by Kaylin Lee
“Oh, not again,” the woman muttered.
I sat up slowly, bewildered but glad to be able to breathe again.
“There goes another one of our backups.” A gray-haired man stepped forward, looking annoyed. “Stop wasting our supply on silly tricks. We have enough work to do without your nonsense.”
“Then call the beasts,” the woman snarled. “This Western creature is a trespasser and failed to show proper respect. Something must be done.”
The man shrugged. “If you insist.” He put his fingers to his mouth and let out an ear-piercing whistle.
An uncomfortable, eerie silence followed. Whatever the beasts were, they weren’t here yet, which meant I still had a chance to get to the bottom of this story.
I rose to my feet. This time, the woman watched me sourly but let me stand. Had she run out of magic? What had that man meant—there goes another one?
“I just want to talk.” I addressed the gray-haired man. “I only want to hear your story.”
The man’s lips tightened. “What does it matter? The beasts will make quick work of you.”
“Please.” I forced the same understanding and respect into my voice I’d used to converse with Hal Dukas two months earlier. “Who are you?”
He glanced over his shoulder. The glittering, pale group behind him smirked at me, but they were silent, like they wouldn’t deign to speak with me themselves.
The gray-haired man turned back to me. “We must finish the Master’s work.” He spoke so tonelessly and with such an empty expression, I got the odd feeling that someone else was speaking for him. “Advance his studies. Control the land. Rule the weak.”
“Finish the Master’s work.” The whispered echo of his words rushed through the glowing crowd. “Rule the weak,” they repeated. “Rule the weak. Rule the weak.” They continued to smirk.
A chill went down my spine. “Who is your—”
The ballroom doors crashed open, cutting me off mid-sentence. Two dozen, shaggy, four-legged creatures rushed into the room. Wolves. Real ones. I recognized them from etchings in textbooks. They were impossibly large, with bright, silvery eyes and white-gray fur. They were beautiful, until I realized they were running straight for me.
They stopped in a perfect circle around me and snarled in unison, their huge, sharp teeth dripping with saliva. The low rattle of their growling made my skin crawl.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice trembling as I fought to meet the gray-haired man’s cold, emotionless eyes. “I meant no disrespect by coming here. Please, forgive me.”
“Forgive you?” The man sneered, the blankness in his face replaced by clear disgust. “Forgive you!” He let out a short bark of laughter. In a rush of wind, he stood within the circle of Wolves, looming over me. “We are not in the business of forgiving animals.”
He lifted one hand.
A vicious force took hold of my neck, and I shot up into the air. I tried to scream, but the force crushed my windpipe as it held me in the air above the man’s head. I clutched at my throat. The force grew more painful. Nothing I did eased the pressure. Was he going to kill me?
The man laughed, and the others joined in, their laughter drowning out the wolves’ growls. “Your Western countrymen were so arrogant,” the man hissed, fury twisting his handsome face. “As though natural riches and magic-less inventions could give honor to barbarians, to animals! Westerners. Centuries of peace and wealth, and such pride, such faith in your own civilization.” He sneered. “Yet we brought your whole world down with a single curse.” He squeezed his hand into a fist, and the pressure on my neck grew unbearable. I kicked my legs in midair, desperate for relief but finding none.
The laughter in the ballroom grew wilder. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I couldn’t breathe. I was going to die. I didn’t care about the stricken story anymore. I didn’t care about any of this.
Wait. A single curse that brought down the world?
The plague.
The plague had been a curse, created on purpose by these maniacs. Millions of innocents had died, and they were laughing?
“We finish the Master’s work,” the man growled. “We control the continent. We rule the weak. You are worth nothing. Less than nothing.” He flicked his hand.
I dropped to the floor with a bruising crash. I pushed myself onto my hands and knees and gasped for breath.
The man disappeared, then reappeared outside the circle of wolves. “You see these wolves? Our pets are more beautiful, more powerful than any human, and they obey us without question. Your life is worth nothing compared to theirs, and they are animals, too.”
Somewhere outside the ballroom, a door slammed. I tore my gaze away from the wolves long enough to notice several of the Masters glancing warily at the ballroom entrance.
The man with gray hair drew my attention again. “How fitting that you may be their pet now. For a few moments, anyway.”
“No,” I rasped between sobs. “Please! I’m sorry! I said I was sorry!”
The wolves edged closer, their growls loud and hungry, but not loud enough to drown out the sound of footsteps approaching in the hall outside.
I looked around for a way to escape, but there was none.
Then I saw him.
A lone man entered through the open ballroom doors. His ink-colored hair was slicked-back. Snow dusted the shoulders of his heavy, black coat. His lined, tanned face held a horrified expression as he watched the wolves advance on me.
What was Praetor Demetrius doing here?
Chapter 40
“Wait!” Demetrius called out, his voice panicked. “Stop!”
The well-dressed group whirled on him in unison.
“Demetrius,” shrieked the woman who’d greeted me. The rage in her voice hurt my ears. “You dare to show yourself among us?”
Somehow, he managed to push through the room without being accosted. Perhaps the mages, or whatever they were, were too shocked to see him to do anything to stop him.
He darted between the wolves and gripped my arm, his fingers tight. But when he spoke, his tone was casual. “I have much to offer you, Masters, as always.” He shook my arm. “Take this girl, for example. She has been with the one you seek.” He shoved me forward. “She knows her.”
“Rapunzel.” The room echoed with the hushed whisper of thirty voices. “Death’s Master.”
The first woman stepped forward, watching me closely. “You know her, creature? The one with the Touch, who can resist her True Name?”
The crowd leaned closer, their eyes growing wide. “She is one of us.” The whispered voices made me shiver. “One of us,” they repeated, their expressions rapt. “One of us.”
I swallowed. “I don’t know what you’re doing,” I whispered to Demetrius. “I don’t know—”
“Zel,” he said under his breath. “You wrote that article. You’re going to help me find her—you and that cursed old woman at the Herald.”
“I can still bring her to you,” Demetrius called out. “I only ask that you spare—”
“You’re a fine one to make demands now, traitor,” the woman growled. “After all you’ve done—seeking to spare your own clan from the curse. Lying to my face. And you have the nerve to ask us for favors?”
Demetrius shifted slightly. “I know you want the killer. She’s been in hiding, but I know how to find her now. I will get her for you. I only ask that you let the Wolf clan continue to be your stewards in Draicia when you reveal your majesty to the continent.”
“We will do you the honor of allowing you to retrieve Rapunzel for us,” the gray-haired man said after a long moment, his lips twisting in a thin smile. “And we will give your Wolves a … a special role in the city when the time comes.”
“Thank you, Masters,” Demetrius said. His grip on my arm grew tighter, belying his obsequious tone. “I will need resources. The woman you seek is quite powerful.”
“Of course she is,” the woman in the violet robe sneered. “She is
one of us. Far superior to you.”
“Yes, indeed. Far, far superior,” Demetrius ground out. “Please, Masters. The … resources?”
The gray-haired man pulled two crystal vials from the folds of his robe and held them out to Demetrius. “One for Rapunzel. It will bind her to us, so don’t think you may use it to betray us. The other will get you into Asylia.” He smirked. “We heard of your recent troubles there.”
Demetrius took the vials. “Thank you, Masters. You are very generous.”
“But you said the Western one would suffer for her disrespect. She’s barely even begun to cry.” The woman pouted. “What will our beasts do if we let this traitor take her away? They’ll be disappointed.” She curled her lip at me. “So will I.”
The man heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Fine, fine.” He removed another small, crystal vial from his robe and flung its contents in my face.
Cold fire burned my face, then spread across my entire body. I froze for a moment, shocked at the intense pain, then I began to scream. Tingles tore into my skin like tiny grains of sand.
I tried to back away from the man, but when I moved my feet, the tingles grew sharper, slashing at my skin like knives. My vision blurred. I could hear my own screams as though from a distance. Why? I wanted to beg. Why would they kill me now, when Demetrius had just convinced them to spare me?
Just when I was on the verge of losing consciousness, the cold fire faded away. My skin stung like I’d been burned. I was on my knees, my head low and my hands over my eyes, though I had no memory of getting into such a position.
“That’s better,” I heard a high, female voice say.
There was another loud snap, and a moment later, Demetrius and I were outside in the night, gasping for breath and doubled over in knee-deep snow on the other side of the river.
After catching his breath, Demetrius hauled me to my feet and shoved me forward, away from the river. “It looks like we’re in this together, girl.” His voice was quiet and difficult to read.
My whole body throbbed with pain. The place where his hands had touched my arm was almost unbearably sore. I pulled away from him and stumbled forward. I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound emerged from my crushed, burning throat.
“They lied to me. They won’t spare my people. You think I don’t know that?” Demetrius shoved me toward a winding path at the edge of the river. “But it will go better for my people if the Masters think I want to cooperate.” I tried to see his face as we entered the forest. “Everything I’ve done, I did for my clan,” he said, his voice gruff. “Hard as it may be to believe.”
I shook my head. My mind was reeling. Those horrible mages had implied they could resist their True Names like Zel. And yet they’d spoken as if someone else—their Master—was commanding their actions. They had created the plague on purpose. They claimed to rule the continent of Theros. And they wanted Zel?
I thought of the shy, kind, blonde mage who had sat across from me so stiffly in her new villa in the Mage Division. She’d been ashamed of her own power and nervous about speaking with me, desperate to keep her three daughters and husband out of the newspaper for their own protection. She was nothing like those monsters.
My skin continued to burn. I focused on trying not to stumble and trying to breathe through my sore, crushed throat. The pain kept my terror at bay during the cold, exhausting journey down the snowy slope. Then I glimpsed a cluster of men in dark, heavy jackets and hats beside a massive black fomewagon, and my terror returned full force.
We entered the clearing. I halted, my limbs clumsy with fear. Demetrius dragged me forward by the arm.
A man with broad shoulders separated from the group and strode forward, his stride furious. Lucien. Even after what he’d done to me, my heart leapt at the sight of his familiar scowl.
“What the—” He detached me from Demetrius’s grip, gently placed me behind him, and advanced on Demetrius. “What do you think you’re doing with her?” His voice was a low, threatening growl that reminded me of the wolves we’d just fled. He took hold of the man’s coat collar and shoved him back. I heard a collective rumble from the men behind me. “She was safe.”
“She found the Masters on her own,” Demetrius retorted, pushing Lucien’s hands off his jacket. “I just saved her life for you, nephew. She’s done nothing but plot against our clan, but I knew she meant something to you, so I convinced them to spare her. Show a little gratitude.”
“Gratitude?” Lucien lunged forward and shoved Demetrius to the ground with a single, brutal movement. His clan leader landed on his back in the snow, looking shocked. “We’re only in this nightmare because of you. Ruby’s only in danger because—” He hesitated for a moment. “Because of you. Because you let that poison into our city.”
The other men crowded forward. One helped Demetrius to stand while four other men, Andrei among them, took hold of Lucien and kept him from attacking Demetrius again. Andrei’s face held a grim satisfaction as he twisted Lucien’s arm behind him.
“I know you blame me for what happened.” Demetrius straightened his coat collar. “You think I’m blind? I know you want revenge.” He approached the now-immobilized Lucien. “But I swear to you, Nephew, I had no other choice. The Masters control everything. If I hadn’t won the position of Praetor, they would have sent aurae in through a different clan. You think the Snake clan would’ve been more merciful? The Tiger clan? At least this way, I had a chance to make things better for our people. They will suffer less because of me.”
“I don’t believe you,” Lucien said stubbornly, but he stopped fighting against the men holding him. “We could have resisted them. We could have found another way.”
Demetrius flicked his hand. “Release him.” The men let Lucien go. “You’ll see soon enough, Luc. Everyone will. The Masters always win.”
Chapter 41
The fomewagon rumbled beneath us as it glided over the deep snowdrifts back toward the road. I sat on the floor of the wagon bed, my knees tucked up to my chin. They hadn’t bothered to bind me—what chance did I have against them, anyway? Lucien sat next to me, his legs stretched out across the floor. He didn’t look at me once, yet he never strayed more than a hand’s breadth away.
The day passed. My throat and skin throbbed with pain. I was exhausted and couldn’t stop thinking of those nasty, smirking mages, laughing delightedly as the gray-haired mage suspended me in the air while I kicked my legs like a fool.
I was furious with Lucien. So furious! He’d betrayed me. He’d stolen a secret I’d been keeping since the age of six. But I wanted to lean closer to him, to gain comfort or to give it. I wasn’t sure, and I was too tired to examine my own feelings.
Weeks earlier, sitting beside Lucien in the Wolf clan library, I’d wondered what he would do if I left him. Perhaps he’d become the cold, distant man from the previous night. He’d lost me, then he’d lost himself to the Wolf clan.
Now we were both lost.
Two men seated at the back of the wagon bed sweated as they used their expellant mage power to maneuver the fomewagon over the uneven snowdrifts, gold sparkles shooting out of their hands as they worked. When we finally reached the cleared road, the vehicle landed with a thump, and the smooth, propellant magic took over. The men collapsed against the walls of the truck. “I’d rather blast ten Badlanders than carry that thing again,” one mumbled.
“Check the cannons,” Demetrius said to him from the front passenger seat. “Be ready for Badlanders. They won’t take the night off just because you’re tired. And once you’ve replenished your magic, give us a boost, would you? We don’t have time to waste out here.”
There were fifteen men in the back with me, including Lucien, and they sat in tense, uncomfortable silence. Despite Demetrius’s warning, no Badlanders attacked the fomewagon. We drove through the night and didn’t stop once.
It was just before dawn when we left the mountains, and the plain around Asylia opened up around us.
We sped along the straight, snowy road and approached Asylia’s north gate. The driver muttered something I couldn’t hear.
Demetrius waved a hand toward the back. “Get ready.”
The Wolves in the back of the fomewagon hunkered down under pallet coverings as Demetrius got back in the front with the driver.
Lucien pulled me under a pallet covering without speaking, his arm over my shoulders—either keeping me in place or protecting me, I wasn’t sure.
I kept my focus on a crack in the covering that gave me a partial view of Demetrius in the front seat.
The fomewagon slowed. Then it stopped.
Asylia. We must have reached the north gate. I’d left my home over two months earlier, and now I was coming back through the same gate as a hostage.
“Import papers ready,” a voice shouted. The gate guards! I opened my mouth to call out, but Lucien clamped a hand over it.
“Demetrius will do this peacefully or violently,” he whispered in my ear. “His back is against the wall. Don’t give him a reason to take more people down with us.”
I glared at Lucien but had to admit he was right. I nodded, and he dropped his hand.
As I watched, Demetrius took a small vial out of his coat pocket.
There was a sudden glow in the front seat, and the gate guard who’d been speaking with Demetrius quieted. “Thank you, sir,” he said blandly. “All your paperwork appears to be in order. No inspection will be necessary.”
Another guard called from behind him. “No inspection? But I’m—”
The light flared again, and the voice broke off. “No inspection will be necessary,” she repeated quietly. “Please, enter.”
The fomewagon surged forward. The familiar sound of Merchant Quarter traffic buzzed against the outside of the fomewagon.
We were in.
Dread seeped through my stomach as we sped through the city. Lucien moved the cover from over our heads but didn’t remove his arm from around my shoulders. If anything, he gripped me tighter. I took an odd comfort in his steady presence next to me, not that I’d admit it to him.