Things had changed since those innocent childhood days. Jemin had lost his smiles when his father died six years ago, and a little while ago, he had become so introverted she had started to wonder if he was still the same person. At least now she knew it had nothing to do with what had happened between the two of them, but with him seeing the real-life queen—and receiving a death threat from her.
Jemin had the courtesy to keep pace with her even though she could see he was dying to run at his usual speed—which was at least double of what they were doing now.
“What if we are too late?” he asked, and his hand grabbed for the hilt of his sword; a subconscious action he always showed when he was worried he could run into obstacles. She had seen similar reactions in Heck. Whether it was a natural instinct or part of their training as guards of dimensions, it was hard to tell. She had seen grown men who had been slow to draw when their lives had been at risk; and here they were—Jemin and Heck—two teenage boys, ready to put themselves at the front line of any conflict as long as their favorite weapons were involved.
“It was your plan to give her up to Scott,” she reminded Jemin, managing to keep her breathing even and at least keep the appearance that she was level with his stamina. “If we are too late, the only thing that can happen is that he already knows.”
“And that he finds out you knew about her and didn’t tell him,” Heck interjected over his shoulder.
They crossed a small meadow between two gravel roads, taking a shortcut toward the shouts in the forest.
“No way this can happen.” Jemin forgot his gallantry and sped up, passing Heck in only a couple of strides.
When they finally reached the clearing in the eastern part of the forest, Corey had fallen way behind. Basically, Jemin and Heck were already in deep discussion with Scott, who was pointing in different directions, shouting commands at individuals amidst his conversation with the boys. To her surprise, he wasn’t the only high-ranked in the clearing. Master Feris was standing right next to him, face dark as if he himself was a thunderstorm.
She slowed down, catching her breath, and approached the group cautiously.
“Corey!” Feris called the second he spotted her, and Jemin and Heck turned their heads, acknowledging she had finally made it.
Sheepishly, she stepped closer. She was aware that a warlock had no place in a battlefield—at least that was what Feris always said. And now he was there himself—
“Master Feris,” she greeted and took her usual place at his left shoulder, half a step behind him.
“What are you doing here?” Feris asked in his constantly surprised manner.
Corey, using every second that passed as he spoke to search for an adequate reason she would be in the clearing, shook her head the tiniest bit at Jemin and Heck, who would gladly leap to her defense. Another advantage—and disadvantage—of having two brother-like friends. Heck winked, acknowledging he had understood, while Jemin simply continued watching how Scott’s and Feris’ faces changed.
At least she hadn’t arrived together with them. This way, they could use their guard of dimensions excuse. Anyone else would have not cared about her showing up. Why did it have to be them?
“I heard the noise and was curious,” she said, knowing that it was in line with what Feris would expect of her. “If anything were to happen to the queen, I wanted to be close by so I could help if needed.”
Feris’ expression changed from curious-surprised to curious-pleased.
“Always putting the crown’s well-being before her own.” He ruffled her hair the way he had when she was seven.
Heck’s forehead crinkled as if he was suppressing a grin.
“Anything else you need us to take care of, Commander?” Jemin asked in his soldier-tone, eyes scanning the branches to their left.
Scott dismissed them, and both boys trotted toward the forest without a look back.
Corey felt a plunge in her chest. Again, she was the one to be left behind. It had been like that ever since Jemin and Heck had taken their oath. Ever since they had secrets they didn’t share with her the way they used to. They went on missions together for days, and she never knew if either of them would return. And she, powerful as her magic may have been, was an observer to the action in their lives.
She shook the feeling and returned to being the brave girl everyone thought her to be. “How can I help, Master Feris?”
Feris waited for Scott to march off and instruct the next group of guards, then gave her a serious look.
“What’s the real reason you are here, child?”
She knew there was no way of hiding something was wrong, so she’d better come up with a better excuse.
“I heard about the attack,” Corey admitted part of the truth—an innocent part that wouldn’t hurt anyone, “and I thought I could be of use to the soldiers… you know… heal them if they needed it…”
“And—” Feris waited for her to finish what she was about to say but had no idea she was going to say it.
“And I heard the queen was seen in the palace gardens—” She bit her tongue. What was she doing? She had no proof of her words other than that she knew Maray must be somewhere out there in the forest, and Maray looked like the queen. So wasn’t it better that if they caught her, people believed she was the actual queen?
“Where did you hear that nonsense?” Feris’ eyebrows arched up until he looked curious-angry.
Corey was about to come up with another lie that would put her in an even worse situation, but as she sucked in a breath, hoping something would come to her, she spotted a shape behind a nearby bush. It looked human—a dark silhouette, pressing against the trunk of a bare tree, motionless but definitely alive.
“Master Feris,” Corey absently said as she tried to get a better view of the figure, “I think we have bigger problems than that.”
The ‘curious’ in all of Feris’ looks dropped from his face for once as he followed her gaze. “That’s impossible.”
Maray
The buzzing noise of cars was the first thing she noticed. It was calming compared to the sound of the soldiers’ shouts as they combed through the forest behind them. White fog had surrounded her for a moment before she stepped onto the same spot she had a second ago, and her father was right beside her.
“Welcome back,” he said with a smile then beckoned her to follow him.
They were close to a gate that unmistakably led to a street. Maray walked behind her father as they stepped out of the trees that were the seam of the forest and mingled with the herd of tourists outside of the cover of the branches.
It looked similar to what she had observed before the whole spectacle had started, before she had walked into that tunnel, before she had met Jemin and Heck, and been made aware of the existence of giant wolf-bears. Before she had learned she had magic.
“I guess it’s best if I don’t even ask how you are able to portal us through dimensions.” Maray fell in step with her dad as they passed through the gate and ended up on a wide street. Heavy traffic told her the rush hour wasn’t over.
“There is no longer a good reason not to tell you.” Gerwin put his hand on her shoulder and steered to the next bus stop.
As they got onto a full red-and-white vehicle, Maray’s cloak got caught in the closing door. She pulled nervously as the beeping of the door made the other passengers throw her angry glares. She gave them an apologetic smile and turned to her father, who was as comfortable in his out-of-place clothes as Maray.
“Two stops,” he informed her and glanced over his shoulders. “Do you miss D.C. morning traffic?”
Maray shook her head. They had spent hours in columns of cars, trickling like caramel syrup through the oversized and yet never wide enough streets into the city. Maray looked down awkwardly.
When it was time to get off of the bus, Gerwin grabbed her arm and pulled her through the crowd of people who were trying to get onto the bus before anyone had the chance to exit.
/> “Nobody followed us,” he said as they made it to the narrow street that led up to their apartment. His tension didn’t seem to loosen.
“So, are you going to tell me?” Maray reminded him of the question she had asked before they had exposed themselves to the craziness of public transport in the morning.
“I am Ambassador to the Crown of Allinan,” he said as if he was telling her about a new ice-cream flavor. “I have a key.”
They were almost at the small school at the corner near their street. Parents were dropping off their little ones, waving and kissing them goodbye. Gerwin checked over his shoulder several times on the short way up the hill, always keeping up the pace.
“A key?” Maray wondered if there were physical artifacts that could actually open a portal to Allinan.
“It’s more like a spell. Magic, accessible to me when I need to travel between dimensions.” Gerwin sped up even more as they turned onto their street.
“You have magic?” It was the only conclusion Maray could draw from his words, but Gerwin shook his head.
“I am not the gifted one in the family,” he said with an expression that reminded her of the one he wore when he talked about Rhia. “The magic is stored in this.” He held up his arm, exposing a thin bracelet, similar to Jemin’s and Heck's on his wrist.
“So you don’t have magic,” Maray concluded. “Does Mom?”
Gerwin frowned as he unlocked the gate and let them into their apartment building. “Your mother has many things—but not magic.”
They rushed upstairs, on foot this time, instead of waiting for the elevator.
“Who does, then?”
“Your grandmother.”
They stepped inside, Maray feeling safe for the first time since she had encountered a sword-fighting Jemin. While she pulled off her cloak and sped to her room to find a shirt that wouldn’t be as revealing, Gerwin dove into the closet in the kitchen, searching for something.
“Have you seen the brown box?” he called.
Maray, head stuck in a leaf-green sweater, started walking back toward the kitchen as she pulled it down.
“Which brown box? There are like twenty of them in the spare room.” She joined him in front of the closet. “It would be easier if you told me what you are looking for.”
“Remember that dagger I gave you yesterday?”
How could she forget? Had it only been yesterday? It felt as if the whole world had changed overnight. As a matter of fact, it hadn’t. But instead of one world, now there were two.
“It’s on the table where I left it,” she informed her father and glanced at the memory of a happier moment. The dagger was there, sitting neatly packaged in the colorful gift-box.
“Well, there is plenty more where that came from.” Gerwin dropped the search of the closet and headed for the spare room. “It was in another box with stuff from Laura—” Maray was surprised to hear her mother’s actual name from his mouth, “—all heirlooms.”
There was a crash, and Maray rushed after her father, calling as she was on her way, “Are you okay, Dad?”
She found him hovering over a box that must have had the bottom fall open as he’d lifted it. A bunch of silvery items were strewn across the floor. Maray joined him on the floor and picked up a ring with a large C engraved on top.
“C,” Gerwin said as he noticed what she had in her hand, “for Cornay.”
“Cornay?” Maray twisted it between her fingers and was oddly reminded of the purple crystal that had resulted from Corey’s magic blood test.
“Your real name. Maray Elise Cornay.” He looked at her, eyes searching hers for something. “Princess of Allinan. And next in line for the throne.”
He waited for Maray’s reaction, but there was nothing she had to say right then. Her mouth was dry, her hands sweaty, fingers slipping on the silver of the ring.
Gerwin ran his hands over the floor, gathering the rest of the strewn items, and lifted them onto the free space on the couch.
“What’s all this?” Maray finally asked as Gerwin didn’t continue talking.
“Crown jewels, weapons, seals.” He said it as if it wasn’t worth mentioning.
“Mom is the queen.” Maray leaned her back against the couch as she sat down on the floor.
She was expecting to hear some fairytale story of how heroically her mother was leading a queendom, but Gerwin’s face turned bitter. “Your mother has been running for the past five years.”
Running? “Didn’t you say leaving us was the only way to protect me?”
“It was the only way to protect both of you.” He looked far away, like in a different time. “Laura and I were never supposed to get married. Twenty years ago, when she chose me over her crown, she upset Rhia—”
“And you don’t want to upset Rhia,” Maray finished for him. It was one of the few things she’d heard about her grandmother.
“You don’t,” Gerwin confirmed, and sadness crossed his face.
“What did Rhia do?” It was hard to think of Rhia as her grandmother when she had never even seen a picture of her before her visit to Allinan. She was the bitter ghost in her mother’s past that seemed to make their lives difficult even when she wasn’t around any longer—at least that was what her parents had led her to believe.
“When Laura and I fell in love, Rhia wasn’t happy. She threatened to disown her, even exile her. An Allinan princess with a commoner—a commoner from the other dimension.
“You are not from Allinan?” Maray burst out before she could stop her curiosity. Now that her father was finally speaking, she had to take everything she could get.
“I was born and raised in D.C. My parents were your real grandparents, and they loved you.” A smile slipped within the sadness of his eyes. “Even if they died years ago, everything about them was the truth… whereas… everything about your mother and me was not the truth.”
Maray slipped the ring on her finger absently as she listened.
“When I met her, she was on a mission to see Ambassador Langley in D.C.—our D.C., the one you remember. I always knew something was special about her, but she didn’t tell me about Allinan until a long time after we started dating. And when she told me one day that she might never come back, I told her I would do anything—even cross worlds if that was what would keep us together.”
He picked up a small knife that seemed to be from the same family of ritual weapons as the dagger, and pulled it out of a leather-like shaft. Thaotine for all Maray knew.
“And when I proposed to her, and Rhia threatened to exile her, Laura gave up her crown and came to live with me instead.”
“She ran away,” Maray rephrased, and Gerwin nodded.
“She did. And it was the best thing she could ever have done. It meant that when we had you, Rhia didn’t get to poison you with her intrigues.”
“How did Rhia find us when she was sick?”
“Langley found us.” Gerwin shifted uncomfortably. “And he made us an offer: If Laura came back to reign in Rhia’s place until she was back to health, I could become Ambassador in his place and travel back and forth to see her. She would be forgiven.”
“Forgiven for running away?”
“Forgiven for falling out of line and denying Rhia the chance to pass her throne on to her one daughter. For not giving Rhia an heir that could reign if Laura never took her place.”
“But they never learned about my existence—”
“Because Laura took off that same night with Langley and never looked back.”
“And you continued to travel back and forth so Langley would never feel the need to return.”
“You are a smart girl, Maray.” Gerwin put his hand on her forearm. “I should have shared this with you long ago. It would have helped you deal with your mother’s absence.”
Maray fell silent. It may or may not have helped her. Her father had said that her mother had been running for five years and that she had gone back to help Rhia out during the upri
sing he had told her about in the forest and be forgiven for marrying him. Something didn’t add up, and now only one question was burning on her tongue. Had she been running, or— “When you say I’m the next in line for the throne, does that mean Mom is dead?”
Jemin
Jemin led the way through the underbrush, sword in hand. Somehow he was glad Corey hadn’t heard most of Scott’s and Feris’ words.
“Do you think he is serious about that?” Heck questioned.
Jemin didn’t have the answer to it, but he knew what his duty to the crown meant—even if that exact crown had threatened his life and had executed his father.
“If we find her, I guess we’ll have no choice.” He was glad Heck couldn’t see his face. Conflict must have been written all over it.
“Then let’s not find her.”
Of course Heck would find a way to make this easy. “Don’t find her and then what?” Jemin shot Heck a dark look over his shoulder. “You can walk on to your next mission, but I—”
He didn’t need to finish his sentence. Heck knew what would happen. While Heck would have the benefit of the doubt, Jemin would be found guilty no matter what. His father and his intrigues had made sure of it. He would rot in a cell. Or worse: he might be exiled.
There was nothing for him but his duty to the crown and Heck and Corey. And they were both with the crown, so if he got exiled, he would lose them, too.
“Let’s find her, then.” Heck put a hand on Jemin’s shoulder as they stepped out of the underbrush on the other end of the forest.
Before them was a fountain. It looked Greek or Roman, with an arch across the back of it and a statue of a half-naked woman pouring water from a jar. He had seen it so many times that he knew every rosette in the stone of the arch, and he knew every stair on the side that led to the little hill behind it.
“What do you see?” Heck quizzed in a whisper as he felt Jemin tense.
Jemin pointed. There, behind the statue, one of the steps was missing.
Before Jemin could stop him, Heck launched himself over the grass on the lowest of the stairs and landed quietly like a panther.
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