‘Wait here,’ Accolon commanded and then disappeared from sight.
Jack turned to Harry. ‘I’m speechless.’
‘Speechless enough to tell us everything you’re thinking?’ Harry grinned as though he was in on a huge practical joke. Jack seemed to have the same thought.
‘Are you all about to pop out from behind the set and laugh at us for this?’
Harry laughed. ‘It’s real, I promise.’
‘You’re right,’ Jack agreed. ‘I’m the only one who could pull off a prank this good. Where are the others? And why did we get separated?’
‘And what the hell are we going to do about finding the portal again? Mia added.
Harry shook his head. ‘Seriously guys—this will be easier for me to explain when Satine gets here.’
Jack sighed. ‘It’s pretty cool though, huh?’
‘Cool is a bit of an understatement,’ Mia murmured. ‘Totally, unbelievably wild would be my choice of words.’ She couldn’t stop thinking about the shadow monsters and how close they had come to death. It seemed too surreal to even contemplate. She snickered. ‘What are we going to tell our parents when we get home?’
They were interrupted by a man, clearly a servant, entering from one of the many side doors. He cleared his throat. ‘Her highness the queen is on her way.’
This stopped them both in their tracks. ‘The queen?’
A woman swept into the room, so striking she took Mia’s breath away. Tall and well-muscled, with thick blonde hair that hung in impossible tangles. She wore a simple black dress that fell to the floor. Castles, swords, full-length dresses ... it was all way too weird.
The woman’s eyes were bright blue and her cheek bones angular, making her look stern and unforgiving. But when she saw Jack and Mia, her face broke into a brilliant smile that could have rivalled the sun for warmth.
‘Greetings,’ the woman said, and then, to Mia’s surprise, she hugged them both as if they were long-lost family.
‘I am Queen Satine of Lapis Matyr. Welcome to Burmia.’
Jack gave her a wry half-smile. ‘I might be more grateful if I had any idea where Burmia is.’
Mia shot him a sharp look and turned back to Satine. ‘I’m Mia and this is Jack.’
‘It’s wonderful to finally meet you. Are you both all right?’
Mia nodded faintly. ‘Thanks to Altor.’ She frowned. ‘But what do you mean, “finally”?’
Satine shot Altor a questioning glance but he only shrugged. He was standing behind her, somehow managing to look amused and bored at the same time. Mia shifted her weight uneasily under his stare. The corners of his mouth twitched.
‘They just got here, Satine,’ Harry said quietly.
‘Of course we just got here. What are you talking about? Harry? Man, what’s going on?’ Jack looked from his friend to the queen.
Harry spread his hands. ‘Well, you’re not going to believe this, but you guys took a little longer in crossing over than the rest of us. We’ve been here for a while. Actually, almost two-and-a-half years now.’
Mia’s jaw dropped.
It was ... incredible. But looking at Harry’s appearance, it made a strange sort of sense. ‘So ... you’re nineteen now?’ she whispered. Harry nodded. Mia’s sense of disorientation grew.
‘Holy mother of god,’ Jack breathed. ‘But we just saw you, like, an hour ago! You jumped off the cliff with us! How did this happen?’
‘I have no idea,’ Harry said. ‘We couldn’t find you when we got here, and then Jane had this vision of you guys being safe and turning up when the time was right, but we had no idea when that would happen—and we kinda started thinking it never would. Christ, I’ve never been so relieved to see anyone in my life!’ He hugged the two of them again, unable to stop smiling.
‘But what does this mean? Have we just missed two years of our life? Was it like a coma? Are we nineteen now too?’ Mia asked, horrified.
‘What’s so bad about that? It means we can drink now!’ Jack exclaimed with a delighted whoop.
‘I don’t think so,’ Harry said quickly. ‘You haven’t aged a day. I honestly think it must have been some kind of gap between the worlds. A gap in time.’
‘So then what have we missed?’ Jack asked.
Harry glanced at the queen, and then at Altor, before finally looking back at his friends. He burst out laughing. ‘I don’t even know where to begin.’
Altor kept to the shadows as he walked through the cobbled streets. His black cloak swept behind him as his long strides carried him forward at a quick but silent pace. He reached the inn and went inside without removing his hood. Sitting down at the bar he ordered red wine.
The girl Stranger had been a surprise. She was only moderately attractive, but she had something else that interested him. Innocence. Real innocence. She had, if you wanted to look at it in such a way, been born into this world only today. She was a shining present, wrapped and left at his feet for the taking. It might take some time, he knew, as she seemed to have an attachment to the boy Stranger, but Altor would crack her eventually. It would be a conquest of sorts. Another one to add to his list, but more interesting, certainly.
Altor needed an endless succession of distractions. It was all he sought from life. He went to bars and taverns in order to socialise with ‘normal’ people because they didn’t make him feel as though he may as well be dead already.
He had dreams and wishes, but they were more complex and much darker than most. Nothing was about mere happiness for Altor—he was beyond hoping for that. He didn’t know himself. And he didn’t have time, like everyone else, to learn.
There was something inside him that was unendingly painful. A darkness that he tried desperately to overcome, a coldness that sometimes frightened him.
He supposed he loved his mother. It didn’t seem to be enough in the face of what he’d become, what had been done to him.
The rage inside him was like an animal, trying every moment to break free. He was utterly consumed by it. He wasn’t meant to be living this twisted, broken life. He was too strong and too clever. He could have been so much better if only he’d not been trapped like this.
He knew it could be seen in his eyes—the hollowness and the fury. And it frightened nearly everyone he looked at, turning him into an outsider.
Chapter 2
Luca disentangled himself from the throng of women and left the tavern. There were people everywhere; it was the biggest night of the year.
Luca didn’t think it was right to celebrate like this, not for the deaths of thousands of people. Two years to the day since the Battle of Victory. But no war could be victorious, could it? It was a stupid, arrogant name and it made him angry. Like most things these days.
And yet here he was, walking the streets of Amalia like he had this time last year. Last year he’d played his guitar for the king and queen—this year he declined. He couldn’t bring himself to make music anymore.
Not after what it had done to Ria. She had been in a coma for almost six months, but the last he’d heard she had woken and returned to her family’s vineyard. He’d never gone to visit. He didn’t know why. He knew only that he’d changed, and that he wouldn’t be good enough for her if he tried to find her again.
He wanted to write to her, but couldn’t think of what to say, how to redress.
‘Luca!’ He turned and recognised the distinctive form of Anna, several feet behind him, dressed in her uniform and a peacock mask to mark the occasion.
‘What are you doing wandering around on your own tonight?’ she asked, lifting her mask.
‘You’re on your own,’ he pointed out.
‘I’m headed off on patrol.’
‘No rest for the wicked, I see.’
Anna smiled.
‘Are you sure you’re up for that?’ Luca asked seriously.
‘Of course I am. Want to come with me?’
‘I wouldn’t dream of intruding,’ he replied, trying to mak
e his voice sound light. ‘Besides, you know I’m not welcome with him.’ Anna opened her mouth to protest, but Luca interrupted. ‘I’m fine, really. I might sing for a bit.’ A lie, but Anna looked relieved.
‘Okay. Make sure you do. And don’t stay by yourself for too long.’ Maybe she sensed that something was wrong. Maybe she knew what Luca was going to do. Maybe not, for she was gone in an instant, off to her unyielding duty. He wondered, not for the first time, if Anna was throwing herself so unrelentingly into her job to distract herself. But then—he could hardly talk. He thought of his home and his family every single day. He tried to imagine what they would think of him if they could see him now; how it would be if they ever found a way home. But he knew he would never leave this world without Jane, and he knew, too, that he’d never fit back in to his old life.
Luca reached up to steady his fox mask, wishing it concealed more of his face. He kept walking. An observer would have to have been watching him very closely to notice that what appeared to be aimless wanderings were in fact taking him in a very clear direction. He was careful not to draw attention to himself. He doubled back a few times and even attempted a drunken stumble to blend in with the celebrations.
It was early morning by the time he reached the large house. There was a metal fence surrounding it and dogs inside.
Something had happened to Luca in that battle so long past. An appalling determination was his, a new set of skills, a different way of thinking.
Was it possible to kill for a living and still have morals?
Luca didn’t have the answer.
He crept into the grounds, climbing the fence with deadly silence and grace. He didn’t wake the dogs—he was a ghost. Up the ivy on the wall and into an upper window, sitting for an eternity to make sure it was safe. Feet feather soft, he walked into the room and waited at the door to the hallway for a long time before stepping out. As he walked he scanned the floor, looking for loose floorboards, stopping at the second door on the right. Again he waited, listening for the heavy breathing of two bodies in sleep. Opening the door gently, he walked to the bed.
He was just going through the motions. Motions he had been taught every day for the past two years. Motions that, if he thought about properly, made him shiver.
Luca looked at the figure in the bed, and at the girl who slept beside him. She was very pretty, her white-blonde hair fanned out around her.
Taking his knife out of its sheath, he ran it swiftly through the neck of the sleeping man, using a cloth to cover the wound so that the blood didn’t gurgle and wake the girl.
Retreating quickly through the open door, remembering the boards in the hall and the room with the window, Luca descended down the ivy, across the grass, over the gate and six streets away to safety.
Luca ran a hand through his short hair, and entered a tavern. He ordered a glass of red wine and drained it. As usual, he looked at his hands. It always seemed to him that they should tremble. They never did. They never so much as moved, never whispered or gave any hint of his doings. But inside ... everything shook.
Luca knew who the woman in the bed was. It would have been the Lady Tzenna of Sair. She was betrothed to Lord Willem of Amalia, and it was known that they were already living together. A love match, apparently. She had been beautiful, but he hadn’t allowed himself to think about that, or to look at her for too long.
Luca’s talent had been discovered, honed, crafted, and who was he to let it go to waste? He’d been told on a number of occasions that skills like his were good for only one thing. So he ended lives as his job.
Willem of Amalia had been a nobleman, one of the men from the royal court, and he’d secretly made a large portion of his money through the slave trade. Accolon’s obsession with eradicating the trade was the reason Willem had died.
Lord Willem drank and gambled half his money away. He was violent and sold young girls into slavery.
But did he deserve to die?
Luca drank his third glass slowly and then went back to the castle. There he would sleep, and in the morning collect his pay. It was better that the king himself had commissioned this job—it made Luca feel justified.
A big blow to the trade, Accolon had said.
If you did an evil thing to cause good, does it make the deed any less evil? Too hard a question.
But Luca knew he was kidding himself if he thought he was doing this to help the king. He was doing it in order to subdue the chaos inside him where his heart had once been. In order to try and feel something, so that he might still consider himself human. ‘I’ve shown them to their rooms. They’re sleeping. Or trying to,’ Harry said. He was still smiling.
‘Good,’ Satine said. ‘They’ll need the rest. They’ve got a lot to deal with.’
‘Yeah right—it isn’t half as bad as when I arrived. You had me crossing the marshes within minutes of waking up to a splitting headache, with no clue where I was!’
‘Oh wonderful,’ Altor drawled. ‘We get to hear this story again.’
‘What’s put you in such a bad mood?’ Harry asked, eyebrows raised.
‘Forgive me if I do not deign to listen to repeated dribble that occurred nearly three years ago,’ the prince said sharply, his eyes flashing. He moved over to the window, staring out vacantly.
Harry and Satine looked at each other, knowing by now to ignore Altor’s moods.
‘Arriving to a host of Valkyries has its charm too,’ Satine pointed out tiredly and Harry’s good mood suddenly dimmed with thoughts of the creatures.
‘You mentioned you had a message from Accolon?’ the queen asked.
Harry nodded. ‘Luca contacted me earlier. They’re celebrating the Battle of Victory there tonight.’
‘So they’ll all be falling over drunk pretty soon.’
‘Not Luca. I’ve never seen him drunk in my life.’
‘There’s no civility in letting yourself go like that,’ Altor murmured, and neither of them could tell if he was agreeing with Luca’s choice, or mocking it. ‘I’m going out,’ he announced abruptly and stalked from the room.
Harry watched Satine’s gaze follow her son and he had to look away from the hurt in her eyes. He couldn’t even imagine what she must be going through.
‘Okay,’ she said swiftly. ‘What was the message?’
‘Accolon’s coming here.’
‘What? Why?’
‘I don’t know. Said he had something to talk to you about, and couldn’t do it over the links.’ Harry shrugged, watching her reaction. ‘Do you think he really needs to come all this way?’ he asked.
Satine frowned. ‘You know more than I do.’
‘I don’t know much. You don’t think it could just be ... a ploy?’
‘For what?’
‘To see you.’
Satine’s eyes hardened. ‘Why would you think he might want to do that?’
Harry sighed. ‘I’m not an idiot, Satine. It’s obvious there’s something between you two.’
Satine glared at him.
‘I’m just worried about you, that’s all. I know he hurt you,’ Harry continued.
‘He did no such thing! How could he when he means little more to me than an acquaintance?’
Harry sighed. ‘Just be careful when he comes, is all I’m trying to say.’
‘And who are you to tell me this?’ she asked coldly. ‘Really, Harry, you should mind your own business.’
Elixia stared at her husband, wondering when it was that he had become a stranger. ‘I just don’t think it’s in your best interest to leave right now,’ she said carefully.
‘Why?’ Accolon asked, looking up from his desk. ‘I need to speak to her. There is too much to say through the links—it tires them too much.’
‘You have just had a nobleman assassinated. And now you’re going to leave me here to deal with the consequences?’ she said crisply.
‘The slave trade is out of control.’ Accolon’s voice was flat. ‘The loss of one of its leaders
will send it into turmoil, if only for a while. I will not argue with you about this. I know you can handle it.’
Elixia had been as much of a ruler as he, and they both knew it. The closeness with which they’d first ruled had allowed the country to flourish. Somewhere along the way, that had started to dwindle. Accolon had grown restless, brooding and temperamental. He wanted to introduce laws that made no sense, and had been reading old texts that gave him strange ideas of what Paragor should be like.
Elixia could remember the precise moment in which she had given up hoping for her husband to resume being the man he had once been; the birth of their only child had driven him into a rage she couldn’t bare to remember it was so hurtful, simply because the child had been a girl.
‘Why do you so desperately need to speak to her?’ she tried. ‘We had better not be funding an expensive trip over the ocean just so you can see your mistress!’
But that was too far. She could tell from one glance that Accolon had shut down. His eyes blazed with fury, then he simply turned his back on her.
Elixia tried to calm herself. ‘What of the rumours that this is all Vezzet?’ she managed to ask.
It was a long minute before Accolon replied. ‘I have no doubt that he is capable of becoming the head of the Paragor suppliers, but I have no proof as yet.’
Elixia clenched her teeth. ‘I wasn’t just talking about the trade, Accolon. You know that.’
As usual, he didn’t say anything.
‘We can’t keep ignoring this,’ she hissed. ‘Tens of thousands of men—boys—are dying to protect us against the Valkyries. Something has to be done!’
‘Fine,’ he snapped, as though he was simply doing her a favour. ‘When I get back we’ll talk about it.’
Elixia knew that was the best she was going to get out of him. ‘When will you leave?’ she asked.
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