Parallel (Mortisalian Saga Book 1)

by L. J. Stock

  “Tell me what I can do to help.”

  “You're already doing it,” I whispered, clinging to the back of his shirt as he cradled my head against his chest. Whether he knew it or not, his arms were holding me together, stopping me from fragmenting into a thousand different pieces. I wasn't sure why I was taking it all so hard, not when I'd known it was coming. I'd even gone so far as to prepare myself. Unfortunately, no amount of preplanning could have readied me for the emotional onslaught that took hold of me.

  “Let’s go somewhere out of the way. I don't want people seeing you like this.”

  I nodded into his shoulder as he lifted me effortlessly, holding me against him. He walked as though I weighed nothing at all and headed to one of the back corridors that opened up by the Grand Staircase in the Great Hall. It was another path I didn't use often but one I knew about. I was grateful for his discretion with me, but then, with Damon, I expected no less. He was a gentleman in every way.

  He surprised me when we reached the end of the corridor, carrying me to a small alcove hidden under the stairs in a clever optical illusion that I’d had no idea existed. He sat me on a loveseat, kneeling in front of me, worry evident in his eyes as they found mine. My raw emotions didn't help me conceal my feelings for him. The darkening color of his eyes was almost too much for me to resist and I looked away, searching the room and taking everything in.

  “What is this place?”

  Damon looked around and back at me, a sudden apology on his face. “It's supposed to be a safe room – that's why you can't really see the entrance – but some nobles use it to hide their, uh, indiscretions.” He paused, suddenly realizing what he’d said. “I didn't–”

  Placing my fingers on his lips, I shook my head. “You knew I needed some time to compose myself. Don't apologize for knowing that about me.”

  “Yet, it suddenly feels seedy and wrong in here.”

  He was right in a way. Knowing that the married men in the king’s cabinet used this space to seduce women did make it a little less than savory, but they were just ghosts and memories lingering. It wasn't something I'd witnessed. Leaning forward, I rested my forehead against his and took a deep breath. My hands cupped his neck, my thumbs running along his jaw as I tried to catch my breath and anchor myself. His comfort meant everything. More than I could put into words.

  I felt the moment his breath sped up. It washed over my skin in heavy caresses as his hands found my knees and squeezed. There had always been an attraction between us and we'd admitted that, but there was no way he could know how much I loved him. I'd hidden it, buried it under everything else I was trying to wrap my head around. Right there, in that moment, however, I knew he could feel it, too. I inched forward again, the tip of my nose brushing against his as I took a deep breath of my own.

  Our lips were mere fractions of an inch away from touching when a voice rang out in the narrow corridor.

  “Few know about this spot, sweetheart. You won't get in trouble.”

  My eyes widened at the voice, and Damon and I pulled away from one another, shock and the realization of what we'd almost done worn on both of our faces. Damon, obviously recognizing the baron’s lascivious tone, pushed up from his knees and turned to face the door, blocking me with his body.

  The moment the baron entered with one of the chambermaids, Damon squared his shoulders. There was nothing but silence for a long pause before the baron broke it with a snide tone I couldn't place.

  “Well, aren't you an unwanted shadow, Damon.”

  I watched as Damon's fists curled and released, his frustration as clear to me as the walls surrounding us. Whether I wanted to admit it or not, this was exactly what I'd been worried about. The last thing the baron and I needed was animosity between us when we already had a common enemy.

  “Shouldn't you be at your own home, Baron?”

  “I have quarters here. It was late. Not that it's any of your business, Damon. Though may I say I'm surprised to see you here, when you have your own room to–”

  My sudden rise to my feet cut off his speech. I could see his eyes widen with surprise as they flipped between Damon and me. Accusations and theories seemed to tumble over his blank stare until his eyes hardened.

  “Now I understand.”

  “You understand nothing, baron,” I snapped, while the chambermaid fell over her feet when she caught sight of me. I stepped forward and offered her my hand, my eyes narrowing at the man glaring back at me. I had a feeling that, had he been able, he would have knocked me down where I stood with the power of thought alone.

  “Then–”

  “I was upset. Damon was kind enough to hide me from palace eyes until I had regained my composure. I'm sorry if it doesn't fit into the grand conspiracy you're building in your head, but those are the facts. You, however, can't say the same.”

  “Jealous, Milady?”

  I sensed the rocking of Damon's body as he prepared to launch himself at the baron. As tempting as it was to let him go, I knew it would only cause more problems. The last thing he needed was an inquiry into his behavior, and I wouldn't have it be because of some underhanded comment of the baron's. I placed a hand on his back, and hoped it was enough to keep him calm.

  “Jealous isn't in my vocabulary when it comes to you, Baron. Rest assured that it's far from my thoughts when you're in the vicinity. However, you using my home and staff for your personal amusement does concern me, and I'm sure the king will find it just as disturbing.”

  The chambermaid squeaked, her hand briefly tensing in mine as I spoke. She knew that she would have to be implicated in this as well as the baron, and I was certain she had a family who were depending on her.

  “You may go, baron.”

  “You turn down my proposal and expect me to walk away?”

  “Yes, actually, I do.”

  “Only half your blood is royal, Princess. You'd do well to–”

  He never got to finish the sentence he spat at me. The oxygen hissed from his lungs as Damon slammed him against the wall, his arm a bar across the baron's throat. He let off a grunt of anger before dropping his arm and stepping away.

  “You will do as the princess demands of you.”

  “She's not princess yet, Damon, and don't think I haven't noticed the way you look at her. I'm not the only delusional one here, am I?”

  My breath stuck in my throat as I glared at the baron. Whether he knew it or not, he had just changed everything between Damon and me. I knew deep down there would be no more touches, no more quietly exchanged words as we flirted. He would close himself off to me because he wouldn't risk his position as my guard. Not after these past weeks of being apart anyway.

  The baron had inadvertently taken everything from me in one callous, off the cuff remark that he probably neither believed, nor had the proof to back up. He was lashing out, trying to cut deep. From the way he smelled, he was drunk on mead and was now without a companion for the evening.

  “Damon, escort him out, please. I'll wait here.”

  “Milady...” he started to argue, but saw my tight hold on the chambermaid's hand and nodded in understanding. I'd made him a silent promise to stay right there and wait for him.

  Gripping the collar of the baron's shirt, he pushed him toward the opening and through the space until they were out of our sight completely, leaving the trembling chambermaid and I alone.

  “Sit with me?” I asked, offering her a genuine smile now that the baron was out of my field of view. The rest of my worries would keep until I was alone, but I felt the need to reassure the young woman that was left with me.

  “Milady? I should kneel, or sit lower–”

  “Don't be silly. There's no one here but the two of us, and I won't tell.” Whether my smile did its job or not, she still sat with me, her hands in mine, fingers trembling.

  “You have nothing to fear from me.”

  “I think it's equal amounts of embarrassment and horror, Milady. I don't normally… Well, I wou
ldn't normally… I'm ashamed of myself.”

  “Don't be. What you do on your own time is your business. You've done nothing wrong. We get to make our own decisions. I didn't mean to scare you, but the baron has a tendency to be a little insulting, and I think he's been drinking.”

  “He was, Milady. Quite a lot in all fact. I was hoping that he would pass out. I never intended to…”

  “Smart girl.”

  “No, Milady, it was deceptive.”

  “In the face of self-preservation, it was a smart call to make. If my assumption is correct, you stopped the baron from fighting with someone. Am I right?” The maid bowed her head, her shoulders shaking. For a moment I thought she was crying but the small, humored snort gave her away.

  “You know him better than people give you credit for, Milady. Most people figured you put your strange string in your ears when he spoke, because they couldn't understand how you put up with him for so–” She clamped her hand over her mouth and froze.

  “Can I tell you a secret?” I didn't wait for a response. “While I sat enduring the torture of his company, I would dream up as many ways to escape as possible.”

  “Milady!” The girl giggled and shook her head in disbelief, while I laughed in good humor.

  “What's your name?”

  “Maggie, Milady.”

  “Well, Maggie, you have nothing to fear from Damon or I, and let’s face it, the baron won't remember anything. Even if he was sober, he's too arrogant to ask a girl her name.”

  I leaned my head back against the wall and drew in a long breath as Maggie laughed quietly. When she finally composed herself, she drew in a breath of her own, and I rolled my head to look at her.

  “Milady, I've never heard someone noble speak like you do.”

  “Nobility is overrated,” I responded with a wink.

  “But–”

  “My heritage makes me a noble, but it doesn't mean I'm a conformist.”

  Maggie laughed again and finally started to relax a little. The two of us talked quietly as we waited for Damon to return. It was at times like that I really believed I could do the job and be the person I wanted, and needed, to be without compromising the person I’d always thought myself to be. Maybe the future was manageable after all; I just hated feeling like there was a clock constantly ticking over my head in a countdown. The more time that passed, the more people died. It was up to me to fix that.

  Strange Dreams

  I woke up with a start to the smell of smoke lingering heavily in the air. Looking around, I realized I was still in my chambers at the palace. After remembering I'd made the decision to spend the night there after my mom had left, I forced myself to focus on the smoke getting heavier and thicker with every second that passed. I was almost certain I was dreaming as the absence of panic left a void in me. I knew I should be running around, looking for the fire to put it out, but there wasn't any drive behind my actions. I was breathing normally, even as the acrid smoke billowed around me.

  Climbing out of bed, I moved to the door slowly, my eyes taking in everything around me before I pulled it open. The lack of guards in the corridor outside of my room made it even more obvious this was, indeed, a dream. I would never have been left alone. Even if there was a fire, or a war knocking on the door, one of them would have come in and swept me as far from the danger as they could manage, all on my father’s orders.

  Taking a tentative step forward, I noticed the smoke getting thicker, twisting and cavorting around me, and even though I could still breathe fine, the image of it made me cough automatically. It occurred to me that illusions could be just as dangerous as the real thing if the mind was tricked into believing what it was seeing. I'd heard once that if you died in your dreams, you died outside of them, too. I wasn't sure how that was possible, but I was pretty sure it had something to do with the heart stopping in absolute panic.

  Even with this epiphany, and the sudden realization that I had no idea what was in the palace with me, I kept going, curious as to where the dream was leading me.

  Turning the corner at the end of the small hall, I didn't find myself in the usual corridor that led to the Grand Staircase. Instead, I found myself magically in my father’s wing, and more precisely, in the hall with the histories rolled out in tapestries, in the very spot where I'd shredded the large one depicting the fulfillment of the prophecy. I was standing alone with no guards on the doors while the smoke began to grow thicker around me. I stood alone in my night clothes, my feet welded to the spot while my head swiveled to glance up and down the corridor for a sign of which direction the thickening smoke was coming from. I was afraid to move again, unsure of where I would end up if I did.

  The creaking of a thick, heavy oak door sounded to my right and I turned my head to look into the space, but the flames consumed it. The smoke was billowing from the opening, wrapping around me like restraining limbs, holding me in place. When I tried to move, I found myself stuck in position, my legs glued to the runner below my bare feet.

  I whimpered when I tried and failed to move, my body twisting from side to side almost violently in a bid to escape. How I was able to keep my balance was a complete mystery to me, even as my eyes darted down the hall and, once again, to the room that was ablaze. It was on the third pass of my scanning of the perimeter that I saw the shape in the all-consuming flames. The shape moved and changed like something from a stop animation horror film, its steps too jerky and robotic to be natural as it progressed toward me slowly. My struggles grew harder the nearer it came, my blood running cold when I finally saw the tapestry image of Thánatos step into the light. His body wavered and bent the wrong way, his edges frayed and uneven as though he'd ripped himself out of the tapestry through will alone.

  He opened his mouth, and chopped pieces of thread poured from between his lips, the muffled resonance of a sinister voice lingering behind the sound. He bore down on me in his strange stride, and I shied away, panting for breath as the fear finally took ahold of me.

  “What do you want from me?” I suddenly screamed, sitting up in bed, the scene now missing the smoke and the reassurance of knowing it was a dream. I felt the bed dip next to me, and warm breath washed over my cheek.

  “Easy, Cass. It's me,” Damon whispered calmly. “It was just a dream.”

  “I need to check on my father.”

  “We will in the morning.”

  “No. It can't wait, Damon. Thánatos was here.” I took a deep breath. “In my dream, he was here. He was made of the tapestry and had set fire to the palace. I couldn't move. I just need to make sure–”

  Before I could finish the sentence, I was being hoisted from my bed and handed a small dagger. I would have argued or panicked, but I was so intent on seeing the palace and making sure it was safe that I didn't even think about the weapon I was holding until I was halfway across the Great Hall, following Damon with one of my door guards at my back.

  “Why the armory, Damon?” I asked as I got more of my faculties in check.

  Ignoring me, he turned down the king's corridor, talking quietly to the guard protecting the entrance, leaving him drawing his sword in our wake. I skidded to a halt along the tapestry corridor and stood where I had been frozen in my dream. As well as I knew the palace, it hadn't occurred to me that there wasn't a door there, and as far as I knew, there never had been.

  “Cass, we have to move.”

  “The door was here, Damon. There is no door here. It was just a dream.”

  “No, it wasn't. No one has just a dream about Thánatos. You know he has magic, and he got into your head. In our recorded text, dreams about Thánatos always end badly. Whether it's the dreamer or someone close to them, someone always dies.”

  The dawning of horror had my feet moving again. “How? I mean, yeah, I get he has magic and all that, but there has to be something that triggers it. How else could he get into someone's head?”

  “No one is certain, but some of the suasors believe that there is a catal
yst. From what little we know of magic, we do recognize that he can't just reach out and slip into someone's mind without some kind of contact or connection.”

  “Contact?” I asked, rushing to keep up with him. “How?”

  “We've kept it quiet but we've been pretty sure for a while now that we have an informant in the palace. We've tried every means possible to catch them but they're always one step ahead. Zander helped us with some surveillance equipment. We may have found one of them, but we think there may be another.”

  “Zander knew before I did?”

  I could practically sense Damon rolling his eyes at me. None of us slowed down as we marched through the king's chambers, my robe’s tails flowing out behind me like wings.

  “Okay, not important, but–”

  I didn't finish the sentence; the sword at my throat didn't exactly inspire me to complete my thought aloud. It had come out of nowhere and meant business. I could almost feel the promise of contact in the quarter inch of space between it and my jugular.

  “Stand down and get that sword away from the princess' neck, you fool,” Damon hissed. He shoved the guard roughly the moment the sword was retracted from my throat.

  “Stop. Damon, he was just doing his job.” I wasn’t sure where my calm was coming from, but the armed soldier we’d startled had managed to release me with a look of absolute horror when the comprehension set in.

  “What is going on out here?” Alec asked, his gruff tone even thicker due to the interrupted sleep. “Damon? Why the hell are you down here? Milady, you should–”

  “The king is in danger, praefectus.”

  If there was any doubt in my mind that Alec trusted Damon's judgment, it was eviscerated in that one moment. Alec didn't even question him; he just took off into the king's room after drawing a weapon from one of his men who was standing close. Pushing past the barrier of men, Damon and I followed him in. There was nothing in the room other than the furniture and my father in his huge bed, but we could all see him struggling in his sleep. There was something in his dreams, just like there had been in mine.