“These are all over Raluza,” Michael said, a little amazed.
“They were built long before my father was King. I guess there was a war when my great grandfather ruled. These tunnels were built for refugees to get to the Palace,” Aveena explained as she stared down into the tunnel. “No one really knows about the tunnels now accept for me, and your organization. A lot of the tunnels through the city were blocked off anyway, but I found my way around them.”
Michael nodded. He was listening to what she was saying, but was more focused on the sound of her voice. It was soft, just as he remembered.
Aveena looked up at Michael and saw his face clearly through the shadows. It was an advantage that she had due to her glowing white eyes. Her eyes focused on the crystal hanging from his neck, and then her face went back into a frown. He was going to watch her die. The same guy that tried to protect her when they were kids.
“Let’s go,” Her voice hardened again before she jumped down into the tunnel. Michael followed. They were completely engulfed in darkness again, and Michael had no idea where Aveena was.
“This way,” Aveena’s voice echoed a little ways in front of him. She was already walking away, and didn’t turn around for him to see her white eyes. Michael just followed the sound of her voice and footsteps. They continued of for a few minutes before they came to a stop, and Michael slammed into her back.
“Watch it!” Aveena snapped her head around, eyes piercing.
“S-sorry,” Michael stuttered. He waited for what was going to happen next.
Aveena moved a large rock that revealed a crawl space into the dungeon. She crouched down by the small opening and then tossed a rock inside. They stood there for a moment until they heard footsteps walking towards the hole.
Michael stepped back and reached his hand into his pocket for his staff ball. He wanted to be ready just in case it was anyone other than Clay coming to meet them.
Two dirty legs stopped in front of the opening of the hole, and then Clay crouched down with a smile. “Hello, lovely.”
Aveena cracked a smile and then stepped back for Clay to crawl through the space. He stood up, then bowed his head to Aveena. “Thank you so much. I was afraid that you wouldn’t come.”
Aveena nodded back, “Well, I saw a better Kingdom with you included. You obviously didn’t belong here.”
Clay turned to Michael with a big smile on his face. After observig his partners appearance his lip curled up in disgust, “What on Raluza are you wearing?”
Michael sighed, “Eh...well...”
“Do you see him in the future as well Princess?” Clay asked.
Aveena turned her piercing eyes to Michael, “Let’s get you out of here.”
Clay chuckled when she turned to walk away, “I think she likes you.”
Michael growled.
They followed behind Aveena’s footsteps. Once they were far enough from the dungeon, Clay started asking questions.
“So, what’s up with the Knight’s clothing?”
Michael gave him the gist of how he came back to save him, and then explained his plan. “King Lavier wants me to feed him information about Earth, and in exchange I get to be Aveena’s Knight. I’m going to use that to my advantage to take the Palace down from the inside out.”
They stopped next to a tunnel built in the stone wall that clearly went down towards the Ruq Quarter. They could see moonlight slip through the cracks, and then darkness further down.
“Make sure that you tell all of this to Tayen so that she can devise a plan. I’ll try to stop down there when I can. Also, let them know that Aveena is not a threat, and that her safety is important.”
Aveena looked up from the darkness and listened to Michael.
“Lavier is waiting for her seal to break so that he can kill her. The seal also protects her from death. If Lavier kills Aveena, we will lose our ace.”
Aveena’s expression softened when she realized that Michael remembered their time together on Earth, then her cheeks grew hot after he called her their Ace. He knew that she would help them, even without asking.
“Alright,” Clay nodded. “You be safe up here brother.” He and Michael slapped hands and held them for a moment, then they let go and turned to Aveena, who stood next to the large opening in the wall.
“Princess,” Clay bowed his head.
“Here,” Aveena picked up an air board that she kept on the ground under the opening of the tunnel, then pulled out a small green staff ball that she had tucked into one of the tubes on the bottom of the board. “I hid these here before we came to get you.”
“Ah! I was afraid I’d never see those again!” Clay happily took his air board and staff ball. “I’ll be on my way,” he said dropping his air board to his feet, then stepping on it. “Have fun you two.” He bounced his eyebrows at them before turning around and shooting down the tunnel.
Aveena turned around and led Michael back to the tunnel under the Gem Quarter. Once they were under the moonlight seeping through the hole, Aveena tossed Michael an air board that was against the wall. “I grabbed this for you. Just say that the servants gave it to you early. I’m going to take another way back inside.”
Aveena started to walk off when Michael grabbed her arm, “Wait...wait.”
Aveena snapped her head around with a look that could kill if she just thought about it. Michael wanted to say sorry, but nothing came out. She glared at him with such disgust that the words got stuck in his throat. Aveena shook her head, yanked her arm away, and walked off.
Michael sighed. “See you tomorrow,” he said under his breath.
Chapter 9
Michael was awakened by a loud banging on his door the next day. He jolted into a sitting position, and then looked out the window on his right to see if any Knights were standing outside. Someone must’ve found out that he and Aveena freed Clay last night and were here to take him back to the King.
There was another loud banging on his door, followed by a loud sigh.
Michael frowned. If the Knights were coming to arrest him, then they would have just kicked the wooden door in. He slipped out of the bed and grabbed his green ball off of the table. It shifted into a staff as he took light steps to the door.
“Who is it?” Michael asked with caution in his voice.
“The King’s servant,” it sounded like the servant from yesterday, only he seemed more irritated than he was before.
Michael slowly opened his door to be greeted with the bright sun. Once his eyes adjusted, the servant stood there with a basket full of breads and fruits. “Oh,” he shielded his eyes. “What brings you here?”
“I was sent to give you these, and also to remind you that you are to be with the Princess today. You are officially Aveena’s Knight and are required to be by her side every day,” the servant explained before handing out the basket of fresh foods to Michael.
“Okay,” Michael took the basket. “Thank you.”
The servant gave a tight smile, “You’re very welcome sir Knight. Good luck with the Princess.” He turned to walk away, but then Michael called out to him.
“Wait, hold on. Where can I find her?”
The servant looked over his shoulder, “Last I saw, she was by the fountain. She has a hard time staying in one spot though, so I would try to catch her now.” The corner of the servant’s lip curved upwards before he turned to walk away. Michael had a bad feeling about this.
Michael ran back into his cabin to wash in the tub, then he put on a new pair of clothes and dropped his dirty ones in the basket outside his door. When he observed his surroundings, he saw a few people that were dressed in rags, picking up baskets of dirty clothes from other people’s cabins. He recognized those people all too well, because they each had the Zext brand burned onto their foreheads. They were slaves. Most of them were kids, but there were a few women doing chores as well. He couldn’t understand how he hadn’t noticed them before? His eyes must’ve only let him see all the good and n
ot the bad yesterday.
Michael clicked his air board onto his back, then patted his pocket for his staff ball. At this point, he had no idea what would happen, so he always had to be prepared, just like the organization taught him to be.
On the way to the gate that led to the Palace grounds, the black knight thought over and over about what he was going to say to Aveena. He really wanted to apologize about the attack on her, and to let her know that he would never betray her like that again. He wanted to make sure that she would never look at him with such fear in her eyes. Ever again.
Michael honestly liked her tough exterior. It filled him with excitement to see how the fire blazed in her eyes. She was a tough young lady, but there were times that he’d noticed her toughness falter. Like when Lavier threatened to lock her down in the dungeon. He took a deep breath, then clenched and unclenched his fists. Lavier would get what was coming to him sooner or later. Hopefully, sooner.
He walked through the gate with so much as a head nod from the guard, and then headed-where was he headed? The servant said that she was by the fountain, but where on Raluza would the fountain be found? There was no way that he was going to travel all the way around the Palace just to find it either. At least not on foot.
Michael snapped off his air board and dropped it, then he stepped on top and glided closely to the ground towards the back of the Palace. He was grateful that Aveena had given the board to him last night, or else he probably wouldn’t have found her for another few hours or so. When he arrived to the back of the Palace he was amazed at how big the garden was. He originally expected it to be big, but not like this. The king could run a small town in his own backyard if he wanted to! It was a large garden filled with different colored trees, flowers, and birds. The fountain had to be somewhere within all of this.
Michael glided through the garden and followed the stone pathway through the colorful flowers. He figured that Aveena would be in a place like this just to be away from everyone, because no one would want to search through this jungle of wild plants just to find her. No one but Michael. He followed the pathway to the center where he found a large fountain; in the center was a statue of a muscular man holding a staff.
Michael sighed. There was no sign of Aveena here. He was about to turn around when he heard a splash on the other side of the statue. His eyebrows drew together as he glided closer to the statue, and then slowly moved from behind it.
Aveena didn’t see him at first. She was pre-occupied with trying to levitate small water droplets over the palms of her hands. The little droplets shook in the air as if they were struggling to keep their sphere-shaped form, and then suddenly they dropped and splashed down onto her hands.
The princess sighed loudly and raised her hands over the water to try again. Her face was tight with concentration as she took deep tired breaths. She looked as if she’d been at this for hours, and Michael wondered if she had been up all morning trying to control her powers. The water boiled below her hands, but this time no water droplets formed. Aveena clenched her teeth and focused all of her energy to her fingers, but still, there was nothing.
“Maybe you should just take a break and try again?” Michael suggested as he stepped off of his air board. “That always helped me during training.”
Aveena’s eyes met Michael’s, and for a moment he could swear that she looked happy to see him, but then her eyes narrowed and she was back to killing him with her pupils. She dropped her hands to her sides and took one last deep breath, then she started walking towards one of the paths that led through the garden.
“Princess, wait!” Michael called out. He ran to block her from walking any further, and was about to speak, but the words got caught in his throat again. She was just so beautiful. This was starting to get annoying though. Michael was a confident guy who had no trouble getting women, even though he never wanted them, but around Aveena he was dumb-struck.
The Princess squinted her eyes, as if to study Michael, then she tried to side step him, but he just side stepped with her. This time Michael was smiling. He felt challenged to get Aveena to speak to him, and he never once turned down a challenge.
“Wait, please,” Michael rubbed the back of his neck nervously. “I wanted to say this last night, but I guess I couldn’t speak much,” he chuckled. A bead of sweat formed on his temple.
Aveena raised a brow and crossed her arms across her chest.
“I’m sorry,” Michael said bowing his head. “The attack on you, I was just following orders. I-I really didn’t want...”
Aveena huffed and walked passed him without saying a word. She started down the pathway that zigzagged towards the Palace.
Michael growled and turned around, “Would you at least listen to me!? Goodness, I don’t remember you being so stubborn!”
Aveena stopped walking and snapped around with so much anger that Michael’s diminished in seconds, “And I don’t recall you being such an...” she couldn’t think of anything to say. “You were going to let your friend kill me!”
“But then I stopped him. Doesn’t that count for anything?”
Aveena’s features relaxed as she thought about what happened that night, then her eyebrows drew back together, but this time she looked sad. “Only because you remembered that I couldn’t be killed.”
“And also because I really didn’t want you to die,” Michael explained. “I remembered more than just the fact that you couldn’t be killed. I remembered...” He thought back to when he first met her in the woods, and then when he broke the crystal so that both of them could have a half, “You.”
Aveena’s eyes dropped down to the necklace around Michael’s neck, and then she touched her own earring that dangled from one ear. She must have just recently put it on, because Michael hadn’t noticed it yesterday. She tucked a few loose strands behind her ear and bit her lower lip in thought. That tough exterior of hers was dwindling, and Michael felt as if he had her right where he wanted her. Wrong.
“I don’t believe you,” Aveena lied. Michael looked so vulnerable that she just had to take this to her advantage. Deep down, she understood that he was just following orders, but she still wanted to teach him a lesson. She turned around and started to walk away again.
“Oh, come on!” Michael yelled as he started walking after her.
Aveena stopped in her footsteps, making Michael stop as well. She slowly turned her head just enough for him to see the slight smile planted on her lips. A very devious smile.
“A-Aveena?” Michael was confused. Was she mad, or happy? Or neither?
Aveena sprinted off to her right, through the garden, and off of a clear path.
“Aveena!” Michael chased after her. He thought of jumping on his board, but that option went out of the window when it got clipped on a tree and ripped from his back. “Aveena wait!” If he got caught without her, or she without him, the King would question his ability to watch over her.
Michael could see Aveena a short distance away from him, jumping in between two trees and then stopping to smile back at him. Michael smiled back, accepting her challenge, and then picked up his pace.
Aveena then continued to run. She ducked under branches, and twisted between trees. Michael couldn’t understand how she was getting away so fast and wouldn’t accept the fact that she may have been faster than him on her feet. She eventually disappeared through the garden, and he couldn’t find her anywhere. “Where in the world?” He stopped to look around himself again. He was back on a pathway that led straight to the Palace. “She had to go this way.” He sprinted down the pathway and then ran through the back entrance of the Palace. He ended up in a dim hall lit by torches, but on his way through he saw sunlight at the end.
This hall led into a large room. Most likely, the ball room. The walls were painted red with golden swirled designs, and there was a large chandelier hanging from the ceiling with two long wooden tables on both sides of the room.
“Princess?” Michael called, out of brea
th. Aveena was nowhere in sight.
There was the sound of something crashing to the floor in the hall, diagonal from where Michael was standing. A scream from one of the female servants followed after.
“Aveena!” The woman yelled.
“Sorry!” Aveena’s voice echoed.
Michael sprinted off to the hall where there was a servant gathering broken pieces of glass into a pile on the floor. The woman looked up at him with a slight smile that said ‘sorry,’ and then pointed down the hall. Michael nodded and followed in the direction that she pointed.
This hall curved to the right with more than a few other halls to turn down. He hoped that Aveena didn’t turn down any of these other halls or else he would have never found her.
The long curve led into another large room full of Knights. They looked more like Knights in training compared to the ones that he was used to seeing on patrol. Each Knight was busy sparring with their partners using their staffs, or some other weapon. Some were lined up horizontally while practicing their aim with their guns, and the rest were in a section doing either pushups or sit-ups.
Michael didn’t have to scan the room this time, because he saw Aveena run down a brighter hall on the other side of the room. He had a clear path to the hallway and continued after her through the main hall.
This hall was full of different people. Nobles, servants, and high ranking Knights, all headed to their destinations.
Aveena had stopped running through the hall and started to walk quickly. Michael followed by example and picked up his pace. He took bigger steps to gain more ground, and now that Aveena wasn’t running, he could finally catch up to her. Wrong again. He wondered when he was going to be right.
Aveena slipped out of an opening that led through the courtyard and to another hallway on the other side. Michael chased after her, only this time he didn’t worry about bumping into others or knocking them over for that matter. He just wanted to catch the princess. Never in his days did he think it would be this hard to catch a woman.
Aveena: The City of Gold (The Black Knight duology Book 1) Page 11