by Meg Xuemei X
The door quietly closed behind us.
We were in complete darkness.
Lexa slowed her steps and evened her breathing to get a sense of the direction, but she couldn’t know where we were going. The map was in my head.
“If you’d told me we’d visit the underground,” she said, turning in my direction, “I’d have better prepared—”
“I didn’t plan for you to come down here with me,” I said.
“You’d better include me in every act, Your Highness,” she said. “I won’t let you out of my sight day or night. It’s commonly known now that you’ve made the king’s bitch your mortal enemy.”
“Have I?”
“I’ll cut her down before she ever nears you!”
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “My rule is as before: I want my solitude during bathing and in my sleep.”
The Prince of Angels would come to the Spring Hall and my chamber again. Did I actually look forward to his visit?
The image of his nude, masculine body flashed before my eyes. His cock had wanted me so badly when it pulsed in my palm. His smooth, beautiful shaft had been as hard as a steel rod.
I shook off the pictures. The high prince wouldn’t return to Atlantis until tomorrow. I did not miss him a bit. He and I had a business arrangement. That was all. Even for that, I would cheat him out of it.
“Your Highness, where are we going?” Lexa asked, moving in the dark tunnel. “I should have brought a light.”
From my inner pocket, I pulled out a lighted compass, a magical item from the Mysthian royal house—my house.
The light penetrated the darkness. Lexa shielded her eyes with a hand, her other hand holding a dagger that had angelic runes on its blade.
We’d learned a hard lesson: earthly weapons couldn’t cut into angels’ flesh. The Dragonian rebels had stolen over a dozen angels’ swords forged in their home world and turned them into smaller-sized daggers. The Dragonian leader had equipped each one of my guards with an angel blade before we’d set out for Atlantis.
My guards hid them well. The swords they carried on the surface were earthly weapons.
I, however, carried my chakram wherever I went. Made by magic, it was attuned to me. My weapon master said he hadn’t seen anyone better at using a chakram than I.
Lexa had never seen me fight. In her eyes, I was an exquisite princess who needed to be protected. I’d seen her fight. She was excellent, but I could take her down without my chakram. I’d been secretly trained as a warrior by the best weapon master, and I was a natural.
“Turn left,” I told Lexa, who walked slightly ahead of me even though I was the one who held the lit compass and knew the direction.
The concrete tunnel smelled moldy. The air was wet, chilly. I loathed underground places. Only in this aspect were we Mysthians like the angels.
North had instructed me to head west once I entered the maze of tunnels.
It was impossible to breach the angels’ vault from the surface. The security above was extremely tight. Elite guardian angels patrolled every hallway, entrance, and exit. Sensors were wired into every inch of the building, except inside the vault.
Lexa and I moved forward for half an hour. The air temperature changed. It wasn’t cold anymore, but extra hot and humid, as if a furnace had opened above us.
“Shouldn’t have dressed like a scribe,” Lexa murmured, wiping sweat from her face.
“Did you complain this often when you served the emperor?” I asked.
“It was a good, comfortable life escorting the emperor, you know,” she said.
I wondered if my father still hosted feasts and wine parties with his noble Mysthians, who were great only at art, speech, and all refined things, while his daughter struggled to stay alive in Atlantis.
“Then you should not have come,” I said. “You can still return to my father. I do not need an extra sword.”
“I don’t regret coming, Princess,” she said.
“Then stop whining,” I said.
“I wasn’t exactly complaining,” she said. “It was just too hot here. It might help if you let me know where we’re heading to and what we need to achieve.”
“We’re going to raid the angels’ vault,” I said.
“Sounds ideal.”
“I know you’ll like it, despite the hot air here.”
“Your spies are more competent than the emperor’s. I should have joined you years ago.”
“You thought I was but a little girl years ago.”
“True, and I apologize, profusely.”
Lexa looked a few years older than me, though she was actually a century older.
“When I return to Mysth—if we survive this—the first thing I’ll do is clean the house. I’ll rip the titles off those useless aristocrats who voted against going to war with angels. I’ll open the door for all the commoners who join me in the fight.”
“The emperor won’t approve,” she said cautiously.
I snorted. “My father’s approval means nothing to me.”
“I’ll stand with you whatever you do, Princess.” She fanned her face. “I think we’re at the center of Atlantis’s hell.”
Sweat streamed from my face.
And I knew we stood right under the angels’ vault room.
I put the compass back into my pocket, took out a pair of specially made glasses, and put them on. Through the filtered lens I saw a narrow slot blinking with faint red light. I retrieved the silver column that had opened the prince’s library and jammed it into the slot.
Above us a square manhole moved aside.
“Where did you get all the fancy gadgets?” Lexa whispered.
When I’d gone to meet North in secret, Lexa hadn’t been in my team.
“From the Dragonian leader,” I said, removing my glasses and looking up at the ceilings.
“I go first,” Lexa said. She leapt and grabbed the edge of the opening, pulling herself up, lithe as a cat. A second later, her hand dropped toward me and lifted me up.
We stood inside the angels’ treasure house.
Chapter 5
PRINCE SETH
I followed the princess’s scent to my own library.
I stalked in the main hall with a frown.
How did she get inside? What was she looking for? Was she trying to dig up more shit about me and use it against me?
When I caught her, I’d punish her. I’d make her bend. Last time I’d coerced her into stroking my cock. This time I might get her to wrap her gorgeous pink lips around my shaft and suck it nice and fiercely.
At the thought, my cock hardened.
I’d better go find her then, the sooner the better.
I searched the whole place, but she was nowhere to be found.
Her scent was all over, and she hadn’t doubled back once. At last I stopped at an archway at the south corner. That was where her last scent lingered.
I inhaled. The princess seemed to have gone underground.
Was there an underground city beneath Atlantis?
My gaze fell upon the granite column near the wall before me. Unlike any other place, one side of the column was slightly uneven.
It was a flaw by design.
I ran my hand over the edge of the irregular column. A metal chip was buried inside. I fixed my eyes on the wall behind it. There wasn’t any crack on the surface, but there must be a hidden door somewhere.
Now I thought about it, I became certain that when Rose had first snuck into my brother’s study she was trying to find a secret entrance, only I’d caught her before she had a chance. Now she’d broken into my domain to find the same.
The Dragonian engineers who worked for us had held back. I would interrogate the head engineer and make him cough up what exactly was beneath the golden tower.
The Dragonian rebels were but a tiny flame that kept angel hunters entertained, but it would all go bad if Victoria’s intelligence found out about the princess’s ties with them.
&nbs
p; I needed to find Rose before anyone else did.
I knocked on the wall inch by inch, until I detected different sounds from distinctive materials.
Drawing my sword forged in another universe, I slashed at the wall.
Chapter 6
PRINCESS ROSE
“We’re here,” I whispered. “We’re inside the angels’ vault.”
The vault room was heavily-guarded, but not even an angel was allowed inside, except for their royal bloodline. The arrogant species would never imagine that anyone, especially an earthling, could breach their most treasured house.
Lexa scanned our surroundings, her posture tense.
The vault was a vast room, packed with high-valued items the angels had plundered from other worlds.
Transparent metal cases separated each display.
My hatred for the angels sizzled as I passed every spoil that told a bloody history. The angels would make Mysth one of their collections soon.
“Are we going to rob the angels or destroy their hoard?” Lexa asked in giddiness.
“Find a lethal weapon,” I said, “or anything that contains tech information. Don’t touch it if you’re not sure.”
The angel race had come across many worlds. They’d turned every technology to their use. Their databases and resources could benefit my people greatly. My scientists had been working with the Dragonian to build better weaponry that could actually kill angels.
The Dragonian were ahead of us. The Mysthians had been depending too much on Earth Mother’s protection. We now had to catch up on tech. That was why I’d insisted that the Dragonian scientists and engineers were stationed and worked with my scientists in my secret labs on the border of Mysth. Our combined resources would harvest the most advanced angel technology together; I wouldn’t deliver the angels’ technology to the Dragonian alone.
The Dragonian had also tried to build rocket ships to travel to other worlds, but they’d failed time after time. I would look for space technology in the angels’ vault as well. It was never my father’s dream, but it had been mine since I was a child, to see wonders beyond the realm of Earth.
The angels had bragged that they’d colonized civilizations far more advanced than the earthlings. They must have kept some of the records in their vault.
Once we defeated the angels, a new war might break out between the Dragonian and my race.
My emperor father had despised science and hated this new era of constant changes outside the Kingdom of Mysth. He’d believed that the earth magic would keep us safe forever inside the magic walls of the twilight realm, and he’d been wrong.
The world had shifted as science and technology competed against the old earth magic.
I put on a pair of specially made gloves and picked up a red crystal from a transparent-metal case on the first row. At my touch, a light swirled from the crystal.
A hologram of a recorded battle scene expanded and streamed before me.
Angels, the numbers of the sand and stars, filled the sky and fought equal numbers of dragon-like, fire-breathing creatures. Both winged species wielded swords that emitted beams of light. Wherever the light hit, the flesh exploded and dropped from the air.
The scene moved to another battle and another. Every assault was bloody, brutal, and horrifying.
Angels used different weapons against different species and won every war.
Then in one battle, the balanced tipped for the first time. I heard angels screaming in pain and terror. My heart leapt in joy. The angels had met their betters and we could borrow their superior foes’ technique.
I held my breath as the super beings, in formidable full armor, towered over the angels.
I couldn’t make out the material of the armor. It wasn’t like steel, iron, or any earth material. The armor could shift. It grew. It was terrifying and fascinating to watch.
The powerful beings cut down the angels like grass.
Angels’ blood flowed and formed a red stream on the ground.
My heart pounded. My mouth dried. There was hope for us. The angels could be beaten. They weren’t the sole power in the universe as they’d led us to believe.
They’d lost the war to the armored creatures from another galaxy.
Then black lightning struck across half of the sky.
With a roar like the thunder of heaven, Prince Seth landed amid the superior beings. His lightning tore into his enemies like rains of spears.
They stumbled back, yet did not fall. Their armor diffused his lightning, making it less effective.
I cheered for my enemy’s enemies.
Seth thrust his sword forward, faster than anything I’d ever seen, and pierced the chest of the being hacking at him.
His comrades around him kept falling, and he was outnumbered—a sole soldier among a hostile horde. Yet he fought like a windstorm and cut down the super warriors around him.
No wonder he was one of the most feared angels.
The beings focused on bringing him down. They sealed the sky above him to prevent his escape and closed in on him, a wave of heavy, long blades slashing at him from all directions. No one could live through that siege of blades.
They were hunting him as if he was a beast.
My heart clutched in fear for the prince. As soon as I realized that, I scolded myself hard and cold. I should never sympathize with my sworn enemy.
Looking bored, the prince stretched his hand and whistled.
A swirl of blue liquid fire appeared in his rough palm. Two flaming swords spanned around it, guarding it.
Shouting in an ancient angelic tongue, Seth grabbed one of the flaming blades and stabbed it deep into the ground.
I couldn’t understand his command, but the chill and thrill rushed through me at the words of power, and I wasn’t even on the battlefield.
The ground trembled like an earthquake.
The armored beings cursed and tossed their axes toward Seth’s neck. Their blades disintegrated before reaching him.
A blinding light shot from the liquid fire in Seth’s palm, spreading like a flood of light.
In the blink of an eye, the light had reached every armored being and ripped the flesh off them. Screams and roars deafened my ears. A second later, an eerie silence settled. Seth and a dozen of his remaining angels stood amid piles of bones, broken bodies, and vacant armors.
Thick ashes flew in the air, and some flowed on top of the river of blood.
My heart pounded, and my mouth dried.
That was the most chilling sight I’d ever seen.
Seth picked up the flaming sword from the ground. The blinding light that had struck out at the formidable beings diminished and returned to Seth’s palm in the form of blue liquid fire.
Two flaming swords spanned around it and Seth.
I swallowed as nausea overcame me.
The liquid flame was the Forbidden Glory.
It had annihilated the whole terribly powerful race in a mere second.
Prince Seth rose to his feet and grinned savagely.
The hologram faded away.
I pulled out a white crystal from my scribe’s pocket and attached it to the red crystal. The device blinked and started recording. When the light stopped beaming, I separated the two crystals, put mine back inside my pocket, and returned the red one to its metal case.
Lexa darted a glance at me, her face ashen.
Continuing to search for the angels’ armory had become pointless.
It didn’t matter what weapons we got into our hands. It didn’t matter what weapons the Dragonian and my scientists were going to make. As long as the angels had the Glory, they would win every battle and every war in the universe.
“Those aliens tried every possible weapon against the angels,” Lexa drawled.
“The Angel’s Forbidden Glory—” I nodded, finally finding my own voice, “—is what we came here for.”
Chapter 7
PRINCE SETH
As soon as my blade cut
open the steel door, I dashed through the square hole. A flight of stairs lay in front of me and a dark tunnel extended ahead.
The princess’s scent was in the air. She had indeed gone under.
Angels loathe the subterranean world. Our wings became burdensome and useless down there. So I wasn’t keen to go down into the tunnel, but I had to find Rose before anyone else caught her.
Ever since she’d come to Atlantis, she’d brought me nothing but trouble.
Maybe the one fuck in the future wasn’t worth it.
Biting back a dark curse, I furled my wings tightly behind my back, ready to descend the stairs. Then an alarm broke out, which signaled an infringement in the vault.
I could do the math, and cussed more.
If the princess had been foolish enough to go there, she might be dead already. I was too late.
I stared ahead. It would take me longer to follow the trail of her scent to reach the vault through the underground than to travel in the air.
I went back to my library, swept my wings to full length, and took off.
The arched ceiling opened at my hasty approach.
I sped toward the vault tower.
Chapter 8
PRINCESS ROSE
It sounded like the wind. It sounded like the rain. But it was neither from the wind, nor the rain. The white noise was nothing natural.
Lexa and I stopped at the center of the vault room.
The waves of heat increased and its source beckoned me ahead as if it was sentient.
I’d been living in fear ever since I’d come to Atlantis, but it was nothing compared to the dread I experienced then. Every instinct screamed for me to run.
The menacing force kept drawing me toward it. One foot of mine landed in front of the other and repeated. If I fought it with all I had, I would probably get away, but I wouldn’t run. The Forbidden Glory was what I had come here for.
And if I ran now, I’d never have another chance to come back. I’d never find the means to defeat the angels, and they would forever hunt me.
