The Common King

by Brian Olsen

  Zane doesn’t answer.

  “Was it the new one? The bearded man who tried to move me? He has some sort of transportation magic as well?”

  Still no answer.

  The Common King sighs. “If you’re not here to help me, Zane, why are you here?”

  “Same reason as before.”

  “Before? You mean when you distracted me, while your friends prepared to rip me in two? Sorry. There’s nobody left in my head for you to rescue.”

  “No. Not then. Before.”

  “Before…? Ah.” He laughs. “You mean before the Moment. Excellent. So you are here to help me.”

  I hear movement. If I could open the door a little more I could see better.

  “If you promise not to hurt anyone else,” Zane says, “I’ll convince them to stay out of your way.”

  “Last time we tried that, they destroyed the world. I can’t say that was an ideal outcome. You’ll have to do better.”

  “What else do you want?” Zane sounds angry. “I won’t fight them for you.”

  “Deliver them to me,” he says. “I’ll make sure they can’t interfere in my plans.”

  “By killing them.”

  “No.” Silence. Then more movement. What the hell is going on? “I don’t break promises to people I care about, Zane. You remember that much, I hope.”

  “Oh, and you care about me?”

  “Yes. Very much. Just as you care about me.”

  Mr. Montgomery puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. I don’t know if he’s comforting me or warning me against rushing in.

  “I don’t,” Zane says.

  “Of course you do. I thought I had forced you to come to me, by giving you nowhere else to turn. But your friends live, and you’ve come to me anyway. You remember what we shared now, don’t you?”

  A pause. “Yes.”

  The Common King’s voice gets so soft I have to strain to hear. “And you want to share that again as much as I do, don’t you?”

  Another pause. “Yes.”

  Silence. Movement.

  I push the door open just a little wider. Mr. Montgomery’s fingers bunch up my shirt in his grip, trying to stop me, but I have to know.

  I see them. Kissing. Zane is kissing the Common King. Hands that look just like mine but aren’t mine are running up and down his body.

  They break and I let the door swing back before they can see us.

  “You promise you won’t kill them?” Zane asks.

  “All but Chris Armstrong.”

  “But—”

  “He’s an affront to everything I am. I can’t abide his existence. I promise to spare them all. Except him.”

  “I can’t,” Zane replies. “I can’t.”

  “Zane. You more than anyone understand shadows. They appear to have substance, but they’re nothing. Ephemeral. Chris is my shadow, cast by my glorious light. Any part of him that you love, that you desire, has its origin in me.” The sound of another kiss, a quicker one. “I could tell you I’d spare him and then kill him anyway. But I want you to know that I won’t lie to you. That I won’t break my promises. This will hurt you, but you have made sacrifices before for the greater good. Can you make this one?”

  A long pause. “What you’re planning—”

  “I won’t give you details. Not until I’m sure of your loyalty.”

  Zane laughs. “We’ve figured most of it out already, I think. No, what I’m asking is, do people have to die? If I give up my friends to you, can you carry out your plans without bloodshed?”

  The king is silent for a moment. I hear him walk a little further away. “No. But there will be much less bloodshed than if I have to fight off another resistance. Help me and you will be saving many lives. I can promise that.”

  “I…I can live with that.”

  “You agree to sacrifice Chris Armstrong.”

  “Yes.”

  Mr. Montgomery’s hand cups the back of my neck.

  “Then we are agreed,” the king says. “Where are your friends hiding?”

  “It doesn’t matter where,” Zane replies. “You can’t get at them yet. I’ll need to take care of someone first.”

  “Take care of?” The king laughs. “There’s the Desh I remember! The bearded man?”

  “Yes. Once he’s incapacitated, I’ll text Jasmine again with our location and you can come and collect us.”

  “Excellent!” The king claps. “Now that our business is out of the way, do you have time for some pleasure?”

  I feel sick.

  “I should get back before I’m missed,” Zane answers. “Before I go, could I see Nate?”

  “Why?”

  “I want to make sure he’s okay. You’re about to take all my friends prisoner. I’d like to see how you treat your guests.”

  “Still suspicious! I suppose I’ve given you reason. Have no fear, my queen has kept his insolent tongue far from my ears and my temper. But you may send her a message, if you wish. Tell her I request her and her paramour’s presence in my grand ballroom.”

  Mr. Montgomery’s fingers tense.

  It’s quiet while Zane texts, then he says, “They’re on their way down.”

  “Splendid.” Sounds like he moves closer to Zane again. “Since we have some time to kill…”

  Zane laughs. “Since we do…”

  Kissing. Lots of kissing. And moaning. I bite my lip. I don’t push the door open to look this time. I don’t want to see it again.

  After forever a door across from us opens. Jasmine says, “Whoa! Sorry to interrupt the party, boys!”

  “Zane?” Nate. “Asshole! What the hell?”

  “Sorry, Nate,” Zane says. “I wanted to make sure you’re all right.”

  “I’m better than you, you traitor. Have you been working for him all this time? Is that how you survived?”

  Mr. Montgomery pushes the door open. I flinch, but the four of them are too caught up in Nate’s ranting to notice. Jasmine and Nate are together, near a door on the opposite side of the room from us. Nate’s eyes are puffy and red. Zane takes a few steps towards them, and the Common King goes with him, keeping an arm around his back.

  “Nate.” Zane holds his arms out, as if in apology. “I’m sorry. It’s not what it looks like.”

  Mr. Montgomery bends down and hisses in my ear, “We have to save Nate!”

  I don’t know what we can do. Once Zane leaves, we’ll be stuck here. I have no idea how we’ll get ourselves out, let alone Nate.

  “Well, you’ve seen him,” the king says. “Shouldn’t you get back to your friends’ bolthole?”

  “What?” Nate’s attention zips to my double. “They’re alive?”

  Zane spreads his fingers wide. “Nate, step away from Jasmine.”

  Jasmine curls her arm in Nate’s. “Why should he?”

  Nate shoves her off. “Stop it, Jas!” He takes a few steps away from her. “I told you we’re not—”

  “Shadow!”

  Nate drops through a portal in the rug, out of sight. It closes behind him.

  “Natey!” Jasmine shrieks.

  “Shadow!” Another portal opens beneath Zane. He starts to fall.

  “Liar!” The Common King’s eyes glow with fire and Zane jerks to a stop. He rises into the air, the portal hanging open uselessly beneath him. “Betrayer!”

  It was a trick. It was all a trick. Zane came here to save Nate. To take all the risk on himself, and spare the rest of us.

  And now he’s going to die for it.

  “Burn, deceiver!” The king’s eyes flame higher. “Burn!”

  Twenty-four

  Mr. Montgomery grabs me by my collar, yanks me to my feet, and shoves me down the hall. “Other door!” Then he turns back and bursts through the door we were listening at, yelling “Stop! Stop!”

  I run a few feet down the hall, then into the ballroom through another door, putting me slightly behind the Common King. He’s distracted by Mr. Montgomery’s surprise entrance
and doesn’t see me as he extends a hand towards Nate’s dad, lifts him off the ground, and floats him over to join Zane.

  I hope this carpet is as quiet as it looks.

  I charge the Common King from the rear.

  Jasmine turns at just the wrong moment and spots me. Her eyes widen.

  She doesn’t do anything.

  I grab the king’s shoulder, spin him to face me, and punch him as hard as I can in the jaw. He staggers back with a cry of pain.

  Zane and Mr. Montgomery drop, falling through the still-open shadow portal beneath them.

  I grab my double’s shoulders and bring my knee up into his balls, then shove him aside and jump through the portal. I land with a splash in a puddle on hard cement, catching myself with my hands.

  It’s dark out, but there are lights from the open sky above. I’m in the basement. The real one, the burnt-out shell of the museum’s cellar.

  The shadow portal closes above me.

  “Where’s Nate?” It’s Mr. Montgomery. He and Zane are here with me. “Where did you send him?”

  “Here!” Zane spins around. “The exact same—”

  The world around us shimmers. The sooty gray of the charred stone walls disappears and is replaced by the bright yellow of our prison refuge. Our friends and allies materialize around us. We’re in the living room, where Zane and I were both pretending to sleep just a short time earlier.

  “Dad!” Nate runs to his father. “Dad!”

  “Oh, Nate.” Mr. Montgomery hugs him tight. His voice breaks. “Oh, Nate. Oh, my beautiful boy.”

  Ihsan rubs sleep from his eyes. “Nate appeared outside the prison, alone, so I brought him in. Then you three.”

  “Nate, sweetheart.” Mrs. Green clutches her hands to her heart. “We’re so glad you’re safe.”

  “Likewise, Mrs. G. I thought you were dead. I thought you were all dead.”

  “What happened?” Alisa asks. “How did you get him out?”

  Mr. Montgomery breaks away from Nate. He goes to Zane and embraces him. “Thank you, Zane. Thank you.”

  “Yeah.” Nate smacks Zane’s back. “Thanks. Sorry I thought you turned traitor on us.”

  Zane doesn’t reply. When Mr. Montgomery lets him go, he looks at me, then casts his eyes downward.

  “The three of you went to the hotel?” Alisa puts her hands on her hips. “Without telling me?”

  “Zane tried to go alone,” Mr. Montgomery explains. “Chris and I followed. He pretended to make a deal. To sell us out. But it was a trick. A trick to get Nate back.” He grabs his son again, putting his arm around him. “So brave, Zane. Thank you. Thank you.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Montgomery,” Zane says softly. “You and Chris saved me.”

  I can’t take this anymore. I walk past everyone, grab Zane’s hand, and pull him into the hallway. Everyone parts to let us through. I lead him down to the other room, but the Liefers are in there. So I take him into the bathroom and close the door behind us.

  It’s a nice little bathroom. Dainty. White with flowery wallpaper and soap shaped liked seashells. Zane leans against the sink, his arms folded.

  “Tell me.” I keep my voice low. Hopefully nobody will be rude enough to eavesdrop when I made it so obvious I wanted privacy, but it’s a small space and this door isn’t thick.

  Zane shrugs. “It’s like Mr. Montgomery said. It was a trick to rescue Nate. I didn’t want to put anybody else at risk.”

  “Not that. The things he said to you. About before.” I swallow. “You kissed him, Zane.”

  “That was part of—”

  “I heard everything. You have a past with him, don’t you?”

  His jaw tightens. “Chris, I’m tired, and you agreed—”

  “No.” I touch his folded arms. I slide my hands down to his wrists, trying to take his hands, but he doesn’t let me. “No. We said you could keep things private. But we also said no lying. And you’re lying now.”

  “I’m not.”

  “The way you’re not looking at me. The way you’re closing yourself off to me. That’s a lie. Don’t do this again. Tell me.”

  He doesn’t take my hands. But his body softens. His expression goes from annoyed to sad.

  “You’ll hate me,” he says.

  “I won’t.”

  “I hate me.”

  “Tell me.”

  I let go of his arms and he buries his face in his hands. I want to hold him, to comfort him, but I need to know first. So I step back and wait.

  He drops his hands and meets my eyes. “That final battle between me and him, in the world before. The one that I lost.”

  “The fight that convinced everyone that he could never be beaten.”

  “It never happened. I…I mean, Desh…” He digs his palms into his forehead. “No, I, me, I lied about it all. I decided, on my own, that it would be better if we surrendered and accepted him as our king. That we were already beat, and there’d be fewer deaths if we worked to make his rule better from within. So I told the resistance a story about barely surviving a fight with him. I’d fought him alone once before, so when I told them he’d gotten much more powerful since then, they believed me. But instead of surrendering…”

  “They cast the Moment.”

  He shudders. “It’s all my fault. Everything that’s happened. Because I lied.”

  “And the kiss?”

  He taps his fingers on the sink. “I had to stall. Until Nate got there. I had to go along with him.”

  “Yeah. Today you did. But this wasn’t the first time you’ve kissed him.”

  “No.”

  “Before the Moment. You two were…?”

  “Yeah.”

  I rub the corners of my eyes with my palms. “As a trick? Because you had to? Or…?”

  He shakes his head.

  We’re silent for a long time. I hear muffled voices. People talking in the other rooms. Arguing again, probably.

  My eyes drift down, to the sink. Two separate taps for hot and cold water, like they have in England.

  “The hotel in London,” I say. “We thought it was our first time. But we had already—”

  “Except that’s not you anymore. It was you, and now it’s not. But it’s still me. I did that. I betrayed everyone.”

  “Yeah.”

  He raises his eyes to me. “Are you going to tell them?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “We’ve had this conversation before.” I slide my hands up his forearms. “I don’t care about the world before. I don’t care about choices you made in the past. I care about the choices you’re making now.”

  “But I—”

  “Risked your life to save Nate? Yeah, you did.”

  “You’re really forgiving me?”

  “You haven’t done anything to me that needs forgiveness. But I still trust you.” I rest my forehead against his. “I doubted you, for a second. At the hotel. I’m sorry about that.”

  He smiles. “I can’t blame you.”

  I don’t want to wait anymore. I kiss him. He kisses me back.

  It’s better. It feels like we’re finally, truly better.

  A knock interrupts us. “I’m sorry, kids,” Mr. Green says, “but we only have the one bathroom…”

  I laugh. “Sorry, Mr. Green. Out in a sec.”

  “Should I tell them?” Zane whispers.

  “That’s up to you,” I say. “It’s something you did in another life and I won’t blame you if you don’t. But Mr. Montgomery heard what I heard. Once he’s over the relief of getting Nate back, he might have some questions.”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  We kiss one more time, then open the door and slide past Mr. Green. Some people have gone back to sleep in the bedroom, but a few are awake, talking in hushed voices in the living room. We join them, holding hands.

  Mr. Montgomery sits on a couch with his arm around Nate, who’s leaning his head on his father’s shoulder. “He doesn’t know where we are,�
�� Mr. Montgomery says. “That was clear. Zane didn’t— Oh, Zane. I was filling them in. The Common King doesn’t know how to find us, would you agree?”

  Zane and I sit on the floor together, leaning back against an end table. “Yeah,” Zane says. “He guessed it was Ihsan who got us away but he doesn’t know how.”

  Alisa, Ihsan and Mr. Liefer are the only others in the conversation, sitting in chairs they’ve pulled into a circle. Ihsan nods. “If someone tries to break in, I’ll feel it. I felt Zane’s attempt to make a portal back into the prison. That’s what woke me, just before Nate appeared.”

  “Never occurred to me I wouldn’t be able to slip back in.” Zane scoots over until he’s sitting between my legs. “That was stupid.”

  Mr. Montgomery tsks at him. “They say there’s a fine line between stupidity and bravery, Zane, but I know which side of that line I’d put you.”

  Zane squirms a little. “Yeah. Um. I don’t know about that.”

  “Dude! Enough with the false modesty!” Nate stretches his foot out to nudge Zane’s calf. “You literally made out with an evil killer clone to save me!”

  Alisa sits bolt upright. “He did what now?”

  “Yeah!” Nate laughs. “It was so gross! No offense, Chris.”

  Mr. Montgomery puts on his thoughtful expression. “What was that about, Zane? I’m trying to remember what you said to him…”

  Zane takes a deep breath and leans back against my chest. He’s gripping the thighs of his jeans so tight his knuckles are white, but when I rest my hands on top of his he entwines his fingers in mine.

  “I need to tell you all something,” he begins.

  Twenty-five

  Zane and I sit on the floor as he tells his story. He’s between my legs, leaning back against me for support, holding my hands in a death grip. Alisa, Nate, Liefer, Mr. Montgomery and Ihsan listen attentively as Zane tells them about how he betrayed his allies in the world before the Moment, and about his prior relationship with our enemy. He explains fully his recent encounters with the Common King, adding a few details I didn’t know about, from when they spoke at the hotel the first time, the night of our separation.

  “So there you go, Mr. Montgomery,” he finishes. “Not so brave.”