As everything grew darker, it ceased to matter that he couldn’t feel his legs or the lower part of his spine. There was no pain where he was going. He closed his eyes—
“Jemin,” her voice broke the veil just as he intended to cross it. “Jemin.”
He wanted to respond, but his body didn’t work with him.
“He’s unconscious,” Maray diagnosed incorrectly.
“We need to get out of here,” Heck’s voice appeared next to hers.
“We can’t leave him here,” Maray protested, sounding outraged; a tone that made him feel a bit satisfied. She was anxious for him.
“I never said we would.” Heck appeared almost equally upset after being accused of leaving him behind.
“Is Langley dead?” Maray asked, and a hand squeezed his, judging by the gentleness of the touch, it must have been hers.
There was a short pause filled with Heck’s quiet footsteps crossing the room. He would recognize those footsteps for the rest of his life. He and Heck had grown up together; they had trained together; they patrolled the borders together.
“I didn’t mean to kill him,” Heck defended himself from approximately where Yutu-Langley had laid in the room. “I swear. He attacked Jemin and then came for me.”
Maray gasped beside him.
“He was after you.” The footsteps returned. “I can’t imagine any other reason why he turned on us. I mean, he told Jemin how he would have died for his father and how he’d do anything to protect the crown and get rid of your grandmother…”
Heck was talking too much. They had to get out of there. What if those other revolutionaries Langley had talked about got there before they could get out? They’d see dead Yutu-Langley, and they wouldn’t ask what had happened. They’d go for revenge. From what Langley had told him about them, they were the vengeful type.
“How are we going to get him out of here?” Maray interrupted. Focused mind.
A loud noise made him want to tear his eyes open, but they wouldn’t obey. Why wasn’t his healing bracelet working faster? Langley had replenished it, hadn’t he?
“Here,” Heck said, followed by a screeching sound of something being dragged over the stone floor. “Help me get him onto this.
“The door?” Maray asked, sounding full of doubt.
“Would you prefer I carried him all the way to Corey’s?”
Maray’s hand left his, and he ached for her touch the second it vanished. Even if it would burn him—right now, she was his lifeline.
“I’ll get his torso; you take the legs,” Heck instructed, for once the opposite of amused. He knew Heck could be serious, but that was at rare occasions. The last time he had seen Heck without a smile for longer than an hour was at Jemin’s mother’s funeral.
Heck’s strong arms reached under his shoulders while Maray’s gentle touch remained missing.
“Ready?” Heck asked—whom he couldn’t tell.
His back made a low cracking sound as Heck lifted him and slid him onto something flat and hard; the door he had unhinged.
“Okay.” Heck let go, and Maray’s hand appeared on his shoulder. By now, he knew the difference.
“We are going to get you to Corey, Jemin,” she murmured. “I don’t know if you can hear me, but if you can—”
“You can tell him how bad his haircut is later,” Heck interrupted, and Jemin’s arm itched to kick in his direction. He wanted to hear what Maray had been about to say. “A little help here?”
Maray’s touch disappeared, and the door was set in motion.
Maray
“What happened?” Corey stared at Jemin’s still body with horror. “Is he—”
“Upsettingly good-looking for an unconscious man?” Heck offered. “The answer is, yes.”
Corey ushered them inside with a careful glance in both directions.
“You are lucky Feris isn’t here. Otherwise…” Her voice trailed away as she led the way inside the warlock quarters. “He won’t be back before noon.”
Maray pulled on her side of the rope Heck had stuck in between the boards that the door had been made of, and together they managed to bring Jemin inside.
“It’s a miracle no one saw us on the way to you.” Heck said exactly what she had been thinking all the way from the hideout to Corey’s door. They had been insanely lucky.
She had asked Heck what would happen if someone spotted them and reported it, and he’d told her it depended on which someone. That, followed by the face he’d made, had stopped her from asking again.
Now that they had arrived at Corey’s unseen, she could hardly believe it. Also, she could hardly believe that there hadn’t been any improvement in Jemin’s condition.
“How long has he been like this?” Corey asked as she led them to the room which had been Maray’s bedroom for that one night and helped Heck and her to slide Jemin onto the bed.
“Less than an hour,” Heck answered and laid his hand on Jemin’s arm. “Hang in there, man. We made it to Corey’s. She’ll help you.”
“I hope I can,” Corey said, reining him in.
First her hand reached for his wrist, but not, as Maray had expected, to check his vitals but to examine his bracelet, instead.
“Something is wrong with this,” she explained and slipped it off his hand. “Someone tampered with it.”
“Langley refilled his healing spell,” Maray said absently, realizing as she watched Corey’s face fill with fury that in reality, none of them knew what Langley had actually done to Jemin’s bracelet before he’d attacked them. They still didn’t truly know why he had attacked them in the first place.
“Langley?” Corey eyed her with an unreadable face. She wrapped the bracelet in her hand and marched to the other room.
“He’s been in hiding,” Heck informed her, calling after them. “Used to be,” he corrected.
Maray followed Corey, eager to see what she was doing, while in the background, there was the sound of running water.
“What do you mean,” Corey asked with a suspicious look, “used to?” She placed the bracelet on the lab desk between flasks and vials, all looking like a Pharma lab hybrid with a medieval alchemist’s study.
“Long story.” Heck peeked around the doorframe, face cleaned and shirt changed.
“I saw Langley in the forest the day the impostor led her there,” Corey mentioned to their surprise. “Langley might have even been the impostor.”
“Are you sure it was him?” Heck questioned.
“Shabby clothes, uncombed hair, and crazy eyes.”
At her last words, Heck grinned. “We used to find Langley a bit creepy for his crazy eyes,” he explained to Maray.
“It was him.” Corey looked certain.
From the bedroom, a sigh disturbed their conversation.
“Jemin.” Maray turned on her heels and headed back to the bedroom to check on him, ready to find him having gotten even worse, and took a breath of relief when she saw that he was breathing evenly, eyes closed, and face relaxed.
“Can you hear me, Jem?” Heck asked beside her before she could do the same.
Again, there was no response.
“What’s wrong with him?” Maray stuck her head out the door and asked, finding Corey busy with her equipment, and became impatient. Jemin was still unconscious, and all Corey seemed to care about was the powders and liquids in the flasks.
“I am trying to figure out what Langley did with his bracelet so I can actually help him,” she said calmly. “It doesn’t seem to have much healing power left.” She handled the equipment professionally. “But something else is stuck in there—” she turned the bracelet over on a white board with a pair of tweezers, “—some kind of locator spell.” She crinkled her nose as if she was smelling something foul.
“Why would he put a locator spell on Jemin?” Maray asked, not in the slightest understanding the meaning of her question. Locator spell, she suspected, meant that someone could locate him through his bracelet. The way
he had located her through the crystal.
“Good question.” Corey lifted the bracelet and dropped it into a milky potion. “What exactly were you doing with Langley?”
Maray knew it was time to fill Corey in about everything. Especially the part about Feris turning Langley into a Yutu. She wished Jemin was awake. He’d know how to tell her, and she’d listen to him. Maray had seen the way Corey looked at him. It wasn’t just the look of a friend; it was the look of a broken-hearted girl.
“You will not like what I have to tell you,” Maray began, ready to earn Corey’s anger at any moment during their story.
“Let me decide that,” Corey said without looking up.
“Langley is dead. He attacked us after we stayed overnight in his hideout. He was part of a group of revolutionaries led by Jemin’s dad. Initially, he wanted to help us, but for some reason, he turned on us,” Maray got it out as quickly as she could, and Corey listened patiently, still watching the milky solution.
“Langley wasn’t himself when he attacked. He was turned into a Yutu.” It was difficult to say the words, knowing that Corey felt about Feris like a father.
“Feris turned him.” Heck took over the difficult part but didn’t give her time to react. “And you should really come check on Jemin,” he added in the same breath, ignoring how Corey’s face twisted at the painful news about her adopted father. “He opened his eyes.”
Maray was in the other room before Heck had finished his sentence, unable to wait for Corey’s response.
Jemin was laying like a puppet whose strings had been cut. All that was moving were his eyes. Blue, clouded eyes that were searching the room for something. Unable to keep herself from it, she sat down beside him and placed her hand on his. She didn’t care what the others would think and simply followed what her heart was yearning for.
To her surprise, Jemin flinched.
Had she hurt him again? She lifted her hand and checked his skin. Everything seemed smooth.
“Not nice of you to let them carry you all the way from Langley’s hideout,” Corey scolded him from the threshold with a smile on her lips.
“I never said I was nice.” Jemin grinned, and Corey closed the distance between them with a few quick strides of her endless legs. She squeezed past Maray and hugged Jemin without regard for his potentially cracked spine.
He looked better the second she touched him. It was almost as if he was glowing.
Maray bent around her just enough to see where she had her hands and noticed a layer of light between her palm and his neck.
“What are you doing?” Maray wanted to know and was startled by the harshness of her own voice.
Corey glanced over her shoulder, caught.
“I thought that wasn’t possible.” Heck had noticed, too. “You are healing him, aren’t you?”
Corey got to her feet, looking ashamed.
“Please, don’t tell anyone.” She seemed genuinely worried. “If Feris finds out.” A flash of fear crossed her features.
Maray felt a pang of sympathy for the girl. When she had first met her, she’d been so tough, and now, under the shell…
“I would never tell anyone,” she reassured her. “On the contrary. I’d like you to teach me.”
Corey stared at her.
“I told you she is the go-to person for anything magic,” Jemin commented from the pillows, making Maray’s heart leap.
She glanced past Corey and found him smiling up at her, eyes bright and blue, the way she knew them.
“Can you move your toes?” she asked, but instead of just wiggling the tips of his feet, he sat up and curled his arms around Maray, making her heart race. She wanted to pull away and kiss him; just a small kiss. But, with Heck and Corey in the same room—
Behind her, Heck coughed. “Maybe we could get back to the matter at hand,” he suggested, and Maray gingerly pulled out of Jemin’s embrace, careful to keep her hands to herself from now on. She didn’t want to hurt anyone—especially not Jemin.
It took them a while to get Corey up to date. She listened quietly, nodding at some parts, making Maray wonder how much she had known, or suspected for that matter. At the part where they filled her in about Maray’s missing mother and how Langley had protected the secret of Maray’s existence, she did react surprised, leaning across the bed where they had all taken a seat around Jemin.
“He knew?” She combed through her curls with a nervous hand. “He knew about you?” She stared at Maray as if she was watching a nightmare come to life; a similar expression to the one she’d had the first time she’d seen her.
“He came to find my mother when my grandmother—when Queen Rhia—was sick,” she explained, surprised that Corey didn’t react to the news that she was the queen’s granddaughter. She must have suspected it. “And he and Dad made a deal that he’d become the ambassador and be able to travel to Allinan and see Mom if she agreed to come help Rhia. And Langley would keep me a secret if Dad promised to deliver me to Allinan when I came of age…”
“Which you recently did,” Corey finished.
“November first,” Maray informed her with a frown.
Corey grimaced. “Happy Birthday.”
“So what happened that your father didn’t take you to Allinan on the first?” She eyed Maray with a stern face.
“He promised to deliver me if it was to my mother.”
“But no one has seen your mother in a while,” Corey noted.
Maray’s chest tightened. She had, until a day ago, thought that her mother had left her for her career, that she had preferred being anywhere but with her family. Knowing that wasn’t the truth filled her with a deep sadness; the sadness of lost years.
“That’s because she went missing,” Jemin helped, studying her with open concern. His usually so contained emotions were clear on his face, and Maray could almost feel the pain in his eyes. He, too, had a story of lost parents—only, his were never going to return whereas Maray had a chance of rescuing at least one of them.
Over her thoughts, Maray almost missed how Corey froze. It made her look like she was chiseled from smooth black marble.
“What is it, Corey?” Jemin had leaned toward her, hand on her forearm.
All eyes were on her now.
“I think I know where Princess Laura is.”
The room went abruptly silent, not even a breath disturbing as they waited for Corey to tell them more.
“Do you remember when Heck told you about the dungeons?”
Maray nodded. How could she ever forget?
“Feris didn’t say much.” Corey raised a thin eyebrow and pulled on a curl, making it flex down to her shoulder. “But he used to talk about Princess Laura when she was still at court a couple of years ago, how nice she was, how kind—”
Maray’s stomach knotted. She knew exactly what Feris had referred to. Her mother had been wonderful—until the day she’d left.
“Interestingly, he kept talking about her when she had long left from court after Rhia’s recovery.
Maray held her breath.
“I think Princess Laura might be still somewhere around the castle.”
“The dungeons.” Jemin said it first, but from the look on Heck’s face, she knew that he was thinking the same.
“But she was in D.C. until a while ago…” Maray tried to sort her thoughts. “She stayed there, hidden somewhere on the Allinan side of the border so she could continue to see my dad.” How was that possible? She hadn’t been in Vienna for a while… unless…
“They captured her, right?” As she said it, she knew it had to be true. “Langley said Feris found a way to make the queen immortal, and my mother’s blood had been the key. She needs the supply, or she’ll run out of whatever she takes to stay alive.”
At her words, Corey’s eyes widened. “Feris would never do that,” she defended her adoptive father.
“I am afraid that’s what Langley told us,” Jemin said in a tone that was upsettingly tender.”
“To the best of our knowledge, Feris is helping Queen Rhia to remain immortal,” Maray said, drawing upon all of her diplomat-upbringing so she wouldn’t jump between Corey and Jemin. She wasn’t the jealous type, and there was really no place for her rogue emotions right now—especially not if she and Jemin hadn’t put any label on what had happened between them. And Corey needed all the loving support she could get. It was obvious on her features that she didn’t want to believe Feris was on Rhia’s side. “And she wants more than just immortality,” she added, “She wants to become almighty.”
Corey stopped her head shaking to ask how that would work.
“She needs Maray’s blood,” Jemin informed her, and Maray watched understanding settle behind Corey’s ebony eyes.
“And she wouldn’t need Laura once she has Maray,” Corey continued the thought.
“We don’t know for sure she has my mom,” Maray protested. Now she was the one who didn’t want to believe it.
“I fear she does.” Corey smothered all hope. “I followed Feris to the palace when he behaved so strangely after seeing Langley in the forest, and I overheard a discussion.” She kept twirling and pulling on her hair, a nervous habit, Maray assumed. “And they spoke about the prisoner and that they needed to get more blood.”
She looked around, checking each expression for a response, but there were only shocked faces.
“Who else but Princess Laura could they have been talking about?”
To Maray’s dismay, Corey’s logic made sense. “You mean Mom is in the dungeons?” She had to clarify she wasn’t just making things up.
Corey nodded cautiously. “Feris isn’t who we thought he was.” Her face twisted in a mixture of disappointment and fury. “And it’s likely he is responsible for even worse than turning Ambassador Langley and helping hold Princess Laura prisoner.”
Two Worlds of Provenance Page 20