“This is odd.” He bent over to examine the missing stone.
“Maybe we should report it to Scott,” said Jemin, but what he was thinking was that he would rather tear apart the soil before his feet and turn over any stone if it meant finding Maray. It bothered him how important the girl was to him. Her calm way of handling things had gotten to him. Jemin didn’t like when things got to him. It gave others leverage. It made him vulnerable.
“You coming?” Heck was already pulling on the stone under the gap the missing step left, ignoring Jemin’s remark completely.
Jemin didn’t answer, but leapt over the grass and joined Heck. The stone plate moved an inch as they both applied their strength to it, but it didn’t give way.
He peeked into the gap, finding darkness, but also a stripe of light that told him they were on the right track. “There is something in there,” he let Heck know. “Looks like a tunnel.”
“Out of my way.” Heck pulled him up by the shoulder and, the moment he stepped back, kicked the stone with all his force.
Nothing happened besides the disappearance of whatever half-smile had been left on Heck’s face. But as Jemin was just about to curse, he noticed something else: a thin blue line, nothing more than a shade of chalky color along the next step. He reached out to touch it, led by curiosity rather than by his usual caution.
The second his fingertips were supposed to touch the surface, they ran right through it, as if reaching into a notch. Surprised and startled, he pulled back his hand.
“What?” Heck asked and peered over Jemin’s shoulder.
“I don’t know what it is, but I have never seen anything like it before.” Jemin glanced at Heck, whose face reminded him a lot of Heck when he had seen what Corey could do with her magic for the first time.
“I wish Corey was here,” he spoke Jemin’s mind. “She would know what this is.”
He studied the chalky line for a moment. “Do you think it’s magic?”
“Sure looks like it.” Heck pushed his own hand into the hidden notch, mouth twitching a bit as if he expected something would bite his fingers at the other side. “And there is definitely something behind there. Something like a latch—”
“Let me try.” Jemin stuck his hand in beside Heck’s and searched for the item Heck had mentioned until he touched something cold. He grabbed for the metal-like latch and pulled. Surprisingly, it gave way under the light pressure of his fingers.
“What is happening?” Heck withdrew his hand, and both of them stepped aside just in time before the stairs they had been standing on tilted into a straight, aligned surface and dropped inward like a trapdoor.
A dark tunnel greeted them, a streak of daylight revealing an earthy path into the underground world.
“Do you think it’s safe to go inside?” This time it was Heck who seemed cautious.
Jemin looked around, considering. But there was one clear sign they were on the right track: fresh footprints were all over the dusty ground before them.
“Well—” Heck stepped inside. “This is new.”
Jemin followed, ignoring all impulses to turn around and walk away. It wasn’t optional. This was about someone’s life. Not Maray’s per se. Scott had no clue she existed, but he had seen someone out there, and he had been certain that person looked very similar to the queen. Anyway, it didn’t leave another choice for Jemin than to hunt down the girl from the other world and hope Scott wouldn’t execute her on the spot.
“I don’t know what it is we’ll find down there,” Jemin said, frowning at the foul smell that came from the opening, “but I doubt it will be Maray.”
Heck shrugged and took a couple of steps further in.
The tunnel was unnaturally dark after they turned the corner.
“Do you think someone died down here?” Heck asked in a hushed voice and drew his sword in sync with Jemin.
“Let’s find out.” Jemin went into soldier-mode. “If anyone gets in our way, there will have after today”
Heck chuckled. It was good to hear his amusement was back; it eased the tension before a fight.
As they snuck along, Jemin listened for sounds that would give away what they were about to deal with, but there wasn’t much to go on: the sound of running water from the fountain outside, the dripping of liquid somewhere ahead, and then—
Footsteps. Fast, light feet, rushing ahead of them in the tunnel.
Jemin wished he had magic or at least that he had something to light up the space. Whatever outline of the earthy tunnel he saw was not enough to last in a fight.
The footsteps disappeared to the left, and there was the squeak of a door then silence.
Jemin squeezed past Heck, driven by the prospect of finding out who had just fled them. Anything that helped in accomplishing his mission—especially things that wouldn’t involve Maray. He suppressed the thought of her. It was hard enough to forget how beautiful he’d always thought the queen was, only to find out she was cruel. He couldn’t let that happen again. And even though Maray wasn’t the queen, who knew what dark sides hid underneath that flawless shell.
As he made his way forward in the darkness, his arm and shoulder rubbed along the earthy wall. The swishy sound of sand and little stones trickling to the ground was loud in his ears, as was his heartbeat.
“Heck,” Jemin whisper-yelled, wanting to make sure he was still behind him.
Instead of Heck’s voice, a growl replied to his murmur.
Jemin turned, ready to throw himself at whatever was in his way.
Maray
“Not dead,” Gerwin reassured her, “but—”
Maray measured his face, unsure what it was she was seeing there. It wasn’t sadness or anger, but a mixture of both—and a note of nostalgia she had seen several times on the rare occasions they’d talked about her mother.
“But what?” She waited, hands playing with the Cornay ring on her middle finger.
“But missing.” He glanced up from the tiara he had picked up from the floor.
Maray waited with tension for her father to speak, but all he did was turn over the tiara again and again until Maray had seen all the gemstones in the golden frame. “What do you mean—‘missing’?” she lost her patience.
“I know I told you nobody knew about you, but that’s not entirely true.” He laid down the tiara on his knee. “When Langley came to find Laura five years ago, he found out about you.”
Maray gasped. She didn’t understand why exactly nobody could know about her, but her father’s words sounded serious. Serious enough to give his eyes the haunted look she had noticed before he had told her it was time for him to get more involved in his professional life again. That had been a couple of months ago, and it had been followed by the decision to move to Vienna.
“The deal he offered us back then wasn’t the only deal,” Gerwin said, and his tone didn’t sound any better than before, making Maray wonder if she even wanted to find out.
“What was the deal?” she asked, knowing that whatever her father said wouldn’t be worse than being lied to again. She swallowed a lump of anger and put on what she hoped was a neutral expression.
“He would keep your existence a secret if we agreed to deliver you to Allinan when you came of age.”
Maray took a deep breath. “But Rhia might kill me… if she knew I existed, she…”
“That’s why my condition was that if I deliver you, I’d deliver you to your mother and no one else.” He tilted his head to the side and picked up the tiara again, thoughtful. “And that’s also why we remained in D.C.… even your mother returned to the area that would be D.C. of Allinan so she’d be closer to us. We can switch dimensions, but we can’t portal to another continent.”
Maray stared as he explained. She remembered that first time Jemin had pulled her through the fog and how she had stumbled into his back… his muscled shoulder blades under his Thaotine armor… she shook her head.
“If we portal to Allinan, we’ll sho
w up in the exact same spot as where we are now, just in the other dimension. Only, now that Laura has gone missing, all tracks are leading back to Vienna—”
“That’s why we moved here,” Maray concluded. “To find her.”
“I am sorry I lied to you all these years, Maray.” Gerwin gave her that look that told her it didn’t matter what she said; he would never forgive himself for it.
They were sitting at the dining table an hour later. The sun had crossed its highest point, bringing cold November-light into the apartment from a sharp angle in the west.
“If we don’t find her, what happens if you don’t take me to Langley?” Maray poked a piece of chicken and pushed it deep into the rice. They had ordered in Indian instead of exploring the local cuisine.
“See, that’s the problem.” Gerwin set down his bowl. “I haven’t heard from Langley in a while, either.” A flash of irony crossed his face. “He was the one to make it possible for Laura and me to be able to keep in touch and to keep you a secret. At least your mother said he could be trusted. He used to be one of the closest advisors to your mother on her political missions before we met. She trusted him. That’s why I trusted him—” he stirred his curry without enthusiasm, “—and now either he betrayed us, or…”
Her father broke off, and Maray didn’t need to hear the rest. Langley might be dead was what he had meant. They sat in silence, each of them in their own thoughts, until Gerwin got to his feet and went back to the spare room.
“Dad?”
“I’ll be back in a minute,” he called over his shoulder.
It didn’t take him that long. There was rattling and the clinking of metal pieces against each other; then he returned with a box smaller than the one that had the bottom break open.
“Here.” He pulled the small knife he had been holding earlier from it and handed it to Maray. “You’ll need this when we go back.”
“We’re going back?” She took the blade and examined the engravings. The Cornay ‘C’ was there in the hilt, cut into an oval onyx.
“Your mother’s,” Gerwin nodded and said while going back into the box to pull out a braided belt that looked like a silken scarf, but Maray knew better by now.
“Thaotine.” She recognized the material as she took it from Gerwin’s hands to wrap it around her waist. There was a small scabbard that fit the size of the knife and another one that looked big enough to fit the dagger.
“We don’t know what to expect when we go back to find your mother, but I know I am not letting you out of my sight again.” He took her hand that was holding the knife and tilted it back at the wrist a bit before he flipped it forward in a fast motion, making her fingers open. The knife sailed through the air and got stuck in the wall at the opposite end of the room, right beside the window. “You’ll need to learn how to handle yourself in case we do get separated, though.”
Maray watched the knife as it wobbled left and right a bit, onyx gleaming in the sun. She had never thrown a knife in her life, but the way her father had led her hand felt natural. It was almost as if her fingers were itching to get the blade back so she could try for herself.
“I can’t show you much before they start looking for us in this realm, but I can show you the basics.” Gerwin gave her a look that told her that he was going to do whatever it took to make sure she was safe.
Maray got to her feet and crossed the room. “We are going to find her.” Maray pulled the knife from the wall and ran her index finger over the onyx. “Aren’t we?”
Gerwin didn’t answer but joined her by the window. “This is a blade that has been in your family for generations. It knows you are of that bloodline. It will obey you.”
“Obey me?” Maray watched the knife, half-expecting it to speak.
“It will fly wider for you, fight harder—” Gerwin struggled for words. “It will protect you. As will the dagger.” He held up her birthday gift.
Maray took it with a hesitant hand. “What am I supposed to do?”
Gerwin pulled a similar weapon from the side of his belt and pointed it at her. “Attack.”
With a sense of reluctance, Maray lifted the dagger and let the blade hit her father’s. It was a strange sensation; similar to throwing the knife, but stronger. A force ran through her arm that reminded her of the sensation she felt when she had ignited the purple crystal in Corey’s lab.
“What’s happening?” She watched how she lifted her hand and pulled the dagger before she let it crush down on her father’s again… and again… and again.
Gerwin smiled, pleased with the development. “No need to worry,” he said as Maray kept hitting her dagger against his own weapon. “The dagger and you are getting acquainted.”
Maray tried to stop, but the dagger seemed to have a mind of its own. “It’s making me do this,” she exclaimed as she dropped the knife in her other hand and used both hands to force the dagger to stop.
Gerwin didn’t interrupt or seem concerned by the rogue blade.
The sound of metal on metal rang loudly in her ears; a sound she wasn’t used to, only feeling a familiarity because of her recent encounter with Jemin and Heck fighting the Yutu in the tunnel. Maray swallowed and noted that the Yutu hadn’t had a sword. Where had the sound come from—
The dagger in her hand got stronger with every blow it delivered on the opponent’s blade, making Maray’s breathing heavy.
“Focus,” Gerwin calmly said, pulling back a little as the stakes became greater. “You are the blade’s master. Not the other way around.”
It took all her effort to manage to control the weapon, but her father’s face helped. He had carried her through the difficult times when her mother had left. He had been there for her—as he was now.
Panting, Maray loosened her fingers and dropped the dagger.
He had also lied to her for years. He had let her believe her mother didn’t care about her. He had—
Her hand twitched as she felt the urge to pick the weapon up again.
“This was all right for a start,” Gerwin commented, eyeing her carefully as she glanced back and forth between the dagger and him.
Maray knew that she wasn’t a violent person. Diplomacy had been what her father had brought her up with. She was one to negotiate first before she would ever consider hurting anyone. But something in her shimmered through; a darker side; a side that had enjoyed each strike of the blade.
Eventually, her eyes locked on her father’s. “What’s happening to me?”
The sensation wasn’t leaving her body; it was almost as if she had lost control for a moment there.
“No need to worry,” Gerwin repeated as he picked up the blade for her and pushed it into the sheath on her belt.
His words didn’t calm Maray; neither did the dangling dagger on her hip. That feeling of darkness was there, right where it had been a minute ago.
“It’s completely normal to be overwhelmed by the power of your family weapons.” His eyes showed sympathy, but his mouth was set into a line that seemed to be holding back words he was struggling to keep to himself. “It takes practice… and time. Time we unfortunately don’t have.”
“Did Mom use these?” Maray sat down on the floor by the window and studied the white wall on the other side of the cobblestone backyard. She supposed it was part of the next apartment building—it was difficult to tell in the mosaic structure of the historic city. To her, for now, it was just something to stare at so she wouldn’t have to watch her father as he told her about her mother—the mother he had let her believe had simply taken off because she’d been tired of her.
“Your mother carried them but never used them—” he broke off once.
His hesitation made Maray turn her head and face him. Something was going on behind his eyes. It reminded her of the way Jemin looked when he composed his face.
“Never?” Maray inquired, wondering if she really wanted to know the answer.
“Only to defend herself.” He put his own blade ba
ck in his belt and sat down beside her. “Laura would never harm anyone. It’s not in her nature. Sadly, that particular virtue was seen as a weakness by Rhia.”
That was how Maray remembered her mother before she’d disappeared.
“When, a couple of months ago, I got a message from your mother to meet her at the castle in Vienna—the Vienna of Allinan—it wasn’t Laura who was expecting me on the castle grounds but Rhia. Rhia with your mother’s dagger in her hand, not looking like the old woman she was supposed to be, but looking just like a thirty-five year old version of herself… looking like—”
“Looking like an older version of me,” Maray finished.
Her father nodded absently, eyes staring into the past. “She threatened me, telling me it was time to disappear from Laura’s life. It was a heated argument, and if that boy hadn’t interrupted her, she might have killed me on the spot—”
Jemin, Maray thought, and her heart beat a little faster. Jemin had saved her father.
“He was ready to throw himself in-between me and my attacker.”
“Until he found out that it was the queen.”
“How do you know?” Gerwin returned to the present with surprise.
“Because there have been only three people who have seen the queen in the past twenty years: her three closest advisors. Plus one fourth person—” a sort of pride rose in her chest when she managed to fill the blanks in the story for her father. It made her feel more a part of this and less a spectator, “—Jemin Boyd.”
“Boyd. That’s the name she used when she told that boy to make himself scarce or she’d… what were the exact words… erase him like his father.”
That explained why Jemin was afraid of the queen. She had threatened a man with a dagger. She had threatened him and admitted to killing his father. It made her look not quite as radiant and dignified as she did in the picture. Maray felt a pang of sympathy for Jemin. And all of a sudden, his hostility toward her made sense.
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