Small drops of water splashed onto Gunther’s hand. The General’s head was bowed, so it took me a moment to realize they were tears.
Wordlessly, I rose to the door. When BeLa made no motion to follow me, I tapped her on the arm and tilted my head toward the hallway. I shook my head ruefully when she finally started to follow. It had never actually occurred to me that I would find someone even worse at reading a room than I was.
But after everything, they deserved this moment together. I only wished Clark and Xavier could be here, too.
The Analyst
Gunther was in the middle of explaining how he had come to be here when BeLa held up a hand to ask a question.
“What’s a birthday?”
“It’s the anniversary of the day you were born,” he explained. “You eat cake, and everyone gets you presents.”
“Why do they get you presents? You had no say in being born.” BeLa had enough trouble understanding the customs of her own island, and she had grown up around those.
“In theory, it’s to celebrate your birth.” He smiled patiently. “You know, let you know they’re happy you’re alive.”
“They aren’t happy you’re alive every day?”
“I guess it doesn’t really make any sense. Picaro Island is the only place I know that even does it, and that’s mostly as an excuse to hold pompous parties.” He scowled. “Besides, my family wasn’t happy I was alive any day.” His matter-of-fact tone didn’t entirely dispel the pain she knew he must have felt at that thought.
She tilted his face up.
“I am.”
He quirked a questioning eyebrow.
“Happy you’re alive. Every day. And we can eat cake if you want to.”
His face turned sunny again and a laugh bubbled out of him.
“I love the way your mind works, BeLa.”
No one had ever said that to her before. And she loved the way he said her name, but she wasn’t quite brave enough to admit that. Yet.
Chapter Sixteen
Clark
Nell walked back into our safehouse, a faraway look in her eyes.
“This changes...everything,” she said.
We had given her the cylinder and advised her to watch it alone.
Xav put a broad hand on her shoulder. I resisted the urge to raise my eyebrows in such a serious moment.
“How did your talk with the villagers go?” I asked instead.
She shrugged, leaning into him.
“Too soon to tell, but not as well as I’d hoped. I can’t seem to force myself into the mold they want.”
“Then don’t,” Xavier told her. “Be your own queen.”
“That isn’t how it works here. As it is, our only allies are waiting to take the throne from me at the next possible moment. They’re only even biding their time, because they believe the General’s alliance with the king is a farce.”
“And you don’t?” I asked her.
“I don’t know what to believe,” she admitted. “But no, not especially. I know Auntie thinks we need more time, but I disagree. I think we need to act now. Get my uncle out and start rebuilding from the inside.”
“We don’t have the manpower to do that yet,” I reminded her.
“His warriors are fresh and untrained. We have the Captain of the Guard’s best-trained women.”
“The numbers are still not adding up, especially when we can’t trust the Court further than we could throw the whole lot of them,” I said. “Besides, we can’t risk anything with Addie still in there.”
“Agreed,” Nell nodded. “So, let’s get her out first. We can use the mission for recon as well.”
“I can head out—” I began, but shouting interrupted me.
JeVani burst into the room.
“A group of soldiers just materialized out of nowhere. They’re accusing the village of treason for housing you.” He paused, fear and anger etched in the deep lines of his face. “They said by order of the king, the penalty is death.”
“Like hell it is.” Nell hadn’t even finished speaking before she grabbed her bow and ran out the door.
The Analyst
Marriage had never appealed to BeLa.
Initially, it wasn’t because she had never found anyone attractive, but because she had been sure she would never measure up to what they expected from a Levelian woman. Or because she was afraid they would use her for the status of her title.
Later, she was terrified of the kind of person she would be forced to marry.
These days, keeping up pretenses with the General was difficult for an entirely different, all together more perplexing reason.
Because suddenly, the idea of marriage stirred something inside her, something like desire. And she thought the only terrifying thing was whether or not Gunther would ever feel the same way.
Chapter Seventeen
Adelaide
“You haven’t found the others yet?” I tried to force neutrality into my tone.
“Indeed.” The king’s face turned stormy. “They have proven to be quite elusive.”
Was he lying? I couldn’t tell, but I was sure Killian could. Clark had been able to spot a lie a mile away.
I hoped the king was telling the truth. As dangerous as it would be for him to find the rightful queen or his former wife, I had a feeling my husband would fare even worse if the king discovered his whereabouts.
After all, why wait for me to make a decision about divorce when he could eliminate the problem all together?
An issue for another time, if he was telling the truth.
We stood at the foreground of the training field with a legion of his men before us, but the shield of air I had placed around us had the added benefit of privacy.
It seemed as though the abilities of the amulet were varied and complex, allowing control over both matter and the elements, and I still didn’t understand how much of that was tied to my mind and how much to the device itself.
I had learned that most crystal containers could only emit one color light, but mine was currently emitting a soft purple glow for the shield. A volley of arrows bounced uselessly off the side, clattering to the ground, and the soldiers cheered.
It wasn’t a foreign technology, but this one was apparently stronger than most. I was too tired to muster any pride over that.
“It seems you have that mastered quite well.” The king’s compliment might as well have been one of those arrows against my shield for all the effect it had on me.
I bit back a sigh, knowing what he would say next.
“Let’s go start our next lesson, shall we?” He led me to the timeless chamber without even the courtesy of glancing back to see if I was following.
Of course, I am. Like JoJo follows BeLa. Except the dog had real affection for his master, which was more than I could say for mine.
It was hard to tell how much time had passed since my arrival, with my spending so much of it in the timeless chamber. Clearly, the king was anxious for my training to be accelerated for whatever was going on in the world outside.
Even taking naps in there, the long days were taking their toll. I was constantly exhausted, and focusing the energy of the crystal was challenging even at my best.
As much as I hated to admit it, he was an effective tutor.
“That’s it, you want it to feel slightly warm.” His hand lingered a moment too long on where the crystal rested against my palm.
I was not permitted to put it around my neck, nor hold it when he was not around. As far as I could tell, he kept it on him at all times, carefully wrapped in a velvet bag and tucked into an inner pocket somewhere.
The crystal grew warmer between our hands.
“Good, now channel that.” He gestured toward the target he wanted me to obliterate. “Remember what we talked about. Just think it, will it.”
With his body still far too close to my own, it wasn’t hard to summon the will to destroy something. I narrowed my eyes, willing the shiny o
rb to burst.
It didn’t just burst. It shattered into hundreds of miniscule pieces that disintegrated before they could hit the ground.
“You could be an army unto yourself.” The king’s face radiated pride with an edge of hunger.
And I felt sick.
Only the knowledge that I would never, not in a thousand years, actually kill for this man kept me from vomiting right here in this small, airless chamber.
Killian caught my eye and lifted his chin, urging me to do the same. I realized my expression was conveying too much of my thoughts.
I let determination take over my features instead. Let the king think it was at his words, his plan. The truth was, I was starting to come up with a plan of my own.
“You do know where they are, don’t you?” I asked Killian once we were safely in BeLa’s room.
I still hadn’t gotten the specifics from either of them, but they clearly had no intention of pursuing a romantic relationship. Still, their engagement made for a useful pretense when he wanted to come to her rooms with me to play ‘chaperone’.
“I can get word to them,” he hedged.
“That means no,” Gunther chimed in, grinning.
Killian swatted him on the head, but there was clear warmth in the gesture.
“What means no?” BeLa walked in from the back room, goggles askew and orange splotches covering her face.
I raised a questioning eyebrow at her, and she cocked her head and frowned. Smirking a little, I voiced the question aloud.
“What are you working on?”
“Oh, nothing actually. Well, I’m working on making it appear as though I’m working on something.” She blushed. “No, that didn’t make sense either. I—”
Gunther grabbed her hand from his propped-up position on the cot.
“BeLa has no desire to make actual weapons, so she’s mostly making things that look impressive instead.” His kind features softened even further when he glanced up at her.
It reminded me uncomfortably of the looks I had shared with Clark for a brief span of time, and I had to look away before longing for a man who may not even want me anymore overtook me.
“And my father’s avoidance of a direct answer about Clark’s whereabouts means no, he doesn’t know where they are,” he patiently explained to her.
“If your brother is with the rebels as you suspect, we may have a clue as to his whereabouts.” She delivered this in the same clinical, singsong voice with which she said everything.
She trailed off, fishing in her pockets for something, and I scowled at the back of her head. I had grown to like her, but if she didn’t finish that sentence soon, I would not be responsible for my actions.
Gunther noticed, and shot me a disapproving look. Then the corner of his mouth twitched, and he made a hand gesture, mouthing the word “calm.”
“Calm?” I imitated the gesture.
“Yes.” Killian was the one who answered. “Well, with Clark and Xav in the house, you can imagine we had ample cause to use that one.”
A laugh bubbled out of my lips, surprising even me. I had missed these brothers, their bantering and camaraderie and blatant, abundant love for one another, more than I had let myself think about.
Surely, they would have that again. We had to find the others.
On that note, BeLa finally found whatever it was she was looking for in the random assortment of gadgets she had stashed in her multiple pockets. It was a tiny silver cylinder. She pushed it into a port on her desk, and a small square of light appeared against the wall.
“This was captured only a few minutes ago,” she said quietly.
I was about to ask what she meant when the square of light pixelated into a moving image. First, all I could discern was chaos. There was no sound to accompany the video, but there was movement everywhere.
And blood.
Men and women dressed in outfits similar to those I had been wearing since my arrival, though not as ornate, fought against heavily armored warriors. And by and large, they lost.
It was an effort not to turn my head away from the carnage, but I lost my battle with my insides entirely when a crying child waddled in the midst of it all.
And was shown no more mercy than the adults.
My eyes burned as I bent over to heave into a small waste bin. The others looked sickened as well, but they were managing. I didn’t want to know what the three of them had seen for that horrifying display not to have done them in, as it had me.
“Why are you showing us this? What does this have to do with Clark?” I rasped out to BeLa, misdirected ire plain in my tone.
The girl glanced at me with a rare display of emotion on her face, sympathy so strong I didn’t want to look at it any more than I did the vile images on the screen.
“I hadn’t seen that part before. I only caught a glimpse of outsiders fighting with the rebels before I pulled the port to show Gunther.”
I nodded, swallowing back the bile that threatened to burn up my esophagus. Blinking back a wave of tears, I forced myself to look at the screen for signs of the others.
I didn’t have to wait long.
Xavier was standing where the child had been, right in the edge of the picture, swinging a sword more ferociously than I had ever seen. A few of the soldiers had a small crystal built into the breastplate of their flexible armor, emitting the same purple glow from the shield I had made earlier.
Either theirs weren’t half as strong as mine had been, or Xavier’s blows were just immensely more powerful. He cut down man after man.
I was so immersed in watching the enviable grace of his swordplay, in blocking out every single emotion and trying to ignore the rest of what was happening in that small, awful square, that I nearly missed the arrows cutting across the screen with a terrifying speed.
And one was headed straight for Xavier. Xavier, who did not have even the dubious protection of a Levelian shield.
I cried out as though he could hear me, just in time to see a sword slice into the arrow with blurring speed, knocking it aside.
Xav raised his eyebrows at the wielder, who was still off screen, managing to convey both gratitude and begrudging respect.
Before my heart could even catch up to my brain enough to hope, Xavier stepped to his left to meet another attack, and the figure fighting at his side came into view.
My heart stopped completely, the rest of the room and the screen and the world fading from existence while I took in his stupid, cocky, perfect face.
And I knew without a shred of doubt that it didn’t matter how things had begun or even what he had said on the ship while he was grieving. I would fight for him, as surely as he was fighting now for the lives of everyone in the village behind him.
As surely as he had fought for me, before the relentless claws of grief had pulled him away from himself.
And together, we would stop the despicable man who ordered innocent children to be slaughtered.
I wiped the remaining tears from my eyes. My husband was here and he was alive, and there wasn’t a damned thing on this world or the one below that would keep me from him now.
The Analyst
BeLa listened intently while the General outlined his plan, and she could see that Gunther was likewise rapt with attention.
“Would it not make more sense to let Adelaide know of our plans so that she might be prepared?” BeLa asked Killian.
She knew he trusted his son’s wife, so his decision to have this conversation without her appeared to be illogical.
Gunther and Killian exchanged one of those looks that BeLa never seemed to be able to read.
“She will be furious you didn’t tell her.” Gunther finally said.
“But she’ll be anxious if I do, and she’s been letting her true feelings slip too often as it is.” He paused. “The King has hidden much of his true nature from her. I’m afraid she doesn’t understand the danger she is in, not entirely.”
“So,” BeLa tried to
piece together what he had said. “You are concerned she will inadvertently alert my father that something is amiss, thereby rendering the entire mission a failure?”
“Exactly,” he said.
She reflected, not for the first time, how these newcomers were some of the only people she had met since losing Nell and her mother, who didn’t seem fazed by the way she worked things out or her direct manner of communication.
So it made sense, given the pattern that her life had taken, that now they were in the most danger of all.
Chapter Eighteen
Clark
This wasn’t my country, and these weren’t my people, but there were innocents out there. Children.
I stopped to counter the first person I saw, jumping between the hulking man and the frail woman he was charging toward. I knew my brother was fighting somewhere as well, and Nell had stopped behind us to fire arrow after arrow into the fray, rarely missing a target.
SuEllen had insisted she wear the shield crystal, but it was taking a beating. Fortunately, they seemed to be few and far between on the men we were fighting.
Locke was taking on three men at once like it was nothing, while SuEllen managed to simultaneously fire a constant slew of gleaming arrows and shout orders at her small retinue.
But the soldiers kept coming.
Time passed in a blur of blows and parries. Our assessment about their training had been correct, but what they lacked in skill they were making up for in technology. Between the few who had shields and those who had teleportation crystals, they probably thought this battle was already won.
Little did they know, Locke, Xavier, and I had spent hours training against the formidable Captain of the Guard while she employed the same short-range teleportation tactics, infinitely more effectively than the soldiers were doing now.
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