by Amber Lynn
Krinla bashed the stone next to Rose’s head, hoping to scare some sense into the woman. The dust and shrapnel that flew from the wall impressed Krinla, but Rose didn’t bat an eyelash. She thought her little game was going to be fun, but she probably didn’t count on the first thing Krinla thought to do was torture her until she brought Hunter back.
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Rya said calmly from across the room.
The presence of others wasn’t unknown to Krinla, but she had bigger priorities than greeting her father and sister after not seeing them for a while. She had no problem sensing them, so they moved down on the levels of priorities going on in Krinla’s mind. Getting Hunter back was number one and killing Rose had made its way to number two.
“Why don’t you dial your hormones back a few notches and take a deep breath. She’s not going to bring him back or tell you where he is, so let’s think about this logically.”
Krinla glared over her shoulder at her sister. The girl probably meant well, but she was quick to put her hands up in a defensive position when she saw what was sure to be murder in Krinla’s eyes.
“There are a lot of ways to prove a point. Sending Hunter into some dark hole somewhere isn’t the way to do it.”
The words were a warning to everyone in the room. She didn’t think anyone else had the power to make Hunter disappear, but she wanted it known that she wasn’t going to stand for any moves against Hunter.
“I can’t believe he was able to hide it from me, and you. His father always said he was smart, but this is well beyond that. I watched you two together and could see the affection, but the pure devotion you must both feel was totally hidden.”
Krinla hadn’t turned back to Rose after checking to make sure the others in the room weren’t going to try to take her away from her task, so she saw the confusion on their faces when they registered Rose’s words. It was surprising that something actually confused Rya. She was quick to fill everyone in on exactly what perplexed her.
“Are you blind or something?” Rya shook her head from side to side. “I mean you’d really have to be if you can’t see how crazy they are about each other. It’s in their eyes when they look at each other and their need to always touch. If you listen closely, even their non-beating hearts pitter patter to the same beat.”
She was laying it on thick, but nothing she said was wrong. Krinla looked back to Rose when Rya starting making odd kissing faces at her. The girl needed help. If they were back in Hunter’s time, supposedly they had doctors for the specific help Krinla was thinking about, but Oblivion didn’t have a need for doctors.
“I didn’t see that at all. You sat on his lap, but that was the extent of any closeness.”
“Then maybe you should’ve spent a little more time observing before you decided you needed to keep me locked up for two days learning nothing. Now where is he?”
Krinla had let the conversation curve too far from the basic need she had. Once Hunter had disappeared, everything needed to be about making him come back. What Rose thought she saw or didn’t had no weight in getting her to bring Hunter back.
“You’re going to have to find him. If you really love him, it should be easy.”
There was a taunt in the comment that caused Krinla to punch Rose in her stomach. She thought it was nice that she only hit her with about half her strength. With a new idea of reaching into Rose’s chest and ripping out her annoyingly beating heart forming in Krinla’s head, the punch was definitely her being nice.
As with anything else she’d done, the punch didn’t seem to faze the Naturist. The urge to rip out her heart was becoming a little difficult to resist.
“If you kill her, you’re not going to get any directions of where to look.”
Rya pretending to be the voice of reason wasn’t something Krinla bought. It would make sense for her to try to calm the situations around her, but she didn’t seem like the kind of person who used her power for the good of other people.
“If she was going to give me any directions, you’d already know them, so it doesn’t matter if I tear off one of her arms and beat her with it.”
“You’ve spent way too much time in his memories. Your mind was a little twisted from having an overactive imagination as a child. No one could blame you for that when only one person outside of your family was allowed to see you, but still, you didn’t exactly turn to the morbid stuff.”
“You of all people should understand I could care less about that right now. Are you aware of any hints she’s going to give me or not?”
It seemed like talking to Rose wasn’t getting her anywhere, so she had to turn to the only person in the room who had insight. If said person was doing her any favors, she would’ve dived into Rose’s mind and already known where Hunter was.
“In her case, that isn’t how it works. I didn’t even know she was blind to your feelings. For a while, I thought maybe her head was full of nothing but air, but I’m pretty sure she can keep me out.”
Krinla was looking at Rose to see that she had no response to Rya’s words. Her arm hadn’t pushed much harder, so there shouldn’t have been a sudden change in her ability to speak.
“But you said something about her giving me a clue.”
It sounded like Rya shrugged, judging by the subtle rustle of fabric Krinla heard behind her. It wasn’t a comforting sound.
“That was me hoping she’d give us that much to go on. I don’t think choking her or ripping her arm off to beat her with it is going to do a lot of good, but maybe if you do a little sweet talking, she’ll tell you a little more than just go find him.”
“Maybe if I kill her, whatever magic she used to move him will revert him back here.”
It sounded like a good plan to Krinla, so she moved her free hand up to the bare skin above Rose’s bodice and dug her nails ever so slightly into the woman’s flesh. Krinla had off and on felt a little bloodthirsty when it came to thinking about Hulin, but it had never elevated to the level where she felt the need to scorch everything around her.
“You’d have to call on your powers to do that, so I’m pretty sure I don’t have anything to worry about for a while, even though your temper is about to bring the stone walls down around us.”
If everything else wasn’t bad enough, the cockiness of her tone made Krinla scream again. Since she didn’t know what would happen if she killed Rose, it wasn’t practical to kill her. Not that Krinla was being practical.
“Tell me where he is.”
Krinla tried to sound calm as she asked for what felt like the hundredth time. The growling that seemed to accompany the words made it impossible to sound calm, but she gave it an attempt.
“Well, since you asked so nicely, maybe I will give you a clue. Once I realized I was being deceived, I was able to orient myself a little better with the timeline of events. So, I decided to hide Hunter in the spot you first fell in love with him.”
Before Krinla could ask for any clarification, Rose disappeared from under her grasp. Krinla was quick to turn around to check if she’d transported herself to somewhere else in the room. Krinton and Rya were the only two other occupants of the room. As much as she could, Krinla reached out to feel for Rose in the general vicinity, like Rya’s problem with reading her mind, Krinla wasn’t picking up anything from the Naturist.
The utter frustration going through her body caused Krinla to turn around and punch the wall. She didn’t hold anything back as rocks and dust flew across the room. By the time the echoing tremors stopped, there was a hole twice the size of her head in the stone.
It didn’t help matters, but it sure made her feel a little bit better. She tried to take a few deep breaths and get her mind started down the path of what needed to happen next. Taking Hunter away was one thing, but Rose was potentially putting him in danger if a Dracul happened to wander by him. Most Draculs weren’t the friendly inquisitive type, and even though she thought Hunter could give most Draculs a run for their money, it
was a different story if he came across a group.
“So what are you thinking? The spot where you two first met in the neutral sector?” Rya asked.
Given the clue Rose had decided to hand out, it was as good of a place as any. Krinla was sure there were Draculs in that neighborhood, and Rose had said she would never hurt Hunter. It wasn’t clear whether she could be believed on that matter, but Krinla was hoping she’d hidden him somewhere else.
The problem with that hope was the fact that the only other place she could have sent him was back in the past. If the test Rose was trying to get Krinla to pull off was traveling through time, they were screwed.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Trilla hadn’t been in the room to watch Krinla’s meltdown, but she did show up when it became clear the Draculs were planning to leave. She’d changed out of her ball gown, preferring to wear what Krinla thought looked like a yoga outfit from the century Hunter came from. It was more practical than the fancy dress, but it was strange to see how close the Beasts’ attire followed along with what the humans used to wear.
There were very few similarities Krinla saw between Draculs and humans. There weren’t a ton to find with humans and Beasts either, but Krinla had started keeping a list. There was no reason for it. Krinla just seemed to be developing a habit of looking for the past in the future.
The line of thinking that briefly filled her head wasn’t doing much to find Hunter, so she shook her head and focused back in on Trilla’s ongoing list of reasons why the Draculs shouldn’t travel through the woods without a Beast guard. She’d been going on for a while and Krinla felt a little like she was starting to get a headache.
No one was telling Trilla no, so the excessive talking was only filling the void left from Krinla’s attempts to focus. The droning on of the Beast Queen’s voice was making it more difficult, but Krinla wasn’t worried about shutting her up. As it was, it seemed like she was wrapping things up.
“Obviously I can’t force you to accept my assistance, but we’re here to serve Krinla, so I’d appreciate it if you let us do our jobs.”
Krinla had spent the time between Rose taking off and Trilla holding them up trying to sense Hunter. She focused on the warmth she’d mentioned to Rose, hoping that what had set the woman off to begin with could make it easier to find him. The feelings Krinla got when she thought about Hunter were new to her, so even though they felt like all she thought about, it was somewhat hard to pinpoint the direction of where the object of the feelings had gone.
“We’ve wasted enough time,” Krinla said with her eyes closed in the middle of the room she’d had the confrontation with Rose.
Trilla hadn’t said a word about the damage done, even as she walked over chunks of the destruction as she entered the room. She was still dealing with the Draculs without anyone from her entourage, which was brave given how Krinla had treated the other outsider she’d come in contact with. Krinla wasn’t sure what kind of animal the queen turned into, but she had a feeling it wouldn’t be a match for a pissed off Dracul princess. Especially not a Dracul princess who had recently been introduced to Naturist magic and was in a bad mood.
“As long as you stay out of my way, I could care less whether you follow us around. My mind keeps going back to when I lost Hunter’s scent the first day we met. The only time I wasn’t able to smell him was when he went back to the past. If she sent him back there, he’s in just as much danger.”
Krinla opened her eyes and took a second to glance around the room one more time. She was hoping Rose had somehow made him invisible and left him there in the room with them. Krinla’s mind was trying to go through every option, wanting one of them to spark something and send her straight to Hunter.
The room felt empty to her, killing what little hope the idea tried to spur. She closed her eyes again, reaching out to the neutral sector for Hunter. Time seemed to drag as she remained immobile, which was driving her even more crazy.
Sitting still had never been her favorite activity. She wanted to run out of the castle, letting whoever wanted to chase her down follow, if they could. Something was stopping her from rushing out without thinking things through. It was like when her brain tried to send the instruction to run to her legs, there was something standing in the way.
Krinla felt like she could override it if she tried, but she couldn’t tell if it was Hunter somehow reaching out and doing something to guide her. That was why she kept trying to find him there in the room. She figured if he was making it hard to leave, he had to be close by. As she spun around the room another time, her focus landed on Rya.
“As far as I know, even someone as strong as Rose hasn’t mastered time travel. I readily admit that I can’t get through to her, but I do believe her when she says she isn’t trying to hurt Hunter.” Rya titled her head to the side and tapped a finger on her chin. “I know both she and Hunter have said that nothing from his time remains today, but what if it does?”
The idea was one that had floated through Krinla’s head, but she knew how massive the city Hunter was from was. There were more buildings in that city than Krinla could have fathomed before meeting Hunter. It would’ve covered the entire neutral sector and at least part of the Draculs’ stronghold. Krinla thought a bit of it was probably part of every faction, but having not mapped out the territories herself, she couldn’t be sure.
“You might be on to something,” Krinton added to take Krinla out of her momentary geography lesson. “When I heard Hunter say there was nothing left of his world, I didn’t sense anything wrong, but when Rose did, I thought I detected a lie. There were a few things in what she said that didn’t ring true, but that was definitely one of them.”
Krinla perked up at that news. She’d learned at an early age not to lie whenever she talked to her father. It had been a little unclear how effective the ability he had was, and how much of it was just him knowing his daughter. If he truly felt Rose was lying about something, it was worth looking into.
Trilla’s laughter brought Krinla’s eyes to her. The smile on her face that accompanied the laughter drew Krinla’s frown deeper. Nothing going on in the room warranted happiness.
“Sorry,” she said as she lifted an arm out in front of her and then back to her chest. “I don’t mean to laugh. It’s just the first time I’ve heard Krinton mention knowing when a person is lying and it’s making me see some conversations we had over the years in a new light.”
There was nothing Krinla thought was funny about the ability, so she continued to stare at the woman and wondered whether all leaders of factions were not all there in the head. Her father seemed too normal to be in his position, judging from what she was witnessing.
“Obviously he isn’t going to come right out and tell you he knows when you’re lying through your teeth, Trilla.”
Krinla didn’t have to be looking at Rya to know the girl rolled her eyes as she said the words. Krinla even found herself shaking her head.
“That’s not the point right now,” Rya continued. “So you think there’s actually something left of the old place?”
Looking back to her father, Krinla watched as he tried to keep his neutral face. It’d been hard for him to watch her in pain. Krinla had been able to pick that much up through her haze-infused anger. At the same time, he was proud of what he was seeing from her. She was acting like a complete lunatic, yet he was proud.
“I think it’s worth looking at, if you haven’t come up with something else. You know the general location where things should be, right?”
It was kind of sweet that he added the qualifier about her coming up with something else. No one in the room could miss her frustration when it came to not being able to figure things out.
“That would be the same suggestion Rya had earlier. Hunter told me the building we were in used to be where we first met. I was there, though. There was nothing but trees and dirt.”
“We’re dealing with someone who can create magic.” Krinton was quick t
o point out. “I’m not saying she could make a full building invisible, especially since I’ve walked through every click of land around our factions, but I know what I felt when she said everything was gone. I think there’s something out there.”
Krinla managed to smile at her father. Chances of it looking like a smile were slim, but she gave it her best attempt.
“I trust your feelings. I’m just trying to figure out how it could be possible.”
The level of impossibility that plagued Krinla’s life didn’t seem to be ebbing anytime soon. She hadn’t had time to process Hunter’s admission of blocking things from her, which meant she hadn’t settled on whether she was mad at him. He’d said that all she had to do was want the power he was keeping to himself, but clearly that wasn’t the case. She was begging for anything that would help her find him, and nothing was coming.
“We won’t know if it is unless we go check it out.” For a second, Krinton’s eyes seemed to lose focus before they bounced back. “Like everyone else here, I’ve been trying to keep tabs on the movements coming from back home, and surprisingly no one has formed an army and started this way.”
“I consider that a good thing.”
Trilla interrupted what Krinla thought was going to be more words from her father. Judging by the scowl that transformed his face, Krinla was right.
“It’s yet another odd thing that doesn’t make a lot of sense. You know, like a book my father inscribed being handed to someone who has been enemies of the Draculs for a number of years.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Krinla caught the movement of Trilla raising her hands to her hips and the huff of air she let out as she prepared her response. Even without seeing her face, Krinla knew she was going to counter what Krinton had said.
“We are not enemies, Krinton. I’ve been trying to tell you that for a decade now, but your hard head won’t let logic through.”
By the end of her sentence, Trilla was huffing and puffing. There wasn’t a doubt in Krinla’s mind that they had discussed the topic of enemies, and nothing Trilla seemed to say made it any better.