by M. L. Greye
To Emry’s shock, Llydia burst into tears. She covered her trembling mouth with her hand and squeezed her eyes shut. Emry tried not to gape, but … it was such a small request. What did she need to discuss with Onyx? It clearly was very important to her.
“Thank you,” Llydia whispered between breaths. “Thank you, Emry.”
“Of course,” Emry answered automatically. “Anything for Declan’s mother.”
She really did mean that. Because of security reasons Declan had never learned who exactly he’d saved. He was never rewarded for saving her. That had both bothered and pleased her over the past couple years. He’d saved her without expecting anything in return. Declan was a good man, and he came from the woman in front of Emry. Llydia had to be great woman in her own right to have raised Declan.
Llydia reached her hand into her coat pocket and pulled out a small purse. “Here. Take this.”
“No.” Emry stepped back out of Llydia’s reach, trying her best not to look too horrified. “No. I- I owe Declan a favor, anyway. I mean, this won’t make us even, but I don’t want your money. I just want to help.”
“Thank you, Emry,” Llydia repeated – slipping her purse back into her coat, her bottom lip still trembling.
Emry smiled. “Tomorrow morning, be here no later than ten. Come to the front door and say you have an appointment with the Court. You’ll be taken to the receiving room, and the king will be there. You can speak with him then.”
“How ever will I be able to repay you?” Llydia breathed.
“I told you, I owe Declan.” Emry tossed a glance over her shoulder, toward the palace. She really needed to be heading back, especially if those guards were still out in the woods looking for her. “I wish you the best of luck. Until the next, Llydia.”
Emry barely heard Declan’s mother repeat the farewell back to her. She simply gave Llydia one last smile and then started off back to the palace. It wasn’t until about five or so minutes later that she realized she should have asked how Declan was doing. She’d said he was her friend after all.
Friend was a loose term in all honesty, but still, she was curious. Emry would just have to ask about him tomorrow after Llydia saw her father.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Kearns was making Declan run laps again – to the base of the mountain, up it for about a mile, and then back again – without stopping between laps. Declan had gone three times already, and felt like he was on the verge of throwing up. Yet, he knew he had to finish the fourth lap. She always made him do four. He just needed to finish this last lap and then he could rest. He wasn’t far. Just a little bit more. The end was in sight.
Declan collapsed at Kearns’s feet – his heart a thundering cacophony in his chest. He could feel his nausea rise and focused on his breathing to try to settle his stomach. In and out. One breath at a time.
He was there on the cold ground for all of ten seconds when Kearns grunted and said, “Again.”
“What?” He wheezed. She couldn’t have meant to run again. He’d already done it four times. She always did just four.
“Again, or you can sleep outside tonight,” she told him.
A fifth lap. A fifth lap or she’d take away his tent. He would not lose his tent. Declan forced himself upright. His legs were shaking as he rose onto them.
“Be back in thirty seconds or sleep beneath the clouds,” Kearns sneered. She was enjoying watching him struggle. “Start in five, four, three, two…”
Declan took as deep a breath as he could manage and tore off, counting in his head. Fire shot through his legs and the edges of his sight went dark. Yet, still he pumped his legs. His lungs were too small – too tight – to take in enough air.
He wasn’t moving fast enough. He was going to lose the one place he could go to escape the camp.
Even if the canvas was too thin on some nights and the nightly activities of other Stolen could be heard, it was his. He’d earned it. He’d won it through his own choice and effort.
Kearns would not take it from him! She could destroy him, but she wouldn’t take his tent. His choice.
With the last dregs of his energy, Declan shoved every ounce of speed he possessed into his feet. Faster. He had to go faster. He pushed himself on and on until all he heard was the rush of the air past his ears and his own stuttering heart.
He hit the peak of his last run – as far as his last lap had taken him – and headed back. It was downhill now. Easier. Or so he told himself.
The black that lined his vision were joined by spots. He could barely see in front of him. He began to trust his feet – utilizing another ability of his, one that would lead him back.
He was almost there. He could see Kearns standing by the river, watching it. She didn’t even notice he was coming.
Five seconds left. Declan threw himself forward with whatever was left within him. He was going to make it! He was going to keep his tent. He was going to–
He was going to run into Kearns.
Declan swore in his head and veered off to the side. He tried to stop himself, but his legs wouldn’t listen. Arms and feet flailing, Declan stumbled and skidded into the frozen ground, jarring his shoulder. He cried out in pain as the skin on his palms ripped open.
By now he should have been used to feeling like his heart was going to explode. His lungs burned, and his chest hurt with every pound of his heart. How was he still alive? Or conscious?
Kearns crouched down beside him, cackling in her raspy way. “I didn’t think you’d make it. Rest easy. Your tent is still yours. You’re done for the day.”
Declan didn’t respond. He honestly couldn’t have had he wanted to. He was dying. For the hundredth time. No, for the thousandth time. Releasing something like a moan, Declan stared up at the clouds, swearing in his head.
While his heart slowed and his sight returned and the world stopped spinning around him, he imagined ways to murder Kearns. She was evil incarnate. The sort of monster that would snack on children while they dreamed.
The world would be better off without her.
He needed to see a Ruby for his hands and shoulder. Even though Kearns hadn’t sent him one, he’d send himself to one in her name. He didn’t even care. It was her fault his hands were torn.
A gurgling sound nearby caught his attention, coming from the river. With a grunt, Declan eased himself upward, sitting up slowly.
Kearns was gone, but another Back Rube had appeared in her place on the bank of the river. His ruby red eyes were on the blonde black-eyed woman Rand had almost killed. She was standing waist deep in the river’s icy water – her hands clutching something just below the surface.
Just then, a slender brown hand broke through the water and clawed at the Black’s arms. Declan grimaced as he recognized the drill.
A Blue was beneath the surface, being forced to hold his or her breath or to do something with the water in order to be freed from the Black. Each of the Stolen had their own kind of torture. Declan was glad his didn’t involve being held somewhere void of air.
The Back Rube ordered the Black to bring the Blue back up. She did and a woman with brown skin and long white hair sputtered out, coughing and gagging. Her hair was the lightest color he’d ever seen – so white it almost had a pale blue sheen to it. Declan stared.
She was a fresh-faced. He’d never seen her before. If he had, he would have remembered her hair.
It took a moment for the Blue to catch her breath. When she did, she turned her attention to the Back Rube. Her blue eyes were like rippled water, and they were filled with rage and loathing. Declan sympathized with her all too much.
The Blue opened her mouth and in a thick Heerth accent, she said, “Again.”
Declan’s jaw dropped. He knew he was gaping. The Black looked the same. Even the Back Rube seemed startled, but he nodded. “Do it.”
The Black plunged the Blue beneath the surface again. Declan would have stayed to watch, but he’d finally caught his breath. He needed to
see a Ruby before it got too late for him to use Kearns’s name. He tossed one last glance at the Blue beneath the water and walked away.
:::::
Emry waited just beyond the front courtyard for Llydia to exit the palace. She’d arrived in her spot beside the less busy north wing – to the left of the palace if one was looking directly at it. Around the south wing was the stables, which made that side a terrible place to loiter and spy. Servants and courtiers came and went around that corner all day. On the north wing, however, hardly anyone passed.
She’d found a nice little patch of frozen ground with plenty of shade from the palace itself, and had plopped herself onto it – ice and all. She’d forgone her typical morning gown as well in favor of her Kruth attire and had wrapped herself in a thick blanket.
Unfortunately, the blanket didn’t keep out all the cold. Emry was soon shivering, but it was nearly ten. Any minute and Llydia would be walking up to the palace. Unless Llydia decided to ditch the whole thing. Emry doubted that’d be the case. Llydia had been so emotional about it … No, Declan’s mother would come.
Sure enough, five minutes later, Emry made out Llydia’s figure coming up the long drive toward the palace. She wasn’t alone. The man at her left towered above her.
As they grew closer, Emry knew this was Declan’s father. He looked like him. The same black hair. The same jaw. The same nose. Different eyes, though. Declan’s father was a Brown.
Llydia and her husband arrived at the palace’s door. Emry watched as they were ushered inside by one of her servants, their breath clouding the air. It was far too cold outside for her just to be sitting on the ground. Yet, she wanted to be there when Declan’s parents left. She wanted to ask how it went with her father – ask how Declan himself was doing.
How long would she really be waiting, anyway? An hour at the most. Realistically, probably only thirty minutes. Emry could do thirty more minutes. Her teeth would just be chattering the whole time. Maybe she should stand up and march in place…
Her thoughts were cut short when a moment later Llydia and her husband were back out in the courtyard. Emry blinked. That had been far too quick. It couldn’t have been more than three minutes. Had her father even seen them?
Emry rose to her feet, still clutching the blanket around her. Declan’s father had his arm around Llydia’s shoulders, holding her against his chest. Neither of them looked her way. Not that it would have mattered as Emry had pulled the shadows around herself to hide within. As they began back down the road they’d just come – back towards Breccan – Emry decided to meet them where the stone drive of the palace became the gravel road into the city. It was beyond the tree line so no one in the palace would spy her.
Releasing her grasp on the shadows around her, Emry became shadow herself and ran to the edge of the woods. She solidified once beyond the cover of the trees and realized she’d lost her blanket somewhere along the way. Fantastic.
When Llydia and her husband reached the woods, Emry had already caught her breath from her running. The exertion had warmed her up enough to no longer be shivering.
Making sure they were alone on the road, Emry stepped around a tree into Llydia’s path.
Her husband noticed her first. He whispered something into Llydia’s ear, and she lifted her head.
Emry smiled, even though Llydia looked more miserable than she had the day before. “How’d it go with the king?” She asked.
Llydia grimaced, but it was her husband who answered. “It could have been better.”
“Oh?” Emry’s eyes drifted back and forth between them.
“This is my husband, Levric Sharpe,” Llydia introduced, forcing on a polite smile. “It was kind of you to set up the appointment. Thank you, Emry.”
“What happened?” Emry couldn’t help but pry. They both looked so unhappy.
“We knew going in that our plea was not an easy one to fulfill,” Levric said. “Thank you for helping us.”
“If you do not already have plans for dinner this evening, we have been staying at The Coiled Harp in Breccan,” Llydia told her. “We’d love for you to join us if your … work is finished by then.”
Emry almost blurted out a question about what work, when she remembered they didn’t know who she really was. She would have liked to have dinner with Declan’s parents, but the idea of sneaking off tonight when there were no foreign dignitaries visiting to keep her father occupied would be too difficult. Too obvious. But the look on Llydia’s face made her just say, “I’ll see what I can do. Thanks.”
They parted ways, and as Emry returned to the palace, she couldn’t stop wondering what her father had said. It couldn’t have been good, given Llydia and Levric’s reactions.
She decided to seek out Onyx for herself. He would have ended his appearance in the Court’s receiving room by now, which meant he’d be in only one of two places until lunch. Either his rooms or his menagerie. Since Emry was already outside, she went with the menagerie first.
It took her a few minutes to get there from the edge of the woods. As she neared the menagerie, she glimpsed her father on his way to it from the palace. She hurried to catch up with him.
“Father!” She called out when she was about twenty feet away.
Onyx paused and turned toward her. When he saw her coming at him, he waited in place. A moment later, Emry pulled to a stop in front of him. “Hello, Father. I’m glad I found you. Levric Sharpe and his wife were here to see you. What did they want?”
He stiffened. His entire demeanor shifted into one large scowl. “It was you who sent them to me?”
Emry blinked, surprised by his sudden change of mood. “They’re the parents of Declan Sharpe and his mother said she had business with you. I told her when to come back.”
“Just because they are the parents of the boy who saved you does not mean you had the right to send them to me,” Onyx ground out between clenched teeth, startling Emry. “How did you find them in the first place?”
“I ran into her outside of the palace yesterday,” Emry replied, struggling to keep a bite out of her tone as well. “What did they want?”
“Does it matter?” He retorted, his voice low. “There are proper channels of communication for peasant villagers to go through. They do not go directly to the king. They must go to their lower nobles, who then go to the upper nobility, who can bring the issue to me if the nobility cannot solve it themselves. This is how our country has done it for hundreds of years. I will not make an exception simply because you knew their son.”
Emry stared at him. No, she gawked at him. Onyx sounded like … like his advisors.
It was almost word for word of some speech she’d heard one of those pompous men say during a past banquet she’d had the unfortunate opportunity to sit near. Her father was quoting his disconnected, egotistical advisor rather than making up his mind for himself. Onyx wished to keep things exactly as they’d always been, and he didn’t have the courage to bend tradition in the slightest.
It was just as she’d seen for herself among the regions – in courts of the lower and upper nobility. It both shamed and infuriated her. Had her father lost all semblance of empathy? Their son had risked his life to save her own.
Slowly, her gawking twisted into a glare, and she snapped back, “Well perhaps if we switched things up a bit we wouldn’t have any Rioters wishing the Jewels were overthrown.”
His face hardened at her use of slang for the royal family. “The Rioters are the least of my concern. They’re nothing more than disgruntled citizens.”
“You can’t be serious,” Emry exclaimed. “Surely you see they weaken us. They make us look like an easy target to other nations.”
Onyx passed a hand across his eyes. “I’m not discussing this with you.”
“Why not?” Emry demanded. Her father began walking again toward his menagerie. “Father, you cannot keep me from becoming involved in our kingdom forever.”
“I’ll see you at dinner,” he tossed
over his shoulder without stopping.
Emry watched him go – frozen in place and trembling with rage. That familiar emotion of helplessness was rising up within her again. She could feel her control over the shadows within her slipping. Her fury usually did that to her. She needed to get out of the garden before darkness started seeping out of her. Or somewhere not so out in the open.
As her father stepped into his menagerie without even glancing back to see if she was still there, her resolve clicked into place. She was not her father.
Spinning on her heels, she headed back to her rooms. She needed to grab the satchel she’d recently purchased for her exertions out in Breccan. It held some coin, her shadow blades, and usually some sort of snack. When she woke up that morning, she hadn’t intended to go into Breccan today, but things had changed. If her father wouldn’t help Declan’s parents, then she would do what she could instead.
:::::
After a quick patch job from a Ruby at the infirmary, Declan went to claim his one meal for the day. He hadn’t received breakfast from Kearns today, unfortunately. On days like these, when he only was given one meal, he’d grown into a habit of eating it in late afternoon so that he wasn’t as hungry when he went to bed, excluding those very rare days he won a dinner instead of breakfast.
Once inside the mess hall, he spotted Rand at one of the tables on a bench. Declan quickly grabbed his food and joined the Gray. Rand consistently received two meals a day, but lately he tended to make sure he was there when Declan ate in the afternoon.
Despite Rand yelling at him over interfering with the blonde Black, he and Rand were still allies, of a sort. Not quite friends – because if they were, the Back Rubes would have noticed. No, they were more like comrades in misery.
Declan dropped his tray of food onto the table across from Rand. The Gray didn’t lift his head in greeting, but Declan didn’t need any acknowledgement. It’d only draw more attention to them anyway. The Back Rubes didn’t care if the Stolen consistently ate at the same table together – it was when they chatted and smiled that the Back Rubes sought to break it up. There could be no joy in this camp.