Infinity tcon-3

by Andria Buchanan

“I’m a queen whose army is marching here to burn your country to the ground.”

  “Then you’re a foolish queen, at that. The Palace of Night has never fallen, and when your army is destroyed, we will break you. By the time the empress has finished, you’ll be begging to spend your eternity with Kuolema munching on your bones.”

  “You haven’t seen my army.”

  “I don’t need to.” He smiled at me again. “I’ve seen the monsters our wizards can create, and no one can defeat them. Not even a stupid queen and her toy army.”

  “There’s a first time for everything,” I snapped.

  “There is.” He pulled me forward by the chain of my shackles so that we were almost pressed against each other, his hot, rancid breath wafting across my face. “But I suspect today is not that day, Your Majesty.”

  “I think you might be surprised,” I retorted. “And just so you know, when my boyfriend gets here, you’re going to wish I had killed you.”

  “Oh, come now, Your Rosiness.” He chuckled as he began pulling me toward the castle, the other guards stepping aside, chuckling and leering as we passed them. “We’re going to be seeing a lot of each other. We might as well be friends. Make the best of things, as they say in your world.”

  “I’ve been kidnapped by an enemy queen, and I’m being guarded by a jerk with serious dog breath and his bunch of idiots. There’s not a whole lot to make the best of here.”

  “Oh.” He turned and clutched his free hand to his chest before rolling his eyes at me. “You wound me. And to think I was going to do you a favor.”

  “What?” I asked warily. “Are you going to throw me out another window? Been there, rode that ride, didn’t like it enough to buy the T-shirt.”

  “You’ll see.”

  “Tell me,” I demanded, trying to sound more confident than I actually was considering I was being held hostage and stuck in a pair of handcuffs.

  “You’ll see,” he repeated as he half led, half dragged me to a narrow set of stairs carved into a stone wall and began to climb. “Come along now.”

  “No.” I tried to dig my heels in, knowing that fighting him was futile but refusing to give in.

  “Stop it.” He jerked me forward hard enough to rattle my teeth. “I will carry you if you force me, and the drop is much less forgiving here than it is from above the pool.”

  “I don’t care,” I bluffed, thinking about what Talia had told me a few moments before. Let him drop me off the side of a castle. They’d all be in for a shock once they realized I was still alive—probably paralyzed with all my bones broken, true, but still alive.

  “Don’t be that way.” He grabbed me around the waist and hoisted me against his side, dragging me up the stairs like that instead. “What I have planned for you really is a lovely surprise.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure you’re just brimming with lovely surprises.”

  “I could be,” he said as he stopped at the next floor and dragged me down the corridor to a black wooden door at the end. It had a heavy metal padlock hanging off it. He ran his hand over the lock, and I heard it click. “But if you’re not nice, you’ll never find out, will you?” He pushed the door open and turned to smile at me, his eyes sparkling. “Here are your accommodations, Rosy, my dear.”

  “My name is Queen Alicia Munroe, first of my name, and by the grace of the Pleiades the Golden Rose of Nerissette.” I sneered at him as I finished.

  “And I’m Mikhail, Hound of the blue brujahs clan. If you need anything, please don’t hesitate to ring the bell so I can be sure to come running.” He tightened his grip on my waist and started to pull me into the room.

  “Wait. You’re a Hound?” I asked, stunned. “A half dragon?”

  “I know.” He shook his head. “It’s an unfortunate accident of birth, having a mother who is nothing more than a weak human, but then again, it is better than being a hostage. In you go.”

  He shoved me into the room and slammed the door. I heard the lock being refitted and then the sharp snick of it sliding closed.

  “Wait!” I yelled.

  I heard someone cough behind me and spun around, trying to see in the dim light. Whoever it was coughed again, and I stepped toward the sound.

  “Fish Girl?” the frail figure gasped. “Holy crap, is that really you?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Heidi?” I hurried forward a few steps and then froze. “What are you doing here?”

  “What am I doing here?” She hobbled forward and coughed again before swiping her limp blond hair out of her eyes with a grimy wrist covered with a thick coating of brown dirt. “What do you think I’m doing here? We’re being held prisoner, of course. Isn’t that why you came? To rescue us?”

  “We? Us?” I felt my heart pick up. “What do you mean ‘we’? Is Jesse here, too?”

  “Of course Jesse’s here.” She shuffled over to a small table in the corner and sat down heavily in one of the chairs beside it, her back to the small fire that was crackling in the hearth. “At least, I think he’s still here. They haven’t let me see him in about ten days. They keep us apart. We only see each other when one of us is being taken to the kitchens and the other is being taken back from the kitchen, and even then, we only cross paths if there’s a problem. They’re afraid we might try to escape again.”

  “You tried to escape?” I sat down in the chair opposite her and fought the urge to reach out and grab her hand with my shackled ones.

  “Well, duh, Fish Girl. What were we supposed to do? You’ve taken forever to get here. I was starting to think you weren’t going to bother, and then we’d never get home. You’ve got the only way back. So what took you so long?”

  “Heidi…we thought you were dead. You and Jesse.”

  “You what?”

  “We thought you were dead,” I repeated.

  She looked up, narrowing her blue eyes at me. “So you’re not here to bargain for our freedom? You didn’t negotiate our freedom as part of your peace treaty?” She reached out and grabbed the chain between my wrists and shook it. “What am I saying? Duh, stupid Heidi, of course you didn’t come here to save us. You’re a prisoner just like we are. When were you going to come for us? Forget when, were you ever going to come for us?”

  “We thought you were dead! The Fate Maker told us—”

  “We might as well have been,” she snapped.

  “Heidi,” I started.

  “It would have been better if we were,” she said, quieter this time. “It would have been better to let us die then force us to live like this.”

  “Heidi, we didn’t know. We thought you were dead. The Fate Maker told us that you’d died in the forest during the first battle of the Crystal Palace. He told me you burned to death.”

  “You didn’t bother to check? You just…what? Abandoned us here while you made plans to go back home?”

  “He told us you were in the forest when it caught fire. He told us that you and Jesse had been being kept prisoner there by the wizards. We set fire to the trees where they were, and we thought you were with them.”

  “Do you mean you set fire to a forest I was supposed to be hiding in? You tried to murder me? What the heck!”

  “We didn’t know you were in the forest until after! We didn’t know where you were. You had disappeared, and then during the battle, there was magic coming from the forest so the dragons set fire to the trees to flush the wizards out. It started burning, and the wizards ran. But not everyone made it out. There were bodies.”

  “My body? You saw my body?”

  “No, well, yes… We thought we did. We couldn’t tell. It was burned so badly that we couldn’t tell for sure who it was. Then after we’d trapped the Fate Maker, he told us you were in the forest. Once we’d dealt with him, we tried to find you and Jesse, but all we found were the bodies, and we thought…”

  “So you just wrote the two of us off as a couple of charbroiled corpses and walked away? Thanks a lot.”

  “We didn’t jus
t forget about you! We held a memorial. Okay, it wasn’t much of a memorial, but we had plans to do something bigger once the war was over. We were going to put up a marker for all the dead with their names on it, to make sure that no one had forgotten that you’d died here.”

  “Great!” She stood up and threw her hands in the air before stomping over to the window. “I was going to be a name on a stone. That’s just great. Thanks a lot.”

  “What did you want me to do? We thought you were dead. It’s not my fault.”

  “It is your fault!” she yelled, and then she stormed back over to the table and picked up an empty pitcher before flinging it at me. I ducked to the side, and the pitcher hit the wall behind us, shattering. “You left us behind.”

  “If we’d have known you were here, we would have come for you. We wouldn’t have left you behind.”

  “You already had. You and Winston disappeared. Mercedes was surrounded by those green tree women, and they were all throwing these weird clingy vines at people and tying them up, and that big guy had his army, and we had nothing. We were just there, standing in a crowd full of screaming, terrified people.”

  I didn’t know what to say. There was nothing I could do now to change what happened. I bit the inside of my cheek and listened.

  “There were people with swords and all these monsters, and there was nothing we could do.” She kept going, and I could see tears collecting on her eyelashes and making muddy trails down her hollow, dirty cheeks. “Jesse and I just stood there watching. Neither of us could do anything. We were just trapped. We just had to stand there and watch. Then, these two men in black suits grabbed us, and I couldn’t even fight.”

  “Heidi, I’m—” I started.

  “We were screaming for someone to help, to save us, and I was trying to fight them, but they were too strong and they took us. And you want to know the worst part?”

  “What?” I swallowed, staring at her as she raged.

  “No one even turned around to notice,” she said, her voice cracking. “They took us, and no one even noticed. You left us alone and unarmed, and no one even cared.”

  “Heidi…” I reached for her, and the girl who most loved to hate my guts launched herself at me, toppling us both over on the floor as she wrapped her arms around my waist and buried her head in my shoulder, sobbing.

  I reached up and tried to pat her shoulder, but she winced as my bound hands brushed across her ribs. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

  “They make us crawl,” she sobbed into my collar. “The guards and the people who work here. The servants, I mean.”

  “What?” I swallowed and tried to blink back my own tears. The last thing that would help Heidi right now was me breaking down when she needed me the most.

  “They take me and Jesse to the kitchen and make us crawl around on the floor while they throw bread at us. They laugh and they point at the maid and the boy who wanted to be king as they throw food at us like we’re animals.”

  “They won’t do that anymore,” I promised her. “We’re going to find a way to get you out of here.”

  She sniffled. “How?”

  “I don’t know yet.” I shook my head and then swallowed again. “But we are getting out of here. I have an army, and now that I’m gone, they’ll be coming. They’ll rescue us.”

  “If they manage to win,” she whispered.

  “They will,” I said, trying to sound confident.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because it’s a big army,” I reassured her. “We managed to beat the Fate Maker after all.”

  “Did you?” she asked, her voice filled with a wary sort of hope.

  “We did, and now he’s never going to hurt anyone ever again.”

  I heard the lock click and then the creak of the door opening again. “Aww,” Mikhail, the Hound who had captured me at the palace walls, said mockingly. “Isn’t this sweet?”

  Instead of answering, I shifted so that Heidi wasn’t sitting on top of me anymore, and then I pulled myself up, using the table to support my weight. Once I was upright, I raised my chin a bit and sneered at him.

  “Did you have a nice visit? Catch up a bit?” he taunted.

  “Untie her and make sure she’s brought hot water and clean clothes,” I said, trying to sound every inch like the queen I was supposed to be.

  “No.”

  “I said—”

  “You’re not the queen here!” Mikhail roared, his voice reverberating against the stone walls. “You’re a prisoner here, and your visiting hours with the maid are over. So come along.”

  I glared at him. “No.”

  He stalked toward me and grabbed the chain between my wrists, pulling me close enough that we were nose to nose. “It wasn’t a request, Rosy, my dear.”

  “My name is Queen Alicia Munroe—”

  “I know, I know.” He rolled his eyes as he pulled me, stumbling, toward the door. “First of your name, blah, blah, blah. But you’re not so golden anymore now, are you? Just a plain old Rosy.”

  “It’s better than being the outcast, halfling son of a dragon who can’t even manage his change,” I snapped, trying to think of the most hurtful thing possible to say to him. “I may be just plain old Rosy to you, but at least I didn’t choose to let someone turn me into their own personal dog. So I’d say I’m still one up on you.”

  “Yeah?” He dropped my hands and narrowed his eyes at me. “We’ll see about that, now won’t we? Especially since you’re nothing more than a silly girl with a bit of fancy jewelry on her head, and here I am—a dragon with a taste for treasure.”

  He grabbed for my crown and then screamed, jerking his hand back and crumpling to the floor with his arms cradled to his chest. I stepped closer and looked down at him, staring at his blackened, withered hand until he opened his cobalt-blue eyes to stare at me.

  “I wouldn’t have touched that if I were you. My crown’s got a curse on it—something about causing a pain to the bone that never fades to anyone who tries to steal it. I didn’t know exactly what that meant until now so thanks for the demonstration. I’ll be sure to keep people I like from making the same mistake.”

  “You,” he huffed in a breath.

  “Me queen, you idiot.” I knelt down beside him so that we were nose to nose. “And I don’t need an army to make you wish you’d never been born. Remember that. Now, take me to see the other prisoner.”

  He rolled himself over onto his elbows and pushed up, wobbling on his knees with his hands still pulled tight against him as he tried to stand.

  I reached down and grabbed his elbow, pulling him up so that we were eye to eye again. “Take me to see Jesse. Now.”

  “Fine,” he managed to ground out between clenched teeth. “This way.”

  “Oh, and Mikhail?” I turned back to look at Heidi over my shoulder as he led me out the door.

  “What? Ros—I mean, Your Majesty.”

  “You might want to show some of the other guards your hands and let them know that if I ever hear about these two prisoners being made to crawl around on the floor while people throw bread at them”—Heidi looked up, and I swallowed—“I might just have to see how this crown sits on some of their heads.”

  I stepped away from him and brought my hands up, slipping the combs from my hair as I started toward Heidi. “Here.” I pressed them into her hands. “They’re magic. They’ll help keep you safe until I find a way to get us home.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  I stepped back toward the now-quiet hound and swept past him out into the hallway, my chin held high. He slammed the door closed and stalked past me, making me scurry after him to keep up.

  “This way.” Mikhail hurried down a dark, stone corridor and nodded his head toward another tower with curving stairs. “And don’t think about telling him you’re going to find a way for you all to escape.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “It’s cruel,” he answered, not meeting my eyes. “I don’t l
ike the two of them, but even I know it’s not fair to give them false hope.”

  “And what makes you think it’s false?”

  “Because if you try to escape,” Mikhail said, “I’ll just come and find you, Your Majesty. I’ll sniff you out and when I find you, drag you back here in chains. And because you’re from Nerissette, I won’t even ask the queen for my normal reward.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Will you be feeling too guilty?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “Guilt isn’t something I’ve felt in a very long time, Rosy. The reason I won’t take the queen’s bounty is because the revenge will be sweet enough without her money.”

  “Revenge?”

  “For my sister. The girl one of your most trusted nobles kidnapped and then tried to hunt.”

  “Gunter of the Veldt?” I asked. “The Hound he hunted—”

  “My baby sister,” Mikhail said. “He hunted her, and you let him.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I didn’t. I wasn’t even in Nerissette when it happened. I hadn’t been brought through yet.”

  “But you knew he did it, and you still made him one of your advisors. Allowed him to fight for you.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You should be,” he said bitterly.

  “When my army comes, I’ll find a way to make it up to you and your sister both. I’ll make Gunter apologize.”

  “His apologies are worth nothing to me,” Mikhail said. “And neither are yours. Not that it matters anyway.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  He stepped closer, pushing me back against the stone wall, and sneered down at me. “Because you’ll never rule here. The Palace of Night won’t fall.”

  “You wanna bet?” I arched an eyebrow at him and tried to look brave even though my knees were knocking together.

  “Mikhail!” I froze as the voice from all my worst nightmares echoed down the hall.

  No… It couldn’t be… There was no way.

  Sweat trickled down my back, but I wouldn’t turn around. I couldn’t turn around.

  It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible.