The chance never presented itself.
The Kingdom of Mineraltir absolutely exploded at the thought of a Royal wedding. The marriage of the heir to the throne no less! Almost overnight, Xavier and Mira’s faces were plastered on every wall of the kingdom along with whatever decorations one could find in the increasingly colder outdoors. I knew at home, winter would have set in. I could imagine the beautiful snow beginning to take over the landscape until nothing could be seen except for pristine white. But here in Mineraltir, everything looked the same with all the pine trees, although many of them generously donated a multitude of their branches to the wedding cause.
Suddenly, anything from pine bough table centerpieces to a huge, elaborate archway could be seen within the castle courtyard as the people prepared for their heir’s wedding. Xavier and Mira’s dramatic and romantic “love story” dominated every news article, and one could even buy a miniature of the Mineraltin Prince and Lunakan Princess at the quaint peddler shop on the corner.
Even though I was forced to hide in Xavier’s tower throughout the days and nights, I was spared no detail of the preparations from Rachel. Mira and Xavier were constantly under the supervision of King Adam and Queen Jasmine, and she said she wouldn’t be surprised if they were chained together at the ankles with how often they were forced to be together now. He was only released from her once while Queen Jasmine saw to fitting Mira with her wedding gown.
“You should have seen her face!” Rachel laughed, but then put on a pitiful grimace. “The poor girl though. The queen is imposing her own style upon her, so you can imagine how layered with gold she is. I say, any more and it might snap her poor little figure!”
Regardless of the insanity, Rachel also proved herself to be very perceptive. While Luke remained diligently by my side, his sister was able to spend every moment with Mira and Xavier. She told me how Mira’s animosity toward him seemed to have vaporized. Her hatred was gone, and while Xavier still found the energy to joke with her, his quips seemed more lighthearted. They didn’t seem to be quite as opposed to this union as they had been.
Even with their changing feelings, every night when Xavier returned to his room he was like a ghost. His blue eyes were empty when he settled down to the little cot he’d come to sleeping on since we came to visit. He would collapse in a heap of long limbs and red hair, not even bothering to take his green suitcoat off. This prince had been raised into an introvert, and suddenly everyone needed a little part of him every day.
Xavier gave up his bed for me, and I never could quite wrap my head around the idea that I was sleeping in an heir to a throne’s bed even if it was tiny. Just before my eyes closed for the night, my mind always wandered back to those woods in Lunaka to Sam. Was he still even at the same campsite? It had only been a couple of weeks, and yet it felt like eternity. Did he still remember me? My thoughts were always silenced by the heaviness of sleep.
Three days passed with the entire kingdom enthralled with wedding planning. Flowers poured in from the humid sections of Auklia, bolts of the finest cloth arrived on wagon trains every day from the desert to the south, which wasn’t owned by any kingdom. Even new exotic cuisine was brought in on ships from the small island republic of Caark on the other side of the world that everyone usually forgot existed.
However, none of that remained on my mind when I was jerked forcibly awake in the middle of the night. I had been in a deep sleep, and, even with the ferocity of the shaking, it took a minute for my brain to register what I was hearing.
“Wake up!” I heard someone scream at me again, “All of them are gone, you need to get out of here now!”
As my vision cleared, I saw Xavier fly away from me and begin to shake Rachel and Luke, both laying on the hard floor. They had taken to sleeping while in Xavier’s impregnable chambers, feeling no need to keep watch. He was shouting at them so hard, his voice began to be hoarse. They were on their feet within seconds as they never were ones to be light sleepers.
Luke’s hand went instantly to the hilt of his sword as he asked, “What is it? Is someone attacking?”
“No, you idiot! They’re all gone, it’s coming!” Xavier’s eyes looked nearly mad as he made to grab Luke’s collar in order to shove him toward the door.
“Who’s gone?” Rachel squealed as she strapped her bag over her shoulder and hurriedly pulled me out of bed.
“King Adam, the queen… Even Ren! All of Rhydin’s people have disappeared!” Xavier gasped for breath as Luke pushed him off. “I thought I heard something downstairs so I went to go look. Everyone is gone! The blasted front gate of the castle is hanging open!”
With one look between Luke and Rachel, the latter disappeared in a flash of white light. I was finally up and moving, quickly dressing and grabbing my bag. When Rachel vanished, my voice came out staggering, “Where did she go? What’s the plan?”
“She went to retrieve Princess Mira. We’re getting out of here. Now.” Luke said harshly as he breached the distance between us in only two strides. He grabbed my arm tightly and spun me into him so that he was in core contact with me, which brought back images of the livery basement before we had our feather charms. He was keeping Rhydin from sensing me, even though I still wore my feather.
A strange expression crossed Luke’s face as he looked back across the room to Xavier. “Your Highness…what is your plan of escape? I can only transport one with me.”
My eyes widened, and I nearly gave myself whiplash as I turned to look at Xavier. My voice screeched with how hard the adrenaline was pumping through my body. “Xavier, you have to come with us! We don’t know what’s coming. You could die!”
The red-haired prince cracked that crooked grin that made him look slightly rodent-like, as if this was all a joke to him. He chuckled, “Don’t worry about me, Madam Allyen. I’ll hold whatever it is off to give you more time. Just get Mira out of here.” With that, a menacing fireball burned into the palm of Xavier’s hand, casting eerie shadows onto the face of its creator.
“No!” I screamed as Luke tried to restrain me. “You have to come! We need you!”
The smirk disappeared from his face, and that empty look filled his eyes once more. “It’s okay. I’m not worth it.”
“Xavier!” My voice was drowned out as I was blinded by that all too familiar white light.
It was a rougher trip this time. In the past, it always seemed so smooth, almost transition-less. Now, I clung to Luke for dear life as it felt like we were being rocked in an ocean or storm without mercy. All I could hear were the sounds of my own heart beating and my own lungs gasping for breath in the void, repeating over and over.
Luke and I landed hard on rocky grass, which jutted into my shoulders so bad that I cried out. Immediately, Luke scooped me up and began sprinting slightly uphill, faster than even the speediest of messenger boys at home.
When I could see again, I recognized the stone faces in the distance that we had trekked over two weeks earlier. The mountains. Their rugged cliffs were beginning to quake, rocks sliding down their slopes. It was then I noticed the sky was growing darker than night, and it felt as if the wind was trying to suck us backwards.
Luke continued his dead run higher and higher into the foothills. I noticed Rachel in a similar predicament with a white-faced Mira in her arms a few yards away, equally as fast as her brother. I thrust my head over Luke’s shoulder to see what it was that we were running from, and I felt all the blood drain from my face.
Behind us, consuming the beautiful forests of Mineraltir, was a wall of black smoke that towered into the sky higher than any of those giant trees. It was like a huge thunderstorm that reached from the ground to the heavens, taller than any human could see, and it was not long before the most horrible stench filled my nostrils. It smelled like a thousand different campfires along with the reek of sulfur all mixed together, enough to knock anyone over. Seconds passed before it clicked in my mind from the story I had read in the livery.
It was t
he Darkness. Duunzer’s Darkness. The dragon really was Rhydin’s plan, and it was coming now.
Luke was yelling with exhaustion, desperately willing his legs to keep going forward and to use the oxygen tainted with lung-burning ash. The Darkness was overtaking us, traveling at an unimaginable speed. A hundred horses put together would never dream of running that fast.
Just as Luke and Rachel were steps away from hauling Mira and I onto the stone of the mountains, the Darkness overcame us. I swallowed hard, squeezing my eyes shut as tight as possible as I gripped Luke so fiercely my fingers tore his clothing.
Nothing happened. I looked up barely in time to see the Darkness hesitate, for lack of a better word, for less than ten seconds. It was the time Luke and Rachel needed to give one last burst of dying energy to fling us over the foothills onto the actual mountainside.
The four of us skidded our separate ways upon landing. I winced as I felt my skin shredded from my body along the rock. When I found my bearings, I expected to see the Darkness take us for real this time. Yet, to my complete shock and horror, it was as if it had slammed into a glass wall. The murky smoke poured into it with intensity but did not, could not, come an inch closer. The Darkness flooded upward against the imaginary boundary, and rapidly blocked out any speck of light from the entire kingdom of Mineraltir.
“It’s the mountains!” I mumbled loudly through my pain, remembering how magic was impossible here. “It can’t get through the mountains’ magic barrier!”
“You’re…right…” Rachel heaved for air. Even her hair was drenched with sweat as it trickled down her freckled nose, light blood seeping from her cheeks.
Mira was trembling a few feet away from me, her doll face the same shade as her formerly clean nightgown. “What happened? Why did it stop for those few seconds when it could have gotten us like Rhydin wanted? Where’s Xavier?”
“I know why.” Luke said as he caught his breath, flung out on the ground just as we were. His eyes remained trained on the night sky as he spoke. “It was Xavier. He held it off for us as long as he could.”
That hesitation I had noticed. It hadn’t been even ten seconds, but it made all the difference. Mira’s eyes began to fill with tears, and I knew in my bones that Rachel had been right. Mira had fallen for him indeed, and soon it was her wail of despair that flooded my ears. My heart belonged to Sam, but that didn’t stop my own tears from tracing their way down my cheeks.
Chapter Nineteen
O ur bodies were beaten and broken. Our hearts were distraught and despaired. But somehow, we made it back over those mountains. We never stopped once, not a word spoken. I simply could not wrap my mind around the fact that Xavier was gone. It had happened so quickly… I found myself mourning someone I had barely known while Mira silently wept the whole way back to camp.
As soon as we stepped foot off of the mountain rock, Luke and Rachel transported the princess and I back to rural, northern Lunaka. Once we returned, I found that my body repulsed the new landscape. Every time I turned around, I expected to see the same old skyline that I’d known my entire life. The same old mountains tinged with blue because they were so far away. The same old mountains that caught the sun in its fall every evening.
Now, it was as if a curtain of midnight had been hung to the west, where Mineraltir had once been. We would be there too if it hadn’t been for Xavier.
The sun was beginning to rise in the east as we approached camp, sending its light across the sky to illuminate the clouds, but unable to penetrate the Darkness on the opposite side of the kingdom. I was right. Winter had definitely set in for the long haul here in Lunaka. Snow crunched under my feet with every step, and the air felt like crystals as I breathed it in. I was freezing, but my body was already numb anyway. You could tell which direction the last snow storm had come from, as all the trees now wore a coat of white on only the northern side. They stood like bare skeletons against the blue-white sky.
Flakes were falling from the sky even now, but I knew better. These were not the light, airy diamonds of snow falling gracefully. These were dirty. These flakes were gray and fell heavily to the ground. They smelled of burning, and if they touched your skin, they did not melt into a cool drop like snow. They simply clung there and left marks when you tried to remove them. They were death.
“Lina!”
I heard that all too familiar voice ring out through the dead trees. When I looked up from the somber footsteps in front of me left behind by Luke, I saw Sam perched on a small knoll outside of our camp. He was bundled tightly in his thickest cloak although it was moth-eaten, and a scarf was pulled over his nose and mouth as if he had been sitting there for centuries.
My eyes filled with frigid tears at the sight of him. Just seeing him was enough to push me over the edge because we had lost someone again. He took this all in stride as he reached me within seconds, throwing his arms around me. I felt myself numbly reach up and take big fistfuls of his cloak, clinging to him for dear life just as I had done with Luke as we escaped from Mineraltir. It was then, feeling his warmth pouring into me, that I realized how freezing it was, and I clung to him tighter.
“What happened?” Sam bellowed, his words bouncing off of the hollow trees through the quiet wilderness. Then he turned to begin hollering behind him, but Frederick had already appeared, likely sensing our arrival. He also wore several layers and came toting a blanket, immediately throwing it around his stricken sister. Her face was porcelain again now. White, but unchanging. Before Frederick could repeat Sam’s question, the Owenses jumped in.
“I don’t know how to break this lightly, so I’m just going to say it and explain later.” Rachel said fiercely, her blue eyes like fire. “Rhydin has launched Duunzer’s Darkness on the Kingdom of Mineraltir. We barely escaped with our lives.”
“You are sure?” Frederick mumbled as if in disbelief.
“Extremely. There’s nothing else it could be. We wondered at the possibility of Rhydin using Duunzer as he did centuries ago, and the dragon cannot stand light. As the legends say, the entire continent must be in the Darkness for it to attack. This is just the beginning for Mineraltir to be taken.” Luke responded this time as he twiddled with the hilt of his sword. He cleared his throat as if it was even hard for him, one who showed few emotions. “We were warned in the middle of the night by Prince Xavier. He noticed that all of Rhydin’s people had evacuated.”
Frederick swallowed hard. “What became of Xavier?”
“He held it off and allowed us to escape, Your Highness.”
Mira’s eyes closed in Frederick’s embrace. I saw the blond man try to put on his regal, politician’s face, but he didn’t quite succeed. “Lunaka will remember his service for eternity. Do we know where the Darkness will strike next?”
“Not for certain.” Rachel’s eyes were downcast. “But I imagine Lunaka will be one of the last. That way Duunzer itself can attack where Lina is. Rhydin wants to be rid of all of us at once. The Allyens, their helpers, and the Rounans. We have people scouting the Darkness, and it has begun a slow sweep through the Great Desert south of Mineraltir. We need to contact Evan immediately so he can escape from Auklia with King Daniel and Queen Lily to help Lina fight the dragon.”
“Well then. That is your first task, Rachel.” Frederick’s voice choked slightly, and then he turned to me half-hidden in Sam’s embrace. “I suggest that you find that arrow as quickly as possible, Allyen Linaria.”
I stared at him warily as he began to guide his broken sister back to camp. I had never seen Frederick so emotional before, and his words had kicked my adrenaline into gear all over again. Duunzer was coming. The brother I had never met now had to run for his life just as we had. We didn’t have much time left. And I wasn’t ready.
Rachel left to go to our tent, likely for her contacting business. Luke was motionless as James ultimately headed over the hill to join us, his hair nearly long enough to reach his shoulders now. The two brothers talked for a while and caught each oth
er up as I vainly tried to warm my fingers in Sam’s hands. They felt like wooden ice cubes and I could barely bend them.
Luke scoffed slightly, bringing Sam and I’s attention back to the brothers. “You’re joking!”
“What?” I mumbled, my voice cracking from disuse.
“The people of Soläna have seen the Darkness, and they turned into a frightened mob, paralyzed with fear.” James explained, his eyes hard. “King Adam has told them that Mineraltir had a very large forest fire because of all the ash in the air. He’s proclaimed that both Xavier and Mira are dead, and then moved on to planning the annual masquerade Winter Ball as tribute to their memories in a couple weeks. I saw it all when I went to town to quit my job at the mine."
Bile flowed up my throat. King Adam had been disgusting before, but this was a new, ultimate low. This man vowed to protect the people of Lunaka the day his father died and handed him the crown. Now, he was trying to pass off the most dangerous threat to the world’s safety as a simple forest fire? He was willing to sacrifice his own daughter for this, and feel no remorse? This man had an ugly heart, and I knew that if his was ugly, Rhydin’s was distorted beyond recognition. I knew what I needed to do.
I pulled myself away from Sam and faced the boys. “Luke. James. We need to go back to my grandmother’s house to search for the arrow again.”
“Now?” James whimpered, eyeing the daylight warily.
“My people are in danger, and nobody else is going to protect them.” My voice was stronger than it had been in a long time. “Didn’t Mira say that if I can defeat Duunzer, the people who disappeared will come back?”
The Allyen (The Story of the First Archimage Book 1) Page 22