“I can see Roseharbor,” Charlotte called from the bow.
“Anli, steer the ship closer to land. Let’s find a place to go ashore,” Onlo ordered.
Natalie’s stomach twisted. This was it. Time to put the plan into action. Nervous energy coursed through her blood; she checked her equipment twice and made sure her short staff was in its sheath on her back.
The boat, though small enough for a crew of five people, was large enough that they had to moor it a few yards offshore. Natalie leaped over the side of the boat, sloshed to land and danced on the balls of her feet, eager for Onlo to finish securing the boat to a tree. She reached into the Isle with her magic and felt the answer of the ley lines. It’s good to be home. Pray Goddess we can help make a change.
Anli took point leading them through the forest, with Onlo in the rear. Somehow they walked without making a noise while every step Natalie took seemed to echo throughout the forest. But nothing seemed louder than her own heartbeat drumming in her ears.
“Jules,” she hissed. “How long is the hike to Roseharbor?”
“About an hour,” he whispered. “Once we—”
Anli halted and held up a hand. “Shh! Get down.”
Natalie dropped to her belly, ears alert for any sound. Onlo crawled past her to confer with Anli. She cocked her head but their whispers were no louder than a soft rustling of leaves. Scanning the woods, she couldn’t detect any movement. The sunlight filtered through the trees and dappled the forest floor. Insects chirped all around, and birds—wait. No birds are singing in the trees. Hell in a kettle, someone’s here.
As if Anli read her mind, one finger pointed subtly toward the forest canopy. Waiting a moment, Onlo turned his chin toward the tree canopy, a hand drifting to one of his hidden daggers. Biting her lip, Natalie craned her neck, peering into the trees. She bit back a scream as parts of the trees broke off and fell to the ground.
“Form a circle around the princess,” Onlo roared.
“I can fight,” Charlotte retorted.
“How do people always know where we are?” Jules grumbled.
Fifteen assailants, camouflaged in green and brown clothing and adorned with sticks and mud formed a circle around them. Heart beating in her throat, Natalie drew her short staff. Onlo and Anli crouched, their long, curved daggers glinting in motes of sunlight. Jules drew a similar dagger and checked the position of the special bracer protecting the end of his right forearm. Behind her, Natalie heard a bowstring being pulled taut as the princess nocked an arrow.
One of the enemy must’ve given a silent command, because they attacked as one. Natalie took stock of the man coming for her as Anli let out a battle cry that sent her blood singing through her veins. He was about her height, barrel-chested, with a beard and a tattoo of a snake winding around one arm. His sword gleamed as he swung at her. She got her short staff up just in time, the blow causing her teeth to rattle, but she stopped the sword mere inches from her face. Time slowed and her entire awareness shrunk to the sight of a sword blade embedded a half an inch into the wood of her short staff. Swearing, she pulled, yanked, and twisted to get her staff away. Taking advantage of her exposed side, Snake Tattoo attacked again. Natalie tried drawing on her training, but it was all gone. Blank as a fresh canvas. It was all she could do to get her staff in front of her body as blows rained down from Snake Tattoo’s sword.
Backing away from his crushing blows, Natalie’s boot caught on a tree root and she fell, her back hitting the ground so hard she gasped for air. Snake Tattoo loomed over her and she tried to raise her short staff one last time, but he kicked it away. Kneeling, he hit her on the head with the hilt of his sword and everything went dark.
Chapter 22
B
y the Five, what is that smell? Natalie lifted her head and instantly regretted it; pain shot through her skull like a bolt of lightning. Groaning, she gingerly placed her fingers where she’d been hit with Snake Tattoo’s sword hilt. She felt horrible, but she had enough energy that she could use to do a cursory Naming. She let her hands drop to her sides. She had a great lump on her head—but thankfully no concussion—and numerous cuts and bruises.
Blinking her eyes open, she surmised she was in the Roseharbor palace dungeon. Turning to one side, she peered through her cage of iron bars at the empty cell next to her. Oh Goddess, please tell me I’m not here alone.
“Nat, are you awake?”
Natalie turned her head the other way. “Jules! You’re all right.” She slipped her hand through the bar to grasp his.
His hand shook in hers. “N-no.”
Natalie scrambled to a sitting position. “Are you hurt? Show me; let me Name you.”
“No, it’s not that.” His body curled around her hand, against the bars in a fetal position.
An icy sensation spilled down Natalie’s back. Memories of a nightmare from when Jules was a prisoner flooded back. “Oh Goddess. Aldworth held you in a dungeon, didn’t he?”
“Yes. He’s here, Natalie. He’s here, he’s captured us, and he will torture me again. Or you. The others … it’s all going to happen again.”
Natalie brought her other hand down on Jules’s, longing to enfold him in her arms. “No,” she asserted. “It’s not, do you know why?”
“W-why?”
“Because I’m here now, with you. And maybe Onlo, Anli and Charlotte survived the attack, too. You’re not alone, Jules. I will get you out of here, I promise.” Praying she could keep her vow, she rummaged through her cell for anything that could be used as a weapon. The dirt floor and rotted straw surrounded by iron bars yielded nothing. Not even so much as a bucket she could break.
Abandoning her search, she tried to determine if Anli and Onlo were with them. Squinting over Jules, she thought she could make out the vague outline of someone curled in a fetal position in the cell next to his. Jules would have to check to be sure, but she didn’t want to take the chance that whoever—or whatever—was in the cell would upset Jules more.
The remaining cells rose out the gloom, and a stone stairway, ominously worn in the middle by footsteps over the centuries, led upwards and outwards. How are we going to get out of here?
“Jules, did they take your daggers?”
“Y-y-yes, I have no weapons.”
Natalie blinked. “Yes. Yes, you do. Your energy bolts.”
“No, I’m too weak. I could only stop two attackers in the forest before the third got me, they weren’t enough.”
“You took out two? You did better than I did, I froze.” Natalie’s chest heaved once as she clamped down on the sobs. All my training with Onlo. I worked so hard for months, and I couldn’t do anything when it came to a real fight. What was the point?
Jules tugged on her hand. “It was your first fight ever. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
Natalie swallowed to lock the sobs in place. “Well, Healer Rayvenwood,” she began, pleased her voice wavered only a bit, “since you are our one weapon, you should practice. There’s a splotch on your wall there below the window. Well, if you can call that tiny thing a window. Try to hit it from here.”
“Nat, I know what you’re doing. It won’t work.”
“What am I doing?”
“You’re trying to distract me so I don’t think about Aldworth.”
“Distract you? Now you listen here, Juliers Rayvenwood.” She yanked on his hand and glared daggers at him. “There are no weapons in these cells. None. Except you. You have a way of fighting back when whoever is holding us prisoner reveals themselves. But if you’re not ready to use it, we are both hip deep in horseshit.”
Jules flopped back on the ground, uncurling from his fetal position for the first time. “All right, you damned pest of a woman.” He withdrew his hand from hers and stood up on shaky legs, facing the wall. A faint blue glow suffused his body and he drew his arm back, energy crackling in his hand, and hurled the bolt at the wall. A small blue ball landed on the fl
oor and fizzled out.
Natalie inhaled to say something, but Jules growled at her. “Don’t lecture me.” He took a deep breath, brushed the dirt off his clothes, and stood tall. He fired; this time, a bright blue ball hit the wall with a sizzling pop, right on target.
Jules smiled at her and Natalie grinned back. He practiced in earnest while Natalie lay back on the dirt floor. As she watched him practice, the weight of the day’s events settled upon her like a heavy, gray cloak. I never thought this plan could go so horribly wrong. All I wanted to do was stop Aldworth and fix a corrupt monarchy, now here we are in a dungeon, and Onlo, Anli, and Charlotte might be dead. Goddess, remember when my biggest worry was helping Jules Heal again? And all we had to do was hold hands. So simple and—
“Jules!”
“Goddess, woman, don’t scare me like that, I could’ve thrown a bolt at you.”
“Sorry, but, come here, I have an idea. Remember, before you were a mage how us holding hands allowed us to combine energies and Heal?”
He nodded.
“What if I put my hand on your shoulder or arm, we combined energies, and then you threw a ball of energy? What would happen?”
Jules scratched his chin with his thumb. “Hm. You are not a mage, but you are a Healer. I am both. With my own powers intertwined, if one side of my energy got a boost, would the other?”
Natalie shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”
“Okay, here.” He rolled up the sleeve of his right arm.
She stood, grasped his forearm, just above where his right hand used to be. She closed her eyes, the thrill of her energy joining with his sending chills down her spine. They hadn’t done this in ages; it was like coming home. Despite being in a cell, being in Jules’s worst nightmare, she knew with the utter depth of her soul that she was exactly where she belonged. She opened her eyes and gave him a smile of confidence. She believed in him. She believed in this. “Ready.”
He grinned back at her. “Hold on.”
Natalie watched as Jules glowed a brighter blue than she’d ever witnessed and lobbed an energy ball at the wall. Dizzy, she fell to her knees as a huge chunk of wall exploded into pieces.
“OI!” Anli’s face appeared at the bars opposite Jules’s cell. “Did you find a way to break us out?”
Chapter 23
T
he door to their cell block burst open and five guards jogged down the stairs.
“What happened in here?” A woman’s voice demanded.
Natalie, still disoriented from the energy she’d donated to Jules, sat on the floor and tried to look as groggy as possible. Jules leaned nonchalantly against his cell bars and she had to purse her lips to keep from laughing at the lopsided grin on his face. Anli stood there, arms crossed, sizing up the guards with one of the surliest expressions Natalie had ever seen on a human face.
The guards stalked down the cell row.
“This one is still unconscious, ma’am!” One guard said.
Natalie prayed it was Onlo.
The lead guard reached Jules’s cell. “What happened to your wall? Trying to break out?”
Jules held out his hand and his other arm, his face the perfect picture of innocence. “Me, trying to escape? I think you have cracks in your wall. Have you had someone from Obfuselt down here to check the structure recently?”
Natalie held her breath, ribs aching from containing her laughter.
The guards glared at them all. “Behave yourselves. Once your friend wakes up, the King and Queen want to see you.” They filed out, the heavy door at the top of the stairs closing behind them with a boom.
“Does that mean Onlo is here?”
Anli stood on her tiptoes peering out the front of her cell. ‘Yes, he’s in the cell across from me.”
Natalie sighed. “I can only hope Charlotte is with her parents and not dead.”
Jules made a noise of assent. “Assuming her parents don’t want her dead after working with Aldworth all this time. I’m pretty certain they’ll want us dead.”
“So, we need another plan. Can you get us out of here with one of your combined energy mage bolts?”
Natalie rubbed her temples. “That first one made me dizzy. It may be we can only do this a few times.”
Jules’s brows knit together. “Tell me exactly how you feel after this one, all right?”
She nodded and they repeated the process, this time with Jules aiming at the cell door lock. The iron bars absorbed his energy balls, lightning radiating out from a precise hit. Natalie blinked away blackness, let go of Jules’s arm, and reached out for the ground before she fell over.
“It didn’t work,” Jules said unnecessarily. “Nat? How are you? Can you grab my hand again?”
She waved him off. “I’m dizzy and all I can see is black spots. I just need to lie down.”
“Nat, we shouldn’t combine energies if it does this to you.”
“Are you kidding?” she and Anli exclaimed at the same time. Too tired to argue, she said “Tell him, Anli.”
“You’re the only weapon we have, Lightning Man.”
“Ugh, don’t call me that.”
Natalie’s mouth curled into a small, satisfied smile of revenge.
“You are a man and you throw lightning from your hands,” Anli explained like he was three. “If you can use her to take down several of whoever we meet up there, so much the better.”
“And if I kill her doing it? Look at what two shots did to her; she’s lying on the floor having trouble seeing.”
“Then I die saving you and the Isles, Jules,” Natalie interjected quietly, but firmly. “As we all would.”
“So, once we get loose, Onlo and I will take out what members of the Queensguard we can. You both will go straight for Aldworth, hopefully hitting him in one shot. Onlo, you trained Charlotte, give her orders as soon as you can. Is that our plan?”
Onlo, who had come to about an hour ago, and Anli nodded.
“Nat, you’re silent. Time to weigh in,” Jules said.
Natalie removed her chin from her hand. “It’s the best plan we have, but with all the variables, we don’t—”
The dungeon door rattled. Natalie glanced at her three companions, eyes wide.
“Well, we’re about to find out, aren’t we?” Onlo deadpanned.
The Queensguard filed down the stairs, bristling with weaponry. One guard bound Natalie’s hands behind her back. She bit her lip at the sight of beads of sweat pearling on Jules’s face as another member tied his arms to his sides. Dammit, making him helpless will traumatize him more; Goddess help me if they break his mind. We’ve got to get out of here. Our plan has to work. It has to.
The Queensguard marched them, single file, to the throne room. On the way there, she spotted the hallway leading to the ballroom where she’d treated epidemic patients with Gayla last spring. She’d hidden with Jules from Aldworth in that hallway; she longed to do so now. Before they’d even come to Roseharbor for the sweating sickness, they’d ridden bareback on Jules’s horse, Elric, with the sun warm on their backs happy and dreaming of finding a remote village where no one knew their names. A place where they could be Healers, safe and tucked away. Natalie faced forward, blinking back tears. Now everyone knew her name and she, Jules and their friends were being marched right into the lion’s den.
Natalie gaped when they entered the circular throne room. A forest of white marble columns soared upward to cathedral ceilings covered in intricate frescos. A red carpet embroidered with gold thread covered the white marble floor and led the way to two elaborately carved wooden thrones in the middle of the room, upon which King Gerhard and Queen Phillipa sat. Charlotte stood in between her parents, her face unreadable. Aldworth stood at the foot of the throne, his face triumphant.
“At last, your Majesties,”—he spread his hands wide— “we have two mages with which to make a new megalith on Lorelan.”
“Don’t you alread
y have a mage? Haven’t you already built a new emerald megalith on Lorelan?” Natalie bit her tongue.
“Ah, my dear. A good lesson if you ever take up intrigue: always control what your enemy knows.”
It was false. The intelligence the council received was false. Hell in a kettle.
He smirked. “And it worked. You’re here, are you not? Now I have two mages: Jules and our dear Princess Heir.”
Queen Phillipa, tall and silver-haired like her daughter, frowned at this. “Aldworth, We are grateful for your efforts in Our war, but We agreed you wouldn’t sacrifice Our daughter to build the new megalith.”
Aldworth clasped his hands behind his back and strode around the throne to the princess. “No, of course not. I need not sacrifice one mage when I have another. But, now that we are ready to invade, I also do not need two monarchs giving me orders when I have one to whom I can give orders.”
And he drew a dagger from his silk emerald Healer’s robes and slashed the King and Queen across their throats.
Chapter 24
N
atalie struggled against the guard restraining her as Charlotte screamed and launched herself at Aldworth. Pinning him to the floor in an instant, she disarmed him of his dagger, flipped it and held it against his chin.
Natalie’s eyes widened. She’d sparred with Charlotte before, but had never seen her display her talents to their fullest extent.
Unfortunately, the throne room was a contest of who had the most available allies; Charlotte had four people on her side, bound and unable to help her. Aldworth had at least twenty, and they quickly removed Charlotte from his person.
“Come now, my Queen,” Aldworth said, standing and straightening his robes. “Isn’t this what you wanted? Your mother and father out of the way so you could rule?”
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