by L. C. Mawson
He nodded. “Yes. I actually met Lady Freya while I was away. She wishes to request your help.”
That drew Seph’s attention to Freya, and she appeared to do a double take as she saw her, though she quickly covered it with a graceful smile.
“My apologies, Lady Freya. You greatly resemble an old friend.”
Freya simply nodded, hoping that it conveyed her acceptance of the apology.
“Are you new to these parts?” Seph asked her. “I haven’t seen you before.”
“I live south of the Crossroads and tend not to travel much.”
Seph nodded, seemingly accepting her answer. South of the Crossroads was home to the old capital, and the castle Freya had been living in. Ever since the prince’s death and the Rebel Queen’s disappearance, the whole area had been abandoned, and was generally thought of as cursed. No one travelled through it, meaning that the lands to the south were pretty much cut off.
Freya wasn’t sure how she knew that information, but she didn’t let herself show her surprise. Perhaps her memories from this realm were returning on their own.
“So, what can I help you with?”
“I’m looking for someone. A child. I have reason to believe that she is in danger.”
“And you want help in locating her?”
“Damon told me that you keep records of your citizens. I don’t want to intrude on anyone’s privacy, but I can’t sit idly by while someone plots to kidnap this girl.”
“And who is this someone?”
“A relative of mine. It’s all very embarrassing, you understand. But I wish to ensure that he does not succeed, and I would be grateful for any help you could give.”
“Do you have a name?”
“A first name and age only, I’m afraid. Though I also have the name of her grandmother.”
“I believe we can work with that,” Seph said as she stood up, moving over to the door. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you to the records room and help you to find this girl.”
“You keep the kingdom’s records in your house?” Freya asked as Seph led them back down to the main floor.
“Of course. I run the entire kingdom from here. We no longer have a palace, so this must act as the next best thing.”
“You haven’t tried to build a different palace?”
“As no one has a legitimate claim to the throne, there is no point. The bureaucratic systems remain afloat because there is need for them, and, if I may be so conceited, because I am very good at keeping things running efficiently. I would rather not test the waters.”
“Have none tried to take the throne by force?”
Seph’s lips became a grim line. “There have been... some who would attempt to take it, but it has not quite yet become dire.”
Freya looked over at Damon. “Is that why...?”
He nodded.
“But now?”
He shrugged.
Seph sighed. “Damon, I know that you have been on your own little mission to find the Rebel Queen’s heir. Though I have no idea why you would think that there was one.”
He shrugged. “I just thought that there must be someone of that bloodline left. And, since the prince never had an heir, it seemed like the best bet for stability.”
“So,” Seph continued, aiming her words at Freya, “he roped you into these escapades of his?”
“We’ve been helping each other.”
“I see,” Seph said simply as she led them down to the basement, which was filled with even more books, along with scrolls of parchment.
“Mistress,” a young man said as he approached, bowing his head.
“Xavier. Could you help us find someone in the population records?”
“Of course, just tell me who you’re searching for.”
Chapter Fourteen
Much to Freya’s surprise, it only took Xavier a few minutes to find that Zoe lived with her grandmother, a servant to another noblewoman in the town.
“What are your plans once you find this girl?” Seph asked her once they had the information.
“I think I can work out a spell to protect her.”
Freya actually wasn’t too sure on that point. She knew very few actual spells. In the end, she was pretty much hoping that magical theory came as naturally to her as maths did. If someone gave her a complex equation without a method, she could usually figure it out.
“I meant more about after you help the girl. What is your plan going forward? To continue to help Damon to find the Rebel Queen’s heir.”
“Actually, I think we’re done with that now.”
“Well, I see that this is urgent, but once you’re done, I would very much like to speak with you.”
Freya’s internal alarm bells immediately started to ring.
“What about?” she managed to ask, thankfully not too bluntly.
Seph smiled at her. “About what your plans are, of course.”
She headed back upstairs, leaving Freya and Damon alone once more.
“Should I be worried about that?” Freya asked him.
Damon shrugged. “I’m honestly not sure. But, for now, our focus should be on Zoe,” he said before leading her up, back out of the manor through the kitchens.
“Right. If those seals break, your aunt will be the least of my problems.”
The town was, thankfully, small enough for the walk to only take ten minutes, though Freya felt very self-conscious in her fancy dress. Not that her scavenger garb would be much better, since most women seemed to be wearing basic, rough wool dresses. Everyone seemed to stare at her and Damon, stepping out of their way as quickly as possible. Every time someone got out of their way, some even bowing, it only added to the uncomfortable mix of unease and guilt broiling within Freya. People acting subservient to her had her in a near-panic. It wasn’t how things normally went, so she had no idea how to handle it. She could handle being ignored and being the subservient, because she knew how to manipulate things from that position. From here? Everything was unknown, and nothing was more terrifying to her.
“This should be them,” Damon said, indicating to a small cottage that greatly resembled the one from Earth, though the details weren’t so modern.
Freya knocked on the door, though she hesitated slightly, unsure of exactly what she was going to say once it opened.
“Oh. My lady,” Zoe’s grandmother greeted as she opened the door. “What can I do for you?”
“Is your granddaughter in?”
The older woman seemed slightly alarmed by that. “Why do you want to see her?”
“Just to talk with her,” Freya assured her. “I’ve heard that she’s a bright girl, and I have made a bit of a hobby of making sure that bright girls have bright futures.”
She seemed to relax a little, stepping aside to let them in. “She’s just playing outside. I’ll go and get her, if you would like to just wait here.”
As soon as she had scurried off, Freya turned to Damon.
“When she comes back, can you distract her while I talk with Zoe? I don’t want to alarm her.”
“Do you really think you can do it?”
She gave an unsure shrug. “The way I figure it, the soul exists in two parts, but there is a connection between the two. If I can sense that connection and... pull on it, I guess, like I did to let Zed see Amber, I might be able to draw her into this realm.”
“How confident do you feel in that?”
“I don’t know. It’s flimsy but... I first used a spell without an incantation by accident. I may not be very well educated in the theory, but magic does seem to follow a specific set of underlying laws. It is, to all intents and purposes, a science. And I have always been gifted with science.”
Damon raised an eyebrow, informing Freya of her error.
“Oh crap, that sounded really egotistical, didn’t it?” She groaned. “I’m sorry, but I have no idea how to say that I’m good at something without sounding like an arse. I... I would start listing my grade
s, but I think that would only make it worse, wouldn’t it?”
“I’m sorry,” Damon told her. “I didn’t mean to imply that I thought you were being an ‘arse’. I just... you have talked to me about science before, but I have never really understood the concept. You didn’t elaborate, once you realised that it would mean starting from the beginning, and I hadn’t realised that it was so important to you.”
“Oh, it’s not. I mean, not really.” She shrugged. “I’m just good at it.”
Before Damon could respond, Zoe arrived, hiding slightly behind her grandmother. She continued to hide as her grandmother led her to a chair, which she sat awkwardly, pulling at the fabric of her dress.
Damon, thankfully, approached her grandmother, leading her from the room.
“I thought I would talk you through some of the options my lady will most likely consider for Zoe,” Freya heard him say as they left her alone with the young girl.
Freya sat down opposite her, but didn’t say anything, choosing instead to focus on sensing her. It felt odd to use her magical senses in this Realm. Wrong. There was too little of some elements and too much of others.
And Zoe was almost a mirror image of herself. Everything was the same but, somehow, backwards, and a little fainter.
Freya concentrated, initially piecing together an image of what her soul must look like on Earth. She had sensed enough to get it mostly from memory, only needing to figure out a few pieces from her Shadow Realm soul.
Though, once she had that image, she wasn’t exactly sure what to do but search for it.
And, of course, she got nothing. She was in the Shadow Realm. How was she supposed to sense something that was on Earth, even if it was connected to the girl in front of her?
“Ummm... Miss?” Zoe asked.
“Just two secs,” Freya said, a spike of anxiety appearing at Zoe’s prompt, making her brain go blank.
How the hell was she meant to do this?
This wasn’t Earth, it was just a mirror realm.
Mirror realm... Not an axis realm...
Freya didn’t really know what the difference was. She knew all of the axis realms, but mirror realm was a new one.
Overworld and Underworld. The Old Worlds: Skyreach, Atlantis, Dwiivan and the Vulcan Plains. All axis realms, with Earth in the centre. They required a portal to get to and were very much separate locations.
But the Shadow Realm wasn’t like that. It was all of the Realms, just condensed and simplified.
So what if it inhabited the same space?
Freya tested at the fabric of the realm with her senses, trying to sense through the background magic, that she had never really given much thought to on Earth. But the more she pushed, the more something repelled. So she kept pushing. Kept going past the veil that was pushing her back.
And then she sensed it. The other half of Zoe’s soul.
Not sure of what else to do, she wrapped her energy around it and tugged.
Zoe let out a gasp, clutching at her head.
“Are you alright?” Freya asked, wondering if she had messed it up.
“Freya?” Zoe asked as she looked around. “Where am I?”
Freya let out a sigh of relief. “Somewhere away from Peter.”
“Why?”
“Because he wouldn’t let me talk to you alone on Earth.”
Zoe frowned. “On Earth? Where am I now?”
“A... A kind of dream world.”
“Why did you bring me here? What do you want to talk about?”
“I... I guess I wanted to know why you wanted to leave.”
Zoe looked down at the floor.
“I could take a guess. Your grandmother said you had been bullied at school.”
Zoe nodded.
“And the fact that you live with her in this realm tells me that your parents probably don’t spend a lot of time with you.”
She nodded again.
Freya sighed, not really sure what to say. If she had been given the choice Zoe had now, she would have taken it in a heartbeat.
The irony of the fact that she now had that choice and was doing everything in her power to turn it down was not lost on her.
“I could tell you that things get better as you grow up, but God knows enough people have told me that for me to stop believing them. I could tell you that you can’t run away from your problems, but why not?”
Zoe finally looked at her with a frown.
“I guess I’m not really being persuasive... I just... Peter isn’t a good guy. He doesn’t really care about you. You’re just a means to an end. Your grandmother, on the other hand, she seems to really care. What would she do if you disappeared on her?”
Zoe looked uncomfortable at that.
“It’s not worth it,” she eventually said. “I know it would hurt Grandma, but I can’t stay.”
“But you’ll never grow up.”
“Why do you care?” Zoe bit back. “Why can’t you just let me go?”
Freya sighed, running her hand through her hair before finally deciding to go with the truth.
“I care because I’ve been you. I care because Peter is just using you as leverage, and I don’t trust him to play fair when he’s done. If I give him what he wants, he’ll cut you loose without a second thought. If I don’t, then your use to him is over.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Then let me prove it to you. Stay here, while I return. Without his leverage, Peter won’t get what he wants. I’ll bring you back after he has agreed to never try to make me a Faerie and to never again mess with the seals. If all he ever wanted was you, he will still take you.”
Zoe narrowed her eyes but nodded in agreement.
“I will return you to Earth shortly,” Freya told her as she left the room to find Damon.
“I’m done,” she told Damon before turning to Zoe’s grandmother. “Thank you for letting me speak with her.”
“Of course.”
Freya and Damon left the house at that. As soon as the door was closed behind them, Damon turned to Freya.
“Now what?”
She shrugged. “Now I guess we wait for me to wake up.”
THEY DECIDED THAT THE tavern was the best place to wait for the spell to wear off, though three pints down, Freya had felt no change.
“Do you think it hasn’t worked?” Damon asked.
Freya sighed. “I felt Peter’s magic leave when I brought Zoe fully here. The curse shouldn’t still be in effect.”
“Maybe it isn’t.”
“But I’m still asleep.”
“Maybe it put you to sleep, but it’s not keeping you asleep?”
Freya sighed into her drink. “Great. Well, that leaves me back where I started.”
“True love’s kiss?”
“Yup. I’m going to be trapped here forever...”
Damon gave her an odd look as she finished her drink.
“What?” she asked him, finding herself blushing a little under his gaze.
“Just... It’s strange to have you here. Without your memories, I mean. And knowing that you’ll probably remember when you go back to Earth.”
“Huh, yeah, I never really thought about remembering. Not that it matters when I can’t get back.”
“I just... Normally, when you’re telling me of Earth, you’re complaining about the two of us.”
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged, leaning closer to her.
Her body immediately flushed with warmth at his proximity, the booze making it far more difficult than usual for her to ignore how he affected her.
She almost toppled off her chair as she was suddenly assaulted by a memory from her Shadow Realm counterpart.
The minotaur charged at her once more and she cursed herself for allowing Damon to convince her to accompany him. She shouldn’t have kept contact with him after he had found her at the castle. But her Earth counterpart was so desperately enraptured by him (even if she was reluctant to adm
it it) and those feelings had seeped through.
So, here she was, risking her life just to spend more time with him.
She threw herself out of the way of the charge, crashing to the ground.
By the time she was back on her feet, it was charging Damon.
“No!” she cried, firing a bolt of pure Energy at the creature, striking it straight through the heart.
Huh, she thought to herself. She’d never managed that in this realm.
The beast didn’t lose its momentum, however, still hurtling towards a confused Damon.
Freya threw herself at him, pushing him out of the way in an awkward tangle.
“Hey,” Damon said after they heard the creature collapse down dead.
Freya felt a little breathless, in a way that had little to do with the fight, as she was sprawled on top of him.
“Hey,” she eventually managed.
“You just keep saving my life.”
She smirked. “You’ll have to think of a way to repay me one of these days.”
To her surprise, his response was to sit up and swiftly catch her lips with his.
She gasped into the kiss, causing him to pull away just a little.
“Did I misread that?” he asked with a frown.
“Not in the slightest,” she assured him before grabbing his hair in order to drag his lips back to hers.
“You!” Freya cried, her voice a little slurred.
“What?” Damon asked with a frown.
“I remembered,” she told him, her tone accusatory. “I remembered you.”
“Okay...?”
“You and me. Kissing.”
Damon looked sheepish at that. “That was what I was trying to tell you. When you’re here... You’re constantly annoyed that we weren’t together on Earth.”
“But we’re together here?”
He nodded.
“So...” She trailed off as Damon shifted closer to her, moving a strand of hair from her face.
“I might be able to send you home,” he told her.
“And it took you this long to tell me?” she managed to whisper.
“I didn’t want to tell you something you weren’t supposed to know at first.”
“And then?”
“And then you thought that getting Zoe here would stop Peter as well as get you home.”