by Ben Wolf
It had been a moment of opportunity. Calum’s best chance to end the war and free Kanarah. How could he not take it?
But now, even after only a day, the more he spoke with the King, the more he realized that perhaps there was a way to fix Kanarah that didn’t require thousands more to die in the process. War was still an option, and it still might even be their best option, but Calum couldn’t be sure until he’d exhausted every possible chance to find solutions with the King.
Part of him wondered—and even feared—how Lumen would react if they actually did find solutions. He doubted Lumen would just give in to whatever new way of things they might manage to create here. And if that was the case, what would happen then? Would the war go on anyway? And whose side would Calum be on?
Lumen’s, of course, he decided.
It wasn’t even really a decision; he’d answered Lumen’s call and set him free for exactly this purpose. And above all else, Calum was loyal. Everything he’d done by talking with the King was, ultimately, a labor undertaken for the people of Kanarah—people just like him who couldn’t live in suffering any longer.
A sound behind him drew his attention, and he turned back. The garden was otherwise entirely quiet, devoid of the usual noises that accompanied nature. No crickets, no birds, no rustling of wind through the trees or hissing over the grass.
So the sound of stone lightly scraping against stone caught Calum’s attention immediately. He looked toward the bed of roses that ran along the garden’s back wall. There, under the waning moonlight, he could just barely discern a door-sized opening in the wall.
When the King walked through the opening and into the garden with a basket in one hand, Calum dropped to the ground and flattened himself on the stone path. He immediately realized he wasn’t supposed to have seen what he’d just seen. His heart quickened its beating, and he inhaled and exhaled quick, quiet breaths.
From his position on the ground, he could no longer see the bed of roses or the opening. Bushes and plants and trees lining the path obscured his vision, but he didn’t need to see any more. He just needed to hide.
The King would either walk right past Calum on his way out of the garden, or he would take the path along the far side instead—if he meant to leave the garden at all. If he chose the side nearest to Calum, even in the low light, the King would almost certainly see him.
The soft scrape of stone sounded again, and then the King’s distant footsteps clacked across the stone path. Fortunately, the King chose the path on the far side, and it took him around the central fountain and toward the central path, which led out of the garden.
Calum watched him from a distance, still as a rock, and holding his breath. There was at least a chance the King could still realize Calum was in the garden, especially if he could sense the presence of someone else through the various plants nearby. That had certainly seemed to be the case when Calum tried to attack him.
To Calum’s great relief, once the King reached the central path before the fountain, he headed toward Valkendell and left the garden behind.
Only then did Calum push himself up to his feet. He stared long and hard at the archway denoting the entrance to the fortress. The sun had begun to crest the cliff face, so the increasing amount of light clearly showed that the King had left.
Calum looked over to bed of roses again. The back wall was once again solid, as if there had never been a door there in the first place.
Questions filtered into Calum’s mind. As far as he knew, the walls of the garden also formed the back wall of this part of the city, and all that lay beyond were the steep rock faces of the mountains into which Valkendell was built.
Was there some hidden path back there that ran along the wall of rock? And if so, where did it lead?
More importantly, how long would it be until the King returned? Would Calum have enough time to investigate?
Calum didn’t know, but this was his best chance to take a look without getting caught, so he took it.
Even though he was alone in the garden, Calum crept toward the bed of roses and the back wall as quietly as possible. His boots made that difficult, but he reached the back of the garden quickly enough that he hoped it wouldn’t matter.
Next, he tiptoed through the roses, careful not to crush any of them along the way. Their thorns scratched at the leather of his boots as if trying to hold him back or keep him from advancing.
When Calum reached the wall, he stopped. The light was too low for him to make out any distinct cracks or lines on it, so he held up his left hand and summoned Lumen’s light. His palm shone with a soft glow, the modest burn in his arm and shoulder oozed into his collarbone, and he scanned the area for seams.
He found none. Had he just imagined seeing the door?
No. It was there. The King had even walked through it. This was the right area; Calum just couldn’t find the door.
He searched for minutes, running his fingers over the smooth stone of the wall, trying to find the door by touch, but to no avail. Nor could he decipher any way to get it open, either. Perhaps the King had used his powers to open it. Or perhaps there wasn’t even a door there at all, and the King had somehow made a temporary one and then sealed it back up again.
Calum also remembered that the King was carrying a basket when he’d come through the wall, but he wasn’t carrying it when he left. Was the basket still in the garden, then?
He doubted a simple basket would hold the answers to his questions about the King’s secret door, but at this point, it was his only lead, so he crept back through the bed of roses and began his search. Calum found it a moment later, tucked under a stone bench under an apple tree.
He pulled it out and held it up. It was a simple wicker basket, wider than it was deep, but sturdy and well-made. It looked like something a street vendor in a large city might’ve used to display bread or trinkets at a cart. Nothing fancy.
It gave him no answers, so he put it back where he’d found it.
By that point, the sun was visible in the sky. Axel and Lilly would be waking up soon, and Calum had already overstayed his time in the garden, so he abandoned his quest for the secret door and crept back to his chambers before anyone could catch him wandering the halls.
Back in bed, exhaustion took over, and even though his mind tried to hold him hostage with more thoughts of Lilly, of Lumen, of his friends, of the war, and of the King and the secret door in his garden, Calum finally drifted off to sleep.
Axel had been pounding on the door for solid three minutes before Calum finally opened up. Calum stood there looking like as pallid as a Dactyl, with dark circles under his eyes and squinting at Axel against the brightness of the hallway.
Axel looked him up and down, unimpressed. “What’s wrong with you?”
Calum muttered something Axel couldn’t understand and rubbed his face at the same time.
“Yeah, yeah. Whatever.” Axel pushed past him into the darkness of Calum’s chambers, headed straight for the window in the main chamber, and flung the curtains open wide. Morning sunlight blazed into the space, banishing all but the room’s shadows.
“No, no…” Calum protested. He shut the chamber door behind him and walked toward Axel while shielding his face from the sunlight at the same time.
“What, are you some sort of vampire?” Axel scoffed.
“A what?”
“A vampire. I read about ’em in this novel called Blood for Blood—” Axel waved his hand. “Never mind. Doesn’t matter.”
Calum groaned and tried to get past Axel to close the curtains, but Axel redirected him to the leather sofa. Calum toppled easily and landed facedown on the cushions with another groan. And there he lay, looking half-dead.
Just like a vampire, Axel mused.
“What do you want?” Calum growled into the cushions.
“We need to talk.” Axel folded his arms. “Besides, it’s three hours ‘til midday. You can’t sleep forever.”
Still flattened out on
the sofa, Calum peered up at him with one angry eye. “I only fell asleep a few minutes ago. Or at least it feels that way.”
“Quit whining, Calum the Deliverer. The Unifier of Kanarah,” Axel taunted. He hated those monikers, mostly because they’d been applied to Calum rather than to him, but also because they were terrible and cheesy. “You already missed breakfast. Good thing the King wasn’t there, or you might’ve kicked off the war early with your disrespect.”
“The war is already going on,” Calum grumbled as he buried his face in the cushion again and covered his arms with his head. “And you want the war to happen anyway.”
“Can’t deny that. Got me there.” Axel smirked. When Calum heard what he was going to reveal about what he’d learned last night, it would change everything. “That’s why I arranged for Lilly to meet us in here so we could talk about it.”
Calum’s single exposed eye shot open, then he craned his head up to look at Axel.
“She’ll be here any minute,” Axel added.
As Axel had expected, that got Calum up and moving lightning-fast. If he wasn’t so predictable, it might’ve been funny. Instead, watching him scramble to find clothes and try to fix his lopsided, pillow-pressed hair was just sad. Embarrassing.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with the two of you, but she missed breakfast as well.” Axel shook his head and peered out the window overlooking Solace. “These days if I miss a meal, I get too ornery.”
“You’re always ornery,” Calum called from the next chamber.
“That’s different,” Axel retorted. “It’s called personality. Maybe you should try getting one for yourself sometime.”
“Ha, ha,” Calum replied, deadpan.
A knock, far gentler than how Axel had knocked earlier, sounded on Calum’s chamber door. A curse from Calum in the adjacent room followed.
“You want me to tell her to get lost for a few minutes?” Axel chuckled.
“No, let her in,” Calum replied, then he cursed his hair and the hairbrush and the mirror all in quick succession.
Axel just shook his head. He could pull off the rugged just-woke-up look. After all, he was far more handsome than Calum and had scratchy facial hair, so it wasn’t a bad thing if he looked like a gruff mountain man most of the time.
He opened the door, and the sight of Lilly tickled at his gut. She looked fantastic, wearing a dress that started burgundy on the bottom but progressed to red, and then to orange near the top. The fabric had a distinct sheen to it which added to the effect.
Her yellow crystalline crown and blonde hair made her look like a walking tongue of fire, which had to be an intentional choice on someone’s part. Whether it was Lilly’s doing, or perhaps Valerie’s, or even the King’s, Axel didn’t know. But whoever had done it either really liked fire or they’d gone a bit too far with the ensemble.
But Axel had long since given up on Lilly. And with Valerie roaming these halls, he felt fine acknowledging that Lilly looked good without having to hold a candle for her—a pun which, he decided, had just sparked a new flame to life in his mind.
Oh, yes. He was going to have fun with this one.
He gave her a sly grin. “Aren’t you a little warm in that?”
Lilly’s eyes narrowed. She’d understood his comment well enough. “May I come in?”
“Sure. Calum’s doing his makeup, but he’ll be out soon.”
“Makeup?” Lilly eyed Axel as she walked inside.
“Yeah, you know. Paint for the old barn? A bit of rouge for his cheeks, some powder, maybe some juice pressed from berries to color his lips.” Axel shut the door and followed her to the sofa. “You know, typical girl stuff.”
“Ignore him,” Calum called from the other chamber.
“I always do,” Lilly called back as she took a seat.
Axel’s bright mood dampened, and he muttered, “Isn’t that the truth…”
Lilly looked up at him. “Hmm?”
Axel shook his head. “Nothing, Your Fireness. Oops. Excuse me. I meant ‘Highness.’”
Lilly rolled her eyes.
Calum emerged from the other chamber. He’d missed a section on the back of his head where his hair still stuck out.
Axel considered telling him, but when Lilly stood to greet Calum and did so with a long embrace—much longer than Axel had ever seen her embrace anyone—he decided to keep it to himself. He realized then that he’d missed something important, and a pang of jealousy stabbed at his heart.
When the two of them finally ceased their embrace, they turned back to Axel.
He spoke before they had a chance to. “I get the picture. You don’t have to say anything else.” He forced a smile and lied to their faces. “I am truly happy for you both.”
They smiled in return, clearly not forced.
“Thanks, buddy. Means a lot to me,” Calum said, then he looked to Lilly. “To us both.”
Every reason in the world why Lilly should never have ended up with Calum cascaded through Axel’s mind, but he clamped his mouth shut so as not to spew them all over the two of them right then and there.
Instead, he stepped away from the sofa and motioned toward it in what he considered to be the most charitable act he’d done in recent months. “Why don’t the two of you sit together, and I’ll stand?”
They obliged him, and as his back was turned to them, he mouthed a dozen or so curses to the heavens. Then he reminded himself that women like Valerie existed, including Valerie herself, of course, and he began to feel better.
Still, it gnawed at him that in the end, Calum seemed to have won something Axel had once believed he could win for himself. In other words, Calum had beaten him in something else, yet again.
What was happening to Axel’s life? How was Calum succeeding in every area while Axel continued to falter, especially when it had been exactly the opposite before they’d started this adventure with Magnus?
“Axel?” Calum asked from behind him. “You alright?”
When Axel turned back, the smile he’d plastered on his face almost didn’t hold up at the sight of Calum sitting on the sofa with his arm around Lilly’s shoulders. Axel exhaled a silent furious breath and nodded, still smiling so he wouldn’t start shouting at them.
Instead, he eked out one single syllable. “Fine.”
Calum glanced at Lilly, but he didn’t press Axel further. Good thing, too, or Axel might’ve tossed him clear out the window.
“What did you want to talk about?” Lilly asked.
Axel briefly considered throwing her out the window, too, but since she could fly, that really wouldn’t accomplish anything, so he pushed the thought and the fury from his mind and refocused on the news he’d uncovered instead.
“I came across some useful information,” he managed to say. “I figured I should share it, and if either of you learned anything that might be helpful in our upcoming battles, now is the time to speak up.”
Calum and Lilly glanced at each other, and Calum took his arm off Lilly’s shoulders and leaned forward. The action actually went a long way to reduce Axel’s anger and frustration, but he refused to let either of them know that.
“What did you find out?” Calum asked.
Axel decided to forgo the entire story and instead revealed that he’d overheard the King, Matthios, and Valerie talking in the garden about future plans. He explained that Matthios was currently mustering every soldier in reserve to fight, and more importantly, Valerie had planted some sort of seeds in the most fertile soil in Kanarah.
He went on to explain how that was probably the ocean of grain where they’d first found and rescued Lilly from Roderick and his slave traders, or perhaps the royal orchards nearby. In any case, he asserted, both pieces of information indicated that the King’s conversations with them thus far had been nothing but lip service.
“He’s not ever gonna make any changes. That much is clear,” Axel said. “Otherwise, why bother preparing the rest of his army and planting those seeds
? Personally, I think it’s gonna be something like the rose golems we faced in Kanarah City.”
Calum and Lilly contemplated Axel’s words in silence for a long moment, just like the King had a habit of doing, and he almost spoke again, but then Lilly started talking.
“He isn’t necessarily making preparations because he desires to battle Lumen and our army,” she said. “He may just be taking extra precautions in case our negotiations fail. Or if Lumen refuses to accept whatever terms we come up with. Or if any number of other happenings go wrong along the way and Kanarah plunges into full-scale war.”
Axel didn’t like the sound of that, but he also really liked the sound of that. Lumen had promised them a war since the beginning. War was Axel’s chance to truly make a name for himself, to gain power as one of Lumen’s generals, as one of his Imperators.
“Keep in mind who we’re dealing with, here,” Axel said. “This is the King. He’s a tyrant, and he’ll do anything to stay in power. It’s who he is, just like Magnus’s uncle. There’s no negotiating with men like Kahn and the King.
“The sweet music of ‘cooperation’ he’s singing into our ears is a bunch of lies, nothing more. But now we know his plans, and we can take that information to Lumen so he’ll be prepared for it when it happens,” Axel concluded.
Calum and Lilly hesitated, and Calum spoke first. “Considering what you heard, and considering what we’ve experienced so far, I’m still torn. If he’s lying to us, he is genuinely good at it… or he’s actually being genuine and honest with us. I don’t know how to tell which one it is, but I do know that we should already be dead by now, and we’re not.”
Lilly nodded. “That, I agree with. He showed us mercy when he didn’t have to. That has to count for something.”
Axel was shaking his head even before she finished. “It’s a ploy. It has been all along. How can you not see that? I figured you’d be better at spotting when someone is lying to you by now, Lilly, after what your own father concealed from you all those years.”