I rolled my eyes. “Don’t get your feathers all ruffled. None of this is easy for me, either.” I finished off my lunch and stared him down across the table. “Now, I want to know what you know.”
Just as Sam opened his mouth to explain his history with Kieran, someone burst into the dining hall. The girl was wild eyed and obviously in an utter and complete panic. “We’ve had news,” she gasped out to Sam, “The most horrible news. Sigrid and the queen’s Elite Guard are on a rampage with the High Inquisitor in tow. They’re going village to village interrogating people, looking for the raven-haired witch’s location. My cousin Regan’s family was tortured. Even the children. They made their way here afterward to bring us the news.” She studied me with an understandable rage and spat in my face.
I recoiled instinctively, wiping the spit off my cheek, and Sam clapped the young woman on the shoulder, wedging himself between us. “Calm down, Tamara.”
“Why?” The petite, green-eyed brunette was outraged. “Why should I be calm when innocent families are being attacked because of her? Personally, I think we ought to serve her up to Sigrid on a platter!”
I winced, but I couldn’t really argue with her sentiment. She had every right to feel the way she did about me. Rolf, however, didn’t seem to share the sentiment. He stormed up to Tamara and spoke in a quiet, deadly tone. “If you try it, Tamara Lindsey, I swear on everything I hold dear that I will gut you myself. You will not undermine everything I’ve worked for. The prophecies are clear. She will be instrumental in ending this brewing civil war between elves and humans. If you step out of bounds and jeopardize us all because you can’t keep your temper in check, I will personally end you. I'd hate to have to watch your father bury you, but don't think I wouldn't make it happen if I thought you were selfishly endangering the people taking refuge here.”
Rolf's tirade wasn't even directed at me, and I was terrified. I watched as she swallowed convulsively and with surprising violence. I could see the veins in her temples pulsing with the strain she was exerting to keep from snapping back at Rolf. “Aye, Rolf. You have my word that I won’t do anything rash, but this damn witch had better be worth what she’s costing innocent people.”
I felt a chill down to my bones, and tears burned at the back of my eyes. “Excuse me,” I choked around a big lump that had formed in my throat, barely able to make a sound. I turned and ran to my room, shame driving me up the flights of stairs that had become familiar to me.
Gabriel trotted at my heels and hot tears poured down my cheeks. I couldn’t contain the sobs that wracked me at the thought of what Sigrid and her QEG had done because of me. I burst into my room and slammed the door shut behind me. Gabriel whimpered and nosed my leg as I began to hyperventilate. I threw myself onto the bed and he leaped up, curling against me and licking my face.
“I can’t do this, Gabriel.” I shuddered and shook my head with the all-consuming misery. “I can’t freaking do this! I’m just a normal girl. I’m not a witch! I’m not magical. I don’t have special powers. I wasn’t made for confrontation. All I have on my side is my freaking iPhone! I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to handle this.” I moaned, shaking with grief for people I didn’t even know, who had been tormented because I escaped from Sigrid's dungeon and the Q.E.G.'s attempts to recover me.
I was still crying when Kieran let himself in. He sat on the edge of the bed, pulled me to him, and started stroking my hair in an oddly familiar, soothing gesture. He was silent until my sobs quieted. I sat up and made eye contact with him. Once again, I felt the inexplicable tug those darkly hypnotic eyes elicited in my chest when they were soft and kind. “Thank you,” I murmured.
He nodded and tucked my hair behind my ears. The feather-light brush of his fingers in the hollows behind my ears sent heat zipping down my spine. “I need you to pull it together for me, please. Can you do that?”
I took a deep breath and nodded in return. “Yeah. I think so. Maybe.”
Kieran leaned in and brushed a kiss against my temple. “You can, and you will because you’re the best hope we’ve got right now.”
A choking laugh spilled out around the remnants of my crying jag, and I shook my head. "Jeez. No pressure or anything, right?" It came out half sarcastic, half joking, and Kieran grimaced.
"I know it's a lot to expect from someone who doesn't even have a stake in all this, but you may be the only hope humans have of continuing to survive in Daraglathia." I could see the combination of earnestness and fear in his eyes, and a heavy sigh escaped me.
"Why? Why me?" I groaned, desperate to make sense of the situation I'd been plunged into for the sake of trying to earn my old life back. "Why do elves have some kind of crazy vendetta against humans in this insane world? More than that, why do I have anything to do with it?"
Kieran sighed, hanging his head and running his hands through his hair. "Those are questions that deserve answers, I suppose."
I frowned, sensing his reluctance to say anything. "They deserve answers, but you don't want to be the one to give me those answers, right?"
"No." He shook his head before lifting his head to make eye contact with me. "I don't want to, but I will. It's the right thing to do."
My stomach flip-flopped, and my breath hitched in my chest for a moment. "Why do I feel like things are suddenly a lot heavier than I was expecting?"
"Because they are," Kieran groaned. "Where do I even begin?"
"You don't have to tell me if it makes you that uncomfortable," I blurted, rushing to cut him off before he could tell me something he might regret.
He shook his head. "No, it's better if you know. It's not really all elves that have a problem with humans. Mostly, it's just Sigrid and a select group of elitist snobs encouraged by the high inquisitor. The queen is half mad, but not without reason. I'm going to try my best to explain this without going on unnecessary tangents, okay?"
I nodded, slightly confused and hoping his non-tangential explanation was going to clear things up. "Okay."
Kieran frowned, and I could tell he was calculating exactly how little he could tell me while still illuminating the situation for me. "Sigrid was raped by a human man. That has made it easy for the high inquisitor and a select group of elitist elves to manipulate Sigrid into backing their purist, anti-human fervor."
"Okay," I nodded, understanding beginning to dawn. "So your biggest problem is this high inquisitor. Why hasn't anyone taken him or her out, yet? Without a powerful voice, the other purists might quiet down, you know?"
"If we knew who the high inquisitor was, we'd have tried that by now." Kieran rubbed his face, as if trying to scrub the tiredness and frustration away. "Unfortunately, no one really knows who the high inquisitor is. We don't know whether it's a man or a woman, much less any more useful information."
I frowned with confusion. "How is it possible that no one knows the identity of a person who's in that high-profile of a position?"
"The high inquisitor has a job which makes him or her the most hated and feared individual in Daraglathia, even more so than Sigrid," Kieran explained. "No one sees the face of the high inquisitor. He or she is always, masked, shrouded, and his or her voice is always magically disguised. The identity protection that the position affords practically guarantees his or her survival. All we know is that whoever it is must be an elf because they support the purist, anti-human sentiment."
"Holy crap," I muttered. "This whole situation is a lot more complex than I originally suspected."
"Indeed," Kieran agreed.
"And because I'm human, Sigrid must have immediately assumed that the Daraglathian humans were trying to get a leg-up on her with the help of a so-called 'witch.' No wonder she was so determined to find out how I came to be in Daraglathia," I mused.
Kieran nodded, looking exhausted. I reached out and gave his hand a gentle, encouraging squeeze. "Thanks for telling me. I appreciate knowing more about the situation I've been thrown in the middle of."
He gave a dark chuckle. "If you're going to end up in the middle of a civil war, you deserve to know what caused it in the first place."
I nodded my agreement. "Yeah. If I'm going to get caught in the middle of a conflict, I prefer to have some idea of what's going on, so I know how to feel about it."
Kieran laughed a little to himself. "On that note, I should probably warn you about Tamara."
I scowled at the name, and felt an angry flush creeping up my neck. "That's the girl who spit in my face this morning and threatened to hand me to Sigrid on a silver platter."
"Yeah," Kieran nodded and grimaced. "Her temper's worse than mine, and it probably didn't help that you were talking to Sam when she came in."
I wrinkled my nose and made a disgusted noise somewhere in the back of my throat. "Did I accidentally walk into the middle of some kind of lover's spat without knowing it, too?"
Kieran laughed until his eyes watered, all the while shaking his head. "No," he gasped, trying to catch his breath through his laughing fit. "Not in the least. Tamara's madly in love with Sam, or at least thinks she is, but he has no idea she exists."
"Ouch," I murmured, almost feeling bad for her. I probably would have been more empathetic if she hadn't been quite so hateful to me without giving me a chance to defend myself. "Sucks for her."
"What?" I watched Kieran's brow wrinkle with confusion at the expression.
"Sorry. I somehow forget you're not from my world. It was a vaguely apathetic expression of my recognition that she's in an embarrassing, painful position when it comes to Sam."
Kieran tilted his head and studied me with interest. "You see where she's coming from, but you don't really care. Is that what you mean?"
I picked at a hangnail, rather than returning his interested gaze. "When you put it that way, it sounds terrible, but yes. I'd say that's an accurate assessment of how I feel about her right now."
My gaze snapped to his face in surprise when he laughed, and I saw that he was nodding. "A lot of people feel that way about Tamara. Her heart's in the right place, most of the time, but she's so temperamental and forceful with her opinions that it has a tendency to turn people against her."
"I can see why," I quipped.
Kieran shrugged and patted my shoulder in what I assumed was supposed to be a comforting gesture. "The best advice I can give you is to ignore her and just focus on yourself and any ideas you might have on how to help us stand a chance against Sigrid."
I gave him a reassuring smile and a firm nod. "That's the plan."
11
Plans & Preparations
I spent the remainder of that day in my room, trying to gather my wits and pull myself together as Kieran had asked. I did a lot of thinking, pacing and muttering, and Gabriel followed me step for step. I watched an episode of my favorite TV show on my iPhone and cuddled with Gabriel, sighing as the low battery signal blinked at me. I made a vow to myself that I would ask Sam if there were any spell he could think of that would charge it up for me. A couple of ideas about how we could use it to our advantage against Sigrid simmered in the back of my mind as I used the cool spring water from the bathroom to clean up before bed.
“Thank God for the dwarves and their genius,” I muttered. I still couldn’t believe how technologically advanced they had been as a race, and wondered why the elves and humans hadn’t bothered to try to catch up yet. I marveled at their handiwork for a few moments longer before collapsing on the bed. Gabriel, who had been snoring softly, gave me a slit-eyed look and a snort of annoyance.
“Sorry, buddy,” I whispered, stroking his head in an absentminded, habitual sort of way. His face softened, he yawned, and resumed his soft snoring in no time, lulling me into a deep, refreshing sleep.
When I woke the next morning, I sought Kieran out first. I gave him a tentative smile. “I’m going to do whatever I can to pull it together and help you.”
He flashed a broad, genuine smile and ruffled my hair. “I knew you would.”
I was momentarily stunned by how dazzling his smile was and how perfect his teeth were. Attraction tugged at my gut, and I blushed, looking away in the hope that he wouldn’t notice.
“Do you know where Sam is? I’ve got some questions about magic and some ideas that we might be able to use against Sigrid that I wanted to talk over with him.”
“Excellent! I’ll tell Rolf.” He nodded vigorously. “Sam is probably meditating up in one of the towers on the wall. Would you like me to help you find him before I give Rolf the good news?”
I grinned at his enthusiasm. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
It took us a good thirty minutes to find Sam, and I had shin splints from hell by then. I bent down and rubbed my shins with a grimace as Kieran cleared his throat to get Sam’s attention.
Sam’s eyes snapped open, and he scowled at Kieran until he spotted me. His expression cleared in an instant, and he smiled. “I guess there’s a reason the two of you sought me out all the way up here,” he drawled.
Kieran nodded. “Lauren has agreed to do whatever she can to help us, and she’s got some questions about magic for you, and some ideas that we may be able to use against Sigrid, too.”
Sam leaped up from his cross-legged position on the floor and grabbed my hand, giving it an excited squeeze. “Excellent! Just excellent!”
I returned his beaming smile with a nervous one of my own. “Easy now. There’s no guarantee that any of these ideas I have are going to work. At all.”
“You just have to have faith,” Sam chirped.
Kieran nodded. “I’ll leave you two to it, then. I’m going to go tell Rolf and Captain Burns the good news.”
I didn’t say anything to Sam until Kieran was gone because I was afraid the plan I was formulating might freak him out. Sam, however, seemed a little more laid back. I pulled my dying iPhone out of my frock pocket and locked eyes with Sam. "Kieran tells me you’re a pretty good mage."
Sam grinned. "Understatement, as usual. I graduated from the University of Pallidia with highest marks in magic. Now, tell me what that thing is, and what I can do for you."
I chewed on my lip for a moment. "This is my iPhone. It’s a device that can make calls when I have signal, play music and movies, take pictures, and things like that, but the power source is about to die. I was wondering if you could somehow enchant it so that the energy the music or other media generates in the listener can be used to charge the power source?"
Sam nodded. "It’s worth a try. Did you want to tell me your ideas regarding how we can use this...thing against Sigrid?"
"Well," I sighed. "The idea isn’t fully formulated yet, but I’ll give you the basics. First, I want you to find a way to magically tie the song selection to my mood. Second of all, we need to find a way to magically amplify the sound from the headphones, and blast the music out of the walls, toward our enemies. With the right choice of music, we might be able to scare them and send them packing."
Sam smiled and chucked me on the chin. "As a former bard and mage extraordinaire, I like the way you think, m’lady."
I rolled my eyes at the "m’lady" part and shook my head. "It’s great that you like the way I think and all that, but the more important question is whether you can actually pull off what I want you to pull off."
Sam arched a brow. "I think I can. Now, hand over the device."
I clutched it instinctively for a moment. "If you break this, Sam, I swear to God I’ll break you."
He nodded, his expression somber. "I understand, Lauren. Please, give me the device and go explain your ideas to Rolf. He’ll be pleased to know that you’re making a real effort to help us. After that, he’ll probably send you to your first training session with Captain Burns."
I groaned as dread tied my stomach in a knot. "Oh, goody, I get to make a fool of myself and get my butt kicked while I’m at it. Joy." Kill me now.
Frost: An Otherworld Tale (The Otherworld Tales Book 1) Page 14