“That is true unless they have a male champion to fight for them.”
The purple-red color blossoming on his face along with the bulging veins along his temples made me wonder if Gil was going to have a coronary. He was far too young to be so stressed out. I almost wanted to back away in case he exploded.
“Queen Rafaela,” the magistrate said, “who have you chosen to fight as your champion for the title of Alpha?”
I held my arm out to Alec, who edged closer, with his back straight as a board. Never had I felt surer of my decisions than I did now. He had agreed to defend me, whereas Gil had failed me in the worst possible way. The pain of his betrayal lingered beneath my surface, but I shoved it so far down, I hoped it might never break through again. He was something I had to get rid of, like a thorn, a parasite eating away at my life, my pride, my love. This was going to hurt him more than me, but nothing ever went the way I wanted it to. He’d tried to cast me aside, and I would relish this payback with every savory bite.
I waited for the crowd to quiet down before announcing my champion. “Alec of the StaNover bloodline has accepted to undertake this challenge in my name.”
Another wave of gasps, shocked expressions, and curious chatter flurried about the room, making the magistrate more annoyed than before as he slammed the gavel down, over and over.
“Silence! I will have the crowd removed if need be.” The mass of people fell mute, too invested in the outcome to risk being kicked out. “Very well, Queen Rafaela,” he said when he was satisfied. “When do you propose this will happen?”
“Tonight. They fight until there is only one champion left standing in the midcourt arena.”
“To the death?”
I eyed Gil, whose expression now bordered on catatonic. He’d sat down, speechless, and was staring at the hardwood floor before him. Was he so resigned already? Had he no fight left in him? It made no difference to me, but a small part of me still ached with hurt for him.
Still, it served him right.
“No. Only until one champion is down for more than ten seconds. Then the loser may choose to stay on, demoted, or leave the ArcKnight stronghold with his new bride.” I snickered slightly, trying to hide my defiance.
I’d meant the last part for either Gil or Alec. I couldn’t predict the future, and even with the utmost confidence in my new fiancé, I had to contemplate the very real possibility that we could lose. I’d not watched Gil in combat for a long time, but Alec had. He’d assured me it would be quite a fight, but he was certain he could beat the Alpha. I prayed he was right, for I’d have to leave my home forever if we lost.
“Does the Alpha accept the challenge?” The magistrate waited, along with the impatient crowd. It would be the fight of the century, and everyone was sure to want to be there.
“Yes.” Gil looked up at the magistrate. “I accept, but with one condition.”
“What is that?”
Gil turned toward me. “If the queen’s champion loses, she stays as my second mate, and Alec will be banished forever.”
I clenched my fists together and drilled an acidy look into him. How dare he? If the magistrate agreed, I’d be left there to rot as a lowly secondary wife. The worst part would be that Alec would have to leave his home and his beloved army.
“Impossible,” I snapped.
“That is not your decision,” The magistrate said, smirking. He obviously favored Gil, and I made a mental note to have him demoted when this was all over. I could tell he believed Alec and I would lose. I would see to it that he begged for our forgiveness. “I concur with the King. If he wins, the challenger will be banished from the ArcKnight stronghold forever and Queen Rafaela will remain as second mate. If Queen Rafaela’s champion wins, the former Alpha must leave with his new bride. The challenge will be held at dusk, in the arena.”
The gavel slammed, and I jumped slightly. The rush of chattering began once more, and Alec slipped his hands over my shoulders.
“It’ll be over soon. Don’t worry. I’ve got this.”
I reached up to touch his fingers, feeling the loving warmth radiate from them. “I know.”
“There’s no way I would leave you here, you know that, right?” He pulled me in, his lips brushing against mine. Each touch sent sparks down my core.
“I know. There’s no way I would ever stay here with him. A lowly second wife? How dare he? After everything I went through to help him. I always made sure everything was in order, and he pays me back by discarding me for another because I haven’t gotten pregnant yet? No one treats me like that and gets away with it.” I hugged Alec tighter and felt safe and secure. “I’m glad this happened, or I’d still be at his side, unhappy and used up without ever knowing true love. I have you now, and that’s all that matters.”
Alec beamed and took my hand, leading me out into the corridors reserved for the royals so they could leave court safely. The challenge was at dusk, and there was so much to do beforehand. It was easy to break a vow in our pack. One just had to renounce their spouse. For those with royal blood, the process was the same except when challenging for a position, such as Alpha. I had to be married to be Alpha, and since I was a woman, I couldn’t challenge Gil directly. If the Alpha was a woman, I could. It just kept things fairly matched. Instead, Alec would fight for me, and if he won, he would technically take over as Alpha even though I would be the one in power.
Sharing the throne with Alec would be so much more agreeable. He had grown up treating the women in his family with the utmost love, respect and equality. Gil’s childhood had involved spoiling him and conditioning him to be like his chauvinistic father, who had suppressed his mother in ways I would never impose on anyone. No wonder she’d lost her mind living here. Who could blame the poor woman?
And what of the frail former queen? What would become of her when I won?
I gulped down a twinge of panic. I’d been taking care of Gil’s mother. I made sure her servants treated her well, kept her clean and presentable, even when she wasn’t all there. I wouldn’t be seeing her much anymore, and I prayed my replacement was half as kind as I’d been to her.
Every action, no matter how well intended, rippled across our lives like a pebble thrown into a pond, affecting everyone we loved. Despite the potential heartache, I knew that when this was all over, it would be for the best, for everyone.
Everyone except Gil.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Ephrem
Langley shoved a stack of books toward me. They were old and smelled of the must of centuries. Everything I wanted to know about the KelHan pack was contained within these stacks. Langley warned me I might not want to know what was in there. That some things were meant to be buried forever. I gave the old man a curt nod, noting his beady eyes, filled with more knowledge than any man should ever possess. His warning had not been given lightly, and I thanked him for his concern.
It had everything to do with my fiancé, Lily. For her, it was worth shaking out the skeletons, even when it involved a centuries-old curse.
Settling down at one of the desks, I flipped through the delicate papers. The archives were vast, dark and reeked of old leather. Langley practically lived there, biding his time documenting the current events and organizing the ancient ones.
“I found another one.” Langley approached the desk with another book of bound papers. The pages were uneven and had been woven into the book seemingly at random. It was thinner than the other massive volumes he’d given me earlier.
“I appreciate this, really. Is there any way you’d happen to know anything about a KelHan shifter named Grayson?”
Langley rubbed his white beard thoughtfully. He could play Santa Claus each winter if he wanted to, but I doubted he’d ever thought of taking such a job.
“I think this is the volume you need to read the most carefully. It has family trees as recent as this century, sketches of the leaders of the KelHan pack and details about the prophecy they used to claim would one da
y save them.” A long, aged finger reached out of his long robe and tapped the volume he’d just brought.
“Thank you again, Langley. This helps a lot.” I grabbed the volume and flipped to the first page. Langley was already gone before I looked back up, and I wondered if he’d even heard me thank him. It didn’t matter; I had what I needed. I just needed to narrow it down even more.
The first page was a decorated family tree. I followed the tree to Grayson KelHan’s branch. It indicated he’d never married but had remained celibate for centuries. Impressed, I followed the lines that listed his parents, who were now deceased, having died shortly after their banishment. Grayson had a sister, but her whereabouts were unknown, for she had disappeared shortly after leaving the MarkTier stronghold.
Flipping through the following pages quickly became tedious. There were extended branches of more families than I could ever count in the KelHan pack. If MarkTier was big now, it had been quadruple it's current size when the KelHans were part of the pack. How had such a great pack disappeared off the face of the earth? How was it that Grayson had been born in the 1600s and was still alive?
They were immortal. The rumors about the curse allowing them to live were true. If Grayson was really four hundred years old, where were the rest of them?
A feeling of doom filled my gut as I passed the next section: a list of known dead in the KelHan pack. There were almost as many names there as in the pages of all the lineages. It was heartbreaking to find that there were less than a hundred left of them at the last census, which had been taken at the turn of the century.
What had killed them off? It had been a slow but unrelenting extinction. Had the curse driven them to their deaths? Had it involved some sort of disease that could wither them into dust? It had something to do with their gargoyle abilities. It had to.
“Do you remember the hall of statues?”
I looked up from the book and watched as Langley walked past me and plucked another volume from a wall of bookshelves. I’d need a very tall ladder to reach the top of that stack.
“Yes. It’s located in the catacombs of Temple, right? Near the western edge of the city? Right next to….”
“Right next to Center Park.”
Something clicked in the back of my head, and I struggled to understand what it meant.
“There is one large room down there, full of gargoyle statues. They were a sight to behold. Wings tucked on their backs. Grotesque faces with tusks extending down their chins. The talons! Those things could shred anyone into strips of meat.”
“What are you getting at, Langley?” I asked.
“Well, I’d totally forgotten about the statues, but I thought you should know that there is an entrance to the catacombs on the outside of the city. The tunnels run for miles under the forest. There, the boundaries of Temple do not reach, and the woods take over. If you count the known dead KelHans, you’ll find they match the number of statues exactly. Every one of their dead is encased in stone, trapped. Dormant and waiting.”
I gawked at him, shocked at his revelation. “Their dead remain frozen in their stone prisons? But why? I thought they were immortal, but here it says most of them are dead.”
Langley shrugged. “Some say the only reason we are alive is because we agree with this life given to us. What happens when we no longer cooperate?”
He walked away, leaving me more baffled than ever.
“What?” I asked out loud. He was already gone, back into the stacks of ancient manuscripts and his own mind. Sure, he was a bit senile; he was the oldest resident of the MarkTier stronghold. I doubted he would live much longer, but while he did, his knowledge was bottomless.
Looking back down at the pages before me, I shook my head. Who would have thought the KelHans were buried beneath Temple? It was crazy that they would return them to the city’s hidden catacombs. The only thing that bothered me was how they died. Were they just hibernating? Waiting? If so, for what? How did one kill an immortal flying stone creature? There had to be more to the curse than anyone had ever heard. I hoped I could find it in that book.
As if reading my mind, the next page grabbed me. It had a drawing of two people. One was labeled Grayson KelHan and the other… the other was Lilliana. Well, it looked exactly like her, but the caption identified the figure as Malia KelHan. It was a drawing of Grayson’s sister.
And she’d been reincarnated as Lilliana of ArcKnight?
What did it mean? I flipped past the next few pages, hoping to find something else having to do with Lily or Malia. How could she be the perfect doppelganger of a long-dead KelHan? Especially Grayson’s sister? There was something there I wasn’t comprehending, and I had to find it.
“Langley?” I called out into the stacks, listening for the familiar shuffle of the old man’s worn-out leather shoes and his robe swishing past the rows of books. I called out once more, hoping he hadn’t yet left.
“Lang—”
“I’m right here.” He appeared next to me, and I gave a little jump.
“Geeze, Langley. Make some noise!”
“I apologize. I thought I might have left out something important, and I was right. Here.” He held out another older book that looked like a diary of some sort. The outside was well-worn leather. Inside, the pages were weathered but newer than some of the others I’d been looking through. “It belonged to a KelHan. I believe her name was …”—he flipped open the cover and narrowed his eyes—“… ah, yes. Malia. I think this is what you’re looking for.”
He placed the book in my hands and disappeared into the stacks once more. I listened to the rustle of his robes before opening the book. It did indeed belong to Malia KelHan. The girl Lily resembled. Flipping through the elegant script handwriting, I found that a lot of it was useless to me: a girl’s dreams, desires, wants and daily activities. It was a recording of her life from the day she turned sixteen to around the time she would have turned twenty. I was impressed with how meticulously she documented mundane things. But there were gaps. Large periods of time when she didn’t write in her diary at all. I wondered what she’d done during that time.
Skipping through toward the end, I stopped on one page where the rune that graced Lily’s palm had been hastily drawn on one of the pages. There Malia’s writing changed, became more desperate, as though rapidly scratched onto the paper. I turned to the next page and stopped.
I don’t know how I’m going to tell Grayson, but I figured out how to break the curse. Unfortunately, it still involves death. If I succeed, I might not see my brother for a very long time. I know he will figure it out and find me when the time comes. He will have to sacrifice so much while I rest in oblivion and he lives on in this wretched world. If I succeed, I’ll break the curse on all my people. In the meantime, those who do not wish to live another day with this curse have taken my potion to petrify them until I return. They feel no pain, no wants, needs, cold, heat or even hunger. The potion turns them to stone indefinitely, resting in an eternal slumber until I return to revive them.
When I return, Grayson will have to activate my memories. It might take some work and time to remember what I’m supposed to do, but once he contacts me, it will return like water rushing through a broken dam. Only then will I be able to break this spell placed on my family and my pack. I only hope my reincarnation cooperates with him and understands what must be done.
I must die so that my pack can live. When I awake in the future, I will bring the MarkTiers to their knees.
Those were the last words written in the diary, but there was a folded sheet shoved into the blank pages that followed. I pulled it out and found yet another diagram of the rune of Lily’s palm and several ancient words written in what looked like Latin. Three words caught my eye: Ultionem reputabuntur mihi.
I hurried to the front of the archive where the modern reference books were kept and pulled out the Latin to English dictionary. I flipped to the page I needed, and my heart sank when I read the translation: Vengeance wi
ll be mine.
It was the spell Lily needed to unleash whatever magic Malia had laid out for her return. Grayson would have the second part of the puzzle, I was positive. Wherever Lily had to be when she muttered these words was where Grayson would lead her. The words would unleash her army of gargoyle shifters, awakening them from their sleep, ready for war against the MarkTiers.
This couldn’t happen. I wouldn’t allow it.
I rushed out of the archives, diary in hand, to seek out my brother, not knowing if I would tell him of Lily’s involvement. She was in danger, and I couldn’t risk her life, no matter how foul her nature could turn once her vengeful spirit returned in full force.
My love could bring my family to its knees, but what else could I do?
Chapter Thirty-Three
Lilliana
I stared at the growing fog swirling before me. I hadn’t returned to Ephrem’s apartment. Instead, with both talismans hanging from my neck, one ArcKnight, and one KelHan, I found myself making my way back to the forest. Back to Grayson. He had so much to answer for, and I was angry he’d withheld so much from me. My heritage and my entire existence.
“Grayson!” I stepped into the dense cover of mist, heart pounding in my ears, for I’d run the entire way from the ArcKnight palace to the edge of Temple. “I know what I am now,” I called out into the woods. “You need to tell me why.”
I waited, feeling the rush of cool air and moisture swirling around me, clinging to my clothes and exposed skin. I felt the rune on my hand grow in intensity underneath my leather glove. If I pulled it off now, it would surely be glowing brighter than the moonlight filtering through the canopy.
“Grayson!” I yelled out again.
“I knew you’d return.”
I whirled around, startled by his sudden appearance.
“You knew. You knew I wasn’t born into my pack, but yours. The KelHans.”
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