“We need to talk to Corey soon,” Heck noted. “She can help us track the guy who left his cloak behind in the woods.”
Gerwin held up his hand as if to stop Heck but didn’t slow down himself as they passed a set of saluting guards when they entered the palace. “Scott and I went to see her. She wasn’t home.”
Maray listened to her father and her fiancé as they discussed what needed or didn’t need to be done while she walked between them, feeling powerless. Hadn’t she just given a speech and people had come solely to see her and hear her words?
“And there is something else,” Gerwin stopped as they reached the corridor to Maray’s chambers where Maray’s usual guards had already taken position, and the ones who had been extra on their trip to her appearance trailed away, silently handing over their duties.
Maray watched her father as his face turned back into the diplomat’s mask she’d grown accustomed over the past month—the emotionless man who seemed to have forgotten that he was mourning his wife.
“It can’t be worse than the news about the Shalleyn, can it?” Maray asked in an attempt to make him feel better, but all she got from him was a twisted smile that appeared to be more painful than what had been originally on his mind.
“You need to consider moving up the wedding date, Maray,” Gerwin said with sad eyes. “Gerenhoff is slowly turning the council against you, and even though you are the rightful heir to the throne of Allinan, the council will not wait forever—especially not in dire times like these. They will seek someone to blame, and that someone will be you.” He almost whispered the words so only Maray and Heck could hear him, but they rang in Maray’s ears as if he’d shouted them through the marble hallway.
For lack of a reasonable answer, Maray nodded a sign of acknowledgement, something she’d seen on her mother countless times—and Maray’s heart ached as she realized she really was stepping into her mother’s footsteps. The look in Gerwin’s eyes told her he’d noticed, too.
“The Crown Princess needs to rest, Ambassador.” Heck came to Maray’s aid, sounding like the gentle Heck she’d experienced increasingly often since the suitors’ ball. He held out a hand, and Maray let her arm glide out of her father’s and took Heck’s hand without thinking, letting him lead her to her chambers.
“Thanks for letting me know, Dad,” Maray said after a couple of steps and watched her father’s aging face over her shoulder. “I’ll do my best.”
He smiled. The proud smile of a father who recognized something he’d taught his daughter. Maray guessed it was her words, which were really his words. ‘Thank them. Give them hope. Never promise them’.
At the door, Heck squeezed her fingers. “I need to go see what Gerenhoff is up to,” he informed her. “Will you be okay if I leave you with Pia?”
Pia was there behind them, ready to step in the moment her name was mentioned.
“Of course she will,” Pia said with an edge that sounded very much as if she was offended someone might even ask such a thing. “She is always okay with me.”
Maray couldn’t help but smile. “Thanks, Heck,” she reassured him. “Pia can take it from here.”
At Maray’s words, Pia squeezed past Heck and opened the door, slid inside the room, and started rummaging in the dresser.
“Make sure Gerenhoff doesn’t notice you’re spying on him,” Maray whispered, leaning forward to peck Heck on the cheek. It was a gesture of the deep friendship between them. How she wished there was something more, some sort of different excitement for Heck, but however deep she searched inside her heart, it wasn’t there.
“You know me,” Heck said with a smile.
“That’s exactly why I am worried.”
Heck dismissed her concern with a grin as he walked away, leaving Maray to her own thoughts and Pia’s scolding look from beside the dresser.
With a stifled sigh, Maray nodded at the guards a couple of yards away, who were waiting for her signal to take up positions at the door, and she stepped over the threshold, closing the door behind her. How much more would she be able to stand before she was going to break under the weight of her responsibilities to Allinan? If only she could at least have the one person at her side who she really wanted there. If only her heart wouldn’t keep freezing over with every thought of him…
At least she had Heck. Loyal and ready to lay all of Allinan at her feet, and ready to help her through anything that would come without losing her own dignity. Heck was her wild card when it came to keeping the council’s loyalty, and sad as it sounded, she needed him. How could she ever rule without someone who knew Allinan inside and out—her history, her traditions, her people? There was so much Maray still had to learn and so little time until she would have to give up all hope of freedom forever.
“One day he’s going to burn the city to the ground for your love,” Pia’s said without a warning.
“I don’t think he will,” Maray answered, recovering from the events of the still young day as she let herself fall into one of the blue armchairs and took her cloak off, folding it over her lap. “Heck knows exactly what he got himself into.” She turned to face Pia, who was watching her from across the room with a blatant look.
“I am not talking about Heck.” Pia waited for a moment, giving Maray time to figure it out, but Maray didn’t dare go there. “Jem—” Pia said and leaped over the edge of the bed, the hem of her dress raised enough so she didn’t slip on it. “I am talking about Jem.”
Maray stiffened in the chair and swallowed the unbearable emotions, which never failed to hit her at the mention of Jemin’s name. As much as she loved her handmaiden, bringing up Jemin wasn’t one of her smarter moves. “Pass me a glass of water, please,” Maray asked, hiding the raging battle in her chest, and forced her body to not betray herself. She hadn’t spoken to anyone about how she felt about her choice—the choice her mother had encouraged her to make.
“He asks about you,” Pia said out of the blue and opened the closet, rummaging for something, probably pretending she wasn’t paying attention to the paling of Maray’s face.
“He does?” Maray found herself asking with a little too much enthusiasm and immediately wished she hadn’t. What difference did it make?
“Every time he comes to the safe house—at least every time I am there.” Pia sounded confident, almost excited.
“Why haven’t you told me before?”
“Because I never felt like you needed to know.”
Maray frowned at Pia, who had extracted a pair of boots from the closet and was holding them out.
“Why now? When you know Jemin’s absence brings me only pain.”
Pia’s face changed, and she no longer looked like the rebellious thirteen-year-old she was but like a wise woman. “Because until now, it didn’t make any difference.”
“And now it does?”
“Because you are forgetting that once you are Queen, you can rewrite the rules.” A grin stole onto Pia’s face. “‘If I were Queen…’ Remember?”
Maray stared at Pia, feeling all the blood leave her face. They had played that game before, imagining all the things they could change if they were Queen of Allinan.
“You don’t need to be married to be a queen,” Pia said bluntly, boots still in her hands. A pair. Just as was expected of Maray and Heck. A pair, ready to do a job together.
“It’s expected of a queen to have a husband,” Maray repeated with a grimace what she heard every day at every council meeting.
“You sound like my mother,” Pia commented with a frown and shook her ginger mane back.
Jemin
The crowd thinned as they followed the hooded ghost into the side streets.
“I can’t smell him,” Seri complained in a whisper, squeezing past an elderly couple aiming for one of the carved doors of the pastel-colored residential buildings.
Jemin’s heart was pounding in his chest with anticipation. The Shalleyn in the forest may have escaped, but he was determined to get
his hands—or paws—on this one.
Without responding to Seri’s frustration, he leapt on top of a low wall separating the street from a small front yard. In the summer, it had to be brimming with flowers, but now, Jemin was looking down at frozen soil and dead leaves. He couldn’t smell the guy, but he could hear his footsteps as they echoed along the walls between the houses.
With a quick motion of his head, he beckoned for Seri to follow and crouched down like a wolf before he jumped over the dead flowerbed and into the narrow alleyway behind it. Adrenaline flooded his veins when he caught a glimpse of a dark cloak as he turned the corner behind the house. Just a couple more steps, and they would catch up with him.
Jemin snuck along the wall, body shaking slightly as he mentally prepared to shift and, with a glance at Seri, who was right behind him, readied himself to attack.
He glanced up to check for spectators, but there were no windows on this side of the house. In addition, there was a line of hedges and a fence shielding the building from the stables that started behind it. Jemin leapt around the corner, shaking into his Yutu-form as he flew through the cold air, and landed right behind an assembly of bushes. Seri was still behind him, having followed his lead. Her warm breath touched his flank as she lowered her head to see through the branches.
The cloaked figure was there at the other side, rushing toward the stables without seeming to notice the two shifters’ presence. It was now or never.
Before Jemin could charge the Shalleyn, Seri flew out of the bushes and flung herself at the demon. Jemin, stunned for a brief second, watched how Seri’s teeth sunk into the figure’s arm, and her jaws locked around something more than fabric. He followed her out of the thicket and pushed his paws into the frozen soil as he jumped to attack, but the Shalleyn collapsed with a whimper before Jemin landed beside him, making the horses in the stables whinny uneasily.
The pace of Jemin’s heart stuttered for a moment. He had been prepared for a fight, for something super-human much like the one they had encountered in the woods. Yet, as the hood of the struggling figure slid back, exposing a face that looked very much human, Jemin no longer knew if he could trust his usually sharp shifter-senses. He took a whiff of air, wondering if he had missed the scent of the man as they’d hunted him from the crowd at Maray’s speech. But the air smelled of nothing but stables, hay, and Seri’s familiar scent. No other human was present.
The man eyed Seri defiantly as he tried to free his arm from her merciless jaws. Jemin noticed that there was no blood trickling from Seri’s muzzle.
“If you hesitate any longer,” the guy said and pulled his mouth into a sneer, cold gray eyes locking onto Jemin’s, “I might choose to fight back… or disappear again.”
Seri glanced at Jemin, sudden fear flickering in her black irises. They needed to act, and fast.
Jemin focused on his paws, the way he always did when he needed to transform back into his human shape, and waited until he felt the cold ground under his bare palms. He needed his voice, not his razor-sharp teeth.
“Who are you?” he barked at the man and leapt back onto his feet, earning an amused expression as he landed right beside Seri, who hadn’t loosened her jaws.
“Not important,” the man countered.
Jemin searched the man’s dead gaze for answers, but there was nothing there besides a gloating that reminded him of the look Gan Krai had fashioned as he’d allowed Jemin to fall into the frozen lake. He shuddered and grabbed his sword from his side, pulled it in a graceful bow, and set the tip at the man’s throat.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
Again, the man’s face lit up almost as if he was winning a game Jemin didn’t know he was playing.
“Not right now,” he agreed. “I have a message to deliver, and I take it you are the best person to deliver it.”
“What message?” Jemin glanced at Seri, who growled, letting Jemin know that she was ready to rip the guy’s arm off if needed.
“A message for the Queen,” the odorless man said and moved his free arm to gesture as if he was bowing. Jemin, reflexes faster than human speed, pinned the arm to the ground with his right foot and leaned forward over his knee to look the man in the eye.
“The Queen is dead.”
A wince escaped the man’s lips, and his face twisted for a moment, showing a human reaction to the pain both Jemin’s weight and Seri’s teeth must be inflicting, but then his expression smoothed over and was quickly replaced by an ice-cold grin.
“Haven’t you heard? There will be a new Queen. And she will be crowned by the Master himself.” A dark chuckle followed his words, and his scarred face fell into the shadow of the hood as he shook with laughter.
“What are you talking about?” Jemin barked. Fury was boiling inside of him. Whoever this demon was, his chances of surviving this encounter were fading with every word he spoke. If there was the slightest chance he was threatening Maray—
“Don’t tell me you don’t know about the Queen’s promise,” the man provoked. “This time, I do mean the dead Queen.”
Of course, Jemin knew. How could he ever forget what they had learned about Queen Rhia’s secret pact with Gan Krai? How could he forget that saving Princess Laura from marrying the evil warlock by pushing her into exile with Ambassador Johnson had ended in their beautiful daughter Maray—and Rhia’s promise of Maray’s hand to Gan Krai in exchange for Laura’s freedom? How could anyone forget that?
“I see by the pain in your eyes that you know exactly what I am talking about,” the man said, and his face turned serious. “Tell your Crown Princess that the Master hasn’t forgotten Queen Rhia’s promise and that it won’t be long before she will be crowned Queen of both worlds.”
Jemin’s hand shook as anger threatened to consume him alongside a deep-set fear of losing Maray forever, and the blade cut into the man’s throat. But instead of the gurgling sound of a man breathing his own blood, another laugh filled the air. A horse stomped in the stables behind them, and a bird crowed in the trees somewhere nearby.
“You should be dying,” Jemin said, grabbed by a new fear.
“You can’t die if you’re already dead.” The man shrugged and pulled his arm out of Seri’s mouth as if he didn’t have a care in the world. No blood, no flesh, just smoke running out from between her teeth like sand in an hourglass, and sealed back together into an arm once it was free.
“What are you?” Seri asked with a shaky voice beside Jemin, now that her Yutu-strength no longer made a difference, transformed back into her human shape.
The man shrugged again. “The girl is asking the right questions,” he mocked and got to his feet, ignoring both shifters’ attempts to contain him, letting their hands grasp smoke whenever they grabbed for his arms or shoulders.
Jemin growled in frustration, considering a transformation back into his Yutu-form just so he could bite with his teeth rather than his blade, but he needed his voice more than he needed to taste the smoke they were trying to get hold of.
“You are a Shalleyn,” Jemin answered for the guy. “A demon of this world, banned to the other world, eager to get your hands on the souls of Allinan.
“One soul in particular,” the man responded with a smirk, and his eyes glanced in the direction of the palace. Jemin knew even though there were buildings and flora blocking the view on the pale-yellow castle in the distance, but it was definitely that direction.
“Over my dead body,” Jemin growled. A wave of rage welled up inside of him once more, as his shifter instincts set in and his urge to protect Maray, the one who had settled in his heart, became stronger than the need to protect his own life or Allinan.
“That can be arranged.” The demon grasped Jemin’s throat in a movement so quick, not even Seri could intervene, and squeezed until Jemin felt his jugular was going to burst under the pressure. Unthinking, he ran his sword through the man’s chest in a helpless attempt to free himself as his sense of self-preservation kicked in. Seri cur
sed an objection behind him, but it was too late. To both their surprises, the hand on Jemin’s throat loosened, and the demon dropped dead on the ground. Not a demon, a human man, aged between forty and fifty, salt and pepper hair cropped short above his scarred cheeks and forehead, and eyes now lifelessly staring into the winter sky while thick smoke drifted from his open lips in a twirl.
“You could keep your temper under control for at least a second,” Seri complained as she pushed the still body with her boot, just to watch how it flopped back like a sack of flour. “Now we lost our source of information.”
While Seri got worked up about Jemin’s failure to keep his shifter nature under lock and key, Jemin felt a sudden cold creep through his chest. Gan Krai was after Maray for real. He was sending out satellite units to test the waters, scout the area, find the weak spots in her protection. And he had found the weakest of all: Jemin himself, who had just proven then and there that he would go to any length to make sure Gan Krai would never lay a finger on Maray. Jemin wasn’t even sure it was his shifter nature making him do it. It was his foolish love for someone way out of his reach, which was slowly but gradually driving him mad.
“Why did your stab to the chest kill him?” Seri brought Jemin back to the present. “My bite didn’t make him bleed. Your sword on his throat didn’t hurt him.” She examined the body with more curiosity than anger. The life had puffed away like the smoke from the man’s mouth. “Scott’s going to award you a medal for killing a demon.” With an unexpected grin, she clapped Jemin on the shoulder. “Only you can sit through a boring political event and return with a demon’s head.”
Jemin forced a laugh. Seri was Seri. In every way he knew. Her competitiveness shone through every word as she recapped the moment, and her sharp mind pointed out all the devastating details of the meaning of the Shalleyn’s words. But behind her warrior faade, her heart was as human as any. She reached out for Jemin’s hand and laced her fingers with his, not a sign of attraction but a gesture of deepest affection and friendship.
Two Worlds of Dominion Page 5