a door which looked way too heavy for her tiny body to stand a chance against, but she held it for them with one hand as if she was holding a curtain. Corey reminded herself that the girl was a Yutu-shifter, just like her father—or like Langley, who had turned on Maray and almost killed Heck and Jem. As she crossed the threshold, she was still wondering if it was normal to be angry with someone who had paid for his sins by burning in a magical fire cast by the person he’d been after, and she shrank back from that cruel side of her which appeared under the surface whenever she thought of the rush Maray’s insanely strong magic had caused in her. Wil’s tug on her hand as he moved along into the corridor ahead of them brought her back to the present.

  Seri let the door fall shut behind them and followed at Corey’s heel like a miniature shadow.

  “I must warn you,” Neelis said over his shoulder as he led them through the exhibition of Vienna’s thirteenth district. “This might be a little bit out of your comfort zone.”

  Corey wondered what he was referring to, and Wil’s grasp on her hand tightened as he pulled her a bit closer toward him. She didn’t object, but instead laid her free hand on his arm. He rewarded her with a knightly twitch of his lips.

  In the exhibition, the glass show cases hadn’t changed, neither had the path to the basement. What was different was that today, the museum was populated. The visitors weren’t from this world, though; she could tell by their choice of clothes. They were all Allinan people. Some of them looked familiar, people she might have seen at court before or in the streets of the city on the Allinan-side of the borders.

  “Meet my pack,” Neelis said as if this was nothing special.

  “Pack?” Corey searched Neelis’ face for something that would confirm what she was thinking; that they were all Yutu-shifters, just like him and Seri.

  “Long story.” He shrugged and a flash in his eyes confirmed that she was right.

  Corey stared with surprise into the room for a long moment while comprehending that all those Allinans must have been turned by either Neelis or Feris. She shuddered and inched closer to Wil who seemed to be as absorbed with the amount of shifters as she was.

  “Wil,” a girl’s voice caught their attention, and Wil let go of her hand.

  He darted forward through the rows of men and women all clothed in a mix of Thaotine and leather, the same as Neelis and Seri, reeling out of their reach as they tried to block him with their arms, leaving Corey standing.

  “Pia?”

  As Corey bent to the side, she spotted a shock of ginger right in the place where the voice had come from. Wil was wrapped around a girl whose age was hard to tell until they untangled half a minute later, and he led her toward them. All of the other Yutu-shifters had stood back once they had noticed Wil and Pia’s familiarity—and that they basically looked the same. Only, Pia had to be almost a decade younger, and a girl. But the rest was the same: ginger hair, also short, warm, brown eyes, tiny freckles on her nose and cheeks.

  “What are you doing here?” Wil asked, seemingly unimpressed by the audience of at least twenty shifters in the room—or Corey. “Are you—?”

  “A Yutu?” Pia finished and nodded with a broad smile that exposed a set of slightly crooked teeth. “What makes you think that? That I am with Neelis? Or the fact that I’ve always been more awesome than you are?” She laughed, and Wil chuckled. Corey noticed that his eyes weren’t smiling at all but searching the room for Neelis and, when they found him, sending little daggers at him.

  “I am glad you’re okay,” he said instead of commenting on her statement and her new ability to turn into a giant, furry beast. “Does Mom know?”

  “Mom,” Pia repeated, face sour all of a sudden, “doesn’t think I am worthy to stay with her much longer.”

  “Because you’re a shifter?” Corey asked, uninvited to join the conversation but triggered by the well-known feeling of being a cast-away child for being different.

  “What?” Pia jerked to the side and faced her as if she was smelling a threat then stopped mid-turn and chuckled. “Because I am not interested in joining court life so she can prep me for a political alliance based on gender-differences.”

  Corey almost laughed out loud and was glad that she wasn’t the only one to struggle. Beside her, Seri was hiding a chuckle in a cough.

  “She wants to marry you off?” Wil asked incredulously. “But you’re only twelve.”

  “That’s what I told her before I ran away.” Pia folded her arms across her chest in a motion that reminded Corey a bit of Jemin’s self-restraining moments. Only, she wore her defiance openly on her boyish face, and she did it with pride.

  “I am sorry to break up the little catch-up,” Neelis interrupted, “but we have two princesses, an ambassador, and two warriors to rescue.”

  A murmur ran through the room as the shifters realized that their leader had a mission for them.

  “Princess Maray?” Pia asked, curiosity taking over her entire face.

  “And Crown Princess Laura,” Seri added.

  “Can I come?”

  “Absolutely not,” Wil forbade Pia before she could get any ideas.

  But Pia didn’t seem to care. “Sorry, big brother, but I answer to my pack-master.” She nodded her chin at Neelis. “The only one who can keep me from rescuing the mystery-princess is him.”

  Again, there was something in W
il’s face that Corey recognized to be an intertwined struggle between pride, concern, and humor.

  “We can’t all infiltrate the castle without drawing attention. Wil is right. You’re staying,” Neelis spoke, agreeing with Wil’s objection, and ignoring the daggers from Pia’s eyes. “The strongest of us will go while the rest await our return in this world and protect the safe house in case anything goes wrong.”

  Neelis called out a three names Corey didn’t recognize, and three shifters stepped forward, all of them faces she had never seen before. Wherever Neelis had found them and why he had turned them was something she would have to learn at another time.

  Together with the three, Neelis had formed a small team of fierce Yutu-shifters who clustered at the front of the room beside Neelis, Seri, Corey, and Wil—and Wil’s sister, who had claimed she wouldn’t leave his side until they actually left the house. There was a murmur of disappointment from those who weren’t chosen and some comments that gave Corey a good idea about the Yutu-shifters’ temper.

  Neelis cleared his voice and recapped the situation for the task-force. “They took them to the dungeons, and the longer we wait, the higher the chances Rhia already got her fix of magic Cornay-blood from Maray. And you all understand what that means.”

  “Rhia is back?” An intimidatingly tall guy asked from the back of the room, voice rough with shock.

  “I thought she was dead,” another one added.

  “Corey and Wil were participating in the emergency meeting with me and Seri,” Neelis explained, “and Rhia showed up claiming the loyalty of the palace guards and arrested the two princesses.”

  His words were followed by a brief silence during which even the prior murmuring stopped completely, all of the shifters struck with horror.