Maray gasped. There, strapped onto the bed, lying on top of a lilac mattress and half-covered with a woolen blanket, was her mother. “Mom?” She all but flew around Jemin when she closed the distance between her and her mother in a few, quick strides, not caring about anything but finding out if she was really seeing her mother there on the bed.
She was half-there when Jemin’s hand caught her shoulder and held her back.
“Stop,” he murmured. “We don’t know if this is an illusion or the real thing.”
Maray wanted to cry out for him to let go of her, but she knew he was right. She thought of the many times her mother had cautioned her. ‘Reason,’ she had always said to her when she’d been still with them, ‘gets you farther than emotions.’ She stayed where she was, willingly letting Jemin restrain her. It gave her time to assess the scene better.
There was a tube coming from her mother’s—given it was her mother—arm. It led to a pump which was slowly moving up and down, driven by some invisible force. She couldn’t see what was being pumped into her mother, but on her other arm, there clearly was blood being pumped out of her. Maray’s stomach lurched.
Her mother’s grey-hair-framed face was ashen, as were her arms and bare shoulders in the low, bluish light of the room. There were no torches here, just some cold, artificial light that reminded Maray of a surgical suite rather than a dungeon.
She remembered her mother with black hair like hers, not the way she looked now.
Jemin waited until he was certain she wouldn’t run the moment he let go of her shoulder before he stepped closer to examine the person on the bed. Maray didn’t follow until he waved her over.
“It’s really her?” she asked, wanting less and less by the second for that woman on the bed to be her mother. What had they done to her?
Jemin nodded.
Maray cautiously knelt down on the dusty floor beside the bed and reached out for her mother’s hand.
“Mom,” she whispered. There was no response. “Mom, I don’t know if you can hear me—”
“She probably can’t.” Jemin was tiptoeing around the equipment behind the bed. “That’s where they are collecting her blood.” He held up the red tube. “And here, they must be infusing her with minerals and vitamins and nutrition.” He crinkled his nose as if he was smelling something foul. “Who does that?” He shook his head.
“How courteous of you to ask, Boyd,” a voice, very familiar, spoke from behind them.
Maray spun around on her knees, and it was as if she was looking into a mirror—a sophisticated mirror. There, in the door they had entered through, stood Rhia, looking like Maray. Just like in her portrait, she wore gilded clothes with her dark hair wound in intricate braids around her head.
“And wonderful to finally meet you, Maray.” She stepped closer, moving gracefully like Maray never could. “I can’t see why you still aren’t on your knees, Boyd,” she scolded Jemin with a royal gesture of her hand. “I thought you knew better than to upset me after last time.”
Jemin went rigid on the other side of the bed, leaving Maray to wonder for a short moment if he had zoned out from cognitive overload.
Rhia practically floated toward them, the eerie proof Maray wasn’t the only one with her face.
“You killed my father,” Jemin squeezed out between gritted teeth. “I don’t kneel before you.”
Rhia ignored him, an elaborate smile on her face, the way Maray had never smiled in her life. It was that artificial, sophisticated line of rosy lips that reminded her that Rhia wasn’t a sixteen-year-old girl, but her grandmother—probably sixty years of age. Where was the grey hair? It didn’t belong on her mother but on her. Where was her wrinkled skin? She had sucked life out of Laura; Maray could see it there as she pushed herself to her feet, glancing at her mom as she straightened her spine. If Rhia was going to hurt her mother, she would have to get past Maray. She clutched the dagger more tightly at her side, grateful it was hidden behind the black folds of her cloak.
“What are you doing to her?” Maray demanded, feeling awkward speaking to someone who looked just like her—or she looked just like Rhia…
“My dear daughter has been nice enough to let me borrow her blood.” Her smile narrowed.
“Princess Laura hasn’t given you anything,” Jemin objected, voice dangerously calm. “You have taken it.”
“And I, Boyd—” the queen’s friendly facade slipped for a fraction of a second, “I have given her life.
Maray felt nauseous. She had expected anything but running into Rhia. It was the epitome of everything frightening from her childhood combined with a bad horror movie. Her hands were layered with sweat, and her eyes had a hard time staying open.
“She is your daughter,” Maray said, struggling to believe this was really happening. “That doesn’t mean she belongs to you. You may have given her life, but it’s not your position to take it.” She sounded more like her father than she liked to believe. “Her life belongs to her.”
“Wise little girl,” Rhia stepped closer, almost close enough to touch her. “Just think of it… you and I… all the things we could achieve—” She seemed absent, eyes gazing into a reality Maray didn’t want to imagine.
“I don’t know what it is you’re up to,” she spat, repulsed by seeing herself, hearing her own voice coming from someone capable of such evil, “but rest assured, I will never be part of it.” She held Rhia’s lapis-lazuli gaze. She needed to think, to get out of there with her mother. On the other side of the bed, Jemin had lowered in a crouch. She could see it from the corner of her eye, and she could tell that he was about to attack. The question was whether Rhia had noticed, too.
So fast that he was a graceful blur, Jemin jumped over the bed, sword lifted above his head, and launched himself at Rhia. She couldn’t even tear her eyes off the queen before his sword landed in her chest. At the same moment, a shadow rushed through the room, attacking Jemin.
When she could make out clear lines and features, both Jemin and Rhia had sunk to the ground.
Jemin rolled over and got back to his feet, shaking the shadow off. She didn’t know the face, but she could imagine it had to be Feris. They were struggling back and forth, the elderly man and the young boy, their strength equal as they pushed against each other, Jemin with a bloody sword in his hand, and Feris a kind of staff that was carved from dark wood.
Maray’s heart was racing in her throat. She wanted to speak, to scream out loud for them to stop. Every time Feris lifted the staff and made it batter down onto Jemin, she shrank an inch, and every time Jemin managed to catch the blow with his sword before it could hit him on the head or in the chest, she felt like cheering for him. But, no sound left her dry mouth. She was useless—
Until she remembered that she wasn’t. The dagger in her hand resonated with power as she thought of it, shooting a surge of adrenaline through her system. She was about to step forward and drive her dagger into Feris’ side when she saw the opportunity; but at that exact same moment, something caught her ankle, forcing her to look down. It was Rhia, or what was left of Rhia. Her hand, more foul flesh than skin, was grabbing her foot; the dress, gilded and silky before, was soaked in some ichor that seemed to be neither blood nor any other substance a body would normally expel.
Maray gagged as the stench of rotten flesh touched her nose, and she tried to kick her foot free from Rhia’s grasp.
“You have no idea what you are giving up if you stand on the wrong side,” Rhia crowed at Maray from the ground. Her face was now a revolting mixture of exposed bone, flesh, and skin. Her lapis-lazuli eyes—the only things that Maray still reluctantly recognized as if gazing into a mirror—were hard, desperate, and full of hatred.
“We could be immortal together. We could reign forever—you and I.”
The dagger in Maray’s fingers vibrated violently. She could hardly hold on to it as it wanted to sink itself into her grandmother. She could kill Rhia, easily—maybe—if she stuck the dagger
into her. But could she kill her own grandmother? Could she live with herself if she did it? No matter how evil, did she deserve to die like that—at the hand of her own family?
Maray debated for a moment that felt like eons, her heart racing, knees shaking. The dagger was strong… stronger than she had ever felt. It was almost strong enough to make her do it—almost.
Rhia laughed up at her, no longer bothering to hide her true character. Her smile was a distorted grimace, her voice rough and unmelodious. “You are weak, child,” she spat. “Weak like Laura.”
Maray glanced over her shoulder where her mother lay motionless, blessed to not see any of this, while on her side, Jemin was slowly winning the upper hand over Feris.
“Weakness is to give in when you are being pushed to do something you know is wrong.” Maray pulled the dagger back and shoved it into her belt. Rhia was wounded, she was degenerating there on the floor. She wouldn’t hurt her.
Just as she had made her decision, so fast she hardly knew it was happening, Feris ducked out from under Jemin’s falling sword and threw himself onto Rhia. White haze rose from the ground, sneaking out from under the bed, and together, Rhia and Feris disappeared.
Jemin
Maray’s shoulders were hunched as she stood, looming over the vacant spot where Feris and Rhia had been a moment ago. Jemin watched her in silence, catching his breath after the fight. Feris was stronger than he had expected, but then he didn’t play fair. He had magic, and if he had found a way to make the queen immortal, who knew what else he had accomplished.
“Where did they go?” She looked up at him, eyes wide in shock.
It was hard for him to believe he had ever thought she and young Rhia looked alike. Of course, they had the same face, the same body, yet still they were as different as day and night. While Rhia’s artificial friendliness and her fake smiles were a thin cover for the absolute authority she claimed, everything about Maray inspired affection. It was her calm, deliberate manner when she was being pushed into a stressful situation, her willpower, her strength… her heart. He could almost see it; that was how much love and hope she had been emitting all this time.
“Portaled out,” he said absently, unable to calm down. Something had fundamentally changed for him, and he wasn’t thinking about the fight and that he had seen Rhia for real, her decaying, true face. He had a feeling in his chest that he had never felt before. It felt similar to when his father had talked about his mother.
He rolled his sore shoulders, arms prickling with exhaustion.
Love… He hadn’t thought about love in a long time. The love for his parents, for his best friend Heck, and the love for Corey. A brotherly love almost, mistaken for a type of feelings he didn’t have for her. He didn’t regret kissing her. He didn’t regret the lines of affection he had written to her. It had brought them closer together. And he was almost certain Corey wasn’t heartbroken any longer—at least he hoped.
This feeling for Maray was different—and he couldn’t have had his epiphany at a worse time.
While he was still standing there like a fool, Maray had moved on to examining the pumps and tubes on Laura herself.
“Is it safe to pull this out?” she asked, pointing at the red tube. “I don’t want her to lose any more blood.”
Jemin kicked himself out of his petrified realization that he was in love with Maray, that this was real, and joined her, suddenly hyper-aware of her presence. His adrenaline was high from the fight, but this was an electric current, heating his veins. He reached past her, following the tube with one hand. “I think it’s safe.”
He didn’t wait for Maray to pull the needle from Laura’s arm but bent down and gently extracted the metal pin from the ashen layer of tissue. He had learned Allinan first aid in his training. Handling basic healing potions and all; inserting them into individuals through an infusion had been part of that. A guard of dimensions had to know. They were soldiers in both worlds, guarding them from each other. And all the peace that he had believed in all his life wasn’t real in Allinan, the peace he had been guarding full-heartedly.
Now that he knew he had no obligations toward the queen who had killed his father, it was easy to look at Maray as a girl and not as part of the royal family. It was easy to look at her and see her for who she actually was—
Maray
“Mom?” Laura’s eyes had fluttered open and were searching the room.
Jemin was next to her, waiting with what felt like endless patience. Now that Rhia was gone, his tension had eased. He didn’t stand straight like a soldier on duty but sat calmly on the edge of the bed, hands folded in his lap, observing as her mother was recovering.
The tube hung down to the ground, white liquid trickling on the soil rather than into Laura’s arm.
Her mother’s eyes stopped as they found Maray’s, and she blinked as if she was trying to shake a nightmare.
“It’s me, Mom,” Maray said, close to tears—tears of joy as her mother was awake and alert and, at the same time, tears of desperation. Looking at her, of course, she realized her mother must see Rhia in her disguised shape.
“Mom, it’s Maray,” she tried again and laid her hand on Laura’s, “your daughter.”
For a second, Maray believed her mother was going to jump up and scream, but as she kept staring, recognition slowly trickled over her features, and they softened, a little bit of color returning into her ashen face. “My little girl,” she croaked.
A rush of joy swept Maray away, and she threw her arms around her mother, pulling her half up and wetting her hair with tears. “Mom.”
“I apologize for interrupting, Your Royal Highness,” Jemin’s voice seeped through the haze of joy. “But, I highly suggest we leave.”
“And who is this young man?” Laura said over Maray’s shoulder. “You are wearing a uniform. Allinan guard of dimensions.” She pulled away from Maray but slung one arm around her.
“Jemin Boyd, Your Royal Highness.” He got to his feet and bowed in a similar way to how Heck had bowed to her the first time they’d met. Only, on Jemin, the action looked more graceful, like part of a dance.
Laura observed him with a serious face. “At ease, Jemin Boyd,” she commanded gently, and Jemin straightened up, posture more relaxed than before.
She noted his struggle. She could hardly believe it herself. They had made Rhia and Feris flee, and they had found her mother. She was alive and seemed all right, other than the signs of time-warp aging.
“If I may,” Jemin addressed Laura in his perfect manner, “I’d advise you to leave this place.” He waited a second, but neither Laura nor Maray had anything to say. Both nodded, her mother’s nod light-years more graceful than Maray felt hers could ever be.
“Lead the way.” Maray hopped to her feet and took her mother by the arm, helping her out of bed.
Laura took a moment. With her free arm, she shoved her gown up over her shoulders before she slid her bare feet out from under the blanket.
Jemin hurried to their side, offering his arm to the grey-haired princess.
Laura was weak. And thin. Her collarbones stuck out, dark hollows underneath, reminding Maray of twigs that were about to snap. It was hard to watch. Even with Jemin’s support, she could hardly stand up, and as they pulled her forward together, one step after the other, Maray’s heart tore apart.
The tears from earlier returned, tears of desperation now. She swallowed them bravely, trying to hide her exasperation from her mother, but it was also impossible to watch without feeling a sharp pain in her chest.
For five years, she had thought her mother had abandoned her; now she knew her mother had done everything she’d done out of love for her. She had protected her by leaving, and she had been kept from returning. She had never—in her mind or in her heart—abandoned her. It was as clear as daylight as Laura glanced at her from the side.
“I would recognize you over a thousand who looked like you… my beautiful daughter,” she whispered, savin
g her strength for walking, and Jemin threw Maray a look over Laura’s shoulder that made her doubt she was going to make it out of there alive.
He didn’t ask this time but simply scooped Laura up in his arms, bloody sleeve sliding up along his forearm under her knees. “My apologies, but we don’t have time. You can reprimand me later.”
Maray let go of her mother’s hand, ready to follow Jemin anywhere he’d take them. He had promised to protect her, and he had. He would get them out of there.
“Up here,” he said, breathing faster than normal under her mother’s weight. He nodded at a hidden door in the back of the room. “This leads up to the other side of the palace.”
Maray didn’t question his instructions and rushed to the door to pull it open.
Behind it lay a little corridor, darker and narrower than the one in granite. It reminded her of the corridors to Langley’s hideout. Jemin crossed the threshold, carrying her mother as if she was a small cat rather than a grown woman.
“There is a door at the end of the corridor.” He hastened soundlessly along the dusty space, Maray close behind him. She watched the muscles in his neckline as they worked with every step he took. His caramel hair bounced in a falling-apart ponytail.
It was a long and quiet journey before Jemin slowed down in front of her.
“There.” He pointed at something and stepped aside, opening the view on an iron gate, barred as the window in the dungeons had been. Maray shuddered.
She opened it with more effort than she had expected. Her entire body was exhausted from tension and anxiety—but nothing compared to the exhaustion her mother must be feeling. She held the gate open so Jemin could carry his load through.
He gave her an appreciative nod as he passed her, and again the wordless chase began.
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