“We should get going,” Tyran said. “I want to get to the clearing for the night.”
Lilliana stood up and went to grab my pack again, but I took it from her. She was pretty banged up and I’m not a cruel person. I let my emotions take over before, but I couldn’t let that happen again. I didn’t grab her wrist again; I knew that she wouldn’t try to get away.
“Thanks,” she said. “I know I shouldn’t even ask, but can you tell me what is going on? I feel like I’ve screwed up everything.”
“It wasn’t you who screwed up everything, it was Queen Aella,” I said.
Tyran and I explained mostly everything to her. It surprised me that Tyran didn’t object to letting her in on the information. I was hoping that I would earn her trust and possibly, she’d be willing to give us information on Pyrencia.
“So you mean that if I were to have been brought home by our parents than I would have been given the chance to become Queen for real?” she asked.
“That’s right. It was all because of Aella that I am Queen and you were never given the chance.”
“I should have known something was wrong when she told me that I was going to Tamporlea first.”
“What?” I asked curiously.
“I’m sure you don’t want to know my pathetic story…” she trailed off.
“No, I do,” I encouraged. “What happened?”
“Obviously I don’t remember going to Pyrencia, I was too young. I was told that Queen Aella went to my mother and told her that when I came of age I would be given the opportunity to be Queen. She said that Pyrencia would raise me as a princess and that she would have nothing to worry about. Mom was even told she could come and visit as often as she wanted if she agreed to let me go to Pyrencia.”
“All lies.”
“I know that now. When she never came to visit me, Queen Aella would just tell me that my parents didn’t want to interfere. I even got letters from my mom, or at least Aella told me they were from her. God, how could I be so stupid?”
“She covered all her bases,” Tyran said. “You wouldn’t know any different because it’s how you grew up. Did Queen Aella at least treat you okay?”
“Oh, yes. I was treated like a princess. I had people who would wait on me and I was given everything I ever wanted. The only work I had to do was study Tamporlea’s laws so that I could be a good Queen when it was time for me to take over.”
“Why didn’t you question living in a different kingdom?”
“I did and I was told that the princess stays in Pyrencia because there were some problems in the past when she lived in Tamporlea. I learned more about that when I was studying the history of Tamporlea.”
“So what was supposed to happen then? How were you supposed to take over as Queen?” I asked.
“Well, I was supposed to spend six months in my mother’s house before I turned eighteen. Then I was told that Queen Holly’s assistant would come and get me when it was time.”
“You were never told about me?”
“No, never. Queen Aella told me that mom was never able to have more children after I was born.”
“Well, that’s true, but you obviously had a twin,” I said angrily thinking about the amount of deception the so-called Queen pulled off.
“I don’t know why she wouldn’t tell me about that.”
“You really haven’t figured that out by now?” Lilliana shook her head and I continued, “Queen Aella was planning to switch us in hopes that Tamporlea wouldn’t know the difference.”
“I don’t know about that,” Tyran said. “You may look alike but you act completely different, and you have different names.”
“No,” Lilliana said. “I grew up as Jasmine Lilliana Grace Taylor. The Queen and her assistant have always called me Lilliana because of her daughter, but the rest of the kingdom called me Princess Jasmine.”
“What do you mean because of her daughter?” Tyran asked.
“The one who died. She said she had a daughter named Jasmine who died just a few months after she was born and that it hurt her too much to call me Jasmine, so she used my middle name.”
“Oh Lilliana,” I said sympathetically. “She never had a daughter named Jasmine. She was preparing you for when my mom and everyone in Tamporlea would call you Jasmine thinking you were me.”
She didn’t say anything, but I knew she was wondering how many other lies Queen Aella told her throughout her life. She had to be just as angry and scared as I was. It may be for different reasons, but I knew exactly how she was feeling.
“What are you going to do with me?” she asked with a trembling voice.
“I don’t know yet.” I couldn’t make the decision to kill her. She was a victim more than anyone else in this situation.
“Please don’t send me back.”
“To Pyrencia?”
“I don’t want to go back to a place where all I have ever known is lies. I don’t belong there. I don’t belong in Tamporlea. I don’t belong with your mother. I don’t belong anywhere.”
“It’s okay. We’ll figure something out.”
We made it to the campsite around dinnertime and Tyran made some vegetable soup over the campfire he built. When I handed Lilliana her bowl, she looked almost surprised that we weren’t planning to starve her. She quickly ate everything in the bowl, looking quite satisfied by the time it was empty.
“Lilliana, would you like some more?” Tyran asked when he noticed her bowl was empty.
She shook her head and said, “No thank you.”
“I think we should probably stay here tonight,” I said. “I know we could keep heading toward the palace, but there’s no way we’d make it all the way there by nightfall. I think we’d be safer if we waited until morning to head out again.”
“I agree,” Tyran said. “Besides, I don’t think Lilliana can handle any more hiking.”
“Well, if we’re going to stay, we may as well set up the tent,” I suggested.
While we took out the poles for the tent, Lilliana started asking questions about me. What was my favorite color, if I was popular in school, what I was planning to do in college. I was surprised that after the way I acted, she would want to know anything about me. I told her more about our parents and how dad had died when we were twelve. I even told her about Casper and how he helped me better handle my dad’s death. She looked so sad while I described my life and I knew she was wishing she had the same.
“Will you tell us more about Pyrencia?” Tyran asked after the tent was secure.
“What do you want to know?”
“Anything you might think is helpful. The war hasn’t ended and it’s only a matter of time before they attack again.”
“Well, I don’t know if I can be of much help. They always did their best to keep that information away from me. I was to concentrate on Tamporlea.”
“Anything you want to tell us could be helpful,” I said.
“When I was older, I used to wander around the kingdom when I couldn’t sleep and sometimes I would go through Pyrencia’s tunnels. I know that a few people of Tamporlea would meet with some of Pyrencia’s Guards there.”
“Yes, that’s where all the trading happens,” Tyran said.
“I know, but they weren’t talking about trading. It was a couple years ago, but I was pretty sure that our Guards were being shown how to get through some of the tunnels to get to Tamporlea.”
“Who was showing them?” I asked. Was it possible that Lilliana knew who betrayed my kingdom?
“I can’t be sure, nobody mentioned any names.”
“Anything else?” Tyran asked.
“Not really. Like I said, they were pretty set on keeping me away from their business.”
“Do you know anything about the people she would have sent to Tamporlea?” I asked.
“On the way to your mom’s house, Aella and her assistant, James, brought me. While I was supposed to be sleeping, I caught bits and pieces of their conversation. I kn
ow that James was supposed to be the one giving the instructions from the Queen to everyone because somehow he was able to keep in contact with her.”
“He was killed,” I said coldly thinking of him attacking Orion and stabbing Casper.
“So she will need a new assistant soon then.”
“Do you know who would be appointed?”
“There was a Guard she seemed quite fond of, Jack. They always seemed to be around each other if James was out of the kingdom. If I had to guess, it would be him.”
“Does he have any powers that you know of?” Tyran asked.
“Yes, he creates earthquakes. He can even make the earth split open when he’s really angry, which is the scariest thing I’ve ever witnessed.”
“Thank you for telling us all this,” I said.
“If I think of anything else, I will let you know.”
“Alright, what are we going to do here until tomorrow morning?” I asked.
“I think we should gather some wood before the sun sets,” Tyran suggested.
“Lilliana, do you mind staying here while I help Tyran?”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?” Tyran asked before she could answer.
“She’s not going anywhere. She couldn’t find her way out of here in a million years.”
“I won’t try to leave. I promise I will be right here when you get back. I have nowhere to go anyway.”
“See? Let’s go.”
When we were far enough away that Lilliana couldn’t overhear, Tyran asked if there was a reason I was so insistent on going with him. I explained that I really just wanted to know what he thought of Lilliana’s story. I assumed that he believed her, but I wasn’t sure.
“I don’t think she’s lying. It is really obvious that she doesn’t think she belongs anywhere. If she thought otherwise, I think she would have fought me when I woke her up and told her to get dressed or she would have at least tried to pry her hand out of your grip as you dragged her through the forest.”
“I shouldn’t have done that,” I said feeling the shame wash over me. “That’s not the type of person I am. I have never been that angry before.”
“I know. I won’t say anything more about it. I guess it pretty well shocked me that you would react that way.”
“It shocked me too to be honest. So, I'll tell you what happened to my hand if you still want to know.”
“Of course I do, it’s a real nasty cut.”
I explained about breaking the mirror and showed him my half which was still in my back pocket. I saw that the mirror was still reflecting my mother’s unmade bed and it made me wonder how it worked. He explained that the mirrors were all once a single mirror and the enchantment that was placed on it works no matter how many times the mirror is broken.
“When the spell breaks on your mother, the piece in the palace will no longer reflect her because there is no longer a need. It will instead show what this mirror reflects,” he continued to explain.
“So Cali couldn’t see me now if she had the palace piece?”
“No, but the tunnels were destroyed in the attack. I have no idea how she would have got to it anyway.”
“I don’t know either, but I know she would at least try.”
“Maybe,” he said doubtfully as he picked up a large branch and began breaking it into suitable firewood.
“Do you think Aella will attack again right when the twenty-four hours are up?”
“I’ve been thinking about that too,” he said. “I think she’ll probably wait a bit, that way she will have the element of surprise.”
“I hope we manage to get there first. With almost all of the Guards gone, we really need you there to protect the kingdom.”
Tyran didn’t know what to say to that and I imagined he was thinking about Orion and Casper again. When we got back to the campsite, Lilliana was happy to see us. I didn’t think we were gone very long, but she obviously didn’t like being alone. We gathered enough fallen branches to last until morning.
Lilliana and I talked more about her life in Pyrencia, and I shared whatever stories I could think of. It was strange listening to her talk about her life. We looked the same, but we had such a different upbringing. Although I hated Aella for taking my sister away and for everything she was doing to my kingdom, I was grateful that she didn’t neglect Lilliana in any way. I knew it was for her own advantage but by the way it sounded, she did treat Lilliana almost like a daughter in many ways.
While Tyran was telling Lilliana a little about Tamporlea, I started thinking about Cali. I wondered what she was doing and if everyone was still okay. I imagined that Cali had to be worried about Tyran and I, although we were both safe with his abilities.
Tyran cleaned and dressed both my and Lilliana’s wounds again in the evening before Lilliana went inside the tent to sleep. She was exhausted after the strenuous hike, and I’m sure the stress of the day didn’t help matters any. My hand was throbbing relentlessly now that I didn’t have the adrenaline numbing the pain.
Chapter 3
The Fire
“We’re going to leave as early as possible in the morning,” Tyran said.
“I figured as much.”
“I want to get there well before noon and I think we have about six hours more of hiking.”
“Is that really how long it took us to get here before? It didn’t feel that long at all.”
“Yeah, well, I am sure you had other things on your mind to keep you distracted from the hours passing by,” he said.
“That’s true.”
Being so close to Tyran, and not angry with him like I was last night, I started to think about how close we had become over the last month. It was so hard to believe that I hadn't known him or Cali for my whole life. I had really formed an impenetrable bond with both of them.
“What are you thinking about?” Tyran finally asked.
“Just thinking about some of the friendships I’ve developed since I’ve been in Tamporlea.”
“Yes, I think you have more friends there than I’ve ever had,” he said.
“Why is that?”
“Well you’ve seen me every Sunday underneath a tree just reading. I don’t form friendships easily.”
“You could have though. I mean, I know Orion thought a lot of you and Cali told me just about all the girls had their sights set on you.”
He laughed and said, “I don’t know about all that. Orion and I had a strange relationship. You know that I didn’t respect him as much as I probably should have. Orion just seemed to be different with me, especially once I took over as your Seer.”
“How did that all happen?”
“Your original Seer was also your mother’s. A little over a year ago, he died and I took over as Head Guard and also became your Seer.”
“What did you even see?” I asked trying to bring back all of the memories that I had in the past year. I was searching my mind for anything so embarrassing that I would be mortified if anyone knew.
“I saw you applying to colleges and taking the SAT’s.”
“Nothing too embarrassing then?” I asked.
“No, you know I wasn’t like a stalker or anything. I was only around when something major was going on in your life. I did see you saying goodbye to Scott however.”
Scott was my semi-serious boyfriend for two years We split up because he graduated early and went into the military and neither one of us wanted to be in a long-distance situation. We were serious in that we were fully committed to each other but we never took our relationship to a deeply sexual level.
“Why would you be there for that?” I asked.
“Well it was a major thing in your life. Although it may not seem like it now, it was at the time. You weren’t just saying goodbye to a boyfriend, you were saying goodbye to your best friend. That’s a lot for anyone to handle. Plus I was told I should look at Scott as a possibility for your future husband.”
“What?”
“I told
you awhile ago that Queen Holly had a strange way of looking at love. She never experienced love the way it should be. That was her one regret as Queen. She didn’t want the future Queen to go through that. She asked that I see if Scott had the potential of being that person for you.”
“What did you think?” I asked curiously.
“I thought it was unfair that she would ask me to do such a thing. She knew how I felt about you. I knew that I had truly fallen in love with you the day that you received the acceptance letter to Syracuse University. The fact that you hid that letter because you didn’t want your mother to be alone showed me just how passionate you were about the people you cared for. That also happens to be the day that I realized I was wrong about not wanting you to come to Tamporlea because you weren’t really supposed to be Queen.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I mean, I saw that you would really care about the people of Tamporlea if you were Queen. In the end, that’s really what matters.”
“Do you mind if I ask how Queen Holly found out about your feelings toward me?”
He laughed and said, “She tried to marry me off and I refused. I couldn’t just give her the run around as to why I didn’t want to be married so I had to tell her the truth. Of course, Orion was there when I told her as well and that is when things started getting really bad between us. He would tell me that a Queen couldn’t be with a Guard. There’s too much politics involved or whatever. So he thought it would be the next best thing that I be your assistant.”
“How did Queen Holly react?”
“She was more sympathetic than anything else. She still tried to find me someone within the kingdom to marry but I continued to refuse and she eventually gave up.”
“What if I decided not to come to Tamporlea? Or decided not to be Queen?”
Unjust Page 3