“And Jem and Heck when they stood in her way,” Corey added nervously. They couldn’t forget the boys; the two boys in Rhia’s claws. Jemin’s kidnaping by Langley in comparison suddenly seemed like a stroll in the park.
“We need to enter the palace unnoticed and sneak into the dungeons before any harm can come to either of them.” Neelis gave each of the shifters at the front a glance that made clear there was nothing to debate.
“We can sneak into the castle in this world and cross the border once we’re in,” someone at the back of the room suggested and was cut off before they could finish their thought.
“The entire castle will be swarming with guards whose loyalties we don’t know,” Wil pointed out. “We can’t afford to crash into them as we cross into Allinan. We need to sneak in and remain hidden. Just a small group. No delays.”
“Okay, smarty-pants. How do we get in then?” a woman with tousled hair asked and turned over her locked hands, palms facing outward, knuckles cracking as she flexed her arms.
No one spoke. There were many entrances, but hardly any of them was safe after Rhia’s return to the castle, even the one they had used a couple of weeks ago to save Maray’s mother. There was only one entrance she could think of that would lead them in there unnoticed…
“There is a secret entrance—” Corey started, and as the shifters all locked their eyes on hers, heat rose in her cheeks. She smoothed out her cloak and glanced at Wil for emotional support. He nodded. Could she really do this? Could she tell a whole pack of Yutu-shifters she had never met before, about the secret passageway?
“Continue,” Neelis sparkled at her, thrilled that there obviously was a solution to the first part of his plan.
If she wanted her friends back, she’d make sure Rhia didn’t have anything to work with.
“It takes you into the palace, but not the dungeons.” Corey’s words flowed freely now that she knew she wasn’t betraying the royal family’s trust but actually saving their lives. All of theirs. If the pack was strong enough—and she had seen Yutu, knew they were strong, and this was a pack of twenty or more—maybe there was a better way to bring Rhia down than to just kill her. “But it’s back in the woods. We’ll need to cross through the gardens and head south-east. And it’s heavily guarded.”
“We can take down any guard if we need to,” Neelis reassured with a twist of a smile that reminded Corey of a butcher rather than a man or a Yutu, for that matter.
“Not this one.” Corey pictured Pen and stifled a grin. “He’ll either defeat you with his charms or with poison. Whatever you fall to first.”
“What exactly are we talking about?” Pia asked, eyes shining with fascination.
“A smoke-breathing, fang-baring, pony-sized beast which you probably know from nursery rhymes rather than from real life.” The words were out before Corey could think. They didn’t know about him. No one did but the royal family and Jem, Heck, and her.
“A Gurnyak?” It was Wil whose eyes had popped wide open with a mixture of shock and fascination. “I thought they were extinct.”
“They basically are,” Corey agreed with a sad undertone, hoping she hadn’t just initiated a hunt for Pen. “Gan Krai made sure of that during his life-time.” She remembered the pages in Gan Krai’s ‘Laws and Rituals’; pages filled with myths about the healing power of Gurnyak liver, and the supposed aphrodisiac that was ground Gurnyak bone. People—warlocks mostly—had hunted them with traps, the only way a Gurnyak can be caught, and killed them with arrows from a distance so the poisonous smoke couldn’t kill them or their razor-sharp teeth couldn’t snap at them. It was all there in the books in the rituals section. How to extract the liver, how to dry and grind the bones, how to dispose of the poison… She shuddered. “This one is very much alive, though. And I intend to keep it that way.” She threw a warning look at the assembly. “You must swear you won’t hurt him or tell anyone about him—today or any time after we return from our rescue mission—if we return,” she added.
Half of the shifters looked at her in awe while the other half didn’t seem to believe her or were fear-stricken at the thought of a Gurnyak.
“Swear,” Corey demanded, unimpressed by any of their looks. Pen was on their side, and she wasn’t going to put him in danger.
“I swear,” Neelis said, solemnly, “and I speak for the pack. They are sworn to me.”
Satisfied, Corey turned to the door. “Then what are we waiting for?”
“For me.”
Corey turned at the voice—all of them did—and couldn’t believe her eyes.
“Ambassador Johnson.” She unthinkingly threw her arms around Maray’s father and only realized she was doing it as he hugged her back.
“I am so relieved to see you, Corey,” he said, voice shaky.
Corey felt a wave of overwhelming emotion. Was that what it felt like to have a father? She felt herself sob. “I thought you were locked up with Princess Laura and Maray and the boys.”
“Rhia exiled me.” He pulled away and stepped back to speak to all of the pack. “She sent Scott to escort me over the border. And without a bracelet…”
“Scott,” Neelis spat and added a curse, rallying agreement from his pack with a lost Wil in between the Yutu-shifters. But Maray’s father held up his hand and stopped them. With his arm lifted, his empty wrist was visible under his dark ambassador’s uniform and reminded her that they were not in Allinan anymore. They were in a world devoid of magic. Corey also remembered that in this world, she was useless.
“Scott did bring me to this world, that’s correct, but he isn’t on Rhia’s side. He’s with us,” he reassured them. “Before he returned to try to delay any decisions of the Queen, he told me to find you at your safe house and bring however many of you I could find back to Allinan.” He glanced around the room. “My wife and my daughter need your help, as do two young Allinan nobles who have risked their lives before to protect my family. We need to go and free them before Rhia can harm any of them.”
Corey was almost expecting cheers from the pack at his speech, but they remained silent. Except for Neelis, who had grabbed his saber from his belt. For a brief second the room was dense with tension, then he threw his arm up, the saber reflecting the strange artificial light which seemed to come from little glass bulbs on the ceiling, and said, “For Allinan.”
“For Allinan,” the pack repeated, and so did Wil’s little sister, much to Wil’s dismay.
Corey stepped to his side and took his hand. “For Allinan.”
Maray
Maray rammed her boots into the ground. Before them spread the room she had rescued her own mother from a couple of weeks ago. The bed with the Cornay ‘C’ at the foot was still there—this time, empty and readied for the next victim—as were the tubes and machines behind it. And even though the air was better in here, Maray’s stomach instantly lurched with nausea at the memories the place triggered.
“I am not going in there,” she informed the two men who were pulling on each of her arms, trying to get her over the threshold. But the image of Jemin stabbing Rhia, her disintegrating flesh, and of course, Laura, ashen and dying on the Cornay bed, let fresh adrenaline rush into her system, and for a moment, she felt like she might stand a chance… but just for a moment. Then the guards pulled her forward again, both of them glancing at her nervously every other second. And again, she threw all her weight backward, attempting to keep the space between the torture instrument and herself as wide as possible. And the guards slowed…
So far, she had one advantage: she looked like the queen they answered to, and even if Rhia had told them to drag her here, they had become hesitant the moment the queen was out of their sight. It made them uncomfortable to look at her and see the face of the woman whose picture they had grown up with staring back at them with defiance.
“You must, Your Royal Highness.”
Wait, had she heard doubt in the guard’s words? She checked his face with a sideways glance and reali
zed she was right. There was in fact a crease on the man’s forehead that let her guess he wasn’t fully convinced he was doing the right thing.
Maray put all her effort into standing her ground. “You don’t have to do this,” she offered. “It is your choice which side you want to be on.” The men gave her a sideways glance, which informed her that it wasn’t that they didn’t know, but that they were afraid of Rhia. She notched it up by feigning Rhia’s smile. “And you want to be on the winning side, don’t you?”
The shorter of the two softened his grip as his breath caught at her words, and Maray was pleased with herself for having made an impression on at least one of them. If she chose the right words, she might get through to them—
What had started with an innocent cough turned into a cacophony of panting, coughing, gasping. The man’s fingers were digging into her arm harder than ever as he glanced at her with bloodshot eyes.
“Goran?” The other guard reached over Maray’s head, loosening his iron grasp on her wrist, and patted Goran’s back between his shoulders.
As they were both distracted, one with choking on what was probably inhaled spit, and the other with trying to help the first, Maray recognized her chance to make a run for it. She waited another moment, feeling that the guard named Goran would need both of his hands free within a moment, and that was her signal.
As his fingers loosened, she did what her father had shown her: she let herself drop into a crouch and turned over her forearms at the same time, twirling her wrists out of the inattentive claws of the busy guards. Their fingers lost their hold on her, and she turned around and launched herself away from them. They didn’t even try to hold her back, and as Maray glanced over her shoulder before she would have turned the corner, Goran had stumbled to his knees, face pink and sweaty. Was he having a heart attack? The second guard, the taller one, was leaning over him like a friend would when he was trying to help but was in fact helpless. He glanced at her, his expression making sure that he was going to go after her the second his friend could breathe again, then directed his eyes back on Goran.
As she watched them for a brief moment, despite the fear and her pouting heart, something in her changed. She was a Princess of Allinan. These were her people. And even though she wasn’t queen, as part of the royal family, she had to help if she could. And she could. It didn’t matter if she was in this world or the other one; first aid was first aid, and she might even have more tools and skills available here than in the world where she’d grown up. With a sigh, casting her sense of self-preservation aside for now, she turned on her heels and joined the tall guard on the earthy ground.
He looked up at her, weary, grey eyes inquisitive as if wanting to know if she was insane.
“Move aside,” Maray instructed, ignoring the man’s surprise. She grabbed Goran’s shoulders and forced him to look at her. “Goran,” she spoke in a clear voice. “Is something hurting?” She reached for his collar and opened the top buttons of his uniform and pulled the fabric aside so he could breathe better. Goran folded over, clutching his left arm.
“What is it?” the other guard asked her as if she were a doctor rather than an escaping prisoner.
“Is your arm hurting, Goran?” Maray saw only the soldier who needed help. In the other world, she would call an ambulance. What did they do in Allinan? She reached for Goran’s wrists and searched for a bracelet. “No bracelet,” she noted and got a grumble from the other guard who was observing her more curiously by the second while his hands were supporting Goran’s back. There was something tender in the way he was holding the other man.
“Rhia insisted we take them off.” He lifted his elbow to present his forearm without taking his hand off of Goran.
“Why?” Maray wished Corey was there with them. She had seen the warlock girl heal Jemin with little more than a touch.
The guard shrugged and returned his attention to Goran, whose coughing and gasping had gotten weaker, his breathing a mere noisy in-and-out of wisps of air, and his eyes closed. His formerly red face was slowly paling, and his cramping muscles were slumping. He was dying. Maray knew it was now or never. She couldn’t rely on any help. She had to do it herself before Rhia came to prick her open like a juice bar with a straw.
She could run still, and the guard wouldn’t hold her back, and Goran most certainly couldn’t either. But there was something in the guard’s eyes that reminded her of the way Corey had looked at Jemin when they had brought him to the warlock quarters after Langley had attacked the boys. Or the look Jemin had given her when he had carried her back to the palace from Neelis’ safe house. It was a certain tenderness that exceeded the boundaries of friendship, and Maray could see that in the guard’s eyes there was more of it than she could have ever imagined a mindless executioner of Rhia’s biding could ever show. And against all her better instincts that were telling her that she would be better off letting Goran die and leaving the second guy grieving by his side, she recognized love when she saw it, and she stayed. It was now—not never.
With an exercise Corey had shown her, she emptied her mind first then filed all her thoughts with something that calmed her so she could focus. It wasn’t Jemin this time—he would stir all other emotions in her; anger mostly for putting himself in danger again because of her. Her mind conjured an image of the place she had grown up, images of her childhood sanctuary long before the time when she had learned about Allinan, when everything in her life had been in order, and her worst issue had been to want more bedtime stories than her parents had been willing to sit through. And as she went back to that place, her palms remembered the fire she had cast in the underground quarters, and for a brief moment, her mind shied away from what she had to do. She had never healed anyone, but she knew she had it in her to save this man’s life. With a gesture that was way more familiar than casting magic, Maray laid her fingers on Goran’s wrist to feel his weakening pulse. It was fading with every struggling beat of his heart. With a thought of the man’s life-giving lump of constrained muscles in his chest, Maray forced herself back into that dark place where the fire had erupted from her hands. Her childhood memories provided a cushion between her fear and what she was about to do.
“What are you doing?” The second man asked as if he had read her mind, and his face twisted with suspicion.
She flinched at his tone but didn’t retract her hand. “If I may,” she said instead and closed her eyes. “He needs help.”
“You can’t help him.” The man shook his head. “He needs a bracelet or a potion.”
Maray thought that what Goran needed was actually a doctor, but she didn’t even know if the concept of medicine existed there in the same way it did in the world she’d grown up in. And there she was, possibly able to help, and the other guy was objecting? But then, he didn’t know she had magic or that the type of magic she had was even possible…
“Would you insist on letting him die?” Maray gave the tall guard a sharp look that reminded her more of her evil grandmother than her diplomat father and waited to see his expression change to shame. “I didn’t think so.”
Without another glance at either of the guards, she closed her eyes and went back into her head, then her hand, her palm—
It was there, stronger than she remembered; a sizzling sensation that wanted to form itself into the familiar shape of flames. Maray fought to hold it back. Stay, she thought as if she was commanding a dog… stay. And the flames didn’t erupt; they didn’t even sneak through her skin. Instead, the energy spread like a layer of warmth throughout her palm, reaching into her fingertips where she was still measuring the man’s almost-gone heartbeat. It was then that an instinct took over, an instinct almost as strong as that to flee, which made her reach into the man’s heartbeat with her thoughts, her mind. She could feel it. A weak sensation at first, but gradually it heightened until Goran’s pulse was her pulse—a pulse which was about to cease. As Maray struggled to pick up the low beat, she sensed how, by her pure force o
f will, it vibrated more strongly in her veins; in his veins.
“What are you doing?” The guard’s voice pierced through her focus. “Goran?” It was a whisper, but there was hope in it.
Was it actually working? Maray didn’t know for sure she was healing the man. She could have just as well be hurting him. She was going by pure instinct, and as she felt Goran’s heartbeat strengthen, her own grew weaker—
“Your Royal Highness?” The voice—Goran’s voice—was fearful.
“She’s been still for too long,” the other guard noted, concern in his tone. “What happened to her?”
Maray tried to remember what had happened. Something hard was pushing into her back. A stone? Where was she? As she went back in her mind, it all came to her in a rush of memories. The meeting, Rhia, the dungeons, the guards… The guards. Two guards. Goran. Had it actually worked? Had she saved him?
“Maybe we should put her on the bed. She looks uncomfortable there on the ground,” the tall guard said, and a hand reached under Maray’s neck while a second one pushed under her knees before the man lifted her up.
Maray tried to open her eyes, but they didn’t respond. Neither did her voice as she tried to speak.
“On the bed?” Goran sounded outraged. “The Queen wanted her there. Shouldn’t we be getting her out of here, Pete?”
The man named Pete, who was carrying her, stopped. “She could have run when you collapsed,” he said as if he still couldn’t understand it. “But she turned around and did something… I still don’t know what it was… Magic…”
“She saved me even though we were about to lock her up here for the Queen,” Goran mused.
“Why did she do it? Why didn’t she save herself?”
Maray forced all her strength into her throat and croaked, “It’s called compassion—” Pete almost dropped her, startled, but caught his composure before she slid from his arms. “Now help me out of here.” Finally, Maray’s eyes popped open and she found Pete staring down at her in shock, mouth a thin line of pondering between his poorly-shaved beard.
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