“I didn’t lose her,” Corey bit at him in a tone he had rarely heard from her as she ran back and forth between the room she had sent Maray for the night, and the main room where all of Feris’ equipment was stored. “And before you say anything else, Heck—” she shot him a cold look over her shoulder, “—you can trust me.”
“Then, where is she?” Heck’s eyes had lost all of their usual humor.
“Do you think I would still be here if I knew?” Corey grabbed the purple crystal from the desk and stared at it as if she was going to burn it with her gaze. “Where are you, Maray Johnson?”
Jemin had spent most of the night tossing while trying to figure out which one he put first, his morals or his oath to the crown. His loyalty had won the fight, and he had been on his way to inform Commander Scott first thing this morning when he had heard screams and the growl of a rogue Yutu in the palace gardens.
He had abandoned his plan to find Scott and headed back down to find out what was going on, but when he had made it back to the yard, the guards had already gone after the Yutu, which had triggered a new sensation inside of him. The same one he was feeling now. He was anxious for Maray. Where was she? What had happened to her?
He wasn’t used to caring about anyone but Heck and Corey—each of them in their own way. And himself, naturally. His father had taught him that: ‘You are the only one who matters. If you lose, you can’t protect anyone. If you care about anyone, you won’t be able to focus enough to win a fight. Again, if you lose, you won’t be around long enough to care about the ones you were able to protect because you didn’t care.’ His father had always been able to twist words in a way that benefited his current needs. And in a way, his words had always made sense. To a ten-year-old, at least. Not to the seventeen-year-old man he was today.
“Jem?” Heck interrupted his thoughts. “You all right?”
Jemin nodded and shoved aside the unwelcome sensation in his chest. What did it matter if anything happened to Maray? His loyalty to the crown ensured he’d have a place in the palace ten years from now. Handing over Maray to Scott would have bought him something he had never had from the commander: respect. If he showed the crown that he was on its side, no matter what, he might earn back the trust his father and grandfather had lost for his family. And yet, there was something inside of him fighting his dutifulness.
“Someone took her,” he concluded aloud. If she wasn’t here, and if they believed Corey when she said she hadn’t let Maray go, then this was the only reasonable response.
“She might have snuck out by herself,” Heck suggested and earned a dark look from Corey.
“Do you really think I’d leave her in an unlocked room?” she snapped. “I sealed the door with magic. There is no way she could have opened it—”
Something about her voice again made Jemin think there was something wrong.
“Unless—”
He jumped to his feet, not for a moment longer wanting to hear excuses or reasons why what had happened should have been impossible.
“Unless what?” He blocked Corey’s path of nervous pacing and let her run into his chest.
She gave him a look that reminded him of the time before they had gotten along.
“Unless she figured out a way to open it.”
“To open it how?” he pushed. There was only one way to unlock a magical seal.
“With magic,” Corey admitted.
“Are you serious?” Heck stepped closer, making Corey detach from Jemin’s chest with a look of remorse. “Why didn’t you tell us the second we entered the room?”
“Because there is something more important than that she has magic,” Corey explained.
“She has magic?” Jemin lost his patience. “How can she have magic?”
“Calm down, Jem.” Corey laid her hand on his shoulder, bringing up old memories. “I have no idea how strong her magic is, but she does have magic. I saw it myself last night when she touched the crystal.”
“But she is from the other dimension,” Heck objected.
“She is. And yet she has royal blood.” Jemin felt as if everything he had ever believed in was tossed in the gutter. “How could you not notice her leaving?” He attacked Corey instead of dealing with the emotions that came with the realization.
“Had you been here earlier—like Heck was—you would know that someone must have put a spell on me in my sleep. “You know me, Jem. Nobody gets past me.”
“Except for other warlocks,” he concluded and stared at the empty bedroom again.
“You would have known that—of course—if you had been here before me after you snuck out of your room early today,” Heck commented. “Where were you, anyway?”
Jemin ignored him, trying to smother his guilty conscience. Maray’s jeans and jacket were sitting on the dresser, and the bed was obviously used. She couldn’t have been gone too long. It had been late at night when they’d left the two girls, and it was only seven thirty in the morning. Had he chosen to come here instead of going to see Scott, he might have prevented this incident.
“You told Scott?” Heck assumed from his embarrassed silence. “Seriously, Jem.” There was a disappointment in his voice that was worse than any other scolding. Heck was his best friend.
“I didn’t,” he defended himself. “But I was on my way there when I heard the Yutu in the yard, and—”
“A Yutu?” Heck’s eyes bulged. “What is a Yutu doing in the yard?”
“I have no idea.”
“The same thing as all the other Yutu before it,” Corey suggested. “It was after her.”
Jemin sucked up the disapproving looks of both Corey and Heck and drew his sword. “If it is after Maray, then its tracks will lead us directly to her. What are we waiting for?”
Maray
For a second, Maray considered running again but then remembered how Jemin had killed the beast in the tunnel the day before. He had moved like a shadow, fast as a ghost. There was no way Maray could ever be that quick. So, she settled for a cautious turn to face the monster and gingerly took the first step.
Up close, the Yutu was twice the size she had imagined. Its muzzle was the height of her face and so close she could smell its stinking breath. She swallowed a cough. It took her a moment to tear her gaze away from the pointed teeth that were oddly white in the dim light of the forest. A pair of crimson eyes stared back at her, but instead of the murderous look she had expected, she found a curious kind of intelligence behind the dark pupils. The beast stood completely still—a statue in the cold and dead landscape.
Maray waited for it to happen; for the Yutu to attack and end her. But all it did was stand and stare. Almost as if it was waiting for something.
‘If you can’t win a fight, make sure you win time. You never know what a minute more might do for you’. One of her father’s life lessons rang in her head as she stupidly raised her palms at the animal. As if it would understand the gesture.
“I don’t know what it is you want from me,” she said in a voice she had heard other people use when talking to a panicked horse, “but I promise I will not hurt you.”
Waving the white flag to a beast was something even her father as an experienced diplomat had never done; she was sure of that.
The Yutu lowered its head to be level with Maray’s eyes. One massive paw hit the forest ground, sending fir needles flying toward her.
She took a careful step back, glancing to the side in hopes of spotting Corey between the trees.
The Yutu gave a warning growl, making Maray shrink to the height of a five-year-old.
“You don’t want to hurt me,” she told the beast, well knowing that it didn’t understand a word she said as it kept staring with its flaming eyes. “I am not your enemy. Actually, I like dogs.” Anything to keep that thing distracted. “My neighbor in D.C. had a Corgi like the Queen of England. We got along well.” That was a lie. The dog had hated her for no apparent reason.
The Yutu lowered its hea
d even more, as if readying itself to spring, and Maray saw her short life go by in rapid images: the walks with her mother when she had been younger, that birthday her mother had left, her father with his hidden grief, Jemin—
“You know, you need to work on your negotiation tactics,” Gerwin’s voice said, ripping through a curtain of fear. “And that Corgi would have bitten your head off, given the chance.”
“Dad?” Maray opened her eyes, wondering if she was already dead, and found her father standing where the giant beast had been a second ago. “How—”
“I got word you had made it to the other world,” he said, using the face he wore when he kept work-related secrets from her. “I thought I’d better come and get you before anything happens to you.”
Maray flung her arms around her father, unable to believe he was really there, but also relieved by the sudden disappearance of the murderous beast.
“Dad, what are you doing here?” she asked into his shoulder, feeling a familiar fabric under her face, and lifted her head, pushing away a little.
“Where did the Yutu go?” She glanced around, almost expecting the giant beast to leap out of the underbrush. “How did you manage to chase it away?”
Gerwin shifted and took Maray’s hand. “The Yutu is taken care of.”
“How did you get here?” It dawned on Maray that there was more than one thing wrong with this picture. Her father was dressed in Thaotine; a shirt like Jemin’s and Heck’s but with golden patterns woven into it on the chest and arms. Besides the obvious, Corey was still gone.
“These past couple of hours must have been difficult for you.” Gerwin eyed Maray as she studied his outfit. “I wish I had skipped the event last night and stayed with you. I was planning to tell you everything…”
“I don’t understand.” Something in Maray’s stomach tightened painfully as she listened to her father. This was impossible. He couldn’t be here. Especially not in Allinan armor. He was Gerwin Johnson. Single father, abandoned husband, patient diplomat, fixer of company-political issues for a large corporation—
“You don’t work for that company, do you?” She shook her head as she realized the degree of betrayal it would mean if she was right. Gerwin looked at her with warm, brown eyes, the fatherly look he gave her whenever he was about to make an apology that he knew was not going to satisfy the depth of her pain. “Your diplomatic duties are with Allinan, aren’t they? That’s why we moved to Vienna.”
The longer she spoke, the more sure she became that she was right. And when her father eventually nodded, she wasn’t certain whether to release a springtide of rage at him or dance in joy that she wasn’t alone in this anymore.
Desperate, she glanced over her shoulder one more time, checking for Corey. Where had she gone? Had the Yutu gotten to her? Then she looked back at her father, his smile so familiar, his clothes a reminder of his betrayal.
“You knew about the two worlds all these years, and you never cared to even mention it to me?” It broke out of her like a storm. “I had to find out by being kidnapped by people from this world after being hunted by a giant wolf-bear. Supposedly, I have royal blood, and last night, I found out that I have magic.” She flung her hands in the air, almost expecting a spark of the purple, sizzling fire would reappear in her palms as she spoke.
“I am so sorry.” Gerwin reached out his hand to stroke her cheek the way he had when she’d been a little girl, and she considered letting him for a second, but shied away. “I promise, things are going to be different from now on. I’m going to tell you everything I know.”
“Different how?” Maray pulled her cloak tighter around her, cold to the bone.
“You are sixteen, Maray.” He looked at her with a mixture of compassion and pride. “Your magic is awakening, and I won’t be able to hide you much longer.”
Maray’s mouth fell open. “Hide me?”
“Maray Elise Johnson,” he said with serious eyes, “you are the next in line for the Allinan throne.”
Her eyes popped open wider. After the last eighteen hours with all the absurd events, she was amazed anything could still surprise her. It was hard to imagine herself as royalty but on an actual throne? She wasn’t sure if she should be intrigued or scared by the thought. But, there was something in her father’s voice that made it feel like he had been delivering bad news.
“Why do you think your mother left us?” he said with a stern face, answering her silence.
Maray waited for his answer. She had made up her mind about her mother years ago, and she wasn’t ready to go back to that dark place and play through it for the one-billionth time.
Gerwin understood, by the look on his face, and finally reached out to touch her cheek.
“I’m sorry that I have to bring her up.” There was something in his eyes she hadn’t noticed before; some sort of admiration. “Your mother was the princess of Allinan, and she left because it was the only way to keep you a secret. She loved you so much. She would have given up anything to protect you.”
Something shattered inside Maray. It might have been the image of an ice-statue that she had built of her mother or whatever had been left of her sanity; she couldn’t tell. She shoved it aside as best she could and bit back the tears that wanted to escape.
“And she gave up our family,” she finished her father’s explanation instead, “and returned to Allinan.”
Gerwin nodded.
“Why?”
“Because she was next in line for the throne, and Rhia was very sick.”
Maray measured his face. There was more. He was wearing that expression again. “Why, Dad?
He hesitated. “There was an uprising, and someone was going to use that moment of weakness to overthrow the crown—”
“And Mom stepped in to help?” she wondered. “I thought Mom hated Rhia.”
“Laura had her differences with Rhia, but Rhia was the queen, and her queendom needed help…”
“Then she left us to help Grandma?” Maray clarified. Somehow, some piece of information was missing that would tie all of this together to make sense. “I thought she left to protect me.”
“She did.” Gerwin nodded again. This time there was nervousness in his gaze. Something Maray had hardly ever seen in him. “Your mother left Allinan twenty years ago to be with me. Nobody even knew we had a baby. You were our secret.”
Maray’s head was about to explode. “If nobody knew about me, why would I need protecting?”
“That’s a story for another time,” he repeated what he had said when he had told her the dagger was a family heirloom. “Right now, we need to get out of here. The Yutu most certainly got the palace’s attention. It won’t be long before this forest is crawling with soldiers.”
Corey
It wouldn’t matter what Corey would say. Heck would never understand it. He didn’t know what it was like to be an outcast. His family hadn’t needed to fight their way up in ranks the way Jemin’s had. And his family also had chosen the right side in the first breach of dimensions. Jemin’s, on the other hand, had messed up big time.
She eyed Jemin as they snuck out the back of the warlock quarters. His muscled shoulder moved with his panther-like strides as he glided along the wall toward the forest. There hadn’t been any need to guess the direction the Yutu had chased Maray and whoever had taken her; big paw marks had been clawed into the gravel, uncovering the dark soil underneath. Besides that, shouts of the palace guard were audible through bare bushes and hedges.
“Are you sure we can just join the rest of them?” she asked into Jemin’s neck as he stopped at the corner. “Won’t they find it suspicious?”
“And what exactly is supposed to be suspicious about Heck and me hunting the Yutu?”
“Exactly,” she whispered. “Heck and you.” She stepped to his side, feeling his body warmth through both their layers of clothes. “Not the both of you and me.”
Jemin shook his head, and she felt instant relief. If he didn’t find
it suspicious, no one else in the palace would. Jemin was about the most careful and cautious person she knew. With everything—except others’ feelings. She fought the urge to stick her tongue out at him for what had happened a couple of months ago.
Heck, unaware of her internal struggle, grinned back at her as if challenged to an adventure. “The two of us is lame. Let’s make it a hunting threesome.”
Jemin elbowed his ribs. “Can you be serious at least this time?”
Heck bit his lip, probably sinking his teeth into another inappropriate comment.
“Let’s get going, then.” She took the lead and stepped out of the protection of the archway into the open space to join the cluster of running soldiers. “The longer we wait, the higher the likelihood they’ll find her before us.”
Jemin and Heck were beside her in an instant. Of course. They would never let her take the lead. This wasn’t so much about her being a woman in a male-dominated court—except for the queen who hadn’t been seen since before she’d been born—but about them treating her like a little sister even though she was a year older than the two boys.
“Are you sure you can keep up?” Heck asked as he jogged past her, and she gave him a grimaced smile as a response. The standard answer to so many of the boys’ questions these days.
She remembered when they had played together as six-year-olds. Heck, the noble, Jemin the traitor’s son, and her—daughter of no one, dropped off at Feris’ doorstep as an infant with a note saying that she was the devil.
Surprisingly, Master Feris had taken her in. Only kids with early signs of magic are said to be devils. Normal warlocks developed their powers around the age of sixteen. But she wasn’t normal when it came to anything, with her dark skin, her untamable mop of hair, her uninvited episodes of magic relief—
Feris had gotten her a nanny, and he had taken care of everything she had needed. The only thing he demanded in return was her loyalty. But who was she not to be loyal to the man she trusted like a father?
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