As more and more pictures of her floated by in one particular hallway, I piped up in a quiet voice in case someone else was nearby. “Your Highness, who is this girl that I keep seeing?”
“Ren,” Xavier said barely above a whisper. “My half-sister.”
I let that soak in as Xavier led us to a small door at the end of our long hallway. It seemed to be a door built for someone more of my stature than someone of Xavier’s. Or any normal human being for that matter. It seemed to be an average looking door that I would have guessed was some sort of servant’s entrance rather than the passage to a prince’s set of rooms. The only thing that seemed different about it was there was no doorknob. In its place was instead a small, metal panel etched with old, faint leaf designs.
The prince dropped my arm to retrieve a large, antique key from around his neck. It appeared to have rusted thoroughly a long time ago, but the emeralds in the end were unmistakable, shining brightly from what I assumed to be use. Xavier stole a quick glance behind him to assure the hallway we’d traveled through was clear, and inserted the key into the ancient lock with his left hand while placing his right hand against the metal plate above it.
Immediately, I felt the heat radiate from Xavier’s hand and the metal underneath it. The little plate began to turn red, then orange. And then, a yellow from a brilliant sunset, yet his hand seemed unharmed. As the very edges of the metal visible beyond Xavier’s hand began to turn scalding white, the prince turned the key with his other hand. I heard an audible click as the cogs of the lock groaned, and Xavier pulled the door open in front of us as the metal was still molten and glued to his hand.
He bowed and gestured to me. “Ladies first.”
I stared at him hesitantly, not necessarily fearful of his power but definitely curious, before pivoting to face the tower of old wooden stairs that stood before us through the tiny doorway.
“Wait a minute.” Luke whispered just loudly enough for us all to hear.
When we turned to him, he held one solitary finger up to his mouth and rotated around to the hallway we’d come down. A feeling of nervousness arose inside of me until I realized that Luke had not drawn his sword, and then I knew that whatever he was hearing was not someone who posed a threat. I tuned into any presences that could be near us, beginning to be very comfortable with this kind of magic.
I immediately felt the familiar presence of Princess Mira. I had sensed her before, and so it was her name that occurred to me first rather than the different components of her presence like usual. It made me excited to think I was starting to become experienced with this sensing ability.
As if on cue, Mira ducked out from under yet another tapestry covered with Queen Jasmine and Princess Ren. Her violet eyes seemed happy to see us until they glazed over at the sight of our princely companion. She crossed her arms tightly and one of her hips jutted out, suddenly reminding me that this girl really was only eighteen even if most of the time she acted twice that age. Her doll-like face crimped into an unbecoming frown, before dipping into a shallow curtsy. “Your Highness. A pleasure, as always.” Her words dripped with hatred.
Prince Xavier’s eyebrow quirked, and that street rat grin of his came back. He gave her a fancy bow. “My alabaster rose. My heart is warmed at the sight of you.” If Mira’s words were dripping, Xavier’s were flooded.
“Ah, lovely. The lovebirds are reunited.” Luke’s eyes rolled, his words loud enough for Rachel’s ears alone although I overheard.
She stifled a giggle as she reached out with her exceptionally wide arm span to herd us all toward the tiny door. “Now that we’re all here, I think it best that we continue this conversation upstairs.”
Xavier chuckled and offered his arm to Mira, who turned up her nose and headed into the tower of stairs on her own. The rejection rolled off Xavier like butter, and without even a blink, he turned and offered the same arm to me.
Although I knew I could climb those stairs perfectly well on my own, I could feel Rachel’s eyes boring into the back of my head. I was learning fast on this trip that, judging from the looks of Xavier and Mira’s disdain for each other, we would have to negotiate more than we had planned. Those two had much more of a history than I had known before, but nothing could go wrong. So, no matter how little it seemed, I took his arm and allowed him to lead me up the stairs.
They were that old-fashioned type of stairs, which seemed to be twice as high as they were long. My tiny foot could barely fit comfortably on the squeaky wood while I was sure my boots were the smallest in this party. I watched Xavier’s feet in particular since he was right next to me, the corridor barely wide enough for us both. Only the balls of his feet could fit on these stairs.
As we went on, I began to get winded because of the height of each step. While everyone else seemed to trek up them just fine, each stair came up to the middle of my shins due to my tiny legs. Everyone else was just above their ankle, so while they were still taller than normal steps, they weren’t as out of the ordinary for them.
I tried not to let my huffing and puffing come to Xavier’s attention, but by the time we reached the top of the tower, I had given up. I was gasping for air when Xavier used his antique, rusted out key on the door at the top as well. This door was equally, awkwardly undecorated for housing the rooms of a prince. At least this one had a normal doorknob.
When the door opened, my eyes became like sponges to everything inside. It was not a suite of rooms as Prince Frederick or Princess Mira had. It was one small room. The walls were so filled with different decorations and knick-knacks that one could barely see the collaborative mix of building material underneath. There was a tiny bed in one corner. The same size as the cot I had occupied while hiding out in the livery even though the comforter was of a thick, rich green material.
There were books of every type littered around the room, on the floor, on shelves, and on the one small desk. Drawings of different lines and angles were strewn across the desk along with a couple of plants, one scorched to a crisp. It was now only a limp, blackened skeleton of what was once a Mineraltin nut plant. I recognized the intact chocolate colored nuts on the living plant next to it as ones that used to find their way to Lunaka, though they were always out of my price range.
As my eyes registered the ashy leaves, they began to pick out similar scorch marks around the room. A round one next to one of the book shelves maybe four feet off the ground. Another one just above his tiny bed. A third one was spread into several black dots along the wooden shutter for the single window. A long, burnt slash stretched from the ceiling to the floor behind us as I turned to look around. It finally hit me. Prince Xavier was a pyromage. Fire magic.
Right next to that slash, untouched, was a tapestry with people I hadn’t seen yet while traveling through the castle. There was a man, a woman, and a child in the center, surrounded by beautiful, embroidered trees. They all wore crowns of green and gold on their red-haired heads. The man was tall with his hair pulled back while a long beard stretched beyond his collarbones. A tiny smile was on the man’s lips, and there were slight wrinkles at the edges of his blue eyes.
The woman looked as if she could be half his age, barely old enough to be holding the small child in her arms. The way her bangs spread across her forehead reminded me of Xavier, along with the freckles on her cheeks that the tapestries’ creator had painstakingly put in. She looked so happy with her big grin. The child showed no emotion as he stared back at me with gigantic blue eyes, probably still at that age where he had no idea what was going on.
Ever the cat, because curiosity constantly got me in trouble, I had to ask, “Your Highness. Who are these people?”
“Lina…” Mira tried to intervene, but a pale white hand came up to silence her.
Xavier looked at me with daggers for eyes, and a small fire appeared in his hand as he brought it back from shushing Mira. He played with it using his fingers for a few moments before he spoke again. “None of your business.”
&nb
sp; I couldn’t quite restrain the gulp that leaped down my throat as Rachel moved forward. She looked at Xavier carefully, her eyes threatening, until the little fire in his hand was extinguished. She cleared her throat as she sat in a chair that had lost its back from a previous fireball, and pursed her lips like a polished speaker. “Prince Xavier. Have you, or have you not, received any messengers from Prince Frederick of Lunaka?”
A grin cracked the prince’s face as he flopped onto his bed like the teenager he was. “That depends.”
“On what?” Rachel’s eyebrow rose, sounding unimpressed.
“Things.”
Luke rolled his eyes hard and whispered into his sister’s ear, “I say we do this at sword point.”
Rachel gave him a good glare and then turned to Xavier again. “Prince Frederick has been trying to contact you on the subject of Rhydin. Do you know who he is?”
“Maybe I do, maybe I don’t.” Xavier laughed. I was sure that, if his legs were far shorter, he would be swaying them back and forth like a child as he lounged on the bed.
Rachel’s poker face was impressive, a trait that Luke did not inherit. Her words continued to be calm. “Has anyone approached you about joining Rhydin? Have Queen Jasmine or Princess Ren mentioned his name at all?”
Xavier sighed mischievously as he drew circles on his blanket. “Oh, I don’t know. One such as me can only hear whispers through these dry hallways. After all, what could I possibly know?”
“You are such a child!” Mira hissed, angrier than I’d ever seen her before. “You haven’t changed a bit since we were kids!”
Xavier leaned forward quickly, his eyes like blue fire. “Do you really think me to be so stupid that I don’t know who Rhydin is? Of course, I know who he is! He’s the biggest threat this continent has ever faced time and time again! What I need from you, Princess, is to tell me that your little Allyen here isn’t going to be just as bad!”
Mira was instantly within a few feet of Xavier’s red face, her countenance all but gone. I wondered if Frederick would even recognize his sister if he were present. “We are not out to make you into an idiot! You are doing a fine job of that yourself with all these sideways answers. You’re right. Rhydin is the biggest threat this world has ever seen, and we need to work together if we’re ever going to defeat him. Both my brother and King Daniel of Auklia have sworn allegiances to the Allyen. Where do your loyalties lie, Xavier?”
The prince looked at her calmly, the harsh color faded from his face but not too much so. A smile spread across his face that didn’t seem like a rat at all. More like the smiles in the tapestry that I had dared ask about. “Here I’ve thought all this time you were a twit.”
“Huh?” Mira was caught completely off guard, stumbling away from him with a crimson blush on her face. Xavier then proceeded to wink at her, effectively silencing her for the rest of the conversation.
“As I was saying…” Rachel tried to pick up whatever threads of her interrogation were left. They continued to banter back and forth, but to every question Rachel asked, Xavier had another snippy remark or smoothly somehow turned the question back around on us.
As Rachel and Luke kept their attentions solely on Xavier, I watched Mira for a few moments as she wrung out and folded her little silk handkerchief time and time again. The coloring in her cheeks had faded slightly but was still noticeable.
No matter how hard Rachel tried, Xavier continued to give dead ends. Luke had lost his patience with him ages ago, and Mira had reduced herself to a lump of nerves. After an hour, even Rachel seemed to be losing steam, as Xavier once again declared “I don’t trust you!”
At those words, I felt my thoughts suddenly speed up to a mile per minute. I turned in my seat to view the mystery tapestry once again. The bearded man with the sweet smile, the young woman with the brilliant grin who resembled Xavier greatly, and the small boy child that she held. I finally recognized the man as King Morris. Xavier had called Princess Ren his half-sister as we traveled here, and she looked exactly like Queen Jasmine in all the portraits. Rachel had mentioned briefly that Jasmine ruled the kingdom because King Morris became a hermit…
Because his first wife died! That was what Rachel had said! I’d bet anything that the young woman in that tapestry was his first wife. She was Xavier’s mother and she had died. Putting that with how terribly lonely Xavier’s presence felt, and this guy had some pretty serious demons that he was dealing with. He’d lost his mother a long time ago and now had lost his father to his grief.
On top of everything, his stepmother was running his kingdom likely right into Rhydin’s grasp with her familiar greeting of King Adam. It was then that it hit me hard that talking to him like a politician was simply not going to work. Everyone else in his entire life talked to him like he was the prince of Mineraltir. Someone needed to talk to him like he was a person.
When Rachel paused to consider a new route to get through to Xavier, I stepped forward. Feeling my color rise as I interrupted them, I tried my best to keep my words steady but soothing. “Your Highness… Um, can I just call you, Xavier?”
The prince quirked his eyebrow and brought one of his hands to his mouth. His interest was piqued. “Why would you want to call me that?”
Here was the hard part. I tried my hardest to swallow my fear. “Because I suspect that no one really does, and I would like to be your friend.”
I had Xavier’s full attention now. He didn’t know how to react he had been caught so off guard.
“Um, we haven’t been properly introduced. My name is Lina.” I said, trying to smile as I reached toward him.
Instead of shaking my hand, he simply stared at it as if he didn’t even know what it was. He gave me a hard look instead.
I cleared my throat as I retracted my hand, trying to continue awkwardly. This was the first time I’d ever spoken to a Royal I wasn’t at least somewhat familiar with. “You’re right. I am an Allyen. I’m kind of still in the middle of figuring out what all of that means, but I’ve learned a lot in the last year! I’m getting pretty good at this magic thing, although I’m sure you could beat me pretty badly.”
Xavier grinned slightly. I had no clue if he could beat me or not with how well I was doing, but it didn’t hurt to stroke the redhead’s ego.
“Um, I can promise you that I’m not going to take over the continent like Rhydin wants to. I grew up as a simple farm girl who thought magic was a thing for Royals to kill us with. It didn’t become my problem until I figured out who Rhydin was, and that he killed my parents.” A lump rose in my throat. I thought this was about showing Xavier he wasn’t alone, and now I was the one who was beginning to get emotional. “I started my training with these three’s help” – I gestured to Rachel, Luke, and Mira – “Along with Frederick. They’ve all taught me so much, but I still wasn’t strong enough to save the rest of my family. Just a season ago, Rhydin killed my grandmother, my sister, and my little cousin. So, trust me when I say that I know what you’re going through.”
It was then that Xavier realized what I was doing. He stared up at me in shock, his blue eyes wide, and then he stared down the room at the tapestry that depicted his family when it was whole. He was the little child in the picture. Xavier was completely silent as he looked at his hands, unsure of what to say.
I squatted down in front of him as he sat on the bed like I used to do when Rosetta was younger. It would make us sisters on the same level, but it made me much shorter than Xavier’s sitting position where I could see his face. I tried to smile as I talked. “When we first met you downstairs just a couple hours ago, you offered me your arm and told me to make my own decisions. I took your arm because I decided that you were all bark and no bite, and that I could trust you. Can you trust me now? Trust us?”
Xavier rose from the bed, causing me to stumble backwards into a standing position as well. Now, he towered a good foot or more over my head, about the same height as Sam. He met each of us in the eyes as he spoke, his voic
e sounding different. It was genuine. “You all must understand that I have no control over my kingdom. The queen made sure of that when she entered my father’s life.”
“We do.” Rachel reentered the conversation. “But we also understand that most of the people of Mineraltir’s loyalty is with you. The rightful heir. Not her. They see her as a usurper.”
Xavier nodded slightly. “Then you have my allegiance. And my trust.” He looked to me on the last part. I glowed with happiness. He glanced at Rachel solemnly, “To answer your question, both the queen and Ren have tried to recruit me for Rhydin’s cause. I refused, because I want nothing to do with those witches.”
“Well, that tells us what we needed to know. I will happily report to Prince Frederick that you have joined him and King Daniel, as well as the news of the queen and princess.” Rachel smiled her politician’s smile. “Rhydin had better look out. The future Three Kings are in unification against him now.”
When Rachel said those words, I actually felt a glimmer of hope. After all, I had done my first great deed as an Allyen nearly all by myself! I was the one to convince Prince Xavier to align himself with us. I knew regardless of his mischief, he would remain loyal, not just to Frederick and King Daniel of Auklia, but to me. And that was huge. That was when I first began to feel the power of my position. Rachel’s words made me feel so confident, as if defeating Rhydin was now going to be an easy task and would happen soon.
Even years later, I cannot believe how naive I was.
Our original plan had been to escape to the safety of the Lunakan woods as soon as we had Xavier on our side and had discerned whether Queen Jasmine was working with Rhydin or not. However, that quickly changed when King Adam decided to spontaneously move up Mira and Xavier’s nuptials to later in the week.
Rachel and Luke were still in communication with James, who was back at our camp via some magic I still didn’t understand how they possessed. Frederick was livid that the king would do this so out of the blue. He was fearful that something would happen to his sister in Mineraltir, so we were commanded not to leave the kingdom without her. Rachel and Luke kept their eyes peeled at every moment for a chance to steal Mira away to safety while I remained sequestered in Xavier’s room, unassailable to anyone who wasn’t a pyromage.
The Allyen (The Story of the First Archimage Book 1) Page 21