He inclined his head toward her. “You’re right. By the rules of the land, if you are to be my companion in the trials, it must be of your own free will. That’s why I brought you to this particular place. Don’t you recognize it?”
She cast her gaze around the clearing and the woods beyond. They stood in the mountains. “This is the First Realm. Near Ishtem.”
He shook his head. “Yes, but do you not see? Do you not hear?” He walked toward her, and she scurried back. He did not break stride as he brushed by her and moved into the trees.
Maeve hesitated for a moment, and then followed him, stepping cautiously to avoid any sharp pebbles on her bare feet. They entered the woods and followed a narrow trail to another, much larger clearing. Maeve frowned. Ample space in the mountains was uncommon, especially with the trees so dense.
Rodan stopped at the edge of the foliage, his gaze implacable. “What do you see?”
She turned her head, but other than the abnormally wide space, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Before, when she fell into the Realms as a teenager, there always was something out of place. A dragon hunting the land. A plague affecting the population. Villages burning. People screaming. But now? All stillness and quiet. Nothing out of the ordinary.
“I don’t see anything. There are no signs of distress. What am I supposed to be looking for?”
“You see, but do not comprehend,” he scowled and broke through the cover of the trees. He walked without glancing back, stopped, and then knelt, looking behind him to motion Maeve over. She picked her way over the moss and leaves and crouched beside him. Rodan reached out a gloved hand and wiped away the moss and dirt, revealing something rounded and white—
“Is that a skull?” Maeve gasped, jerking back.
He gave her a stern look. “Yes. Come closer.”
Her heart fluttering, she moved back in. Rodan wiped more of the dirt away and then pried the skull out of the ground. Rotting flesh still clung to it in strips, and with a sick twist to her stomach, Maeve realized that the scent of rot that she associated with the usual smells of the forest was something far more sinister.
She held the back of her hand up against her nose and took a deep, shaking breath through her mouth. That was a mistake, for as soon as the air touched her tongue it was coated in cloyingly sweet scent. She gagged and ducked her head.
“It belongs to a child,” Rodan said in a soft voice. “Probably no more than five, six perhaps? What do you think?”
He thrust the skull toward her, and this time Maeve did fall back in her haste to get away. He glowered at her and rose.
“Look at this and tell me, is she thanking you now for removing me from my throne? Is she happier, her life more fulfilled, now that Sebastian Sekou sits on the high seat?” His voice took on a dangerous undertone, and Maeve felt that familiar rush of danger creep over her. “Do you see now? Hear now? What signs of distress are there, you ask me, and yet the Realms welcome you in silence.”
On her hands and knees, looking up at the Fae overlord who haunted some of her darkest dreams and a few of her nightmares, Maeve struggled to process what he told her. She could hear birdsong, and the insects, and the babbling brook, yet—
No people.
She held her breath, listening harder.
Each time she walked these hills and valleys, these mountains and deserts, the sound of people surrounded her. Humans, most of the time, but the Realms hosted many species. Yet, she could hear no skittering footsteps. No laughter or song of the elves as they sang-spoke to one another. No centaurs stomping their hooves, no goblins sharpening their blades, and no humans laughing, crying, talking.
The emptiness rang in her ears. Her fingers sank into the soft earth, and she touched something hard and cold. She shot up, wondering if she just touched something—someone—else.
“He—” she licked her lips, unable to meet the eyes of the creature before her and his barely contained rage. “Sebastian did this?”
“Did it. Let it be done. It depends on the place and the people.” He crouched down and gently returned the skull to its earthen home. He straightened, brushing his gloved hands free of loose soil. “I believe that these people harbored loyalists to my reign. When they wouldn’t give them up, he had the entire village butchered.” He raised his strange eyes to her. “Men, women, and children.” He put specific emphasis on that last word. “It is not the only place he has done this to.”
She crossed her arms over her stomach and shook her head, “I can’t believe it. Why would he do that?” She glared at Rodan. “You attacked us. You attacked me. Tried to kill me. This is more like something you would have done.”
“I tried to squash a rebellion,” he corrected, his voice surprising in its gentleness. “If I had wanted to kill you, you would have been dead the moment you started stirring up trouble in the Five Realms. If I were the tyrant your dear Sebastian painted me to be I had ample opportunity to lead you both to your demise. Yet here you are. Alive. Well. Setting me as the villain in your children’s books.”
Her mind buzzed from the onslaught of new information, threatening to tip her entire world over. What Rodan said would nullify everything that she ever believed in. All that she stood for. She shook her head. “If you’re really a nice guy, then let me go back to my world. Run the trials yourself. Find someone else to be your second.”
Rodan shook his head in return. “I have chosen. The rest is up to you. I have shown you what Sebastian is.”
“Why me?” Maeve asked. “I’ve only worked against you in the past.”
“But you have worked for the Realm,” King Rodan explained. “In all your many ventures, in all the kingdoms you conquered on your way to the high seat, you were gentle with the subjects. You were the one who had the power to change things, to bend situations to your will. It was not Sebastian,” he spat the name, “who won the throne. It was you. You, the interloper. The maiden from beyond the veil.”
She flushed as he said her old titles, both good and bad. She remembered the ‘Wanted’ posters that sprung up in villages and cities with her face sketched upon them, branding her an interloper and offering a monumental reward to anyone who would aid in her successful capture. Many tried, over those many years, but none succeeded. Some got close, and she shuddered at the memory.
Rodan was right. She did just as he said—helped conquer each of the kingdoms on the way to crown Sebastian as high king.
Sebastian, she thought, looking around her at the little clearing in the woods. He should know I’m here. He always sensed when I came through the veil. Just like her, he could use magic. Possessed senses others did not.
Her heart gave an involuntary flutter.
After all those years of adventure, she thought that she and Sebastian would rule here together. That after she crowned him at his coronation, he would call her back to him to be by his side. His summons never came, and no matter how many times she revisited the places where the world grew thin, admittance to the Five Realms was denied her.
She assumed that she no longer could, but now Rodan had proved that wasn’t the case. She was here.
Rodan, of all people, had pulled her through.
“This can’t be right,” she protested, her words sounding weak even to her own ears. “It can’t be. Sebastian would never have ordered the execution of these people. He couldn’t have. He—”
“I what?” called a familiar voice.
Maeve jerked at the sound and turned, heart leaping but stomach sinking at the same time. Rodan only lifted his chin, otherwise remaining stock still.
Striding toward them across the clearing stepped an older, more weathered Sebastian. Crisp dark blue eyes flashed under a mop of unruly red curls, and his smile was the same. His gait and the way he tilted his head in greeting was the same. Her throat tightened.
“Sebastian, I—”
“Maeve,” he interrupted, holding his arms out from his side. “How splendid you look.”
Before she could react, Sebastian enveloped her in a firm embrace. He smelled sweet, like sugared cookies and flowers, but with an undercurrent of something else. Something wrong. Sour.
He pulled away from her and held her at arm’s length, grinning. “I never thought I’d see you again.”
She couldn’t help but echo his smile. “Neither did I.”
He let her go and turned on his heel toward his old nemesis. His golden crown of roses and thorns flashed in the sunlight. “Rodan. You’ve returned.”
Rodan swept into a formal bow, extending his arms out to both sides. “Sebastian Sekou, high king of the Five Realms, I hereby declare my intention to challenge you to the throne. Name your terms, and let the trials begin.”
Maeve felt a strange chill run through her. Those words felt—odd. Significant. As though they carried a weight of their own.
Sebastian put his hands on his hips and gave a long-suffering sigh. “I knew you would pull something like this one day. A duel, hey, old man? Do you think you can take me?”
Rodan remained silent.
“Very well,” Sebastian said, his voice taking on a wheedling, high tone. “I’ll see that the challenges are laid in your path. You have, mm, six months to make it to my castle, or the duel is forfeit.” He tapped his finger against his chin, looking between Maeve and Rodan. “Who is your second, old man?”
“Maeve Almeida,” Rodan declared, straightening and facing her. “So long as she accepts.”
Sebastian laughed. He laughed so hard that he almost doubled over, the crown slipping a little on his head, listing to the side. Wiping tears from his eyes, he continued to grin at Maeve. “Is he serious? Do you accept the mantle of second and companion to him during his trials?”
Maeve hesitated, on the brink of saying no. She licked her lips. “Sebastian,” she said in a soft voice, soft enough that she hoped it did not carry over to Rodan. “What happened here?”
Her old friend moved his gaze around, nodding a little as though concluding something. “So, he told you, did he? Told you that this place harbored traitors?”
A lump formed in her throat and it felt as though a boulder was settling on her stomach. “What?” she rasped.
“I have to hold my throne, Maeve,” Sebastian said, his tone condescending. “Do you think the trials were hard? They’re a cakewalk compared to the governorship.”
Her eyes burned, but she blinked back the tears. “Why didn’t you call for me, then?”
“What?” Sebastian snapped. “So you could take credit for everything else that I do? No. You were better off in your world.”
Maeve took a step back from him, legs shaking a little. “Take credit? When did I ever—”
“You know what you did,” he snarled.
Maeve glanced at Rodan, who stared back at her with an unreadable expression, silent.
“But you did this,” she said, her voice shaking. She pushed through it. She needed the confirmation. “You killed these people.”
“Don’t be crass. I had them killed. They were treasonous, the lot of them.”
A tear fell, Maeve helpless to stop it. “The children were treasonous? How?”
“They would have grown to be a problem, and you know it,” Sebastian said in a smooth, silken voice, holding up his hands in a placating gesture. “What would you have me do? Allow someone else to take over the throne? To throw away all your hard-won victories? Aren’t you proud of me for holding onto the world you gifted me?”
With those last few, mocking words, Sebastian’s blue eyes glittered with malice. She took another couple of steps back from him, shaking her head. “I can’t believe it. You’re what he said.”
His eyes flashed dangerously. “I am what you made me.”
“No!” Maeve cried. “You—you were kind. Once,” she said the last word in a whisper.
Rodan spoke, his voice calm like water over her heated flesh. “The question remains, Maeve Almeida. Will you accept the companion role in my trials? Will you help me rectify these wrongs, and set the Realms to right again?”
Shaking, she swung her gaze between the two men. Both tall. Both handsome. Both wanting something quite different from her. Could she do it? Could she turn her back on everything that she wrote about and believed in? If Rodan fell along the way, the challenge would migrate to her shoulders, and she would be the one locked in battle with her childhood friend.
While she deliberated, the silence descended on them once more.
The roaring quiet, more than anything, demanded her response.
Maeve lifted her chin, looked between them once more, and said, “I accept.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Rodan
RODAN RELEASED THE BREATH HE’D HELD without realizing it, and a smile curved his lips. He turned his gaze toward his old enemy, “I have my companion, Sebastian Sekou. I will begin the trials.”
Sebastian looked ready to explode, his expression thunderous. He and Maeve stared at each other, she with her jaw set and her fists on her hips, him with a muscle jumping in his cheek. Sebastian reached up and straightened the crown—Rodan’s crown—on the top of his head and glared between the two of them.
“You decided then,” the interloper said, his voice a hissing snarl. “You’re just as much my enemy now as he is. I won’t hold anything back.”
Maeve’s chin lifted, and something in Rodan softened at her challenge. Recruiting her for the trials would work in his favor. Her eyes narrowed. “I look forward to it.”
Sebastian choked out a quick, mocking laugh, and then turned away from them both, disappearing before his boots hit the ground. Rodan blinked at that, and a cold chill wrapped around his bones. The throne is imparting power upon him, he thought. This will make things even harder.
Maeve let out a breath and deflated where she stood, and soon the glitter of tears shone at the corners of her amber eyes. He took a few steps forward, the wind picking up and throwing bits of pine needles against his calves as he did so. “Maeve,” he said, softening his voice. “Are you alright?”
She jerked away from him, and he tried to pretend that the motion didn’t hurt.
Of all the women who threw themselves at me over the years, this is the one I offered everything to.
Maeve crossed her arms over her stomach and looked at the spot where Sebastian disappeared. “What just happened?” Her tone was a little high, and he saw the panic in the widening of her eyes. “Did I really just do that?”
“Yes,” Rodan said. “You did. Thank you, Maeve. The Realms need you.”
She looked at him, her eyes like cut citrine, her long tawny hair flipping over her shoulder, and bit out, “That’s what I did it for. The Realms. Not for you.”
He nodded. “Of course.”
What else did he expect from her at this point?
“Something’s wrong with him,” she murmured. “Sebastian. He smelled wrong.”
Rodan sensed it too. A miasma, a greasy sheen about the air when Sebastian appeared, as though he infected the very oxygen around him with whatever sickness burbled up inside.
“Is he ill?” she asked. “Could that be it? Could something have happened to him?”
Rodan shook his head. “I honestly do not know. But it was not the only curious thing about this encounter.”
“What else?”
“His disappearance. When did you ever see Sebastian wield magic with any kind of finesse? That was more your style. He was good with the flash-bangs, but never anything of any significance.” Rodan thought again on how Sebastian slipped out of sight. His own keen senses told him that Sebastian managed to traverse space, removing himself from where they stood and transporting himself somewhere else. Rodan possessed the ability himself, though it would be barred from him for the duration of the trials.
Maeve frowned at him. “I wasn’t that great at magic. Sebastian said—”
“I think we’ve established that Sebastian lies. He does it as easy as he breathes. Your magic is tre
mendous. A boon to his trials and, hopefully, to mine.”
Her lips pressed into a straight line, and she turned her head away, her hair falling forward to hide part of her face. “I think he’s sick. That was not the same man that I knew when I was younger. And if he’s sick, that means that there must be a cure.”
“Oh?” His mouth twisted in an unpleasant smile. “Why do you think there was always a sense of imminent danger when you came through the veil? He was the cause of much of the chaos you witnessed over the years, only he pinned the blame on me. He is a master manipulator. He may have painted me as your villain, but it was he who abused your trust, not I.”
She shook her head. “I would have known.”
“You were a child.”
“I was not!” She spun on him. “I was young, yes, but I wasn’t a child.”
He tilted his head a little to one side to study her, his gaze flickering down the length of her body and back up. Maeve, on the athletic side of curvaceous, stood taller than the average woman but still a good six inches shorter than himself. Her hair, a lovely, tousled mess that begged for hands to dive into it, fell to her shoulder blades.
A red flush rose in her cheeks as he looked at her, and he smiled. “I suppose,” he said with a drawl, “from the perspective of an immortal, most humans would seem like children. Even so, you were young enough then—and dare I say, wounded enough—to believe anything pressed upon you with such sincerity. Sebastian gave you a world of good and evil. Black and white. It must have been refreshing.”
Her lower lip trembled, and he wondered if he overstepped. The books that she wrote in her world offered an insight into Maeve’s past, and that insight taught him that her upbringing had been unpleasant. Even now, it appeared as though she carried wounds from those days.
“It doesn’t matter, Maeve,” he said as gently as possible. “All that matters now is that you work to right the wrong. You’ve taken the first, most important step in accepting the companionship role in my trials. If I fall, I know that you’ll do the right thing.”
She shook her head, still staring at him, as though captivated. “I don’t want to be a queen.”
Catching Pathways Page 3
