The mistake had been his, and he did not blame her for being upset. It confused him as well. The wedding had not been ordinary. But neither was the woman who stood in front of him. If they had met under different circumstances, he had no doubt he would have loved her. He leaned against the wall and felt the stone cold reality of their current circumstance pressing against his back.
“Are you hungry?” she asked again.
“Do you aim to poison me?”
She laughed. Walking to the bars, she stopped where they had stood together the day before and shook her head. “I only aim to feed you.” She slipped her hand through the bars and extended it. A small paper package lay on her palm. “It’s cheese,” she said. “I’ll be able to get you more once I authorize your release.”
He studied the parcel she offered him. His stomach grumbled in anticipation for it, but he did not move toward her. “Why would you do that?”
“Because I won’t execute my husband,” she responded. “Please eat. I know the food in here is terrible, and I also know they haven’t given any of it to you yet. They usually wait a day or two to provide the first meal.”
He approached and removed the cheese from her hand. After unwrapping it, he tore a chunk from it and offered the morsel to her first.
“Still think I want to poison you?” she asked. He smiled in response and she took the cheese, tossed it into her mouth and swallowed. “Satisfied?”
“Yes,” he said and started eating. “Where’s your guard?”
“Past the light, in the shadows,” she nodded her head toward the hallway. “I made her wait there so we could talk.”
“You mean so she wouldn’t interrupt again,” he quipped and heard a growl from the darkness. He laughed. “She can hear, apparently. Aren’t you afraid I’ll try to hurt you?”
“You won’t. I’m certain our powers wouldn’t have joined us if you meant me harm.”
“Then you believe me? You believe I’m not trying to trick you?”
“I know you aren’t. I knew it yesterday, but the wedding took me by surprise. I shouldn’t have treated you that way.”
“You knew?” he asked. “How could you have known? It’s not as if it’s happened before. If our roles were reversed, I would think the worst of you.”
“No, you wouldn’t.” She leaned against the bars, wrapping her hands around them. “If you held my role, you would know the secrets I know.”
He finished the last of the cheese and joined her at the bars. He wrapped his hands around hers. “And what secrets do you know?”
“Royal ones,” she replied. “That song you sang yesterday isn’t just a tale. It’s history. My family’s history.”
“I’ve heard that before. It’s not a secret.”
“How they fell in love is. They belonged to rival tribes, the two largest in these parts before the kingdom came about. There were wars at the time. Each tribe had gathered the smaller tribes to their sides, essentially dividing the lands in two. One war lasted for decades. Some say fifty years or more, but I don’t know for certain if that’s true. It could have been longer. It could have been shorter.” She shrugged. “The tribes were too evenly matched. Either they had to eliminate each other, or they had to reach a truce. They never had the chance to decide which they wanted to do. They called a meeting of the elder tribesmen and their families. As soon as everyone arrived at the gathering point, the powers of the opposing Chiefs’ children wed them. They say it happened so fast the bride fainted.”
“You’re serious?” he asked. “Why would your family hide that?”
“Because it tells better as a love story. The Chiefs’ children hated each other at first. They wanted to continue the war, but the Chiefs took the wedding as a sign they must make peace. They did. The kingdom was formed and eventually the anointed King and Queen grew to love each other in the way we know them in song.” She paused and studied him, her head tilted in curiosity. “A Seer later prophesied there would be more weddings in the same fashion, weddings brought about with purpose instead of love.”
“So what do you think our purpose is?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps we’ll never know. It could be something we need to do together, or it could be we need to create a descendant. The only thing we can know for certain is we’re bound to each other.”
“I hope someday you’ll be happy with that,” he told her. “The original King and Queen found love. Maybe we can too.”
She smiled and turned from him. “I’ll have the guard release you. It won’t be long.”
“Wait,” he called out to her. “Queen Adelina, please don’t go yet. I came for a reason.”
She faced him again. “Adelina,” she said and returned to the bars. “Just Adelina. I’m no more Queen over you than you’re King over me.”
“I’m not a,” he started and then felt his heart race in panic. “Adelina, I’m not meant to be a king. I only lead my people because they need help.”
“All people need help,” she told him and reached through the bars to lay a palm against his cheek. “You’ll make a fine king, I assure you. Now what is it you needed from me?”
“My people,” he forced the words from his mouth. “We’re not like you.”
“What do you mean?”
“We were from Zeiihbu once, a long time ago. We left the lands there to live south of the border, in the forests and mountains. We’ve always been nomads, living off the land and making what we need. But the Zeiihbu War made our regular territory unsafe and depleted our resources.”
“Which is why you started raiding the villages,” she said.
“My father made that decision. I never agreed with it.”
“But you didn’t come to me before and you didn’t go to my mother. What brings you here now?”
“We’re not like you,” he said again. “Once we ventured into the villages, we caught diseases we’d never been exposed to before. Some only harmed us until we built immunities. Others killed whoever caught them. Until recently, the deaths were minimal, though, limited to a few people at a time. Now we’ve caught something that’s killing everyone it touches. I think it’s a plague. We’ve lost a third of our population already, and I can’t save the rest of them without your help.”
“What are the symptoms?” The question came from the shadows and he turned his head in time to see May step out of them. “I need to know them in order to figure out what type of plague it is.”
He raised an eyebrow, surprised at the relaxed manner in which she asked the question. She seemed to want to help. “It starts with a stomach ache and bloody eyes, and then the pain becomes so bad the infected can no longer eat or sleep. We force water into them to keep them alive, but it hurts them. They scream the whole time.”
“And eventually they starve to death,” she said.
“Yes.”
“It’s not a disease. It’s the Famine Curse. It’s a bad spell designed to mimic disease, which is why it didn’t hit everyone at once. ”
“Where did it come from?”
“The short answer?” May asked. “It stems from revenge. I’m guessing your people do more than raid villages. They rob travelers too.”
“Sometimes,” he admitted. “How did you know?”
“Because I know of the Spellmaster who created this spell and you can’t get into his village, which means your people had to have robbed him or he wouldn’t have bothered to cast the curse. He used the same spell on the Zeiihbuans during the war. I helped my mother come up with the cure for it.”
“You helped the Zeiihbu people when you were at war with them? Why?”
“I won’t allow people to suffer if I can help them. It’s not in my nature.”
“I can understand that,” he said and regarded her with a new respect he would never have thought possible in their first meeting. “I would do the same.”
She nodded. “I believe you. And I’m sorry for the way I treated you yesterday. I can be wrong occasionally. Ev
en about Raiders.”
“I hate that name. I wish you wouldn’t use it.”
“What do you want to be called?”
“My people don’t have a name, but you can call me Ed. It’s short for Edáire.”
“Ed it is then,” she agreed. “I’ll organize the Healers and as soon as you’re released, you can show me where your people live. You’ll also need to take the potion or it won’t be long before you fall to the spell.”
“I understand. Thank you.” He turned back to Adelina. “How soon can I go?”
“I’ll need to explain this to the head guard and then probably the Guardian Elders. It could take half a day or so.”
“And if I had a way of leaving here sooner, would you allow it?”
“Of course. What did you have in mind?”
“You asked me how I got my instrument back yesterday. I used my power and retrieved it from the guard station where they left it.”
“What is your power?”
Instead of telling her, he showed her. He passed his arms and then his entire body through the bars, walking through them as if they were no more than beams of sunlight. Adelina’s mouth hung open and it was all Ed could do not to laugh at the reaction.
“I can move through objects,” he told her. “Now it’s only a matter of getting out of here without lighting the torches along the hallways. The guards are bound to notice my escape if we do that.”
“Why would we light the torches?” she asked and shook her head. “There’s no need.”
“How did you get down here then? It’s impossible to see anything without them.”
“Not if you have my power,” she said and turned to extinguish the torch. He felt her hand grip his. “I can see in the dark.”
§
MEAGHAN CLOSED the book and sighed as tears streamed down her face. Her parents had seemed so real. She had watched them move, heard their thoughts, felt their breath as they took it in and let it go, and sensed their emotions as if they were standing in the room with her. No one could describe them to her the way she had just seen them. The book was a gift. But it was also a curse to be this close to them and not be able to touch them, to feel their presence and not have them feel hers, and to know they would die too young and not be able to warn them. She had hated the story as much as she had loved it.
She stood and slipped the book into the backpack. Running her hand over the bag’s rip-stop material, the irony did not escape her that she was using the last reminder of one father to house the only memory she had of the other. Weary, she climbed back into bed with Nick, and closed her eyes. As she drifted to sleep, she wondered if Queen Adelina and King Edáire had ever discovered the purpose of their wedding. Had they found a Seer who knew their only child would experience a prophesied wedding as well? Had it crossed their minds that their purpose might have been to create that child?
Meaghan doubted it, but they had not needed to know for it to matter. She knew. And she would not let them down.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
SOMETHING SLICED into Meaghan’s stomach. The pain came hot and swift, ripping through her from her belly button to her breastbone. Then, as fast as it had started, it stopped. Before she could catch her breath, pain squeezed at her neck and panic joined it. Terror matching no other she had ever felt overcame all else and then faded into nothing.
She forced her eyes open, and then squinted as the pink haze of a new day greeted her. It chased some of the shadows from the cottage, leaving those that remained to shrink into the corners, and she knew she had not been asleep long, maybe a few hours at most. She sat up and a new round of pain began. The first strike came as a blow to the temple that exploded like sharp fingers across her head. Before it faded, the second seized her arm, splintering up to her elbow from her wrist. A sharp needle stabbed her heart next, and then flames seared her lungs. When pain burned her skin, she screamed.
Nick startled awake beside her. “There’s danger,” he muttered, and then faced her. She felt his panic and his fingers on her arm before she tumbled from bed. The pain continued to roll. Her legs hurt. Her feet felt like they were on fire. Her lungs convulsed, and then her stomach turned. She tried to stand, but could only pull up to her knees before she fell back down, landing on her palms. Desperate, she crawled across the floor, making it as far as the trash can before a wave of nausea overcame her.
“Meg!” Nick called from beside her. His hands gripped her shoulders, holding her when she convulsed again. “I sense danger. We have to leave.”
She could not speak. Her muscles felt weak and she collapsed to the floor. Drawing her knees to her chest, she wrapped her arms around them, and prayed for the pain to stop.
“Meg,” Nick begged her, laying a hand on her back. “What’s wrong? Your pain, it’s—”
“Everywhere,” she moaned. “Everywhere,” she repeated, and then the screams started outside. Nick’s panic changed into a chilling fear that only added to her misery. His touch disappeared and she heard him moving around the cottage. He returned to her a moment later. After slipping her nightgown over her head, he dressed her in her travel clothes, and then lifted her into his arms. She felt the rough material of the backpack strap brush against her cheek and struggled to comprehend its meaning through the excruciating pain now echoing within her body. She felt the pain from tears and breaks, from sharp stabs, and agonizing burns. And she felt them stop, only to start again from another direction. They rolled over each other, a constant battering of rough waves that drowned her. She forced a painful breath into her lungs, struggled to hold her focus on her own feelings, her own sensations, and lost. She felt dizzy, or was Nick running? She could not tell. She screamed from the agony, or were those the voices of the villagers? The sounds and pain blended together and she could not tell if they belonged to someone else or if they were her own. Even the warmth of Nick’s body melded with the burning pain searing her skin. She heard talking and wondered if she had begun to hallucinate.
“What are you doing here? You should’ve gotten her out. She’s more important than I am.”
“She won’t survive without you. She’s feeling all of this. It’s too much.”
“But your power—”
“I can’t get her to focus on it. Grab your kit. Do you think we can teleport without being tracked?”
“We can’t risk it. Set her down.”
Meaghan felt the unyielding wood of a chair, and then the sharp smell of burning rubber as it assaulted her nose. She recoiled from the odor, regretting the reaction when her head slammed against the back of the chair. Pressing a hand to the base of her skull, she winced when she felt a welt.
Fingers covered hers. “It’s all right,” May’s voice came from beside Meaghan’s ear. “It’s only a minor injury.”
“Good,” Nick responded. “Meg, open your eyes.”
She did as he asked and his face filled her vision. “Focus on my power,” he said. Her eyes drifted from him to his mother, who knelt beside the chair. Nick placed a hand on her cheek and guided her focus back to him. “Do it, Meg. It won’t be long before you’re overwhelmed.”
She closed her eyes again. She could already feel the emotions pushing their way past the fringes of her control, clawing at her sanity—another sharp blow to her gut, another slash of pain in her mind, a fire of agony spreading across her legs. They swelled and then they faded, dissolving as soon as she found Nick’s power.
She opened her eyes, but not all of the emotions left her. Her own panic and fear built each time another scream pierced the air. Through the window of May’s kitchen, Meaghan could see fires devouring buildings and villagers running through the streets as they tried to escape. One man stopped to stare at them. Blood coursed down his face, streaming from a gash in his temple. His eyes met Meaghan’s, and then he turned from her. He stumbled a few more steps before he collapsed to the ground. A bolt of lightning streaked by, illuminating a woman in the distance and then she, too, was gone.
“Meaghan!”
Meaghan’s gaze trailed from the fingers up arms clad in flannel sleeves to the ashen skin of May’s face.
“Can you walk?” May asked.
“I think so.” Meaghan’s hand shook, but it obeyed her command as she drew it up to grasp May’s arm. If it worked, her legs should too. She tried not to notice the fire springing to life outside the window. The guest cottage roof had sparked. The house would not be far behind.
“We need to run for the woods,” May instructed. Her grip disappeared, replaced by another, more familiar touch. Nick urged Meaghan forward, tugging her through the kitchen and the living room, then out the front door.
It happened again, as it had little more than a week before. The brisk air slapped her face, shattering the numbness encasing her. She followed Nick. She ran from the house resembling the one where she had grown up and she could not separate the past from the present, Earth from Ærenden. In her mind, night turned to day. The scent of snow filled the air instead of ash. Clouds filled the sky instead of stars. Death filled the living room behind her instead of flames.
She sought the SUV, but found the blood-spattered faces of children littering the grass where the driveway should have been. They stared at her, frozen like dolls discarded in play. She wanted to scream, but her voice remained trapped in her throat.
The ground exploded beside her, showering her in dirt and she snapped her eyes from the bodies to the cloaked figure to her right. He held no club. Blue electricity served as his weapon, and she knew she would not evade death so easily this time. She caught her breath, then surged forward as Nick’s hand pulled hard on hers. The ground heaved where she had stood, blown apart by the bolt meant for her.
They fled, chased again by three Mardróch. Meaghan saw them each time she glanced over her shoulder, but they appeared as creatures in a dream. Nick dragged her behind him through village streets and alleys, twisting their way to an escape.
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