Maray looked up and found Heck leaning against the windowsill. He was grinning broadly, hand at the hilt of his sword, looking as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
“How did you get in?” Maray asked instead of saying ‘hello’.
He nodded at the fireplace.
“Seriously, Heck, you need to stop doing this.” Maray wasn’t sure if she should be upset or glad that he kept checking on her. He had done so a couple of times a day since the assassination attempt on her father, and he didn’t seem to have any intention of stopping.
“Not until the serious guy is back,” Heck joked and did his best impersonation of Jemin. “Someone has to make sure he finds you in one piece when he returns.”
“If he returns.” Maray thought aloud, and Heck strolled over, placing a hand on her shoulder and fashioning a smile that only Heck could get away with.
“And what will I do all day long once he’s back?” He winked and headed for the door, leaving Maray itching to pinch his arm. This wasn’t funny.
“Good luck down there,” Pia called as Maray followed Heck from the room. She was supposed to stay and make sure no one in the castle noticed that Maray had left her chambers.
When they walked down the hallway, no guards were present. Laura had assigned them to Gerwin’s doors instead, using the recent attack on the Ambassador as an excuse to help her daughter sneak out of her bedroom and to the secret passage to the dungeons Maray had used once before to eavesdrop on Rhia’s initial questioning. Heck was quiet as he walked beside her and only stopped once, briefly, to pull up her hood before they entered the main corridor.
“Why is it so important nobody knows I’ll be down there?” Maray asked as his face above her vanished behind the rim of her hood.
Her father had said “so no one can suspect anything and try anything”—whatever that meant.
“If nobody knows you left your rooms, no one will care to follow you. If no one follows you, no one will be able to alert Rhia in case she is planning to get her assassin involved again…”
Heck’s answer sounded logical, but Maray was getting frustrated about being in a golden cage and yet being targeted and unable to do anything about it, instead having to smile at nobles who asked about the wellbeing of her father and suppressing the urge to investigate on her own where the poison might have come from. Luckily, Corey and Pia had taken on that task. They were able to roam the areas accessible to servants more easily, including the kitchen where the poisoned dumpling must have originated.
“Just follow me down there, and trust me for once,” Heck added.
“I trust you,” Maray pointed out.
“Why doesn’t it sound like you mean it?”
Maray couldn’t see Heck’s face, but she could swear there was an edge of disappointment in his voice.
“Let’s go.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her forward along the main corridor, dodging an opening door and pushing Maray against the wall behind a statue. Maray didn’t dare breathe out of fear of closing the distance between their chests by a mere expansion of her lungs. Heck waited for a moment, listening to footsteps disappear along the hallway before he unlocked her from his grasp. “Sorry,” he whispered and took a deep breath. “That was close.”
‘Literally’, Maray thought, but she didn’t dare speak out of fear that Heck would find some strange sort of satisfaction in her recognition of their physical proximity.
They made their way down to the end of the hall before they vanished behind the tapestry, which was the entrance to the secret passageway. Heck led her into the darkness until they reached the stairs spiraling down several levels into the humid, stinking dungeons when he grabbed something from the wall.
“Would you mind?” Heck held up a torch that needed igniting.
Maray pulled back her hood and lifted her free hand, taking a moment to focus. She hadn’t been able to conjure fire when she had tried to defend herself from Rhia. Something inside of her had made her block herself from doing so. Maybe it was the fear of what she was capable of.
Heck eyed Maray through the darkness, chocolate eyes full of wonder. He had seen what she could do when she had burned the tunnels under the fountain to ashes and buried Langley and his revolutionaries in dust and fire. But he didn’t seem afraid of her, not the way she was afraid of herself and her abilities, and as he nodded at her, a thin line of fire rose from her open palm and wandered to the top of the torch. It blazed for a second before it burned more evenly. Maray’s heart leapt, and she shrank away from the flames at the same time.
As she glanced down, the stairwell presented itself as a dark spiral with specks of orange from the torch. The dancing light painted an eerie scene for Maray’s and Heck’s descent into the guts of the palace underground. Gerwin had recovered enough that they were certain they could leave him alone with the guards for an hour. He hadn’t exactly agreed to Laura’s and Maray’s urgent wish to face Rhia and squeeze answers out of her; he’d rather walk the path of diplomacy. But Maray didn’t. Not this time. This time, she needed to do it her way. She was glad her father didn't have the chance to be there when she would be, what she knew, was a version of herself she wouldn’t be proud of.
Heck’s hair shimmered a fiery red in the glow of the flames, but his features were swallowed in shadows.
“And you are certain no one else knows we’re down here?” Maray asked, listening to her own voice as it bounced in a hushed echo off the stone walls.
“You can never be certain,” Heck countered and eyed her from the side, unnecessarily holding out a hand to help her down the narrowing stairs. “But I took every precaution I could have possibly thought of and informed only the ones we absolutely trust.”
Maray didn’t take his hand but squeezed past him to the corner she knew led to the corridor, which opened into the confinement area on one side. Heck didn’t stop her, so she continued until they ended up outside the room where Rhia was biding her time in captivity in a specially-fortified cell. Maray’s stomach tightened uncomfortably as they got closer. She remembered every word, the horror of Rhia’s silence, and Jemin’s harsh commands and threats as he had interrogated her. She had laid aside the memory of that version of him and had silently hoped the next time she was going to face her grandmother, he would be there to protect her. Now, instead of caramel-blonde Jemin, she had Heck, with his dark, shrewd air, and a strangely serious expression on his young features.
“You ready?” he wanted to know as she stopped at the corner, and Maray shook her head. “We can abort the mission,” he suggested as he read the hesitance on her face in the half-light. But Maray shook her head again.
She wasn’t ready to face Rhia. Not in the slightest. But she was ready for answers.
“Let’s do this.”
And together, they turned the corner, finding a small number of people awaiting them: Scott, some of the shifters from Neelis’ pack, and Goran and Pete. And there, behind Scott, was Maray’s mother, face pale and features tense. She was armoring herself to face her mother, the evil Queen of Allinan, and Maray found in Laura’s eyes the same thing she felt in the pit of her stomach—fear for her own life.
“The regular guards are positioned at their usual posts around the dungeons, to catch anyone who tries to sneak in.” As Scott spoke, he threw Maray a knowing look. Did he know she had eavesdropped? Had he told anyone? “And Corey dropped by to fortify the wards, so no one—no matter how strong—can breach the borders between the two worlds.”
“So this dungeon actually exists in the other world,” Maray found herself saying as she remembered that Feris had saved Rhia before by portaling out of the dungeons to the other world with her.
Scott nodded. “But even if it didn’t, that doesn’t mean there isn’t someone who would go to lengths, such as excavating the basement of the palace in Vienna, so they can break Rhia out.” He eyed Laura and she nodded. “After everything we’ve seen… Immortality… Corey’s powers and yours…” He hesitated. “There is hardl
y anything I find impossible at this point.
Heck made a sound of agreement beside Maray. He had stuck the torch into an iron ring in the wall where it was in good company of five more. The room was beautifully lit by the fire, making the door they needed to walk through appear more like a black hole than a portal to all the answers they were seeking.
“Shall we?” Scott noticed Maray’s gaze at the door and waited for Laura’s approval.
At Laura’s nod, everyone set in motion, but Laura held up her hand. “Only Maray and I will question her,” she informed them. “The rest of you will hold it together and only interfere if she tries something.”
Heck’s teeth made a dangerous noise that let Maray guess he wasn’t happy about her order, but he inclined his head, displaying his agreement. It felt wrong to not see Heck explode and tell Laura exactly what he thought. Where was the rebel with the omnipresent grin?
“Before we go in,” Laura added, “Don’t let anything she says affect you. And if it does, hide it. Rhia can’t twist your minds or manipulate you to her own advantage. She will try—trust me.”
Maray’s feet dragged as she stepped over the threshold, almost as if her body knew she wasn’t doing herself a favor, exposing herself to Rhia. Heck’s broad shoulders were blocking anything from view, but she knew that what she would find behind magically-enhanced bars wouldn’t be pretty.
When they were finally in, and she could view the cell, what she saw was a scene from a child’s nightmares. Rhia was there, a half-decaying, half-petrified figure, standing in the center of the space, eyes directed at the beam of light that was dropping from the high ceiling. She didn’t give a sign she had noticed their presence, other than a dusty laugh, which reminded Maray of the echo of an avalanche in a stone desert.
Scott’s sword was in his hand, and Heck’s fingers grabbed for his, an instinct Maray had observed on Jemin as well. Goran and Pete had positioned themselves on each side of Laura while Scott ordered the shifters to form a loose line between the iron bars and the two princesses.
While Maray watched Rhia as she stood still like an ugly statue, the fear retreated to the back of her mind, and a deep, heartfelt anger pushed itself to the front. This woman had held her own daughter hostage for her blood, she had tried to tie Maray to a bed and some tubes for the exact same reason, and she had potentially killed her own husband and attempted to kill Maray’s father. And those were only the personal assaults toward her own family. By breaching the dimensions and supposedly promising the Shalleyn access to Allinan in return for their help, Rhia had betrayed the entirety of Allinan. And the Allinans were Maray’s people as much as they were Rhia’s or Laura’s. Maray’s hand was on her sword before she could even think of speaking, but Heck, fast as a black-haired whirlwind, caught her by the wrist before she could do anything that would be more dangerous to herself than to anyone else in this room—especially Rhia.
“Ah, the short temper of young life.” With a ghost-like movement, the Queen lowered her head and unblinkingly stared a Maray with a gaze that seemed less human than anything Maray had seen before. From a distance, her eyes were the epitome of dark voids, but as Maray took a step closer, ignoring Heck’s whisper of caution, something flashed in the sockets. It was a fraction of a second, but enough for Maray to stop before she could touch the wide, iron bars.
“You will only speak if I say so,” Laura let her mother know, and the on-edge atmosphere was so thick Maray could taste it in her dry mouth.
Rhia laughed again, sending the sound of gravel down her throat. “You fools think I had something to do with the attack on your unworthy worm of a husband.” She ghosted to the barrier which separated her from all of the individuals who were dying to sink either their claws or their swords into her and smirked. “You have no idea what you got yourself into, dear.”
Maray could feel the anger burn up in Laura without even needing to glance at her. The words Rhia had spoken about her father…
“How can you possibly know what happened, Mother?” Laura spat with gritted teeth, which reminded her little of the composed and dignified royal her mother normally was.
In response, Rhia smiled, for once a resemblance of a real smile. “You just called me ‘Mother’,” she noted.
Maray tasted bitterness and frustration alongside the urge to cut out Rhia’s tongue. No matter if she was the biological mother of Laura, and Maray’s grandmother, she had lost every right to be considered family the second she had made the decision to trade her daughter’s life for immortality.
“Tell me, Mother,” Laura scoffed at her, “How did you do it?” All eyes were on Rhia, whose decomposing face was more stone than ever. “How did you slip that poison into his food?”
When Rhia didn’t respond, Maray’s temper boiled. “Come on ‘Grandma’—” She twisted her mouth, making the word sound like a mockery of its meaning. “How did you do it? I’m sure you’ve had practice in the past, so this must have been easy.” Maray thought of Jemin’s father, who had been poisoned on Rhia’s order, and what Laura had said about King Almein.
Rhia’s eyes, now visible in the shadows of her boney face, locked on Maray’s, and she saw those lapis-lazuli irises reflect the white light from above.
“Oh, child—” The stone of her features melted for a moment as she studied Maray’s face. “You don’t know the half of it. And maybe it’s for the best if you flee Allinan before something happens to you, too.”
Heck’s sword was at Rhia’s throat in an instant, point sticking through the gap in the bars, ready to sink it into the layers of disintegrating flesh. Maray shuddered.
“You will not harm one hair on her head, or I will personally make sure you never see the light of day ever again, ‘Your Royal Highness’,” Heck spat, and for a second, Maray thought he wasn’t going to be able to keep himself from doing it right now. But the growl of the transformed shifters behind them reminded Heck that he wasn’t alone and that their mission was to collect answers, not to kill the Queen of Allinan.
Rhia broke into a peal of papery laughter and leaned forward into Heck’s blade. “You really think I have anything to lose, boy? Look at me. I am locked up in a cell for the crimes I committed in order to protect those I love from the mistakes I made decades ago.” Heck shrank back, careful not to let the blade cut Rhia, but kept it close enough to have the option. “Now that we’ve lost, it doesn’t really matter, does it?”
There was a certain wisdom in her zombie-like face, which was surprising, it seemed, not only to Maray, but also to Laura and Scott.
“What are you talking about, Mother?” Laura asked, moving one step closer to the cell, too.
Scott and the shifters had moved with them, and Goran and Pete had their swords in front of their chests, tips pointing at Rhia.
“Haven’t you ever wondered what changed?” Rhia asked, ignoring the guards and the shifters. “We got along so well when you were a child.”
Maray glanced at her mother and was surprised to find nostalgia on her pale face.
“I know you remember, Laura.” Rhia’s lips threatened to tear as she pulled them into a smile, which Maray couldn’t distinguish if it was real or not. “I remember, too.”
Laura stomped her foot for lack of anything else to do to channel her obvious conflict and frustration. “You are trying to get into my head, Mother,” she hissed, and there was doubt in her voice, something Maray had rarely seen in her mother.
With a deep breath, Maray worked up the courage to interrupt Rhia’s game and pointed a finger at her. “You did it. Tell me who helped you,” she demanded and found Laura’s posture straighten a little as she was reminded why they had initially come here.
“For God’s sake, Maray,” Rhia snapped at her, sounding surprisingly like her mother did when she was upset. “You really think I need help for a simple poisoning?”
Maray’s mouth fell open, and Rhia smirked, satisfied with Maray’s response.
“Do you honestly think I
am here because your cell is holding me? Because your joke of a warlock has put up wards?”
Maray felt her own eyes widen at Rhia’s words, and there was nothing she could do about it.
“What are you saying, Mother?” Laura was more courageous than Maray and asked for an explanation.
Rhia turned back to Laura with a surprisingly smooth motion, and Heck’s swords moved with her, leaving a thin line on her neck, which Rhia ignored—if she even felt it—and every man in the room was ready to attack.
“I am saying that I am here because I choose to be.”
There was a moment of silence while the horror of the news unfolded in the room. Heck pulled back his sword and stepped away from Rhia, positioning himself right next to Maray instead, his shoulders in between the cell and Maray. His arm had reached backward around her to keep her in place, and Maray couldn’t even think of moving.
“It was never the plan to hurt either of you,” Rhia continued. “My daughter, and my lovely granddaughter.” The smile was back on her face, this time enhanced by something like a secret pride, and her skin changed, knitting itself back together in places that had seemed to be rotting before. “Everything I did, I did to protect you.”
This wasn’t going at all as planned. Either Rhia was playing the biggest bluff of her life, or she was actually telling the truth. Either way, Maray didn’t know how to feel, how to even think. She was as perplexed as the rest of the room, and Rhia didn’t appear to be enjoying the confusion. There was something more in her eyes. Was it remorse? Maray couldn’t believe it.
“When have you ever protected me, Mother?” Laura barked. “When you killed Dad and made me the youngest ambassador to the other world?” She pretended to think. “Or when you threatened me and exiled me because of who I fell in love with?” Laura put a finger to her temple as if she was having an epiphany. “Oh, or when you opened that rift between dimensions and let in a horde of demons? No, when you tracked me down and had me locked up in these dungeons so you could get access to my blood and use it as a youth potion?” Laura sounded more and more like a defiant teenager. “Now I know. When you tried to do the same to my daughter—your granddaughter?” Laura’s voice had risen to a shout by now. “When you tried to kill my husband to send a message?”
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