Storybound

by Emily Mckay

  A gentle hand on my shoulder pulls me back a step. “Easy there, Cupcake.” Morgan nods to Crab, his expression guarded. “Talk a little less, why don’t you?”

  Crab blinks innocently. “Now, hey there. You don’t think—”

  “Talk. Less.” Kane stands. “You don’t talk to her again.” He gives Crab a hard stare as he enunciates each word clearly. “Got it?”

  I blink rapidly as I realize what’s just happened. Ro’s smile is a mixture of amusement and exasperation. Only Kane looks annoyed.

  Holy shit. Even knowing exactly what he is, I just got Sirened.

  “Wow.” I murmur. “That’s impressive.”

  Crab smiles, giving me a nod and wink.

  Kane, Morgan, and Crab sit back down. Kane has a notepad at his elbow. Maps are laid out on the table. Ro is still busy in the kitchen, pointedly not taking part in the conversation, but I can tell she’s listening.

  Neither Morgan nor Crab meet my gaze. And I don’t like the defiance in Kane’s eyes.

  “You’re planning my rescue mission without me,” I say.

  “It’s not your rescue mission. It’s mine.”

  “But—”

  “I’m the one who lost the princess,” he insists. “I’ll get her back.”

  “I told them you’d hate being left behind,” Ro says from the kitchen.

  “Left behind?” I whirl back to glare at Kane. “You weren’t even going to bring me with you?”

  “You’re a Dark Worlder, which means you’re already in danger any time you step outside the wards of this house.”

  “Oh, hell no. I’m not staying here.”

  “The wards around Morgan’s house are almost impenetrable. You’ll be safe.”

  Safe? I don’t want to be safe. I want to make a difference. I want to protect Kane, to keep him safe. He’s the one who’s in danger here…only I can’t tell them.

  “Smyth is one of the most powerful people in the kingdoms. And you’re confronting him in his stronghold, on the island he designed to be a fortress. There’s no way I’m letting you bench me.”

  “Bench you?” Morgan asks.

  The frowns on everyone’s faces make me realize they are unfamiliar with this term.

  “Bench me. It’s a sporting term. You know when you accidently kick the ball into the coach’s son’s face and knock his front tooth out, and then you spend the rest of the season sitting on the bench?”

  But I can tell I haven’t convinced anyone. This is what I get for trying to use a sports analogy.

  “Don’t take it personally.” Ro gives my shoulder a squeeze. “Kane is always trying to protect other people. It’s one of his issues.”

  “It’s not one of my issues,” Kane says under his breath.

  Ro gives a dismissive wave of her hand. “It is so one of your issues. But, Kane, you can’t protect everyone. If you don’t rescue the princess, she’s not going to make it to Saint Lew in time for her wedding. That prince from the Han Court who she’s supposed to marry does not seem like the kind of dude who is going to take rejection well. How long do you think it’ll be before civil war breaks out?”

  Kane sets his jaw at a stubborn angle but doesn’t answer.

  “Smyth wants chaos among the High Courts. It’s the excuse he needs to abolish the Seven Courts entirely and unite the entire kingdom under…I don’t know…the Grand Republic of Smyth.”

  Morgan gives a snort of laughter. “Calm down, sis. I doubt it’s as bad as all that.”

  Kane tips his head in my direction begrudgingly, but still. “What do you think, Cupcake? Is that Smyth’s plan? In the books, at least?”

  “Pretty much. He thinks the Courts are petty and irrational. Unfit to rule the kingdoms. He doesn’t trust anyone but himself with that job.”

  Ro drops her arm from around my shoulder to square off against Kane on her own. “You need the princess to marry the Han prince. Those two courts together might be strong enough to defeat Smyth once and for all. Unless you know someone else who could unite the courts against Smyth…”

  She lets the suggestion dangle.

  Does she know that Kane is the king’s missing heir? It sure as hell sounds like she does.

  “My point is,” Ro continues. “If Cupcake wants to help, why not let her?”

  Piggybacking on Ro’s argument, I pull out the remaining empty chair at the table and sit in it. “You need me, and you know it. You can’t even plan this rescue mission without my information.”

  “If I planned the rescue mission in the book”—he leans back in his chair and crosses his arms over his chest, a cocky smirk settling on his lips—“I can plan it in real life.”

  God, he’s arrogant.

  It’s a quality I loved in Kane the Traveler.

  Being on the receiving end of it, though, is devastating. That smirk makes all my girly parts breathless.

  But I don’t have time to sit here, fanning myself and swooning. One day, that arrogance may get him killed. If I don’t do something, that day is right around the corner.

  “Maybe you can get there,” I admit. “But in the book, you waste valuable time. You make a lot of mistakes. Things go wrong. I can prevent that.”

  “True. But you’ve already tipped your hand. Back in my workshop, you told me several things about the island. I’ve got enough to go on that I don’t need your help.”

  They don’t understand sports analogies, but poker analogies they get? Great.

  No. That’s better, actually. I’m good at poker.

  “Okay, so you know it’s an island,” I admit with a shrug. “But you don’t know where it is.”

  Without even looking down at the table, Kane points to one of the maps. “Back at my place, you called it Gull Veston Island. In your world, there is an island off the coast of Houston called Galveston Island. I’m guessing it’s there.”

  I looked down at the maps and realize that one is of the Kingdoms of Mithres and the other is of my world. They are surprisingly similar. Kane is pointing to the map of my world, to the barrier islands that stretch along the entire Texas coast.

  “It’s not Galveston Island.” I’m not even bluffing. I think the island prison is on the much smaller Pelican Island.

  He narrows his gaze slightly, leaning forward.

  I do the same, feeling like a gunslinger in an old John Wayne movie. “And you don’t know about the rest of the magical barriers.”

  “You mentioned cliffs of insanity.”

  Aha! At least I have him here. “Which is a reference to a Dark Worlder movie, that you haven’t possibly—”

  “I’ve seen The Princess Bride.”

  “You have?”

  “We import a lot of Dark Worlder culture.”

  Huh. I didn’t see that coming.

  “Yeah, if you think people like Jackson Pollock here, you should see how crazy they are for Game of Thrones.” Kane lets that sink in a minute before saying, “So I figure the Cliffs of Insanity are just really high cliffs. We can handle that.”

  “Maybe you can. Or, maybe I have a better way of getting you up the cliffs. A faster way. A safer way.” I am bluffing here. Sure, I have an idea. But it’s a harebrained, crazy-as-hell idea. “And, there are at least two more barriers to the island that I haven’t told you about yet.”

  My gaze never wavers from Kane’s. He meets my eyes, without blinking.

  “You should at least listen to her,” Morgan says in that deep, placating voice of his.

  Kane shifts his gaze from me to Morgan. “Whose side are you on here?”

  “I’m on the side that doesn’t get you killed.”

  “Fine,” Kane says, leaning back in his chair so that it tips back on two legs. “You can help plan the mission.”

  “Not good enough. I get to come along. I want your pro
mise.”

  “Fine. I promise.”

  “A binding promise,” I clarify.

  At that, Kane laughs. It’s the first time I’ve heard him laugh, and the sound is low and deep, but tinged with bitterness. It does powerful things to all those girly parts I’m having trouble controlling.

  That laugh of his hits my emotions even harder. I don’t want him to be bitter. I want more than that for him.

  “If you think I’m going to tell you my binding name, then you aren’t smart enough to be on this crew.”

  My cheeks burn with embarrassment.

  “If I don’t have a binding promise from you, how can I trust that you’re going to hold up your end of the bargain?”

  “If you don’t trust me, you probably shouldn’t be following me into a dangerous situation.”

  I meet his gaze, knowing that this is a test. If I waver, if I stumble, he’s not going to take me seriously. And if I drop the ball now, I may never get my hands on it again.

  I tip up my chin. “I won’t be following you. You’ll be following me.”

  His lips twitch just a little. I didn’t drop the ball.

  And look at that, I can use a sports analogy after all.

  Excerpt from

  Book Five of The Traveler Chronicles:

  The Traveler Undone

  I have a lot of friends who… How do I say this without pissing everyone off?

  Friends who operate ever so slightly outside the law.

  Crab is one of those people.

  Not everyone trusts Sirens. Then again, not everyone needs a partner who can talk his way out of any situation and happens to own the fastest damn boat on the continent.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Okay, so I’m not going to get a binding promise out of Kane. I’ll just have to keep my cards close to my chest. To reveal only what I have to, when I have to.

  There is one thing we have to discuss, though. My harebrained, crazy-as-hell idea.

  I can’t pretend this isn’t dangerous, so I blurt it out. “To get up the Cliffs of Insanity, we need the Kellas cat.”

  Morgan looks up. “The Kellas cat?”

  I nod. “The one you captured after the fight. Do you still have it?”

  “Yeah, it’s in a crate in the garage.”

  “What do you mean ‘need’?” Ro asks.

  “She’ll be a useful ally.”

  Everyone at the table stills, but Ro’s reaction is the most dramatic.

  “The Kellas cat? Are you kidding?”

  “No, I—”

  “A Kellas cat isn’t an ally.” Her words pour out. “You can’t hire her. And unless one of us is a master of cats and hasn’t mentioned it, we can’t make her work for us.”

  Ro backs away quickly, her palms raised as if she’s washing her hands of us.

  Kane stands, holding up his own hands, palm out. “I know you don’t like Kellas cats. No one’s going to make you work with her if you don’t want to.” He steps closer to her and reaches out to touch her shoulder reassuringly. “Let’s just hear what Cupcake has to say,” Kane says in a soothing tone. It almost makes me wonder if he has a little Siren blood himself. “Agreed?”

  After several heartbeats, Ro gives just the slightest twitch of her head.

  “Okay, Cupcake, talk us through it.”

  I lay the plan out as simply as I can.

  “Somewhere hidden in the cliffs, there’s a staircase. It’s carved into the cliffs themselves, made from the same rock. It will be almost impossible to see with the naked eye. That’s why we need Ro. She’ll be able to touch the rock and use her affinity to calcium to map out the cliffs in her mind. The stairway will be well hidden. Without her, we might not find it.”

  Kane turns to Ro. Her arms are folded over her chest, holding onto herself for strength. “Does that sound doable?”

  “Maybe,” she hedges. “It’s not easy, but—” She waits a long time before nodding. “I can find the staircase.”

  Morgan holds up a hand to pause the conversation. “Wait a second. We’re going to walk up all those stairs? Exactly how tall are the Cliffs of Insanity?”

  “According to Wallace, they go up a mile.”

  “That’s almost six thousand steps.”

  “Exactly.” I take a deep breath and plunge ahead. “We need a way up those cliffs that doesn’t involve walking up them. That’s where the Kellas cat comes in.”

  “How does that cat help with the stairs?”

  “We’re going to send the Kellas cat up the steps. Then Kane can create a loop from the boat to where the cat is.”

  Ro frowns, shaking her head. “He can’t just create a loop from any one spot to another. It has to be somewhere he’s been before. Someplace he can visualize.”

  “Yes. That’s why we need the Kellas cat.”

  Kane is squinting at me in confusion. “How does the Kellas cat affect that?”

  “You’re going to need to form a mental bond with her.”

  Suddenly, I have the attention of everyone at the table. There’s a beat of silence, and then Morgan leans forward and says, “Excuse me?”

  “A what?” Kane asks.

  “A telepathic bond. If you have a link to the cat, she can show you in her mind exactly where she is. You’ll be able to create a loop to wherever she’s standing.”

  Kane is shaking his head. “None of my affinities are telepathic.”

  “Well, sure but her—” I look around the table and see nothing but confusion reflected back. “You guys know Kellas cats are telepathic, right?”

  “What?” Morgan asks.

  “I thought you said your mom had a dowt of Kellas cats?”

  “She did. I just didn’t—” Morgan tilts his head to the side. Then he looks at his sister. “Did you know Kellas cats were telepathic?”

  Ro focuses her attention on nibbling on her thumbnail. “I thought they might be,” she finally admits.

  “Wait a second,” Kane says. “If we didn’t know Kellas cats were telepathic, how was that in the books?”

  I shrugged. “It’s not. But, in the Dark World, domestic cats meow only to people, not other cats. Kellas cats are the same. They speak aloud only when they’re around humans. Didn’t you notice during the fight that they seemed to be communicating without words with one another?”

  “I didn’t think about it. I was more worried about the cat trying to kill me.”

  “Well, for my plan to work, we’d better make sure you can form a telepathic bond with her.”

  Morgan leans forward. “First, we’d better make sure she’s not going to kill us all.”

  “Kane spared her life. She owes him the death-debt. She’ll be honor bound to return the favor.”

  “There’s only one way to know if this will work,” Kane says slowly. “We’ll have to ask the cat.”

  Ro pushes herself away from the counter, brushing tears from her cheeks as she flees the kitchen.

  “Ro, wait.”

  She stops at the sound of her brother’s voice.

  “Listen, this plan could work,” he says softly. “I know you hate Kellas cats, but you won’t be alone this time. We’ll all be together. Maybe this is dangerous, but that’s never stopped you from doing something before. You’re braver than this.”

  “What is it to you, anyway?” she asks Morgan, her gaze filled with fear. “This isn’t your fight.”

  “You’re the one who said that if we don’t rescue them, civil war will break out. We need to figure out what Smyth is up to. Kane and I are going to that island. We need you to help us get there.”

  Ro nods wordlessly, still brushing away tears as she leaves the room.

  Well, there goes my one friend in the Kingdoms of Mithres—and I just made her cry. Ro is sweet and kind, but for my plan to w
ork, I’m essentially going to torture her with her greatest fear.

  And my mother wonders why I don’t have more friends.

  Excerpt from

  Book Five of The Traveler Chronicles:

  The Traveler Undone

  Dragons, Kellas cats, hellhounds, and Tuatha all have different native languages. Since most of these creatures don’t naturally get along anyway, for most of our history, interspecies negotiations went to hell every time anyone opened their mouths.

  Now, nearly everyone speaks some English.

  You know why?

  TV. Everyone likes Dark World TV.

  When you look at it like that, I’m practically an ambassador for peace.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Once Ro leaves, silence falls over the room. I’m not great with awkward silences, and I have to fight the urge to make a bad joke to break the tension.

  Thankfully, Kane clears his throat and says, “Come on, Cupcake, let’s go talk to a cat.”

  He leads me out of the kitchen and down a long hall.

  “So has Ro always been so…” I search around for the least judgy word. “nervous about Kellas cats?”

  Kane shoots me a look which implies I’ve overstepped my boundaries.

  I did mention that I wasn’t good with awkward silences, right?

  “I just…it never came up in the books.” Kane doesn’t answer. “I mean, Morgan did say, ‘You won’t be alone this time.’ That implies there was some other time when she was alone and when something bad happened. Is that why Ro’s afraid of them?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Is it true the cats in his mother’s dowt used to perch on Morgan’s chest, hoping he would die in his sleep?”

  “The Tuatha stretch the truth, sure. But we don’t lie.”

  I think about when the Kellas cat sat on my chest and remember the uneasy sensation that my soul was tearing loose from my body.

  What must have it been like to experience that as a child? Worse still, to know that the creature was your mother’s pet.