The Forgotten World

by Robin D. Mahle

  The thin leather gloves had been one of the only things he asked for, even once he started communicating. A way to keep himself, and everyone else, from constantly thinking about his scars.

  He was carefully maneuvering a narrow pin into a chamber when his oldest brother came barging into the room, slamming the door against the wall with a vibration that startled him into dropping the rod.

  Gunther took a deep breath before turning to face Xavier, who seemed determined to enter rooms that way.

  “One of these days, I’m actually going to blow something up.”

  “You say that like it hasn’t happened before.” Clark appeared behind Xav, his usual joking smile firmly in place.

  Gunther couldn’t help but smile back. Until Xav spoke next.

  “Sorry, Brother, but it’s time to train.”

  “I’m right in the middle—”

  “You always say that,” Xav interrupted.

  “Come on, Gunther. You know whatever Mother says, goes,” Clark said with a wink, making sure Gunther could read his lips.

  “Stop calling me that!” Xav said back. “I just want to make sure he can protect himself.”

  “A fair point, Little Brother.” Clark ruffled his hair, and Gunther knew there was no getting out of this.

  It wasn’t that he was bad at sparring. He just didn’t like walking away mid-project. With a last reluctant sigh at the pile of metal on his desk, Gunther removed his goggles to follow his brothers up to the training deck.

  His brothers, who were apparently still arguing about the mother comment.

  Before Gunther even picked up a sword, Xav had directed his own at Clark, his brows creasing in irritation as he directed a blow toward him.

  Clark easily ducked out of the way of Xavier’s sword and, with lightning speed, unsheathed his own to meet it. They began sparring with such precision and fury that several of the soldiers onboard the warship stopped to watch.

  When Gunther joined in, they both slowed incrementally. Gunther knew they meant well, but he also knew what they were doing. It was as if they thought he would break if they pushed him too hard.

  “I’m not a child,” he called out to them, “so you can stop treating me like one.”

  “Of course you’re not, Brother.” Xav stopped moving long enough for Gunther to see what he was saying. “That’s never what we mean to imply.”

  Clark made a few signs that indicated it was always what Xavier meant, but that Clark would never do Gunther the discourtesy. Their eldest brother, of course, saw this and again launched at Clark with all the speed and tenacity he possessed.

  Gunther rolled his eyes, but a smile crept back onto his face. They may annoy him at times and be far too overprotective, but the feeling it cemented within him was a good one. He had always dreamt he’d find a family, and for better or worse, he’d succeeded.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Adelaide

  If there had been a single part of me that had desired to be queen or empress one day, the heavy crown digging into my skull and tugging at my tightly bound hair would have effectively eliminated it. I brought the glass of peculiar looking liquid to my lips for the second time in my life.

  The first time I got married, I hadn’t been aware of the commitment I was making. I hadn’t been aware of much of anything that night, outside of Clark. It had felt like we were the only two people on that ship or the entire universe outside.

  This time, I only wished I wasn’t aware of what I was doing. That I wasn’t painfully cognizant of the court of onlookers, the general’s grim face, or BeLa’s neutral one.

  The king’s eyes on my lips when I pressed them to the rim of the glass.

  I took a deep drink, hoping for the clarity it had given me that night, or perhaps at least some of the elation. But there was only emptiness. I repeated words I didn’t understand in a voice that sounded far away from my own ears.

  Then, the king led me to the center of the opulent ballroom onto a glittering dance floor. His hands territorially gripped my waist, pulling me closer with each minute of the orchestral music. My mind wandered of its own accord, escaping to the feel of a wooden deck under my feet, simple stringed instruments strumming out a gentle melody punctuated by Clark’s steadily beating heart.

  Solid arms wrapped around me in the present, but there was no semblance of the love and protection I had felt that night. Only ownership and confinement.

  This isn’t real. But the king didn’t know that.

  When the dance was finally over, the people applauded. It lacked the sincere joy of the women on the ship, but it was thunderous all the same.

  “Smile.” The word was almost a hiss, the arm around me bruising my ribcage.

  I managed to oblige, though I suspected it looked more like a grimace.

  “And now, to finalize our union.” The words were quiet, and I wondered if I imagined the menace in his tone.

  There was no one with an ink pot or a needle ostensibly waiting for us, but he guided me to the center of the room. Murmurs overtook the crowd before a glare from the king silenced them, but it was long enough for me to know the court was confused as well.

  BeLa’s face had gone white. The expression of clear panic on her usually neutral features made me even more nervous than the warning in the general’s eyes.

  My heart raced in spite of myself.

  A gesture from the king brought a guard striding toward us, the same man who had beheaded a servant girl only two days ago. My knees trembled, and I fought to stay upright. The tiny bites of flat bread I had forced myself to eat were threatening a reappearance with each measured step the man took.

  The king reached into his pocket, speaking to the room as he did so.

  “I had something made special for my wife to mark this momentous occasion, something to serve as a more permanent reminder of our union.”

  If the people were wondering, as I was, what was more permanent than a tattoo, they didn’t remark. It was as though the entire room was collectively holding their breath.

  I looked to Killian, and his eyes flashed with murder for a moment before he lifted his chin, reminding me again to stand tall.

  Right.

  Perhaps no one in the room knew exactly what the king had planned, but they were not blind to the kind of man he was. I took in a shaky breath, and he took his time slowly opening the box he had pulled out.

  “Remove her bracelet and pull up her sleeve,” he ordered the guard.

  I held my arm out limply. This was no time to cause a scene. The man removing the heavy gold bangle from my left wrist could have been the king’s older, larger brother, only his eyes were blue.

  I focused on the color in an effort to calm my frantically beating heart. I could almost pretend they were a different set of eyes on a different wedding night, but the cold, cruel expression would never have graced Clark’s face.

  After a long, tense moment, the king presented something to me that looked fairly innocuous. It appeared to be some mix of a paintbrush and an ink pen. Was this what he meant by more permanent?

  So why the theatrics? Just to frighten me? A power play?

  The guard held my arm steady as the King signed what I assumed to be his name with a flourish. The ink, if that’s what the clear liquid was, was cool against my skin.

  The guard stepped away, and I let loose the breath I had been holding on to. There were quiet sighs of relief around the room.

  Only BeLa and the general knew better than to relax so soon. In fact, if anything, the king’s daughter looked even more distressed than she had a moment ago.

  I didn’t have to wait long to discover why.

  A stinging sensation replaced the coolness from a moment ago, like twenty angry scorpions had landed on my wrist. My skin turned bright red where the clear liquid had been, the bold, sweeping strokes of the king’s Levelian name raising up. I placed my opposite hand on the spot in an effort to cool it, but that only made it burn more.

>   My eyes watered in pain. I opened my mouth to cry out, but the king’s hand clamped around my arm.

  “Now, now, my dear. It’s just what we agreed upon. A permanent symbol that you will be mine.” He moved closer. “Unless you would like me to default on my end of the bargain, it would be to your benefit not to struggle.” His promise not to force me into his bed, he meant.

  Bile rose in my throat, thick and burning.

  A test. A game. That’s what everything was for this man. That’s why he insisted on this display in a room full of people, then told me not to react.

  The only thing I couldn’t figure out was whether he was testing me to discern whether I had the strength to be his queen, or torturing me for the sport of it.

  Then, the stinging turned to intense burning, like acid and fire all rolled into one, and I couldn’t wonder about anything at all.

  Blinding, mind-numbing torment annihilated every other sense I had.

  I was so focused on remaining upright, on silencing the screams trying to escape my lips that I barely registered the general striding confidently over, BeLa at his side.

  “We came to offer our congratulations,” he announced it loudly enough for the room to hear, but it was as though I was hearing it through water.

  He moved his broad frame in front of mine, shielding me from the people’s view. I fisted my hand into my aubergine skirts to keep from clawing at my searing, bubbling skin.

  I couldn’t think about the scar, the brand that had already obliterated Clark’s name from my skin. If he had ever wanted a way out of this, he had it now.

  The anxious thought was doing nothing for the agony completely overtaking me, edging out every bit of the cold logic I usually relied on to get me through.

  Somewhere through the tears freely falling down my face, I saw a blurry vision of the king glaring at me, while his daughter tried very determinedly not to glare at him.

  I blinked the moisture away long enough to notice the general’s exaggerated breathing. In. Out. He gestured subtly with his hand as he did it.

  I struggled to match his breaths. Counting down from five was beyond me, but I could do that much.

  In.

  Out.

  He squeezed my uninjured hand before leaving, both a supportive gesture and a reminder to remove the other from my skirts before the onslaught of well-wishers noticed.

  I knew then that Clark may hate this man for the rest of his life, but I could never be anything but grateful for him as long as I lived. I nodded once, but I didn’t trust my voice to thank him aloud.

  The strength he had lent me was all I had to get through the barrage of courtiers. I breathed through the blistering pain, dipping my head politely for what felt like years. My eyes were red, and I couldn’t speak, but no one dared remark on it.

  Fortunately, the king did not require his new wife to speak, or indeed, to have a voice at all.

  No matter. I was going to take every ounce of this rage and torment and humiliation and channel it directly into the crystal the next time I held the amulet.

  Then, we would see who would be choking back screams.

  The Idealist

  Gunther recognized the girl as soon as he saw her. If Clark and Xavier hadn’t been so preoccupied with their latest spat, they also would have known it was the director’s daughter with the amulet stuck around her neck.

  “My name is Gunther. What’s yours?” He held his breath, hoping he had judged the spark of intelligence in her eyes correctly, that she was smart enough to lie.

  Clark was distracted enough as it was, and perilously close to losing his head, even without realizing who she was.

  Besides, somewhere beneath her haughty expression, he was sure she was terrified. She didn’t deserve to have Clark’s aggravation taken out on her for the actions of a man she couldn’t control, on top of this mess she had landed herself in.

  She mouthed something, and it took Gunther a moment to work out what it was. Most people would go to something familiar in a crisis. He blinked, picturing the dossier with her full name on it. Adelaide Celeste Kensington. Running through a list of all possible variations of those names and comparing it to the shape of her lips when she spoke, he finally took his best educated guess.

  “Addie,” he said back to her.

  When she didn’t argue, he knew he had gotten it right, so he continued trying to reassure her, to let her know what was going on.

  Just when she appeared to consider trusting them, Clark came in with his big mouth and ruined all of Gunther’s hard work with some scare tactic speech about the girl either working with them or dying.

  Gunther inwardly rolled his eyes, but he had to hand it to his brother. That furious glint in Adelaide’s eyes did seem to bolster her. Not unlike Clark, he thought with an inward chuckle.

  He wondered if Clark had actually lost his temper, or only done what he had to in order to keep the girl moving.

  Even after years at his side, Gunther’s brother still managed to be an enigma sometimes.

  Twenty-Eight

  Clark

  I hated to admit my father — damn it, now I was doing it. I hated to admit the general was right about anything these days, but it took everything I had to keep my head during the king’s announcement.

  My brothers and I had just come into the house for a break from training when we heard it.

  Just as before, a lyrical alarm went off around the village. I started to head out the door toward the square, but Xavier put a hand out to stop me. He pointed to the center of the room, where a square was flickering to life.

  I guessed it made sense with as little time was in between the signal and the appearance of the screen that there would be access from the houses as well.

  I tapped Gunther on the shoulder and gestured to the screen just as the image appeared. Once again, it was a view of the throne room. But unlike before, this time I immediately knew something was wrong.

  Addie’s face was pale and drawn. Though she was making a hell of an effort, the corners of her eyes were pinched with pain. I was so busy examining every centimeter of the pixelated view for signs of an injury that I very nearly missed the bronze and jade crown on her head.

  The general stood at the king’s right hand. He was a master at hiding his expression, but in that moment, he was hiding it a little too well. His carefully guarded face gave me almost as much pause as Addie’s crown did.

  BeLa’s tall, waifish form stood next to him. She was, by far, the easiest of the four to read. She shot a number of concerned glances in my wife’s direction before outright wincing when the king grabbed Addie’s hand. Oddly enough, he reached across her for her left hand.

  I blinked, not quite making sense of this. The tattoo had been there the last time I saw her. Even a king couldn’t marry someone who was already married, could he? Had she gotten another tube? One that worked even faster?

  But even that wasn’t what pushed me over the edge.

  When the king took her hand, Addie’s face went slack. She squeezed her eyes shut for a fraction of a second, and when she opened them, they were watery and unfocused. It was an expression I knew well, the look of someone trying hard to conceal a sudden onset of blinding agony.

  And I knew from the way her body was angled subtly away from him, the way she tensed when he touched her, that he had done this to her.

  I couldn’t have been more wrong about the accusations I had flung her way, either the ones I spat at her in person or the suspicions I had been harboring since I found the tube.

  It was clear she had no affection for the king. All of this, I observed in the handful of seconds before he opened his smug mouth to speak.

  His words blurred together, something about a new era and an alliance. But two words I heard clear as day.

  “Your queen.”

  If he had forced a marriage on her, what else did he force?

  Xav’s eyes widened with horror and shock before they narrowed with murderou
s intent.

  Gunther, on the other hand...he squeezed his eyes shut in anguish. But there wasn’t a single trace of surprise.

  And in the end, that’s what did me in.

  “It was one thing when you cheerfully didn’t let me out of your sight, Clark. Following me around to glare at me is something else entirely.” Gunther sounded tired.

  Guilt pricked at me.

  I wasn’t any more comfortable leaving my brother’s side than I had been this morning, but now I was fuming. My knuckles were swollen from hitting the Levelian version of a punching bag, which was similar to the ones in Ceithre, only attached to a moving beam.

  Even that hadn’t been enough to dispel my anger.

  “Maybe next time you suspect,” I emphasized the word, because he had insisted he hadn’t actually known what she was planning, “that my wife is going to marry someone else, putting herself in an insane amount of danger, you’ll give me a little heads up.”

  My brother still looked too thin, and remorse overtook his features.

  I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay mad at him for long, not when I just got him back. But I couldn’t just let it go, either.

  “I don’t know how you and Xav do this all the time. Fighting is exhausting.” Gunther took a deep breath. “But for the last time, I didn’t see the need to worry you when I wasn’t sure.” More gently, he added. “It was her choice to put herself in danger, Clark, and she wasn’t the only one.”

  Not for the first time, I wondered what had gone down with him and BeLa in that room together. He hadn’t outright said anything, but it was clear he was worried for her. He asked SuEllen about her every time that wrist bracelet chimed.

  Just like that, my anger deflated like a balloon with a pin in it.

  “I know.” I put my head in my hands. “But she’s so reckless sometimes.”

  “I know you don’t want to hear this, but Father will protect her.”