The Sentry

by Lyssa Morasey

  And that’s when a sudden, invisible wall of weight slams into me, knocking the breath from my lungs and sending the aura detector flying across the clearing. I feel the unmistakable pressure of fang-filled jaws clamping around my arm, but there is no scary beast around to claim them. I reach up, grunting, and feel my hands digging into mangy invisible fur.

  Great Goddess, what the hell is this?

  I shift into a cat, wiggling out of the invisible thing’s grip and onto four feet, then grow into a bristling wolf. Four patches of flattened grass tell me where the thing’s paws are, and as a wolf I can smell it, too: something big and angry, maybe a bear. I snarl, and lunge towards it; a heavy paw slams into my muzzle, knocking me back into the grass. I leap to my feet, shifting again into a snow leopard, and have another go. This time, I manage to run my claws down the invisible bear-thing’s flank, deep enough to elicit a roar. Another paw swipe rakes my shoulder, drawing blood, but not enough to stop me. I lunge again for the bear-thing, but I collide with nothing but air.

  I pull myself up again, confused. Then I feel a weight crash on my back, and sharp claws digging into my skin. I hiss and yowl, slamming my side as hard as I can into the nearest tree. The weight drops off my back with a yelp.

  I change into a kite, pounding my wings frantically to gain altitude, but before I’ve cleared the treetops a pair of invisible taloned feet lock around my neck, squeezing the life out of me. The two of us lose height quickly, held up only by the erratic beating of our pairs of wings; I shift back into a human as we near the ground and feel the talons stretch apart and leave my neck. I fall squarely onto my back, sending a wave of pain shooting up my spine.

  By the time I’ve managed to roll myself onto my feet, a man has materialized in front of me, dark-haired and sunglassed and leveling a gun at my head.

  Swallowing back my fear, I raise my hands cautiously in surrender. “Don’t shoot,” I say; “we’re on the same side.” My shoulder is killing me—blood has already seeped through the folds of my jacket, dyeing the fabric red. And my vamp wound had only just stopped throbbing.

  The man cocks his gun. “I don’t think so, Sentry.” He has a bit of an accent, something I can’t place. When he moves his arms to adjust the gun, I see that there’s no Sentry mark etched into his right one.

  Okay, then. An invisible foreign shifter who’s not a Sentry. I can work with that.

  “I’m not a Sentry,” I say. “Not anymore. Why would a Sentry be flying around so far past the guard stations?”

  “I don’t know; you tell me.” The shifter man keeps the barrel of his gun fixed just above my eyes, holding it admirably steady. When he steps closer, a weird-looking bracelet he’s wearing bounces sunlight into my eyes, blinding me. Ice-glass. How did he even get that?

  I take a deep breath, blinking. “I’m traveling to New Fauske with a couple of Wardens,” I tell him. “We’re going to sneak into Fenris’s castle to rescue some prisoners and take out the duke.” I indicate my all-black outfit. “Look. No Sentry would wear this.”

  The man lowers his gun, though he still holds a finger over the trigger. “Where are the Wardens, then?” he asks.

  “I don’t know. They drove off without me. I was supposed to take care of the guards at the closest border station and meet them there.” My eyes fall on Wes’s aura detector, lying in the grass just behind the man. I point to it. “Look on there.”

  He inches backwards to the detector and picks it up slowly, never once taking his eyes off of me. He looks at the screen and sucks in a breath. “Jesus Christ. You’re not lying.”

  I step over warily and sneak my head in below his armpit. Sure enough, my dot is in the center of the detector’s screen—nothing shows up, of course, for the ice-glass-wearing shifter guy—and there are two red Warden dots a few miles further west, with two more gray dots hot on their trail.

  “Jesus,” the man says again. “Are the other shifters with you?”

  “Nope,” I reply, “they’re border guards.” I grab the detector from him and stuff it back into my pocket. “So now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go save some asses.”

  4 October: Cassatia

  The day after I return home from Svalbard City, I head to the one place outside the castle I can go without bodyguards: the Great Temple, home of New Fauske’s Nixan priests. There’s a little temple inside the castle as well, where morning prayer services are held for the castle’s inhabitants, but if you want to have a talk with the Goddess, the Great Temple is the best place to go.

  The Temple is a long, large, rectangular building, with a central vein running down its middle and rooms branching off at even intervals that lead into priests’ living quarters and seminary rooms for the novitiates. There’s only one entrance, from which a snowflake-strewn carpet leads all the way to the back of the Temple.

  Near the entrance, the Temple is loud, with priests and priestesses running back and forth and chatting and praying, and the building is bright and open, with glass panes for a roof to let in the sun. But as I head further back, the noise fades away, the temperature drops, and the skylights give way to stone, engulfing the Temple in darkness. The hall seems to narrow; I can hear my breaths ricocheting off its walls.

  At the very back of the Temple, all the way against the wall, is a massive ice-glass stone ringed by tiny fires. The fires lick and snap at its sides, trying to pick away at it, but the stone is unmeltable.

  I kneel between two of the fires, feeling their heat against my legs, and lay a palm on the ice-glass. It’s cold, making my nerves dance and spark with excitement. Even the greatest fire in the world could not heat ice-glass—only Old Magic.

  Back here the Temple is still, uninhabited; it’s me, alone, in the presence of the Goddess. I can say anything, do anything, and no one else will ever know.

  “Nixa,” I whisper. “I need your help.” I close my eyes, gulping down a breath. “I was supposed to marry the son of the king last night. My father arranged it with King Aknes—he promised me to the prince. And Evana thinks that I should marry him, too.” I bite my lip. “They want me to bring honor to the family. And I understand that, and I want it, too, but I don’t want this.”

  I press my forehead against the ice-glass, feeling its stubborn coolness seeping into my thoughts. “Not because I’m trying to be selfish—I don’t think I am, at least—but because it would be a lie. Every political marriage is a lie, I guess, but our marriage would be even more of one. I don’t love Prince Iven, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to. And it wouldn’t be fair to him, for me to deceive him like that.” I’m making up excuses now, trying to justify what I want. This isn’t about Iven: it’s all about me, only me. “I want to serve you, Nixa, but I want to serve you here, in New Fauske. I’m happy here.” A tear slides down my cheek, landing on the face of the stone; my eyes have gone blurry with more. I’ve never felt more like a helpless, spineless damsel in distress. “Please, tell me what you want me to do. I don’t know—I’m so alone, Nixa, I—”

  “Princess.” I snap up my head with a gasp, standing and whipping around with my hands out. A silhouette stands at the edge of the light further back, wringing her hands nervously. “I—I’m sorry to disturb you, but your father says it’s urgent.”

  I lower my hands, shaking. “Phoebe,” I breathe. “You’re back already?”

  “Yes—we just got home.” She backs up, head bowed. “Your father wants to see you in his bedroom.”

  “His bedroom?” My heart quickens; that means he wants to speak with me in private.

  “He said you have to come right away.” She gulps. “I’m sorry if you were—”

  “It’s okay,” I insist, stepping out from between the fires and walking back into the light, sliding past a fidgeting Phoebe. “I’ll go see him, don’t worry.”

  It’s not until I’m out of the Temple that I realize she called me princess.

  ❄❄

  My father stands at the foot of his bed, arms crossed; wh
en I enter, he grabs a little wooden box he’d set beside him and holds it out to me.

  “For you,” he says.

  Curious, I take the box, examining it. It’s smooth and brightly polished, mahogany-red in color, with a golden winged wolf carved into its top and Old Norse words engraved in fine calligraphy along its sides. Carefully I pop its latch and pry it open.

  Inside, padded and embellished by blood-red velvet, is a silver diamond ring, with miniature sapphires studding its sides. Six prongs support the center jewel, each topped by a sapphire of its own. And the diamond itself is huge, fifteen carats at least, and perfectly clear, reflecting colors and light like a kaleidoscope.

  It’s the most beautiful, expensive-looking ring I’ve ever seen—I know immediately what it’s meant for.

  I close the box. “This is a bond-ring.”

  “It was crafted by three of Svalbard City’s finest jewelers,” my father says. “Each of the jewels was hand-selected from among thousands, and cut with the greatest precision.”

  “This is a bond-ring,” I repeat. “I’m not bonded.”

  “I explained to the royal family that you were feeling ill last night,” my father goes on; “it seemed you had already told the prince that story. He had his bond-ring all picked out for you already, and I passed on one for him on your behalf.”

  My mouth goes dry. For Nixans, putting on a bond-ring is equivalent to accepting a marriage proposal—once you put one on, you’re supposed to wear it forever.

  “I never agreed to this. I’ll refuse Prince Iven in public if I have to. I won’t put on the ring, I swear to the Goddess.”

  “Then the king will accuse our family of lying and treason,” Fenris says, “and our whole province will be caught up in it. The entirety of Nixa’s Kingdom will be divided, and we’ll be weaker than we have been for centuries.”

  “That’s your problem,” I growl, “not mine. You caused this, by pretending I wanted to be thrown into an unbreakable union with someone I barely know.”

  My father shakes his head and snatches the ring box from my hands. “You are ignorant,” he says. “I’d hoped that your time with Evana and the Goddess would have helped you to learn, but clearly I was wrong. Even after all these years, you fail to understand that this is bigger than you. This is about uniting the kingdom in a way that it has never been united before, and instead you want to divide it.”

  “I don’t want to divide anything,” I insist. “All I want is to have a say in the rest of my life. Right now, that’s all I care about.”

  “You don’t understand what we’re facing, then.” My father grabs my arm. I squirm, but he refuses to loosen his grip. “I’ll show you—maybe you’ll understand then.”

  He pulls me from his room and to the stairs, and all the way down a winding hall to the door leading into the infidel prisoners’ holding cell. He nods to the Sentries guarding the entranceway, and they draw open the door to reveal an expanse of white beyond.

  I clench my fists. “I’m not going in there,” I say, backing up.

  “You will.” My father puts a hand to my back, hard as rock, forcing me inside. “It’s about time you met a Warden.”

  4 October: Westrey

  The Sentry guards hijack our car, throwing us handcuffed into the back and driving us back to their station with a gun swiveling between our heads. They take our fire-guns, using special gloves to keep from burning themselves, and our bags, Ferignis and all.

  After a few minutes, the driving Sentry pulls off the road and parks the car in a ditch. He and his friend yank the two of us from the back, and lead us down a little footworn trail through the woods to a gray, steepled Gothic-esque building, surrounded by statues of Nixan kings and winged Katyri wolves. It’s a far cry from any shack-in-the-woods Warden border station—then again, the Nixans have nearly unlimited funds from their allies’ slave labor, and Old Magic to cover up anything that looks too out of place.

  There’s a big metal cage beside the steps leading into the station—the Sentry guards drag us into it, shoving us against the bars, and lock us inside. One of the Sentries—the one with the purple eyes—heads into the station, while the other waits outside to examine our bags and keep a gun on us.

  The guard draws out Ferignis and steps back to study the blade in a patch of sunlight; once he’s a few paces away, Basil whispers to me, “Why haven’t they killed us yet?”

  I shrug. “They probably want to talk to Caphian first. Maybe they’ll take us back to their castle and throw us in with Freya and Quincey.”

  Basil shudders. “That’s not much of an improvement on being killed.”

  “This is what we get for trusting a shifter,” I growl. I twist my hands in their cuffs, wondering if I can set the Sentry watching us on fire, but I end up sending a bush thirty degrees off up in flames instead.

  The Sentry drops Ferignis and runs over to smother the flames, cursing. He throws his jacket on top of the bush and coughs through the sudden spiral of smoke. “Set anything else on fire,” he threatens, “and I’ll put you infidels to sleep.”

  “You’re the one who thought we could trust Keira,” Baz whispers back. “I’m innocent on this one.”

  “You still decided to come with us,” I point out. “I didn’t force you.”

  “True,” Baz says. “But it’s not like I was gonna say no.”

  The Sentry guard comes over with Ferignis. “Either of you want to tell me why you’ve been lugging this around?”

  “Because it’s cool,” Basil says. “Swords are pretty badass, don’t you think?”

  The Sentry slides the sword through the bars of our cage until it touches the skin beneath Basil’s chin. “I’m asking for a real answer, smartass.”

  “Jesus,” Baz says, leaning back against the bars to avoid the sword tip. “If you’re going to point that thing at one of us, how about him?” He waves his cuffed hands to indicate me; I shoot him a glare.

  “Don’t interrogate them,” the purple-eyed Sentry says, stepping back outside. “We’re leaving that to Caphian’s Sentries.”

  Caphian’s Sentries. So we are going to New Fauske.

  “Guess you’ll get to see Freya again after all,” Basil mutters.

  “What was that?” Basil grunts as the sword tip digs deeper into his skin. “If you have something to say, how about you share it with all of us?”

  “Stop it,” Purple Eyes demands. “We’re supposed to ship them to New Fauske unharmed.” Reluctantly, his partner pulls back the sword and slides it back into its sheath. Baz breathes an audible sigh of relief. “Caphian said to make sure they’re—” But Purple Eyes doesn’t get a chance to finish his thought, because he’s yanked back and thrown to the ground by some sudden invisible force. And then a red kite—one of Keira’s bird shifts—comes swooping down from the sky, shifting into a snow leopard as she crashes down on top of the other Sentry, Ferignis flying from his grasp.

  My mouth falls open. What the hell?

  Purple Eyes shifts into a tiger to battle his invisible enemy, who quickly slashes open his muzzle with unseen claws. The other Sentry becomes a giant, mangy dog to battle Keira the snow leopard, both of them snarling as they go for each other’s throats.

  “Are we supposed to help them?” Baz wonders above the commotion.

  I shake my head. “I’m not setting another bush on fire.”

  Baz and I watch breathlessly as Keira knocks her Sentry backwards into the woods and Purple Eyes goes limp under his assailant’s weight. The invisible force finally materializes as a grizzly, glowering down at Purple Eyes and giving a deep, angry roar that nearly deafens me. Purple Eyes pushes him off with a powerful kick of his hind legs, scrambling to his feet and letting out a deafening roar of his own. Meanwhile the dog-Sentry has emerged from the brush, licking his teeth as he circles the snarling Keira.

  And then, as if responding to some sudden, silent signal, both Purple Eyes and the dog change into birds and take to the sky, abandoning their pos
t and leaving Keira and the grizzly all alone with us. Both of them shift back into their human forms, the grizzly becoming a twenty-something man in sunglasses.

  “Go inside the station and look for the keys to this thing,” Keira says breathlessly to the man, running over to our cage. He quickly obeys.

  “What the hell is going on?” I demand when Keira reaches us. She’s got a few scratches running down her arms thanks to the fight and a nice little shoulder wound, but nothing too serious. “Why did the Sentries leave like that?”

  “They’re going to get help,” she pants, glancing anxiously around. “We have to get out of here before they get back.”

  “They both flew off for help?” Baz asks. “Why?”

  Keira shakes her head. “I don’t know,” she snaps. “Not really my biggest concern right now.” There’s an edge to her voice that gives me the impression that she isn’t telling us everything—but that’s not my biggest concern right now, either.

  The mysterious new man emerges from the station and throws Keira a set of keys. “These must be it,” he says. “Their bags are in the station, too.”

  “And who’s that?” I ask, pointing to him. “How did he make himself invisible?”

  “Don’t ask me,” Keira says, trying the keys until she finds the one that unlocks the cage. She wrenches it open and pulls us forcefully out, bending over to unlock our handcuffs. “He’s the reason I couldn’t deal with the guards before they found you. He’s a shifter, but he doesn’t have a Sentry mark.”

  “That’s because I’m not a Sentry,” says the man. Keira turns to face him as he descends the station steps to our cage, slowly removing his sunglasses. Behind them are two black eyes, so dark I can’t make out the pupils. Keira mutters something under her breath. “I’m a faedra. And that means I’m on your side.”

  Ten Years Ago: Keira

  Every morning, before I ate or dressed or did anything else, I had to check my eyes.