Soft light woke Maray after a restless sleep. She turned over in her bed, trying to remember the details of the nightmare that had chased her through the night and startled. It hadn’t been a dream. Corey had come through the fireplace, a projection to warn her, and Gan Krai had taken the liberty to use Corey’s established connection to propose to Maray then threaten Allinan when she had refused. What was wrong with the worlds?
As Maray found Pia’s face measuring her from the brocade sofa with an age-inappropriate crease between her brows, Maray remembered that there was more.
“What did I do?” She covered her eyes with her hands as she remembered how Heck and Jemin had entered the room on her request, both of them ready to find and rescue Corey. And she had sent them to do so.
“They are all grown up,” Pia commented. “They can handle it.”
Maray had her doubts. Jemin and Seri were shifters. They probably stood the best chance against any monster they’d meet out there on their mission… but Heck… Heck was a boy with hurt pride. He might do something reckless…
“Heck is fine,” Pia reassured her as if she had read Maray’s thoughts.
Maray had her doubts. The conversation hadn’t been easy, and after she had recovered from Jemin’s abrupt, and furious, departure, Heck had made it difficult for her to voice her concerns about the effectiveness of their union at this point in history.
Even if her claim had been to postpone the wedding, not to call it off, Heck had taken it with a sour expression on his face and painful silence. She had no idea what he thought, if he would forgive her, if she could still count on his loyalty.
“I need to go after them.” Maray surged out of bed but stopped as she realized that even if that was what she wanted to do, there was something else that was crucial she did instead. “Pia.” she turned to the shifter-girl, swaying slightly as the horrors of the night threatened to crush her with equal force at the thought of facing a number of upset middle-aged men and women who wouldn’t understand or endorse her choices. “Let Scott and my dad know to summon the council for an emergency meeting, will you.” Her father had checked in on her after Heck had left, and he had promised to be there for her at the council meeting—and to stay until she fell asleep before he returned to discuss the matters at hand with Scott and Neelis.
Pia nodded, apparently satisfied with Maray’s insight, and got to her feet at once but hesitated before she strode from the room. “I will need to leave you alone in here for a while,” she reluctantly admitted.
Maray’s knees weakened at the thought. She hadn’t been afraid when she had sent Pia to fetch Jemin and Heck the night before, but now that daylight was chasing away the nebulosity of the events, the threat of Gan Krai suddenly walking out of the fireplace again appeared very real. “The guards from outside could come in,” she suggested meekly for lack of a better solution unless—
“I don’t need to stay here, do I?” she asked as if Pia was her warden. The girl shook her head. “Then, let’s go somewhere nobody will suspect I will be.”
Pia cocked her head, listening.
“Pen’s cabin.”
A disbelieving expression formed on Pia’s face. “And how should anyone protect you there?”
Maray shrugged. “Don’t you think it’s time I learned to protect myself?”
Pia obviously struggled, wrestling the agreement of her rebel mindset down with reason and the responsibility of her position.
“Come on, Pia,” Maray all but begged. “Who could protect me better than Pen? I need to practice magic, and I can’t do that anywhere inside the palace, not even in the warlock quarters.”
Pia didn’t seem convinced, and Maray could imagine why. By now, everyone in her inner circle knew the story of how Langley had abducted Jemin from right outside the cabin’s doors.
“Send Wil over to keep watch,” Maray suggested eventually. “He’ll need distraction as much as I do. And at least then, he can take out his fury that I didn’t let him join the search party for Corey on me in person.”
“Why didn’t you,” Pia asked. “He would have wanted to come.”
Maray regarded the girl’s expression carefully before she spoke. “Remember what happened when I went looking for the person I loved.” The image of Jemin in the fire-tormented tunnels which were collapsing under her rogue magic was still hauntingly vivid in her mind.
Pia nodded. “‘Loved’?” She narrowed her eyes, and Maray noticed she had spoken aloud the word for the first time. “You mean ‘love’. That hasn’t changed, no matter the complications of the present.”
Maray remained silent, but it was clear Pia understood her silence as a ‘yes’.
“Okay,” Pia gave in. “I’ll fetch my brother from the servant quarters before I seek out Scott.”
Maray stepped forward and pulled Pia into a hug.
“All right. Let me find you something to wear first.” Pia pulled away, but Maray dismissed that idea with a wave of her hand.
“I can dress myself,” she reassured Pia. “Hurry so I can disappear for a little bit.”
As Pia took off through the closet, taking the shortcut to the servant quarters, Maray stepped into the shelves after her and closed the hidden door so she could pick something that would endure some licks of flames. She picked a pair of Thaotine pants and a silken undershirt to wear under a Thaotine vest and her tailcoat before she rushed to the bathroom to wash off the sweat of the night. It wasn’t long before she noticed footsteps outside her door, and she shrank, for a moment, imagining Gan Krai might have returned to her chambers through a projection. When she heard Pia’s concerned voice asking if everything was all right, Maray relaxed and put down the silver soap dispenser she’d picked up as a makeshift—now that she was thinking about it, useless—weapon.
“One moment.” Maray dried off and slipped into her clothes, not bothering to take a look at the mirror.
When she stepped back into the room, Wil and Pia were discussing in hushed voices. Pia stopped mid-sentence when she heard the door open and Wil looked positively infuriated, an expression Maray had never seen on his freckled face before.
“You can elaborate on that with Her Royal Highness,” Pia told her brother in answer to something he must have asked before, flitting past Maray with a wink and wave as she approached the door. “I’ll come find you when Scott has everyone in one room. And if it takes too long, I’ll bring you lunch in-between.”
Maray was hardly able to finish her expression of gratitude before Pia left and the door clicked shut.
“What are we to elaborate on?” Maray asked with caution as she approached Wil in her socks, scanning the room for her boots so she wouldn’t need to meet his gaze.
Wil waited for Maray to find what she needed then gestured at the fireplace. “After you.”
Maray led the way through the dark corridor leading from her room to the Gurnyak’s cabin in the forest, Wil’s soft footfalls echoed behind her like a reassuring metronome. All the while until they made it to the door in the back wall of the cabin, neither of them spoke. Maray was busy groping along the tunnel with a small flame conjured atop her palm, and Wil didn’t appear to be in the mood to speak.
Pen’s shriek greeted them as they stepped into the one-room cabin. His beetle-black eyes flickered with excitement as if he was trying to tell Maray that he had been wondering how long it would take for her to come visit again. As she bent down to scratch his neck, she was surprised herself that the razor-sharp teeth he exposed in his horse-mouth as he grinned up at her, satisfied, didn’t scare her more.
After an enthusiastic greeting, Pen trotted past Maray and stopped right in front of Wil, nose up in the air, sniffing.
“It’s okay, Pen,” Maray reassured the Gurnyak that there was no imminent danger. “Wil is with us. He is a friend.”
Much to Maray’s wonder, Pen rubbed his muzzle against Wil’s outreached hand and blinked as if he was greeting an old friend.
“Nice to see you
again, too,” Wil whispered, face reminding Maray more of the friendly young man she knew.
“You’ve been here before?”
Wil glanced up with a sudden frown. “Corey showed me,” he simply said and then, “Which reminds me… Pen—” He turned back to the Gurnyak who was watching him expectantly. “Corey isn’t coming today. She got herself into trouble.”
Pen shook his head with a motion, which in a pony would have been accompanied by a furious whinny, but his screech so fittingly expressed everything Maray felt in that instant. The emptiness where her mother had filled her life before, the pain of the association of her death with Corey’s magic, the painful truth that Allinan was as progressed as the European middle ages when it came to accepting a female ruler if she didn’t have an heir. All of a sudden, Maray felt very sick.
“You’ve been here before,” Maray acknowledged instead of doubling over and letting the nausea in her stomach consume her.
Wil nodded, wordless. It was clear on his face how much he was there because her command was his duty, and not because he was her friend.
“I am sorry, Wil.” She stepped to the narrow window situated between wooden planks, facing the clearing. The snow was melting there under the sunbeams of the slowly-receding winter.
“About what?” Wil’s voice came from where he had been standing before, minus the Gurnyak’s shuffle movements.
When Maray turned back to face him, Wil stood beside a curled-up Pen, who eyed Maray with melancholy.
“Corey.”
Fury flickered in Wil’s eyes. Then, as if it had been a mere wisp of smoke, it evaporated from the dark brown of his irises.
“It’s not your fault Gan Krai got her,” he offered.
“But it’s my fault you are here with me now instead of turning over every stone in Allinan until you find her.”
Wil tilted his head, unsure of what he was expected to say.
“I know what it’s like to have someone taken away and the despair of the search—” She remembered all the darkness in her heart when she had wandered through the corridors of the hidden palace quarters with Corey, Heck, and Wil. “You were there with me. You know what happened,” she reminded him.
“What I remember is that you fought bravely and saved us from Langley and his insane mission,” Wil disarmed her argument.
Maray took a deep breath and stepped forward, touching Wil’s shoulder in response to the effect of the unguarded fear in his eyes as he looked up.
“I almost killed all of you because I couldn’t control myself. I wasn’t ready.” She thought of that moment with a shudder. Of the flames, the singeing heat, the screams, and Jemin falling… “And even if I had been, I was out of control—or to put it differently, my emotions controlled me instead of my head. I was more of a danger to Jemin than even Langley.”
Wil’s face smoothed over. “Your Royal Highness,” he began, formal, distant, then he must have recognized the agony in Maray’s eyes. “Maray,” he called her by her first name. “I grew up with a mother who is a tyrant, willing to trade the life of my little sister in an instant if it meant she could eat from golden dishes every day, and Corey is the one person in the world who is willing to put up with my wretched soul…” He paused, pensive. Then he shook his head. “I cannot lose her.”
As he spilled his thoughts in front of her, Maray saw the correct and dutiful young man in an entirely new light. He was as tormented as the rest of them, carrying his own burden as everyone did in both worlds. Who was she to demand his service when he had someone he loved he wanted to rescue?
“Wil… If you must, if you want to…” She wanted to tell him he was free to go, to find Corey and bring her home. But he shook his head again.
“You are right to not have told me the others went on the rescue mission. You were right to keep me here, where I am not tempted to follow them and endanger them with my fear-driven irrationality.” He paused and took her hand from his shoulder to squeeze it. “No soldier should battle motivated by fear the same way no queen should marry incentivized by the threat of someone else striving for their throne.” The wisdom in his words made it clear that it wasn’t that he was upset with her, but with himself. And that when the day came to choose, he would be on her side. It reminded her of what her father had said after Heck had left the room earlier. That she would need to bravely unearth her council’s loyalties. Better to know who was going to stand by her. And even if all of them would betray her, it was better to know and be able to prepare than to guess and live in fear of the uncertain. And something about Jemin had made her think that his mind was strong, but not stronger than his heart if she put it to the test.
“I am aware that you would rather be out there, too,” Wil remarked as he measured her face, unaware of the canyons she was trying to bridge in her own heart and soul. “You love her, too.”
“Thank you, Wil,” Maray acknowledged the meaning of his words. Corey, in fact, was one of the few friends she had in Allinan. “Corey is lucky to have you.”
“And I am lucky that my future Queen doesn’t tend to sit and twiddle thumbs when there is danger ahead,” Wil remarked with a smile, his eyes warmed up again to the Wil she knew. “So if there is nothing else to discuss, I’d rather we start.”
“With what?” Maray eyed him with a sideways glance while Pen stirred on the floor and lifted his nose expectantly.
“Your magic, of course.” He leaned forward conspiringly. “That’s what you came here to do,” he whispered as if someone could listen in from the nearby armchairs. “Not to discuss details of my frustration.”
He dropped his arms and made his way to the window to check that the airways were clear, then waved Maray over to the door as he strolled over and pulled it open with a quick hand. “Pen?” He glanced over his shoulder, inviting the Gurnyak to join them. “You’ll stand guard.”
Pen enthusiastically scrambled to his feet and galloped past them, almost pushing Maray over in his wild glee.
“Anything suspicious,” Wil instructed as he called after Pen, who was running in a large circle at the edges of the clearing, obviously checking the perimeter, “you let us know.” And with a serious glance at Maray, he said, “We need to be prepared for anything.”
The magic came hesitantly at first, slowly, like an old chewing gum she was trying to peel off the sidewalk. If it hadn’t been for the tiny things such as switching on the water or the light in the palace, or the occasional flame, she was almost certain she would not manage a simple miniature bonfire in her palm.
“Not so bad,” Wil encouraged, rousing the sensation inside Maray that he was mocking her.
She glanced over her shoulder to find him sitting with an authentic grin, in the exact same spot where Jemin had once sat beside her. She ignored the uncomfortable knot that formed in her stomach every time she thought about Jemin. Was there ever going to be a time when there would be nothing standing between them?
As she suffered from the suspicion, the answer was a clear ‘no.’ Wil’s voice broke through to her again. “You’re setting your cloak on fire,” he warned her and got to his feet to jog over.
He was right. There was a sudden branch of flames surging skyward from her palm, the mild wind fanning them to the side, where her sleeve had crumpled at her wrist. She stared at the sizzling fabric with fascination before she was able to focus enough to forbid her fire from spreading, and smothered the embers with her bare hand.
“Ouch!” she exclaimed as the heat actually bit her skin.
Wil got up and jogged to her side, concerned. “Why is it that you can conjure fire with your bare hands, and it doesn’t hurt, but the second it enflames something else, the heat seems to destroy even your skin?”
He picked up her hand and turned it over, both of them observing with wonder how the second-degree burn sealed itself under their stare.
“Corey has the same issue,” he let Maray know, making her feel less like a freak.
They both eyed Ma
ray’s healed palm for a moment.
“Corey is not defenseless.” Maray didn’t know if she was saying it to make herself feel better or Wil. Anyway, the thought of Corey battling Gan Krai with flames was both a relief and the scariest thing she could imagine. He had ‘made’ her a devil-child. She had his blood and his magic. It was unlikely Corey stood even the slightest chance against Gan Krai.
Wil ignored her words and let go of her hand, pointing at the center of the clearing, halfway between them and where Pen had settled under the evergreens to keep watch. “Why don’t you challenge your own abilities a bit?” He raised one eyebrow as if he knew exactly what he was talking about.
Maray measured the distance with her eyes. “I don’t think I can,” she admitted.
“You didn’t think you could bring yourself to make that decision either,” he pointed out, leaving Maray confused.
“What decision?”
“To rely on your own strength rather than on the strength of someone who is seen as strong.” He gave her a minute to comprehend, but when Maray didn’t react other than blinking, he rolled his eyes. “To get the coronation done without the wedding,” he explained as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Warmth spread within Maray, making slow but sure progress from her heart to her mind. ‘Her own strength.’ She liked that.
“You can do this.” He winked at her as if seeing the realization plainly on her face and held up her hand in front of her body. “Try again.”
Maray pushed back all the worries for Corey, the agonizing feeling which came with the various losses she had suffered over the past months. Instead, she focused on the one thing that couldn’t fight back on its own. Allinan. In all its beauty and its astonishing differentness, Allinan was worth fighting for as much as every single man, woman, and child in it. Corey, Jemin, and all the others she loved were part of Allinan, flaming examples of how worthy she was of saving.
“Okay.” She pulled back her sleeves. “Let’s do this.”
With fierce concentration, she rekindled the flames in her palms and imagined the clearing as a map with the point Wil had wanted her to project her fire to the heart of Allinan. Allinan was freezing under the neglect of a former tyrant-queen, a never-present Crown Princess, and now under Maray’s paralyzed procrastination. It desperately needed that fire. And as if it had always been that simple, the spark in her palm flickered across the unfreezing meadow with a sizzle, leaving steam where it moved through the cold air. But it never touched the ground. As Maray was watching it with fascination, the flames unfolded, at first in straight lines outward like a star, then in circles to form a grid, and spiraled upward back toward the sky.
Two Worlds of Dominion Page 11