Daytime was the only time when I would be able to sneak out of my quarters, since no vampire in his or her right mind would want to go outside in broad sunlight. While the sun didn’t kill us outright, it was painful and it weakened our powers. I would survive, but the experience wouldn’t be pleasant.
The wolf replied with the coordinates—a location in the forest at the boundary of the Vale. It would be simple enough to run to.
In the meantime, I entered Elena’s room, not wanting my lady’s maid to have to be a part of this. I didn’t intend on getting caught, but if I did, I wanted her name to be clear.
She rose when I entered. “Your Highness,” she said with a curtsy. “How was your dinner with the prince?”
“It went well, thank you,” I said, and then I looked straight into her eyes, infusing magic into my tone. “I’m going to be leaving my quarters soon,” I told her. “You will tell no one that I’m gone. When you wake tomorrow, you will forget that I was gone and that this ever happened.”
“Yes, Your Highness.” Her eyes dulled as my magic took effect. “Do you need me to help you get ready?”
“That won’t be necessary,” I said, still using my compulsion. “Stay in your room and go to sleep. I’ll see you at sunset.”
She lay down in her bed and was asleep in an instant.
Now that Elena was taken care of, I returned to my room and dressed for my upcoming excursion, covering as much skin as possible. The clothing would make the sun less painful. It would still hurt, but there would be enough hours before sunset to recover in time for breakfast. I also grabbed a small umbrella. While I wouldn’t be able to run with it open above my head—it would hit too many trees—it would be useful once I reached my destination.
Satisfied that I’d outfitted myself as best as possible, I opened my window. The sunlight scorched my eyes so much that I had to squint through my sunglasses to see.
The sooner I got this over with, the sooner I could return to my room and recover.
And so I jumped out the window, landing as silently as a cat on the ground below, and ran toward the forest.
Karina
Noah was waiting for me at the meeting spot.
At least, I assumed that the tall, muscled man who waited outside the boundary was Noah.
“Karina.” He stated my name with a small nod. He didn’t use my title—I supposed that vampire royal titles were irrelevant to the wolves.
It was a perfect example of how savage the shifters were.
I stepped closer to the boundary, opening the umbrella and holding it above my head. My skin ached from the sunlight, and the umbrella reduced the burn. At least it was a cloudy day—the burn would have been much more intense otherwise.
This was the first time I’d been near the boundary since arriving to the Vale. It was like looking through a thin piece of glass—so thin that you wouldn’t know it was there if you weren’t looking for it. And given that I’d heard Noah perfectly, it wasn’t affected by sound.
“Noah,” I said his name in return. I didn’t know his status within his pack, but apparently all formalities were already out of the window, so I guessed it didn’t matter.
“I’m glad you could make it out of the palace so quickly,” he said. “Nicolae has told me that you’re loyal to our cause.”
“I know little about your cause,” I replied. “King Nicolae has given me an offer I can’t refuse in exchange for helping you, so I will provide whatever assistance you need from me to ensure your success.” I made a point to address the king with his proper title, but if Noah noticed, he didn’t show it.
“And you feel no guilt about helping to destroy the Vale?” He gave me a haughty look, as if he were expecting to catch me in a lie. “About causing the death of those in your own species?”
“My loyalty is to the Carpathian Kingdom, and the Carpathian Kingdom alone,” I told him. “The king has his reasons for wanting to help you, and I have mine. Now—what did you need to speak with me about today?”
“The wolves are going to take down the Vale, and we need the help of someone on the inside.” His gaze was strong and intense as he looked down at me, and I couldn’t help but notice that his eyes were a striking shade of green, as if they contained the forest itself. “Nearly a month ago, there was an avalanche on the mountain that contains the Crystal Cavern. The mountain has been undisturbed for centuries… for as long as my kind have lived on this land. Which, for the record, is far longer than the vampires of the Vale have resided here.”
I nodded, since yes, I knew about the Crystal Cavern. That was where the witches had locked Geneva’s sapphire ring all those decades ago. And I could only assume that the avalanche was connected to how Queen Laila had gotten her hands on the ring.
The ring that would be mine to make a wish on if the Vale fell and Queen Laila had nowhere else to go but the Carpathian Kingdom.
“All throughout our history, the packs in the Vale have warred for power,” Noah continued, despite the fact that I hadn’t said anything in response. “Chaos and war have ruled our lives. But after the avalanche, messages started coming to us in our dreams. More than messages—prophecies. Wolves across each pack have received the same message—that we need to get rid of the vampires in the Vale so our savior can rise and bring peace to our homeland. The presence of vampires on our land is stopping Him from rising. We must prove that we’re worthy of His return… we must destroy the vampires and take back the land that is ours. Only then shall He rise and bring peace to our packs.”
“Are shifters often prone to such visions?” I asked, since I truly knew little of their species—beyond the fact that they were naturally prone to violence.
“No.” He stood taller, speaking with the confidence and passion of a true leader. “The message comes from our savior himself. How else could so many of us have had the same dream?”
“I don’t know,” I answered, since what he was describing sounded unlike anything I’d ever heard of. Not even witches had the power to see the future.
He was silent for a few seconds, studying me.
I rarely became uneasy, but I found myself shifting under his gaze.
“Tell me, Karina,” he said, finally breaking the silence.
“Princess,” I said sharply. “My proper title is Princess Karina.”
If this wolf trusted me to help him with his cause, he had best show me some respect.
“Very well.” He smirked. “Princess Karina. While I hope my explanation has moved you, I know better than to believe the vampires care for the shifters—especially when it’s our goal to exterminate members of your species. Nicolae has explained his reasons for providing his assistance. But Nicolae is not here—you are. And I think it’s important that we trust each other. So tell me, Princess Karina—what’s your motive for helping my kind?”
“Love,” I said simply. “I’m helping you because of love.”
“Ah.” He raised an eyebrow and leaned against a nearby tree. “Go on.”
All I wanted was to return to the palace as quickly as possible so I could recover from the sunlight exposure, but Noah was apparently a wordy guy. He’d explained his motives to me. And so, as quickly as possible, I told him everything I’d told Jacen during our dinner date—the story of Peter and me.
“Queen Laila owns an object that has the power to bring Peter back,” I said after finishing the story, purposefully leaving out the fact that the object was Geneva’s sapphire ring. The last thing I needed was for the wolves to go after the ring too. “King Nicolae made a blood oath with me that if I help you destroy the Vale, he’ll personally see to it that I’m given access to that object. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
“You must have loved Peter very deeply to turn on your own kind for him,” Noah said.
“He was everything to me,” I said. “Without him, I am nothing.”
“Very well.” He nodded. “I believe you.” Then he raised his voice, projecting it through the forest, and said, �
�Marigold? Jonah? You may come out now.”
Karina
Marigold—one of the witches from the Carpathian Kingdom—stepped out from behind the trees.
Behind her was a young man—a boy, really. He looked no more than sixteen. He was plain, with eager wide eyes, and he looked to Noah as though Noah were a god.
All of them were dressed in the animal hides typically worn by the wolves. It was strange to see Marigold in such primitive clothing, compared to the elegant gowns worn in the Carpathian Kingdom. Still, I would have recognized her small figure and golden curls anywhere.
“They’ve been listening to our conversation this entire time?” I looked at Noah in disdain. Normally I would have smelled the others nearby. But come to think of it, I couldn’t smell Noah, and his wolf scent should have repulsed me.
It must have been an effect of the boundary.
“You never asked me if our meeting would be private.” He looked me dead in the eye as he spoke.
“I assumed I didn’t have to.” But I should have known better. I’d been so concerned with sneaking out of the palace in the sunlight that I hadn’t considered verifying that Noah and I would be meeting alone. “In the future, don’t surprise me like that.”
“Understood,” Noah said. “Although I thought you’d already been informed that Marigold is sympathetic to our cause.”
“Yes.” I turned to face the witch. She’d always seemed so sweet and innocent when I’d seen her around the Carpathian Kingdom, but she looked different now—harder. As if she’d finally found a cause to fight for.
“It’s good to see you again, Princess.” Her voice was cool and refined, and kept her eyes on mine as she spoke. It was a bold move. Witches and non-royals always lowered their eyes while greeting royalty.
“And you.” I nodded, and she stood straight once more. “Is this the wolf who has stolen your heart?” I glanced at the boy she’d brought with her. He was so nondescript—not the type that I would have assumed could have convinced a witch to go from a life of luxury to one of such ruggedness.
“No.” She laughed, tossing back her curls. “Cody is back at camp. This is Jonah. He’s the first shifter who will be taking action for our cause.”
I nearly made a face when she said the word “camp,” but I controlled myself. She must truly be in love with this wolf—Cody—to have given up her life at the castle for a life at a camp.
“What will he be doing?” I asked.
“He will be sneaking into the Vale.” Noah stepped up, speaking for her.
Marigold glared at him, but she was standing behind him, so he didn’t see.
“What are you to the wolves back at camp?” I asked, trying to get a handle on Noah’s position within his pack.
“I was the first to dream of the prophecy,” he told me. “I soon heard of another wolf from a different pack who’d received the same dream, and spoke with him. As more and more of us started having the dream, I became the liaison between packs. As the First Prophet, I brought all of us together. Now, it’s my God-given duty to ensure that we clear the vampires from our land so our savior will rise.”
I nodded, glad to have a slightly better understanding of what was going on with the wolves. And while these dreams sounded strange to me, it wasn’t my job to judge.
All I needed to do was help them bring down the Vale so I could get that sapphire ring.
So I could bring Peter back to me.
“Cody is the leader of the pack.” Marigold puffed her chest—she was clearly proud of her boyfriend’s position.
As she spoke, the sun moved from behind the clouds, the painful rays of light reminding me that I needed to finish up here and return to the palace to heal. I breathed out a long breath when the sun returned behind the cloud cover. But being out in the sun was still uncomfortable—I could feel my strength weakening—so we needed to hurry.
“What do you need my assistance with?” I asked, looking at all three of them as I awaited the details.
“We need you to help us sneak Jonah through the boundary,” Marigold explained.
“I thought you’d figured out a way to break through the boundary on your own?” I asked. “At least, that’s what King Nicolae told me before I came to the Vale.”
“I did manage to sneak a wolf through—once,” she said. “But since then, the barrier has strengthened. My magic is no longer strong enough to break through on its own. I need the help of a supernatural who has been granted permission to be inside the boundary walls.”
“Me,” I realized.
“Yes.” She nodded.
“What do you need me to do?”
“I need you to reach through the boundary and take Jonah’s hand,” she said. “I’ll take his other hand and do a counter spell for the boundary. This will neutralize Jonah and allow him to step through.”
“How do you know this will work?” I asked her.
“It’s a relatively standard spell,” she said. “It’ll work.”
“If it’s standard, then why are there no protections against its practice?”
“Because what vampire in their right mind would help a shifter cross the boundary?” she asked. “And what witch would help them?”
She made a good point on both counts, since out of all supernaturals, shifters were the least dependable—and the most wild.
Which I supposed made me crazy for helping them with their plan.
Perhaps this whole thing was stupid. Maybe I should just return to the palace and steal the sapphire ring from Laila herself.
Except that I knew better than to think I was strong enough to steal such a sacred object from the vampire queen. And I could forget about simply asking her to use the ring. If she knew I wanted to bring back Peter, she would know I was never interested in marrying Jacen.
I would surely be exiled from the Vale for deception, and would never be this close to the ring again.
I’d come too far now. I needed to continue on the path I’d already started.
And so, I grabbed Jonah’s hand at the same time as Marigold grabbed his other. Disgust rolled through my body upon contact with the shifter. I swallowed it down, since touching one of them wouldn’t kill me. It just felt dirty. But as long as I needed to work with these creatures, I had to force myself to appear like I was tolerating them. So I did my best to keep my expression as neutral as possible.
Jonah stepped forward, but while my hand was allowed back inside the boundary, his banged against it like glass. Then Marigold started to mutter in Latin under her breath. Suddenly, Jonah’s hand slipped past the boundary as well.
His eyes lit up, and he stepped through easily. His other hand came through last, and Marigold’s hand banged against the boundary as his slipped inside, the two of them breaking apart.
He was through.
I’d expected Jonah to stink with the musky smell of wolf—like the shifters who lived outside of the castle in the Carpathian Kingdom—but it wasn’t there. He didn’t smell human, either. It was like he had no scent at all.
Had I been weakened so much from the sun that I’d lost my sense of smell? But I could still smell the forest and the other animals nearby—the birds, the squirrels, and the deer. I’d been weakened, but not that much.
There was something off about Jonah.
“You don’t smell like wolf.” I backed away from him, ready to fight if it came down to it. Just knowing that there was a shifter so nearby—without a boundary between us—made me want to cringe.
“He’s wearing a charm of my creation.” Marigold beamed. “It’ll hide his scent until the next full moon.”
“Very well.” I nodded and turned to the boy. “Are you also wearing wormwood?”
I expected his answer would be yes—most shifters armed themselves with wormwood as protection against the vampires.
“No, ma’am,” he replied, and the way he hung his head slightly gave me the feeling that he was a more submissive wolf. “It’s illegal for those
in the Vale other than the witches to wear wormwood. I can’t risk getting caught for something so petty when I have an important mission to accomplish while here.”
“Perfect.” I removed my sunglasses and looked Jonah straight in the eyes. “You’re going to forget that we ever met,” I told him, infusing magic into my tone. “If anyone asks, you’ve never seen me before in your life.”
His eyes went glassy as the compulsion took hold. Then he gave Noah a salute, and ran off toward the village.
“That wasn’t necessary,” Noah said once Jonah was gone. “You can trust us not to give away your identity.”
“I know,” I said, since I understood that if my identity were revealed, the help they were getting from the inside would be gone. “But it doesn’t hurt to be safe.”
“As long as you promise that you’ll never compel me to forget you.” Noah looked at me so intensely that I might have thought he was trying to seduce me—if he wasn’t a wolf and I wasn’t a vampire.
Just the thought of such a thing made me shudder.
Besides, he already knew that I was on a mission to get back my one true love.
He must just be a flirtatious sort of person. Perhaps all wolves were that way. They were so wild that I wouldn’t be surprised.
“What will Jonah be doing while he’s in the Vale?” I changed the subject, purposefully avoiding replying to Noah’s statement.
“He’ll be acting as a scout,” he said simply. “And he’ll be the first of a few.”
“Are the rest of them here, too?” I looked around the forest behind him, expecting more wolves to step out from behind the trees at any moment.
“Of course not,” Marigold said. “One wolf going crossing the boundary will go unnoticed. Multiple won’t. Think of it like a bug crawling on your skin. You probably wouldn’t notice one small bug. But if a bunch of bugs were on you, it would be a completely different story.”
“We want at least twenty-four hours between sending in each scout,” Noah said. “Will you be able to meet again tomorrow? Same time, same place?”
The Vampire Prince (The Vampire Wish Book 2) Page 14
