by Zara Zenia
Now the trio of fairies appeared to be remorseful for their initial response to assisting me in getting a message out to Jinurak. They gave me a pitying glance and pouted their lips out with sorrow.
“You should never believe anything that Queen Nora tells you,” Sage confirmed with a vigilant nod.
I sighed and lifted my eyes to the sky. “So, my gut intuition was right, huh?”
“Absolutely.” Rose nodded in agreement.
I looked at the three fairies. They were my window of opportunity. They were the only chance I had to talk to Jinurak.
“So, now that we all seem to be on the same page, are you ready to help me with the message?”
“We will do what we can,” Aine said. “And we will hope for the best.”
I took a deep breath. It was the best we could do for the moment, but at least we were going to try and be proactive to do something to get me out of here.
Chapter 9
Jinurak
I couldn’t sleep. So, when my phone buzzed at two o’clock in the morning, I heard the sound go off, and I saw the blue screen light up.
I was lying in bed on my back, staring up at the ceiling fan when I got the first text message from Ariana.
I was already on alert and waiting for news from my advisor team and Yadav, all the while secretly keeping the hope alive that I might hear from Ariana herself. As remotely possible as that was, I refused to give up.
When my phone buzzed, I reached my arm across the lengthy mattress and plucked it from the bedside table. I squinted as my eyes attempted to get used to the bright light from the screen. I turned it down to a softer light and looked at the message.
I had to look at it a couple of times to decipher that it was probably from Ariana. It was from a number I didn’t recognize, not her directly. But I knew it was her, even though the message seemed to be encrypted.
Along the hedge you will find me.
The dragon keeps watch intently.
My heart pounded nervously. I didn’t understand what she meant, but the fact that David Yadav had already declared his assumption that Ariana had been locked inside of some virtual realty world did help me substantially. I didn’t have to be as confused by her message because I knew that she was in a virtual reality system and not somewhere out there with a dragon in real life.
I blinked and started thinking about what kind of reply I was going to send her when my phone buzzed and lit up once again.
Guarded under lock and keep,
The evil fairy tries hard to make me weep.
Evil fairy? A shot of adrenaline burst like a beam of sunlight through my body.
I sat up straight in bed and propped myself up on the pillows. Ariana must have been referring to Nora Morse. Who else would be the evil fairy?
I felt my jaw tighten and I balled my free hand into a hostile fist. How dare Nora trap Ariana like this and torture her with a wicked dragon who was apparently created in order to frighten Ariana and keep her from running away or figuring out where she was.
“I’m so sorry Ariana…”
The sound of my whisper clung in the air like a heavy fog. My mind felt dense. My thoughts were muddled. I didn’t know how to help Ariana with this information but at least I knew she was alive. The fact that she was able to send me encrypted messages provided my mind with the solace I was desperate to achieve.
I was frustrated that I couldn’t go straight to the source, but I appreciated Ariana’s quick wit and poetic style. She was still a fighter with zesty spirit.
She must not have been brainwashed yet if she was trying to send me messages and talking about an evil fairy, so that too was a reassuring fact to discover.
I sighed and stood up and walked over to the window. I pulled back the curtains. The moon that orbited the Earth was milky white and circular, a ball of silver that floated across the otherwise ink colored sky.
“No wonder so much strange behavior is taking place,” I breathed out. “It’s a full moon.”
I said the words to myself as if that could explain everything and had the merit to solve the problems, I was facing with this Nora Morse person. She was a real piece of work. It was going to be a challenge to find Ariana, but I couldn’t wait to go to Yadav with these text messages of hidden clues.
One final time, my phone buzzed in my hand, vibrating through my soul.
I sit and wait for you on the grounds of a thorny castle just hoping.
There’s no limit to how I can shut off my mind because it helps with the coping.
My heart ached for her. I wished I could reach through the screen of the phone and touch her. I wished there was some feasible way to rescue her without having to do an exponential amount of digging first.
But Nora Morse wasn’t the kind of woman who was going to make the quest easy for us. The more difficult the challenge, the better for her because she had more time to move and figure out a new plan for staying one step ahead of us.
I walked to my bathroom and switched on the light. I stared at my reflection in the mirror. I ran a hand through my bronzed colored hair that looked as if it had been sun kissed, bleached under the radiant light of a summer sky. My hair was the perfect blend and balance to my olive complexion and my green eyes pierced through the soul of any woman I looked at.
But here I was, the one who had fallen hard for the girl this time. It was me who was desperate to find Ariana and wrap my arms around her. I couldn’t help but feel partially responsible for her torment.
How could I have been so foolish to think that there wasn’t someone out there willing to sabotage my budding relationship with Ariana?
There was a lot at stake not only for my brothers and I, but for the human women that we were seeking to court too. Sure, Ariana didn’t know that I was a prince, but most of the other human women we encountered did know that information about us.
Ariana had just been shut off from the rest of the world in the wintery woods she lived in. I didn’t want to tell her that I was a prince until I met her in person. I wanted her to visit me because she enjoyed my company and wanted to get to know me, not the title of prince that I carried over my head.
It was almost a burden to be a prince when you were looking for love because you could never be too sure to trust another person’s genuine intentions.
That’s how I knew that Ariana was wholesome and pure. She hadn’t known that information about my background before she had agreed to get on a plane to visit me. And now here she was, trapped in a virtual reality world where she couldn’t escape, and she was probably feeling scared out of her mind.
“How could Nora plant a dragon in the virtual reality world?” I said aloud to my own reflection in the mirror.
Since I was the only one in the room, I didn’t get a response because I didn’t have the answers I was looking for.
I leaned over the sink and twisted the faucet nozzle. I splashed cold water on my face, not even bothering to warm it up at all. I sighed and felt the weight of the world resting on my shoulders.
“Where are you, beautiful girl?” I asked and stared at the ceiling.
I wandered over to the bed and forced myself to lay down. I peered at my phone. And read the messages from Ariana over and over again. She hadn’t sent anymore in several minutes. Perhaps she wasn’t able to send anymore at the time.
I had to count my blessings that I at least received what I did. It was enough to work with for the time being. I would present the texts to Yadav as soon as the day broke. He was in Baltimore now, he had flown back with me from his offices in New York.
There was too much work to do and he needed to be located in the general area of where he suspected the kidnapping to have occurred.
It was going to be difficult for me to wait until the morning to contact him. My heart pounded in my chest. Adrenaline pumped through my veins and kept me awake. I wasn’t even remotely tired.
I placed my fingers on the keys of the phone and began typing out a message to Ariana in respo
nse to hers.
I hoped that I would be able to receive more messages from her, but at the very least I wanted her to know that I had gotten her messages and I was going to be as proactive as possible at hunting her down and bringing her back to safety.
My mind was reeling, but I did my best to sound consoling in the message I typed in response to her.
We are working hard to find you. Don’t give up hope. I have an advisory team out there looking for you. I promise that we will be together soon.
I didn’t want to elaborate too much more because I wasn’t sure if there was any way that Nora might be able to intercept my messages or find out that I had texted Ariana. I had to be partially encrypting myself and careful about whose eyes might end up reading my messages.
I knew that Ariana had to be in the same alert mindset, otherwise she wouldn’t have bothered to send the couplet structured poems giving me vague details that would enhance the clues and hopefully lead us to the resource on where she was located.
I squeezed my eyes shut and took a deep breath before hitting the send button. Ariana must have been feeling so anxious, worried about what the future might hold for her. I hoped that somewhere out there, she would receive my return message and feel partially comforted, even if it was only for a brief period of time.
My mind swirled with fantasies on how to get revenge on Nora. It wasn’t healthy for me to send myself into an irate tailspin like this, but I was furious with her for disrupting our lives in such a vicious way.
There was no reason for this kind of spiteful behavior. She needed to move on with her life and realize that she just didn’t have the personality traits that any Trilyn Prince was ever going to be interested in pursuing in a companion.
I laid on my side and tried to shut off my mind, but my attempts were in vain. My head was swimming in a sea of muddled thoughts. I kept glancing at my phone watching it in the hope that Ariana would answer me, but as the first light of dawn began to paint a canvas of purple and pink hues across the sky, I still had yet to hear any further word from her.
I was disappointed and sullen as I got dressed and trudged downstairs with my fully charged phone in hand.
My assistant was downstairs, buzzing around like a fluttering bumble bee as she attempted to help me manage my hectic schedule.
“Cancel everything for today,” I told her. “There’s been a change of plans. Until I find Ariana, that is going to be my only interest.”
She nodded swiftly. “Yes, Prince Jinurak. Anything you need.”
Isabelle was a thin wisp of a girl with stringing black hair and sad eyes, but she was loyal, and she never questioned my intentions. She always did exactly what was asked of her without ever complaining.
“Will you set me up a meeting with David Yadav this morning?” I asked her. My heart was still violently pounding in my chest.
“Of course.” She cast me a respectful bow and trotted off to arrange the meeting.
“Oh, can you make it here in my offices?” I called out before she was too far away to hear.
“Yes!” I heard her chime in response.
“Great,” I mumbled under my breath and paced around the kitchen. Isabelle had already put on a fresh pot of coffee and the smell of Italian Roast coffee beans, an American favorite of mine, wafted deliciously through the air.
“The last thing I need right now is coffee,” I told myself. “Especially with all these nervous jitters I’m dealing with right now.”
I continued to nervously pace around the room and drummed my fingertips against the surface of the counter, waiting expectantly to hear word back from Isabelle.
A few more minutes ticked by before she reemerged from the back of the castle. She was smiling.
“Great news,” she said. “I was able to get you an early meeting with Yadav.”
“He was agreeable to meet here at my palace offices?”
“Absolutely.” Isabelle beamed with pride as if she wanted to take full credit for the arrangement.
“Wonderful.” I gave her a polite smile in return. “When does he arrive?”
“He’s on his way.” Isabelle did a little bounce on her heels.
“Now?” I was surprised, but I was ready to discuss the logistics with Yadav and I was slightly relieved that I wouldn’t have to wait much longer.
It had been a mentally anguishing night for me being in suspense, just clinging to what little information I did have regarding Ariana’s whereabouts.
Isabelle’s features faded to crestfallen. “I’m sorry. Is that going to be a problem? I can call him back and–”
I waved my hand in the air dismissively. “No. There’s no reason to delay. Just tell him I’ll be waiting for him in my office once he arrives.”
“Will do.” The gleam was back in Isabelle’s eyes after a few seconds as she spun on a heel to take care of less pressing matters of the day.
I walked down the hallway leading to my private office quarters and leaved the door partially ajar so that Yadav would feel inclined to just waltz right in. We had work to do, and I was grateful that he had cleared his own schedule in order to get cracking on Ariana’s location.
Yadav was as experienced and professional as they came. He was also ambitious and motivated. He didn’t have anything else to do other than investigate these things that popped up and I knew that he lived for the thrill of solving a mysterious case.
Nora Morse was certainly giving us both a run for our money. I pulled up my computer screens and began searching databases for any information I could find on Nora Morse, but I didn’t have the resources or the programs that David did to find anything else out other than the material I already knew about her. All the evidence pointed to Nora as the kidnapper. Now we just had to figure out how to reach her before it was too late.
I hoped that the strong bond and connection that Ariana and I already had would be enough to keep the chemistry alive. I hoped that it was enough to reassure her that I was coming for her. I prayed that she wouldn’t listen to a single word of lies that Nora would inevitably try to feed to her. I would be naïve in assuming that Nora hadn’t already started attempting to brainwash Ariana through her virtual reality world.
I just needed to bide my time. I hoped that Yadav would be arriving shortly. We had much to deliberate.
About fifteen minutes after, I heard a knock on my office door and then a moment later, Yadav popped his head through the door..
“Come on in,” I said with a wave and stood up to shake his hand. “Thanks for agreeing to meet with me here on such short notice.
“It’s no trouble at all.” Yadav nodded respectfully and then chuckled. “I was actually on my way here anyway. I was hoping that you would be up and ready to talk about the case.”
“I have been up all night,” I admitted. “I received a series of couplet poems from Ariana last night at about two o’clock in the morning.”
“You did?” David’s eyes widened as if he was surprised to hear it.
“Yes.” I handed over my phone so that he could inspect the words she had sent.
He might not look at them a thousand times like I had done, but hopefully he would be able to dissect them enough to point us in the right direction.
After a few seconds, David handed the phone back to me and met my gaze. “She definitely has been planted into a virtual reality chamber.”
I nodded politely. “I assumed as much.”
“Did you receive a reply?” David frowned.
I shook my head. “No. I told her that I was looking for her as you can see from the message screen, but I haven’t heard from her since.”
“I wouldn’t worry about the lack of response just yet,” David said. “The silence may just mean that she hasn’t been provided with another opportunity to reach out to you.”
“That’s just it,” I said. “If she is trapped in the simulation, how is she even aware of what is going on? How can she separate fact from fiction? How does she know that s
he’s in trouble and that she needs to reach out to me through encrypted messages?”
David chuckled and sat down in the chair across from my desk. “She sounds like a brilliant woman with a good head on her shoulders.”
I pondered David’s compliment about the woman that I had desperately fallen hard for. “You’re right. You are absolutely correct. You hit it right on the mark. She is incredible.”
Yadav smiled. “It’s also a sliver of reassuring proof that Nora hasn’t been successful in brainwashing her yet.”
I breathed out a deep breath. “Thank goodness for that.”
“She mentioned the evil fairy…” I began.
“Right.” Yadav nodded. “That is more than likely Nora.”
“Do you think that Nora is in her own virtual reality pod?” I asked. “Surely, she can’t be in there all the time?”
It didn’t seem practical for Nora to spend all her time in the chamber with Ariana, especially since Nora was trying to run an electronic engineering company, even if she was in hiding. She was underway with her virtual reality chambers and getting them fine-tuned for use. She would have to attend meetings, probably via FaceTime and keep herself on guard as well to make sure she didn’t get ambushed by the team of people attempting to locate Ariana and bring her home or just bring her to justice.
Yadav shook his head. “My theory is that the chamber holding Ariana probably has a remote internet connection so that Nora is able to monitor it remotely when she’s not there, or maybe she’s never there, and only checks in from time to time in her own pod.”
“You think she is hiding Ariana in an unsuspecting location that we wouldn’t immediately be able to spot?”
“If she’s as cunning as she is leading herself on to be,” David cleared his throat and shifted his weight, “then yes.”
“It seems like when we take one step forward, we have to take another step back,” I said with a resigned sigh.
“We are closer than we were yesterday with these messages,” David said optimistically.
“I was grateful to get the messages,” I admitted. “I was relieved to know that she was still alive.”
