“You showed her?” How could Heck have done that? If that girl wasn’t who she said she was… “Are you insane? We don’t even know who she is. She could be a spy. Or worse—”
“Or what, ‘worse’?” Maray cut him off, voice dangerously loud. “I am right here.” She didn’t need to remind him. Every second in her presence made it hard for him to breathe. He wanted to look away but couldn’t tear his gaze off of her as she stood in rage, pulling the queen’s portrait from Heck’s surprised hand and holding it under his nose. “This—” she pointed a slender finger at the picture; a finger that resembled the real queen’s so much it made him nauseous, “—is freaking me out. Apparently, there is someone running around in this dimension with my face, and no one has seen her in years.”
It was freaking him out, too. Heck alone seemed to be unbothered by the queen copy. But then, he was Heck. He had probably pulled his knight-parody on her and then—
Maray let herself drop back onto his bed, and again he was bothered. She had no place there. What had he thought bringing her here? He should have let the Yutu have her.
“How do we know you are who you say you are?” He folded his arms over his chest, hoping to shield himself from softening toward the stranger with the familiar face.
She snorted, obviously offended by his suggestion that she was lying. “For that you would first have to care enough to ask me who I am.”
She was good; he had to give her that. Even in the tunnel before, she had tried to manipulate him with words… just like the queen liked to do. “I have.”
The queen had summoned Jemin after the incident. She had told him that if he kept his mouth shut about seeing her, she would make sure he’d always have a place at court. Naturally, she had spoken from behind the curtain then, the way she did with all her subjects nowadays—except for the elect three. Plus that man in the grey suit that looked like nothing anyone in Allinan would wear.
“Jemin.” The girl tore him from his memories, and her saying his name ran through him like an electric shock. She hadn’t called him Boyd like the queen. She had said Jemin. It touched something inside of him that reminded him of the years of adoration for the queen of Allinan. He fought the emotion.
“My name is Maray Johnson,” the girl reminded him of her name as if to tear into his doubt a little more deeply, “I am from the other dimension. Before I ran into you, I didn’t even know another dimension existed.”
Was she trying to manipulate him? He knew the queen was a master manipulator. It wasn’t wise to believe anything the girl said.
“You two should go outside and fight,” Heck commented with a chuckle, but Jemin shut him up without even looking at him.
“Not funny, Heck.”
His eyes were on the girl, who glared at him as if she wanted to burn him with her mere look.
“I have nothing to do with your court or your queen,” she said, controlling her voice. “All I want is to go home and forget this ever happened.”
Maray
Jemin frowned as he dragged her down the hallway and across the yard. The night was thick with darkness, only a few stars peering through the veil of the November fog. A week ago, Maray might have found a certain aesthetic in the concealed beauty of the palace and the dancing flames in the distance. For now, all she could think of were Jemin’s words of denial. “You can’t.” Those two simple words and nothing more.
“Where are you taking me now?” Maray asked, keeping her head down as instructed.
Heck was bouncing along beside her, looking as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
“Corey,” Jemin whispered in a tone that meant, “Shut up.”
“Who’s Corey?” Maray asked, uneasy about meeting another person in this dimension who might or might not react the same way as Jemin and Heck had.
While Heck had gotten over his initial shock with inhuman grace, Jemin seemed to be bothered by something going deeper than just the resemblance to the queen.
“Why can’t I go home?” she asked and pulled her arm out of Jemin’s grasp, demonstrating how very able she was to walk on her own.
“I can’t watch you there,” he said plainly, this time no evasion of answers. “I don’t trust you, and I’d rather keep my enemies close.”
“I am not your enemy.” Maray stopped to make a point and earned a disapproving glare from Jemin while Heck locked his hand around her arm, pulling her forward.
“Don’t provoke Jem,” he advised. “Jem is serious about everything. If you upset him, he’ll be seriously upset.” There was a hint of amusement in his voice. “You don’t want to meet seriously-upset Jem.”
“Thank you, Heck,” Jemin hissed. “That’s very helpful.” He stepped into the archway at the other end of the yard, following it away from the palace, Maray and Heck at his heels.
“Can you slow down for a second?” Maray murmured but wasn’t heard. Jemin stopped and turned promptly, making her bump into him and bestowing her with an impatient glance as she scrambled out of his chest.
“What is it that can’t wait another minute?” he hissed, eyes tightening dangerously and giving Maray an idea what Heck had meant with ‘seriously-upset Jem.’
“If you care so little about my safety, why bring me here? Why hide me? You could have left me behind or told Commander Scott about me,” she suggested, honestly curious why he was making the effort of getting her from A to B unnoticed when he was so worried she was a spy—or worse.
Heck’s hand loosened around her biceps.
“Look.” Jemin leaned closer, bending down so his face was eye-level. “There are only two versions of how this ends,” he said, his breath a furious breeze on her cheeks. “Either you are who you say you are—then I will deliver you back to the other dimension personally and make sure I never have to see you again—or, you have something to hide. If that’s the case, I will make sure you never get the chance to hurt anyone. And I will do that also personally.” His gaze was indifferent, but something in his voice told her that there was more than he let on. This wasn’t about the crown or his duty—this was about something exactly like he’d said: personal.
“Heck!” he beckoned, and Heck grabbed Maray’s arm more tightly as he set them in motion again.
“Sorry,” Heck whispered as he led her over the threshold of a shabbier building behind one that looked exactly like the servant quarters.
Maray shook her head at Heck. It wasn’t his fault the way Jemin was handling the situation. Had it been in her own dimension, she would have already run for it or, at least, tried. She didn’t like to think of herself of the victim-type, but in this case, what options did she truly have? With Jemin’s determination not to let her out of his sight and Heck’s—whatever it was—loyalty to Jemin, she’d have to be able to conjure magic to outrun them. She’d seen how fast they moved in a fight. She’d seen how quick they were to draw a sword and how they jumped and all but flew through the air as they did so.
Jemin glanced back at her as if he was sensing her thoughts about making a run for it.
A dark corridor led them into a building with lower ceilings. The doors weren’t painted in emerald like in the servant quarters. They were a dark brown, as if scorched by fire.
“In here,” came a whisper from the end of the corridor. Heck’s grasp pulled Maray forward at the sound of the voice until they joined Jemin in front of a cracked open door.
“Come in,” the voice whispered again, “and close the door behind you.”
Maray’s first view as they stepped into the candle-lit chamber was a rough wooden floor. Dust and tiny leaves were caught along the sides and the legs of the furniture. It smelled of candle wax and herbs and of something she had never smelled before. A sweet scent that reminded her of flowers and lemon-cake.
Clicking footsteps approached from somewhere out of her field of vision, light and quick, followed by a sigh.
“Jemin, Heck,” a satin, female voice said with a familiar type of humor. “Wh
at have you done this time?”
A pair of long legs, stuck in tight, leather-like pants—probably also Thaotine—appeared before her, and a dark hand grabbed her hood, pulling it out of her face.
Wide black eyes stared at her out of a dark face in disbelief.
“Are you insane?” the girl asked, a mane of black curls bouncing around her head as she gestured irritably at both boys at Maray’s sides.
“It’s not what it looks like.” Heck was the first to react. “She is not the queen.”
“And how can you be so sure?” The girl didn’t even attempt to show Maray the slightest bit of the courtesy that would have been appropriate had Maray been royalty.
“Because I have seen the queen,” Jemin muttered beside her.
The girl froze. Even Heck let go of her hand and stepped forward to look at Jemin.
“You saw the queen?” he asked in disbelief.
Jemin nodded, looking more than uncomfortable over sharing what he just said.
“When?” the girl demanded.
“A couple of months ago,” Jemin admitted and hooked his thumbs into his weapons belt.
As the three of them stared at each other, they seemed to have forgotten Maray was still there.
“No one but the elect three has seen her in years,” Heck reminded all of them.
“Except it’s the elect four now?” the girl prompted. “Why do you only ever come to me when the roof is on fire?” Heck chuckled once at her annoyed statement but then turned serious as he noticed the look on Jemin’s face.
“I think she’d rather nobody ever knows I saw her face,” Jemin commented with a frown. His indifference had left his features, leaving space for a play of emotions Maray couldn’t name.
“Would it be too much to ask to fill me in about what’s going on?” she asked into the group, not expecting to get a satisfying answer this time.
“Maray, meet Corey,” Jemin introduced them with an unidentifiable look on his face. “Corey—” He glanced at the tall, pretty girl in Thaotine clothing who smirked and shoved the lengths of her cloak behind her shoulders, exposing a well-built torso in a flowery corset. “Meet Maray from the other dimension.”
Corey raised a thin, black eyebrow. “Other dimension—” She strolled around Maray with an appraising look, similar to the way Jemin had, only she didn’t grab Maray’s chin to force her to look at her. “They have all sorts of scum over there, don’t they?”
Maray’s mouth opened at the blatant insult. What had she done to these strangers to earn their distrust and hate?
“Not a very nice thing of you to say,” Maray brought to Corey’s attention.
“Not a very nice thing to look at,” Corey snapped in return, making Maray shrink an inch.
“Give her a break, Corey,” Heck remarked, coming to Maray’s rescue. “Supposedly, she didn’t know our dimension even existed until earlier today.”
Earlier today, Maray repeated longingly in her mind. Earlier today, her worst worry was that she’d have to face a new school and would have to make new friends in a couple of days. All she had managed was to make enemies even though she’d initially tried to help Jemin.
She glanced at him. “Does it really help to bring another person into this?” she asked, avoiding looking at Corey, who was picking up a strand of Maray’s black hair and shaking her head.
“Highly unusual,” she commented and dropped the strand, walking over to a small desk that looked like it was a millennium old but was holding a set of high-tech-looking lab-equipment.
“Trust me,” Heck commented, leaning toward Maray, “if you want to bring anyone into this, it’s her.” His eyes were on Corey, a weird fascination sparkling inside them.
Maray followed his gaze and noticed a stripe of smooth, black skin between the silken corset and the waistband of Corey’s shiny pants. Of course. She rolled her eyes.
“Can you look somewhere else?” Corey glanced over her shoulder at Heck, lips twitching at the side in a generally annoyed face. “Your staring is disturbing my Zen.”
Caught, Heck turned to Jemin, who was playing with a bunch of dried leaves he had picked up from one of the many cupboards.
While the two boys exchanged knowing looks, Corey was handling some jars and flames, and something purple grew from the center of the desk.
“Yep,” she said as if someone had asked her a question, and held up the purple item.
“It can’t be.” Jemin was at her side, eyeing the item closely, Heck following suit, chocolate eyes almost bulging from their sockets.
“What ‘can’t be’?” Maray cautiously stepped closer, trying to catch a glimpse of the purple thing in Corey’s hand over Heck’s shoulder.
It was like a purple crystal caught in layers of glass. Pretty, she thought and had no idea what it meant.
“Corey is a personal assistant to Master Feris.” Jemin turned to the side to give Maray a closer look at the purple crystal while he filled her in. “Feris is the court warlock, highest in his ranks and personally responsible for the well-being of the queen.”
Corey watched Maray with amusement as she tried to make any sense of Jemin’s words.
“Potions, magic, healing,” she translated. “For the latter, sometimes we need blood.” Her lips parted into a tooth-paste grin. “We keep some of the queen’s blood in the warlock quarters—just in case.”
“To make healing potions if the queen’s life is in danger from a disease,” Heck jumped in.
“In this case, though, I ran a matching spell.” Corey took over, fascination flaring her eyes as she stepped a little closer. “You, Maray, have royal blood.”
Maray coughed. “How?”
“I picked a hair from your jacket,” Corey said with the same grin, as Maray continued to stare while all her beliefs spiraled. “Oh, not how I did the spell—you mean how is this possible?” She patted Maray’s shoulder. “That, my dear, is for someone else to find out. Ancestry is not my specialty. Spells and potions are. Come back if someone stabs you and you need a life-saving potion.”
For some reason, the look in her eyes suggested Maray couldn’t trust that offer.
Jemin was oddly quiet. So quiet that despite the news Corey had given her, Maray felt a surge of concern for him. While he remained the silence before the storm, Corey studied Maray’s features.
“Where did you find her?” she asked and laid a hand on Jemin’s forearm. The way her fingers brushed over his armor, consoling, showed Maray that underneath that rough surface, Corey cared about him.
He pulled her arm away as if he hadn’t noticed her touch, swallowing something that was buried behind his eyes, and reached for the crystal. “The palace gardens,” he said as if it didn’t matter, and stared into the purple depths. “Heck and I were fighting a Yutu—”
“Another Yutu?” Corey interrupted, alarmed, and watched Jemin’s head bob once.
“The third one this month,” he repeated what he had reported to Commander Scott. “I portaled Heck back after the Yutu got him in the thigh—”
“Just a minor cut,” Heck commented and rubbed his leg.
Jemin frowned, appearing tired of being interrupted. It seemed to be struggle enough to say what he was about to say. “Scott and Unterly think they are after something.”
“Of course they are.” Corey gestured at Maray. “Look at her—”
“Let him finish, would you?” Heck cut her off sharply, and Corey fell silent.
“I am not supposed to talk to anyone about this, but Scott thinks they are drawn by Allinan activity,” Jemin finished what he had to say, “and wants me to find out what’s behind it.”
Maray felt left out. What were they talking about? And what had happened to not trusting her? As if he had heard her thoughts, he looked at her intensely, as though trying to figure something out. The others followed his lead.
“If I may.” Maray used the opportunity to have their undivided attention. “I’d honestly like to understand what all
this means.”
While Heck gave her a compassionate look—“Me, too”—and Corey a curious one, Jemin seemed to have made up his mind.
“I told you, if you had something to hide, I’d personally make sure no one ever gets hurt by you.”
“What do we do now?” Interestingly it was Corey who sounded concerned.
“With someone who looks like the queen, Yutu roaming the borders of the planes again, and Scott and Unterly breathing down my neck?” Jemin twisted the crystal between his slender fingers, a crease of worry on his forehead.
“He told you not to tell anyone?” Heck confirmed. “I don’t like that.”
Corey’s voice came from somewhere at the back of the room with the sound of rummaging in boxes. “Something is wrong. Scott always revels in his ‘ingenious’ ideas. He’ll tell anyone he thinks you two have done a poor job protecting the Viennese borders. He’d get a kick out of it.”
Maray listened to them with half-open eyes. She had settled down on one of the century-old footstools and rested her head against a cupboard door. She was exhausted from the day jet lag still in her system, and the events from the evening didn’t exactly help her feel any better. It was the sweet scent and the warm air that made her drowsy.
If the days in Allinan had twenty-four hours like in the other dimension, then father was still at the event. No one would miss her for now. And how could anyone help her? Even the police couldn’t just cross the borders to Allinan, given they knew about it—which she highly doubted.
She rested her head in her hands.
“We can’t take her back to the other dimension,” Heck noted, “Scott will have the borders monitored more closely.”
“And what should we do with her, then?” Jemin wondered aloud. It was there in his voice that she was an inconvenience to him. It was in every word, in every glance.
“Hand me over to Scott and Unterly, then,” Maray suggested, tired of the sound of his irritatingly smooth voice. She understood that she was a nuisance to him, but at least he could talk to her instead of debating her fate with Heck and the stunning young woman who had disappeared between rows of shelves.
Two Worlds of Provenance Page 5