He cursed into the night and almost hit his head on the wall again as a short, cloaked figure appeared beside him.
“I wouldn’t say I’m not enjoying the view,” Seri said with a smirk, “but I’d rather you be alive than sexy.”
She held out a cloak and a pair of boots for him, waiting for him to recover from the shock.
Jemin frowned and took the clothes from her hands, desperate for some warmth, and threw them over his body, always careful to keep himself covered where it mattered.
“Come on, Jem,” Seri winked. “Nothing I haven’t seen before.”
“Doesn’t mean you get to see it again,” Jemin countered and hopped into the boots as he got to his feet. “Thanks for the clothes.” He pulled up his hood and clasped the front of his cloak with one hand from the inside. “You don’t happen to have a spare pair of pants on you, do you?”
“Now where would the fun in that be?” Seri shook her head and started walking. “Are you coming? Or are you waiting for your ass to freeze to that wall?”
Jemin set in motion at her words, wondering if it would have been a smarter choice to wait for the couple to bring something to wear.
“I simply didn’t have time to gather all your things. I’m sorry, but between making sure you make it back alive and protecting your privacy in case you changed back into human form, I choose ‘alive’.”
Jemin gave her a grim smile. “Back to Allinan?” he asked and followed Seri in awkward strides, but she shook her head as they turned the corner back toward the direction Jemin had come.
Jemin followed her quietly as she turned onto a wider street where more cars were driving and some pedestrians were rushing along the sidewalks, collars up to their noses.
“Thanks for finding me, Seri,” Jemin murmured and noticed how deep his gratitude ran. He wasn’t ready to face Maray or Laura or Gerwin, even Scott would be difficult, and Heck was out of the question. He was still too upset even when remorse was already nibbling at him.
“How did you actually find me?” he asked as he struggled to not draw attention to himself, but his attire and his naked calves and knees made it nearly impossible to pass by whatever few pedestrians were out in the cold on a snowy night like this. In Allinan, people would stay in their houses unless they absolutely needed to be outside—that meant guards and warlocks on duty. But besides that, people would stay beside the warmth of their fireplaces and avoid the dangers of the darkness. People in Allinan knew that Yutu were hunting, preferably during the nights, and that the First Breach of Dimensions had occurred after dark and ended before dawn. It had become a bedtime story for the little ones in Allinan: the demons after dark who vanish before the first ray of sun came up. Jemin shuddered and rushed along the walls.
“Don’t thank me, Jemin. Thank Heck,” Seri said and grinned at him over her shoulder.
Jemin didn’t like her words, but he didn’t bring up what had happened earlier that night and that Heck had been the actual reason why he had been stranded buck naked on the streets again.
“He told Neelis where he was going to be searching for you and that if you were in the other world, there was only one place you might actually go.” Her eyebrow rose as she spoke. “When I didn’t find you where you’d portaled out of Allinan, I picked up your scent, and I followed you, but not without reporting back to Dad that you were on the loose. In our pack, we don’t just run off and put ourselves at risks—that’s for humans.” She winked again, and something about her light-heartedness gave Jemin hope. She reminded him almost a bit of Heck. Jemin frowned and pulled the cloak a bit tighter as a gust of wind tried to lift it.
“I am sorry I wasn’t there faster, but I stopped by at Maray’s to check if you were there and ran into Heck,” she explained. “Who knew his biceps was that impressive. I don’t think I’ve seen him without a shirt before today.”
Jemin pursed his lips.
“He’s fine, by the way,” Seri shamed him.
Jemin knew that was the first thing he should have asked—if Heck had been hurt. If he, Jemin, uncontrolled shifter monster, had actually hurt his best friend. He lowered his head.
“Just a bit shaken, but he’ll get over it,” Seri continued as if what had happened was the most normal in the worlds. “Too bad he’ll be marrying your girl eventually,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “I think I like him.”
Her words were like daggers, and he felt himself shaking before she had finished her sentence. He stopped in his tracks and closed his eyes. This couldn’t be happening again.
“Help me, Seri,” he asked, barely aware whether she had noticed he was no longer following her. All his effort went into maintaining steady breathing.
Her hand appeared on his arm, warm even through the thick cloak. “You are not alone in this, Jemin.” Her voice was different, free of humor and jokes. “Breathe. You’re doing the right thing. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
Jemin nodded. Her words, even if their meaning was not seeping through his momentary petrification, were solace. And as he focused on her touch, he felt the shaking fade from his body.
“Good,” Seri complimented. “We need to get you out of the cold and properly dressed before we return to Allinan.” She waited for Jemin to open his eyes before she continued walking, this time leading Jemin along with her arm around his back, the top of her head barely reaching his shoulder. “Just promise you won’t shift back the second we enter the apartment,” Seri warned him, and Jemin knew he wouldn’t have much of a choice but to face Heck and face reality, that this was his new life and that Maray was better off without him. No matter how much it hurt.
“If I knew how,” Jemin murmured but nodded anyway to give at least an indication of his goodwill.
Maray
Maray sat in her room, ankles crossed the way she was supposed to whether people could see her legs under her long skirt or not, and stared out the window.
“Is this better?” She shifted, uncomfortable on the wooden chair, and waited for Pia to adjust her posture.
Pia ran her fingers through her hair and tilted her head to the side, her eyes telling Maray that she was about to give up. “Is it really that hard to sit like a lady?” Pia asked, sounding more like Maray’s mother than the teenager she was.
Maray considered, and when she couldn’t ignore the pressure her corset applied to her ribcage, she nodded. She let herself sink back into the chair and was harshly reminded by the pain as her spine touched the backrest, that standing and not breathing was optimal in her attire.
Pia grimaced with empathy. “My mother used to make me sit like this for hours,” she told Maray and crossed the room in exaggeratedly elegant strides, placing her hands on top of her hair. “And walk with a book on my head.” Then she shook herself like a dog coming out of the water. “Trust me—being a shifter is a true relief. No more corsets.” Pia curtseyed comically as she reached Maray. “Except for you, Your Royal Highness.”
They laughed, and Pia stepped around Maray to loosen the strings of the prison around her torso.
“Honestly, what do people see in this?” Pia asked, changing her tone completely. “All it does is make you weaker by making your body believe it doesn’t need to work to stay upright. Your muscles fade, and whatever work you have put into keeping yourself in shape for fighting only proves your effort will have been in vain.”
Maray inhaled deeply and reached her arms over her head, turning her torso left and right just to see if she still could. There was still lightness in the air, but underneath the surface, Maray’s thoughts were returning to Jemin and his fate.
After she learned that Neelis had accidentally turned him, Pia had taken the pack master’s assignment seriously of filling Maray in about everything she needed to know regarding shifters. She hadn’t left her side for even one second until all of Maray’s questions had been answered. Now, Maray knew for a fact that she would probably not see Jemin before the ball, and she would most likely not get a chanc
e to ever be close to him again, for her life with him would be over at New Year’s Eve.
She had cried her eyes out for the first couple of days. Then, the tears had run dry. Now, she was empty. Her duty for Allinan had taken away the man she loved, and Maray couldn’t tell which was worse, the fact that her mother hadn’t given her a choice, or that she secretly knew it was the right thing to do if she wanted stability for Allinan. She might have chosen to go along with it had someone asked her, and sacrificed her own happiness for the greater good. After everything Rhia had done, and Laura, Maray was certain that selfishness wasn’t the path she wanted to travel, even if it cost her Jemin. As long as the laws remained the way they were, a royal wouldn’t be able to marry anything less than the highest of nobles if they wanted to sit on the throne one day, or they would lose the support of the council and, with that, of the individual regions of Allinan.
“If I was Queen,” Pia continued in the background, I would make sure no woman ever had to wear anything that held her back, made her weaker or even helpless.”
Maray forced herself back to the present. “Jeans are a good option,” she commented. “You should try them sometime.”
Pia chuckled. “Hideous. I am happy with my Thaotine pants.” She gestured down at her attire, and Maray was ready to fall out of her dress and into the next best pair of sweatpants.
“Honestly,” Pia said, letting herself drop into one of the blue brocade chairs, “if I were Queen, I would make sure people learned about Rhia’s crimes and that she sees justice executed on her the way she has applied on others.”
Maray imagined how easy it would be if Rhia suddenly disappeared. Then, she would no longer be able to loom over their family like a cloud that could rain down on them any second. But was it her place to decide? Was it her place to judge whether Rhia’s crimes deserved death as a punishment, for it seemed no cell could contain Rhia and death was the only option to silence her. What about the remorse Rhia had shown? Was that all show, or was it true? Even if there was just the slightest bit of truth in her words—not the facts, but how she felt about what she had done—then, did she deserve heartless punishment? Or was every soul who seemed redeemed worth saving?
“Tell me more about the ball, Pia.” Maray changed the subject, not wanting to believe that Rhia was beyond saving. Even with everything she had done—and it had been on the worse end of the scale—there was someone who was even worse out there, and that someone had taken advantage of her greed for power.
Pia eyed her with disgruntled, emerald eyes but didn’t complain to Maray for disrupting her teenage if-I-were-Queen speech. “It’s simple,” she explained instead. “You smile, you dance, you try to breathe in a corset, and then you get acquainted with each of the suitors.”
“At the ball?” Maray asked, horrified over how she could possibly get to know all of them. “How many are there?”
Pia’s expression turned smug as one eyebrow raised higher than the other, and she fashioned a knowing smile.
“You know, don’t you? The list already exists, doesn’t it?” Maray didn’t know if she should be upset with her mother and father for not sharing the names, or if she should be glad she didn’t know. In a case where she really had no other choice than to opt-in for one of the names on the list, did it really matter if she did know? “How did you get to have a look at it?”
Pia shook her head, ginger hair flying above her ears, and leaned back in her chair. “Not see, but hear,” she corrected. “And only part of it… at least, I think so.”
“Who’s on there?” Maray wanted to know, curiosity now overpowering her.
Pia held up her hand, all fingers but the thumb flexed to a maximum. “I’ve got four names for you.”
“Four?” Maray didn’t know whether to be glad or scream. The prospect of such a limited choice made the whole procedure appear even more dreadful. What if there wasn’t one decent candidate? “Do we know any of them?” Maray asked, hopeful.
“Leander Unterly,” Pia started, making Maray’s head spin with scenarios of horror.
“Unterly? As in Councilor Unterly?” He had been one of Rhia’s most loyal supporters before he had spread rumors about Allinan’s new princess and disappeared from court. “He is what, a hundred years of age?”
Much to Maray’s relief, Pia shook her head again, laughing at Maray’s assumption. “Unterly’s grandson, Leander,” she clarified and lifted her gaze to the ceiling, eyes dreamy.
“You know him?” Maray assumed.
“I’ve met him.” Pia quickly gathered her composure. “My mother considered him as a possible option for marriage for me.” She grimaced briefly then smoothed her expression over.
“What is he like? How old is he?” Maray pushed for more information. Better to know ahead what she was dealing with.
“He can’t be older than fifteen,” Pia assessed. “When my mother first invited the Unterlys to our house, he hadn’t even been able to grow a beard, and that’s not long ago.”
Maray sighed. “So a boy—literally.”
Pia dismissed Maray’s statement. “At least he is a good boy. Nothing like the Councilor.”
“Who else?” Maray asked, already tired from hearing about that one candidate.
“Tadaeus Hartwend, Oliver Gerenhoff, Silver Feldworth.” Pia tapped her fingers with the index finger from her free hand at each name. “I don’t know any of them, but I know the Hartwend and Gerenhoff families have impeccable reputations. I don’t know about Feldworth. Not all of them actually live in the capital. Some of them own huge lands throughout the realms—which makes them extremely influential and dangerous to upset.”
Maray heard her history teacher speaking as she listened to Pia. It didn’t matter if it was the world she grew up in or Allinan because the concepts of gaining and keeping power were all the same. Influence through wealth or influence through alliances. She choked back the urge to make an inappropriate comment and focused on what Pia’s words actually meant for her.
“So we’ll need to figure out for ourselves whether or not one of them is worthy,” Maray said and earned a surprised look from Pia. “You didn’t think I’d leave you behind and do the assessment all by myself.”
Pia’s eyes brightened. “You know, I hate dances—especially the formal ones,” she explained with a grin, which made her freckled nose crinkle.
“I know.” Maray chuckled. “But I also don’t want to miss out on your judgement. You might be young, but you have become an invaluable friend to me.”
“Because I let you wear jeans?”
“That, and because you get it. You get that I am not a princess and that I hate the protocol and that I’d rather fight my own wars than watch from a gilded cage how others are dying for me.” She smiled at Pia. “But mostly the jeans.”
Both girls laughed, igniting what was hovering over them with sparks of hope, and for a brief second, Maray forgot that what lay ahead was going to end any chance of happiness.
“Wil isn’t on the list, by the way,” Pia added into the laughter, bringing Maray back to reality. “I asked him, and he said mother was satisfied with him being in service to the crown—for now. She would never make him do anything he doesn’t want. That’s just for me.”
Maray was about to console Pia with something her father had once said, but they were interrupted by a knock on the door, which made Pia jump to her feet and brought back the familiar sense of panic whenever someone came to her chambers unannounced—especially now that Jemin’s impromptu visits weren’t likely to ever happen again.
Pia leaped across the room soundless like a cat, and her frame shook for a second, reminding Maray that the girl, inconspicuous as she might seem, was a Yutu-shifter and highly dangerous if she wanted to be. With quick fingers, Pia pulled the door open, not giving whoever was on the other side enough time to draw a sword.
“We were just talking about you, brother,” Pia greeted Wil, who marched in with Corey the second Pia stepped aside.
“Only good things, I hope,” Corey said jokingly, but the look on her face was everything but relaxed. This wasn’t a visit to check-in, but there was something going on.
Maray glanced down at her corset, making sure everything was covered, and rushed over to give Corey a hug. “I haven’t seen you in forever,” she grumbled. Since she had participated in the crisis meeting in Gerwin’s chambers, Corey had been as absent as Jemin. She could have needed Corey’s wise—and sometimes overly sarcastic—comments in order to grasp what the odds were that there was a future where Rhia was mortal and Gan Krai had no leverage over them. Besides, she hadn’t been able to practice her own magic without the help of Corey’s experienced instructions. Ever since that fiasco in Langley’s hideout, Maray had been reluctant to even try battle magic again. In fact, she hadn’t used magic at all, besides the heart attack, trying to save her father, and the occasional flame to make the secret visits with Jemin cozier.
Corey squeezed her before she let go of her. “You won’t believe what Wil and I found,” she huffed into Maray’s shoulder as Maray was slower to let go of her than Corey pulled away.
“What Corey found,” Wil corrected.
Both Maray and Pia stood, holding their breaths until Corey reached into her cloak and extracted something rectangular. Maray took a closer look at the item and recognized it immediately. ‘Laws and Rituals’ was sitting in Corey’s hands, an old, leather-bound version of it, which was thicker than the usual copies.
“Is this what I think it is?” Maray asked in a shaky voice, and by the look on Corey’s face, she knew the answer was yes. Corey had found Feris’ version of the book. The version with Gan Krai’s notes that she had told them about at the crisis meeting. After learning about Jemin’s transformation into a Yutu-shifter, Maray hadn’t spent too many thoughts on whether or not that book would ever show up. However, now that Corey was holding it out to her, it hit her. “You can break the binding spell.”
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