Matu rushed down the hallway, glancing into every prison cell as he went. He skidded to a halt when he caught sight of dark hair and dark skin. Matu dropped to his knees in front of Reth Okoth’s cell. The great boulder of a man could barely fit in the dug-out space behind the bars. His shoulders were hunched and he held his head low so as not to hit the roof of the cell.
“Reth!” Matu exclaimed. He dropped to his knees.
Reth Okoth lifted his head slightly. His eyes widened as he recognised Matu on the other side of the bars. The man who was like a second father to Matu had definitely seen better days. His nose was broken and his left eye was all puffy and swollen. Relief, and something else Matu didn’t recognise, filled his words when Reth said, “You’re here.”
“Yes, we are.” Matu locked his hands around two of the prison bars. He focused on his magic of Strength. The moment his Band started glowing bronze he pulled as hard as he could. The bars snapped free so easily that Matu almost toppled backwards.
“You found Eidi?” Reth asked.
At first Matu didn’t understand why there was such a defeated sadness in Reth’s voice until…
“She was still alive when we found her.” Matu used his magic to pull out another two bars. Reth’s eyes widened and he smiled such a shocked smile that it made Matu grin. “She’s on Saluverus and she’s fine.”
With the fourth bar pulled out there was enough space for the huge Kenyan soldier to crawl out of the prison cell. But he didn’t get far. Reth tried to crawl, but he couldn’t seem to put any weight on his left wrist, and only in that moment did Matu see that his right leg and right shin had been broken.
Matu leaned into the cell to try and help the man, but Reth waved him off. “Help Yaro first,” he said, his breathing suddenly heavy.
“Reth…”
At that moment Sophie dropped down next to Matu. She studied Reth’s wounds, her Band already glowing golden, and turned to Matu. “I have this covered. Go find her.”
Matu barely gave Reth a second glance. He was on his feet and running down the hallway to find the girl he loved.
Behind him, Matu could hear banging against the main door, as Disciples tried to force their way through.
“Hold it closed! We need all the time we can get!” Matu heard Sky yell. Matu knew that Nathan would be facing the door, his magic blazing as he tried to keep the door closed for as long as it took for the other Asters to get all the Affinites out.
About halfway down the hallway the path was partly blocked with fallen rocks and debris. Matu recognised it as the place where the second explosion had happened.
“Josie!” Matu called down the hall.
“Matu?” shouted back a voice all the way at the end. Matu came to an abrupt halt in front of the fallen rocks and debris. It didn’t block off the hallway completely. It reached to about his waist. Matu’s magic pulsed through his body as he grabbed the biggest rocks on top and threw them behind him like they weighed nothing. He didn’t bother clearing a whole path, just enough to easily climb over to the other side.
Matu scrambled through and raced all the way to the end of the hallway. He dropped to his knees in front of the final prison cell and prepared himself for what he would see.
Josephine was kneeling on the other side of the metal bars. But her face wasn’t one filled with relief at her being saved. It was horror.
“What are you doing here?” she cried at him.
Matu barely registered her question. A wave of relief washed through him as he saw that she had been completely untouched. There wasn’t a single bruise on her delicate face, nor a single scratch on her slender arms. Not one finger had been broken. There weren’t bleeding, bald patches on her head where her light blonde hair could’ve been pulled out. He was so relieved that she was all right that it didn’t yet register that he should be suspicious precisely because she was completely unharmed.
“What?” he said, smiling. Happy—he was so happy that she was all right.
“You can’t be here,” Josie hissed between the bars.
“What are you talking about? We’ve come to save you.”
Out of the corner of his eye, and through the path he’d made, Matu could see the other Asters working on the metal bars of the other prisons. They were whispering spells to break them, seeing as Matu was the only one with the strength to pull them off with his bare hands. He experienced a momentary flash of discomfort at his own selfishness for putting his feelings first, but it was easily drowned out by his relief at finding Josie, at her being unharmed.
Tears started to fill Josie’s pale blue eyes as she reached a hand through the bars and took Matu’s hand in hers. “I know you have. They’ve been waiting for you.”
Matu didn’t waste any more time. He let go of Josie’s hand and he clasped his around two of the metal bars. His Band started glowing that deep bronze again and he ripped the metal bars right out of their frame. It wasn’t quite enough space for Josie to come through, so Matu focused his magic again and pulled out another two bars.
“If they’ve been waiting for us,” Matu muttered as he helped Josie out of the prison and up onto her feet, “then why didn’t they attack the second we arrived here? Why wait that long?”
Matu pulled her into an embrace. Josie hugged him tightly, but only for a second. She pulled herself away and searched Matu’s face. “Because they want you here. Don’t you understand? They want you here, so you can’t be up there.”
Matu frowned. “What are you talking about?”
They hurried back towards the other Asters. Matu helped Josie climb over the rocks still blocking part of the hallway.
“The King knows Gayle’s location,” Josie said as she hopped down on the other side of the debris. “Reth said so after they locked me in here.”
“What?” Matu’s heart pounded hard in his chest as he landed next to her. “But no Affinite here knew—”
“They already knew, Matu. They’ve known all this time. This, us—” Josie gestured down the hallway, where not only Yaro and Reth were out of their cells now, but also Orla Brown and her son Eli, and Amisha and Citra Jasman, too, “—it was all just to get you here.”
“Can’t hold for much longer!” Nathan called evenly from the door. The pounding against the wood was getting louder and Matu could see the roots stretching and the wood behind them splintering.
“It’s all fine,” Matu tried to speak calmly as the two of them reached the others. “Our parents are up there. They are there right now, in fact. They are strong enough to protect Gayle—”
“Matu. You’re not hearing what Josephine is saying.” The strength in Reth Okoth’s voice made everyone turn around to listen to him. “They knew all of it. They’ve planned for it. They knew your parents would be called in, so they used us to get you here. Your parents won’t be strong enough to protect Gayle. They’ve been saying as much for days now; they’ve been gloating.”
“They? Not him?” Sophie asked. “You’ve not seen the King?”
“It’s only been Disciples down here,” Reth said. Yaro was pressed tightly against his father’s side. The young boy nodded in agreement with his father.
“But they’ve known all of it,” Josie said desperately. “You need to get back. Your parents won’t be enough. They’ve known Gayle’s location from the start. Don’t you see? We’re just a distraction!”
“Guys!” Nathan called with unusual urgency. Wood splintered and snapped.
Sky wasted no time. “Everybody in a circle! Hold on to the people each side of you, NOW!”
There was a ringing in Matu’s ears as everything that had happened, and what he had heard, fell into place. He barely registered the Affinites and Asters coming into a circle and holding on to each other. He only then realised that Sophie had healed all of the Affinites partially; enough for them to walk, but there were still obvious injuries. Reth, whose right leg had been broken in two places was walking with just a limp now, but his face looked as bloody a
nd swollen as ever. Amisha Jasman, too, was walking just fine, but she was cradling a broken arm, while her daughter, Citra, was pressing a piece of ripped cloth against an obvious gash near her right temple.
As if in slow-motion, Matu saw Nathan run back from the door towards an open place in the circle. Nathan reached out and clasped his hands around Sky and Reth’s arms. Right before the blue light of Sky’s shimmer filled his vision, Matu saw the last of the roots snap, the wooden door break open, and a whole league of Disciples, double-bladed axes raised, stream into the prison hallway.
Blue light swept around them as they travelled from South America back to Saluverus in an instant. Matu prepared himself to let go of the Affinites the second they arrived in the Board Room, so that they could immediately shimmer off to Brazil and help their parents. They had to hurry. They had to make it in time…
When they shimmered into the Board Room, the room was more crowded than Matu had ever seen it before. Every member of the Small Council was there. All four Ceders were there, and so was Percy Kelly. They were all soaking wet and dripping water all over the floor. But then there were the three Elders as well, the oldest generation of Asters still living: Sky’s grandfather, Sophie’s grandmother, and Nathan’s grandfather.
Matu beheld the scene. He stared at his father, but Diallo Madaki wouldn’t meet his eyes. The three Elders stood to one side, their faces grim, and the Small Council stood near the corner desk, looking equally bleak. The round oak table had been moved to the side to make space for a large salt circle on the ground in the middle of the room. In the centre of the salt circle was a large, shallow dish filled with blood, and in the middle of the dish stood a thick candle. The candle wasn’t lit anymore, but the thin wisp of smoke told Matu it had been not long ago.
“What’s going on?” Sky demanded. Matu could feel his brother’s anxiety mixed with anger rolling off him in waves.
Madeleine turned her face to the party that had just appeared. Her face was red and her eyes were blazing in anger. There was blood on her hands from a cut in her right palm. It was dripping to the floor. She must have been the one who had performed whatever spell had just been concluded. “Get them out, now,” she spat.
It took Matu a moment to realise that she wasn’t talking about the Asters, but the Affinites that they had saved. Abruptly, Sylvia Allen moved away from the rest of the Small Council and ushered the Affinites towards the Board Room’s doors.
“To the Med Bay,” Axel told Sylvia.
The Consul nodded to the Ambassador.
“I will go, too, and assist,” Sophie’s grandmother, Diana Griffiths, said solemnly. She walked to the door as well.
Josie squeezed Matu’s hand and left with the other Affinites. Matu barely managed to tell her goodbye; his eyes were riveted on his father, who was staring at the ground. In all his life, Matu had never seen him look like this, so defeated.
The second the Board Room door closed, Sky shouted, “What the hell happened? They know Gayle’s location; we need to go now!”
“Shut up!” Madeleine snapped at her son.
“We need to go!” Sky shouted back.
“Sky,” Sophie said softly. She was staring at the salt circle on the ground, probably already knowing what all of it meant before any of the adults in the room explained.
“What?” Sky spat, turning to his sister.
“We got a call saying vitals were no longer being sent through from Cara and Tomas’ chips,” Rose Radbourne said. Her voice was calm, but there was something in her eyes that Matu had never seen before. Matu glanced at Nathan. He was looking at his mother with that clinical calmness that he always had during missions. The softness and kindness hadn’t returned to him yet now that they were back. He was so unlike his mother in that respect; she remained kind and warm even out in the field.
All the Asters turned their heads to the screen behind them. While the images of the four Ceders present in the Board Room were still lit, the two images of Cara and Tomas Mendosa were dark. Which meant they were dead. No one needed to say the words because everyone already knew.
Before any of the Asters could ask the next question, Rose continued. “Madeleine did a tracking spell in Brazil. Gayle was alive then, but something was blocking her magic. We needed more power to break through the blockage to track her precise location and shimmer directly to her. With you all gone we brought in the Elders so we had two generations worth of magic, but once we cast the spell there was nothing. No hint of life or magic. Neither exists in this world anymore.”
There was a deep sadness in Rose’s voice. Her words struck each Aster to the core.
“The new King was smarter than we ever imagined,” Rose continued. “He’d planned everything. Led us at every turn. His dark magic is potent. He matches Astaroth’s power already at his young age. He cloaked everything; we didn’t detect it already being in the town when we did our patrols.”
“There was nothing we could have done,” Katherine Griffiths finished.
Sky’s mother was reeling in the corner. She was leaning on the chest of drawers, underneath the window and staring outside, the blood from her cut palm staining the wood. Her knuckles had turned white; that was how hard she was gripping the edge of the chest. In the awful silence that followed, no one moved.
“Say it,” Sophie said through gritted teeth. She was staring at her mother, desperate to be wrong. “Someone needs to say it.”
Katherine Griffiths straightened her back as she looked at her daughter. “Gayle Mendosa is gone. Her magic is gone.”
Matu sucked in a breath.
Finally, Rose added the one thing that hit home for them all.
“The Queen is dead.”
To be continued
Acknowledgements
Firstly, I want to thank my incredible dream team:
Tina, for standing by me every step of the way from day one.
Carlota, for always being there to be my sounding board.
Timothy, for your everlasting energy and insights.
Peggy, for your brilliant eye for detail.
Secondly, a thank you to my awe-inspiring parents. You are my heroes and I would have never made it this far without either of you.
Thirdly, let me thank my ridiculously talented designer, Arjuna Jay, who makes bringing my vision to life seem so easy. You can reach Arjuna at arjunajayofficial.artstation.com.
Finally, I am so grateful to a few more people who knew I would make it to this day:
Nick, any time I veered off course, I remembered you telling me how at heart I was an author. Those words never failed to help me find my way back.
Rob, every time you saw me you told me again of that empty space on your bookshelf where you would put my first novel. Now you can finally fill it.
Juliette, you gave me such brilliant insights that improved my storytelling tremendously.
Sanne, you helped to keep me believing in my stories and what they could become, as long as I didn’t give up.
Marissa, you were there at the beginning. I don’t think either of us thought that those original, silly ideas would ever turn into anything. But, oh my, look at what they have become.
From the author
Thank you for reading A Queen To Come. If you loved the book I would really appreciate it if you would take a moment to write a short review, as it will really help new readers find my books.
If you’d like to be kept informed about the progress of other books in the Aster series, free extra content, and more, visit my website francesellenbooks.com and sign up to my email list, or follow me on instagram.com/francesellen_/.
All the books in the Aster Prequel Novella series
A Queen To Come
A World To Lose
A Threat To Remain
A World To Lose
The second novella in the Asters Prequel Series.
The Queen has vanished from the face of the earth – her magic along with her. The impending threat that the Queen�
��s birth predicted looms over the Asters as they now realise that they will one day have to face it without her.
But there is no time to grieve.
The Small Council still doesn’t know what happened in Brazil that night, and they send Percy Kelly’s best soldiers in to find out. But no soldier that goes in, ever comes back out.
Once again, they have fatally underestimated the unknown King of the South.
Meanwhile, the King of the North American Underworld is mobilising his troops. The rare magic he and his Disciples were so afraid of is no more, and he is taking his chance. The Asters are sent to the Grand Canyon to quell the uprising.
Despite their loss of faith in themselves, the Asters are still expected to protect the humans on the Surface of the world. They must pull together to stand any chance against the very first King they have ever faced.
A Queen To Come Page 18
