by Jada Fisher
“You got here quickly,” the prince said, lifting a remote and pausing the movie. “I thought you would have put up more of a fight. Have you learned your lesson sooner than I thought, Seer?”
I didn’t answer, my gaze sliding to Baelfyre and the interested look he shot me. When my silence stretched out for too long, the prince huffed.
“And here I thought we would have a nice change from having such a faulty oracle. Is more encouragement in order?”
I didn’t answer again, and he sighed, wiping his hands on a cloth napkin before standing. But before he could take a single step toward me, a horn sounded, halting him right where he stood.
“What in the ancestor’s name is that?” he asked sharply, his head snapping toward the door.
“Bronn,” I breathed, relief surging through me.
Suddenly, the prince strode forward, catching the front of my camisole in his grasp and yanking me onto my toes. Panic surged through me, worried that he would be able to see the goodies I had shoved into my bra.
“You think that little upstart has a chance against me? You’ve just brought him to his doom!”
I just glared at him, trying to show him that I wasn’t scared of him in the slightest, even if I was a little bit. “Did you think that he wouldn’t come for me? That he wouldn’t figure out where I had gone off to in the middle of the night?”
The prince let me go, shoving me backward to collide with Sokhanya. We both stumbled, but he just wiped his hands on the napkin again, as if I had dirtied him. “This might work for the better. Perhaps seeing your beloved princeling being torn apart right in front of you will make you more compliant.”
“Sure, feel free to dream big.”
He gave me a smarmy look before glancing to Baelfyre. “Watch them. I’m about to have what I’m sure will be a rousing debate with an idiot.”
“I’m jealous of you, I promise.”
The prince rolled his eyes and strode out the door, the guards following him. I heard the horn sound again right before the door slammed shut, closing us in the room with only Baelfyre and the paused movie.
I stood shakily, offering a hand to Sokhanya. But she didn’t take it, staying on the ground and scooting back to press her back against the wall.
Right, well, I supposed I couldn’t blame her for that. But that was alright. I would be strong enough for the both of us.
Looking around, I tried to see if there were any windows or other ways I could view what was happening outside. But like the other rooms we had been in, there weren’t any openings. Just the artificial lights that had apparently been dimmed for the movie.
My suspicions were confirmed when Baelfyre grabbed the remote and pressed a button, the lighting transitioning smoothly from dim to regular brightness.
“I was hoping that my cousin would show up. Granted, I was also hoping to dangle you in front of him a bit, but it seems like he’ll die before that ever happens.”
“Who says that he’ll die?” I asked quietly, trying to sound uncertain and nervous. It wasn’t that hard to pretend.
“He’s in enemy territory and about to face off against the strongest dragon of our entire people. He’s only ever been safe because he’s never left the protections of his land since this whole war started.”
“He… He could live.”
“Unlikely, sweetheart. For some reason, you do so seem to inspire loyalty in people. I don’t see him leaving without you, except in a body-bag.” He chuckled to himself. “Not that enough of him will be left to fill a body-bag.”
“I…” I forced myself to let out a whimper. “I don’t believe you.”
He shrugged. “You don’t need to believe me for it to happen, Seer. All you have to know is soon your little Bronn is going to go the way of the dodo, and you’ll be all alone with us big, bad wolves.”
The wolf allegory wasn’t that far off. I certainly felt like prey locked in the eyes of a predator. Stared down and trembling and about to be devoured.
“I… I…”
He smiled crookedly at me and extended a hand. “It’s hard, isn’t it? I know you were probably holding onto the hope that he would save you, but that’s just not gonna happen. I’m still here, though. I won’t hold last night against you.”
I looked away from him, allowing myself to flush red. “Y-you would protect me?” I murmured, keeping my voice soft. Weak. I didn’t look at him, afraid that he would see the wheels spinning in my head.
“As best I could. I’m sure you understand that sometimes there’s no way around the prince when he’s in a certain mood, but I could…lessen the blows. All you have to do is be nice to me. Maybe make me feel as important as you do my cousin. Look at me the way you look at him.”
I took a step toward him cautiously, looking at him through my lashes. It helped that I knew he wasn’t actually interested in me in the slightest, that he was just a petty child who wanted to steal something from his cousin just because Bronn had me and he didn’t. If he was actually attracted to me, I might have been intimidated. Scared. But as it was, I was only worried he would detect my ruse too soon.
“I think that…maybe I could do that?”
“Just maybe?”
I took a step closer until the edge of my pajama pants were touching him. It was too close, making my skin crawl, but I knew it wasn’t close enough. Not yet.
“I can try.”
“Well, I suppose trying is a good place to start.” He settled down further in the chair, making himself comfortable just as I had hoped. He patted his leg, and I took that as my signal, turning away from him and slowly lowering myself into his lap.
His strong, iron-like arms wrapped around my waist and pulled me flush against his chest. It was too much touch, too friendly and personal, but I did my best to relax my muscles. I didn’t want him drawing away from me. Didn’t want him paying too much attention.
“See, this isn’t so bad, is it?”
“It’s alright,” I answered, slowly sliding my hand up my body. I paused to scratch at my arm, trying to act normal. I rubbed the back of my neck before finally, subtly, reaching into the front of my shirt.
“Nice and easy, see? It’s not like I’m some terrible monster. Not that different from Bronn, am I? Smarter, more handsome, sure.”
“No,” I murmured. “Not a monster.”
I spoke slowly, carefully. His arms finally released my middle, going instead to my back and gliding over all the muscles and knots I had there.
“Geez, you’re tense, aren’t you? I’ll see if I can get you a better mattress in that room of yours.”
“That’s awful nice of you,” I murmured, my fingers closing around what I was looking for.
“Like I said, I can be nice.”
“Yeah,” I breathed, slowly pulling it out. “I’m learning that.”
And then the hardest part. I knew I had to move fast, faster than a dragon, for the next part of the plan. But years of helping take care of my sister and her lupus had made me pretty handy with minor medical tasks.
When his hands reached my shoulders, I struck. I whipped out the syringe I had hidden in my hand, popping off the cap with my thumb, and jammed the needle into his thigh before shoving the plunger down.
“Ow! What the hell!”
I was dumped out of his lap and onto the ground. I scuttled away, eyes locked on Baelfyre as he got to his feet.
“Ugh, I suppose I should have known, shouldn’t I?” he hissed, ripping the syringe out of his thigh. “What’d you put in this?”
“Something to make you sleep,” I answered honestly, retreating further until my back hit a chair.
“You really are something, you stupid little oracle.” He took another step toward me before swaying, then falling to his knees. He let out one last drunken little laugh before flopping face-first onto the ground, leaving Sokhanya and I alone.
I turned to her, not quite sure what to say, but she just opened her mouth and all our notes fell out between
us, soaked with sweat and chewed up into lumpy, bright paste. Something about the moment was so incongruous to everything else that I couldn’t help the short, manic laugh that escaped me.
Sokhanya’s mouth went wide and a bleating, happy sort of sound escaped her. Our mutual laughs built on each other, until we were shaking with it.
Perhaps it was just the tension that had been building up so deeply in our guts, but the release was like a drug, making me giddy and giggly and silly.
“Come on,” I said, standing to offer her my hand. “We need to hurry.”
Even though she couldn’t understand me, she still clasped my offered palm and let me haul her up. I realized how tiny she was, barely an inch or two taller than Mal, and so slender that I was surprised there was any room for organs inside her.
10
It All Comes Together
I pulled Sokhanya into the hall, looking this way and that before slinking along the corridor. Like they were supposed to, almost all the dragons were out where Bronn was assembled with all of his forces. His speech was supposed to last ten minutes, which would barely be long enough for what we needed to do.
Which was to get down to the kitchens.
It had taken quite a bit of searching to find anything that would let us know what the anti-humanist stronghold looked like. It was apparently on an estate that was about an hour away from the city and set in the mountain range that separated our state from the next.
We’d ended up finding an old blueprint in the archives and one of the elders who had once been in the estate a century before, when the anti-humanists and Bronn’s clan had been trying to negotiate. Both the records and the elder’s memories were incomplete, but it gave us enough to know how to get out.
And that plan meant getting Sokhanya and I to the kitchens.
It was hard to know how much I needed to rush and how much we needed to be quiet. It wasn’t like Sokhanya could hear anyone coming. No, it was all up to me. I had to get us to safety. That was my main mission.
We slunk down the hall and through two large rooms that looked like they were for something overly fancy before I finally found the staircase I was looking for. We rushed down it, erupting into another hallway that was more cobblestone than the modern fixtures that had been in the study and movie room.
But I didn’t pay attention as our cold feet skittered across it. If I remembered right, we needed to go through another hall, cut through a large, very square room, then up another hall to one more staircase.
We did just that, the square room turning out to be a sort of conservatory filled with plants and books and what looked like a nice area to drink tea in and look out over the mountains. It was the first window that I had seen since I had arrived, and if I was a dragon, I would have launched myself right out of it.
But the goal wasn’t only escaping.
Oh no, I had a rendezvous with a certain tiny duo that had hopefully been up to no good.
We made it to the stairs and rushed down them too. Just when I was about to jump into the next hall, a man rounded the corner and I smacked right into him.
I let out a ragged gasp as I bounced back onto the stairs, that burning patch of skin on my chest stabbing at me painfully. I couldn’t draw my breath for a moment, and the man I ran into looked just as surprised to see me.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded, his eyes flashing bright orange and his teeth starting to extend.
I didn’t answer him, instead lashing out so that my foot connected with his crotch. He doubled over, and I used that breath to pull my leg back to lash out again, slamming my foot right into his face.
He stumbled backward, swearing, so I grabbed Sokhanya and yanked her around him, running once more. Down a hall. Turn right. Through several guest rooms. A large bathroom. A ballroom. Down another hall. Turn left. Another hall.
And finally, another set of stairs.
These were longer than the others, winding around and around and so narrow, we couldn’t fit side by side. I recognized them as a servant’s path, and I had never been so happy for general labor in my entire life.
We made it to the bottom and down a dingier hall before we finally burst into the kitchen. Sure enough, Mal and Krisjian were already there, grabbing bundles from their open backpacks on the floor and shoving them into the ovens.
“Oh, hey there. You got here a bit early.”
“Did we?” I asked breathlessly. “I don’t exactly have a watch.”
“Yeah, almost a full minute.” She didn’t look up, still shoving those little bundles in as quickly as she could. “This is the last one. You want to get a head start?”
“No, we’ll wait for you.”
Sokhanya tugged on my hand, and I looked to her. She pointed to the two then to me and then my head. It took me a minute to get what she meant, and I nodded. She wanted to know if these were the two from my memories.
My nod seemed to ease her worries, which had to be considerable given that she had no idea what we were doing. But to her credit, she patiently waited however much of the minute was left before Krisjian and Mal finished filling the ovens.
“Ready for boom?” he asked, grin wide.
“Ready for boom,” I confirmed.
He and Mal turned on the ovens, flicking the knobs to broil, and we raced out of there.
“Glad to see that our plan to smuggle you in worked.”
“Yeah, you’re lucky that the two of us are small enough to fit into fancy barrels of bourbon. Which I’m pretty sure has now sunk into my hair permanently.”
“Hey, some people would consider that a pretty attractive scent.”
“No one that I want to talk to.”
“Fair enough.”
We raced out of the large room and down a rickety service hall. Then through a storage room. And then down another crumbling staircase until finally, we were in a part of the castle that wasn’t used anymore.
The elder had said that it had taken too much damage in the last war and that the anti-humanists had just decided to build new, grand levels over it rather than fix it. That worked to our advantage, however, because part of the floor at the lowest basement level—what had once been the old armory and archives—had collapsed partially into a cave system below it, which had a pretty large lake.
And that lake led to an underwater stream, which led to an aboveground lake where hopefully a boat was supposed to be waiting for me.
I couldn’t believe it was all coming together. I had been so sure that our plan would face a million and one hiccups, and that I’d have to improvise until I was blue in the face. But so far, everything from the faux kidnapping to being introduced to Sokhanya had gone off without a hitch.
Hopefully, that luck would hold steady. We were so close. Maybe that was the difference between taking calculated risks and being reckless.
We pelted down the last step of the rickety stairs, and then we were out into what had to be the abandoned basement. I didn’t know much about construction, but I was pretty sure that something with a giant hole in its foundation couldn’t be that stable. Which was hopefully where our little present in the oven would come in handy.
It was too dark for me to continue, so I stood still a moment. I could already feel the cobwebs and mildew across my skin. Considering everything I had been through, I was certainly looking forward to getting back home and getting myself a nice, hot shower.
But we had to get there first.
“Hey, Mal, you bring a light?”
“Did I bring a light?” she snorted, pulling a glowstick from her backpack. Krisjian revealed one too, cracking it and tossing me one.
Sokhanya let out a startled sound, a sort of gasping, warbling little chirp, her eyes going wide at the illumination. I held it out to her, and she took it almost reverently, staring at it like it was the most magical thing she had ever seen.
It made me wonder how much she had been exposed to and how many things that I assumed were everyday matters would be
completely new and amazing to her. When we were in safety, I was going to need to have a long, long conversation via notepad on everything she needed to catch up on.
“Let’s go,” Krisjian said, hurrying forward and hopping from one decrepit beam to another. “Watch the floor. We must be quick but careful.”
“Yeah, I figured that part out,” I answered, scanning the floor for where it was safe to put my foot next.
Together, the four of us picked our way across the expanse. There were walls that had partially collapsed and all sorts of signs of war and dragon fights. Scorch-marks covered the stone walls, and a general air of decay and disrepair had sunken into everything.
If I wasn’t in such a hurry to escape, it might have been creepy, like we had stumbled onto a horror movie set. But as it was, I barely paid attention to any of it, my eyes on my feet as we moved.
I was so focused that I was sure nothing would be able to draw my eyes away from the next place my foot was going to fall, but just as we were maybe a quarter of the way to where we needed to be, a glimmer caught my gaze.
I stopped dead in my tracks, craning my head to find the sparkle. I halted so abruptly that Sokhanya crashed into my back, nearly toppling over if I hadn’t caught her, making an indignant, breathy sound.
“Sorry,” I said, even though she couldn’t see my face. I knew that I should keep going, but I couldn’t turn back to the path.
No, that same feeling of compulsion was coming over me, like I was being drawn to something. Against my better judgement, I took another step forward, my eyes scanning for whatever it was that I could practically feel singing for me. All I saw was dirt and cobwebs.
I knew that I needed to go—that time was of the essence—and yet I took another step.
“Davie?” I heard someone call. Mal? Krisjian? I didn’t know. But the rumble at the base of my skull was growing, pulling me toward something very old and very…forgotten.
I took another step and then suddenly, a hand caught my arm, jolting me out of the focus that I hadn’t realized I’d been sucked into. Looking at the hand, I followed it to see it was Sokhanya’s.