Solace: Book Three (Strange in Skin Trilogy)

by Sara V. Zook

  “Good, good.” Ben gnawed on the edge of his fingernail. “Emry, you are going to be king, aren’t you?”

  Emry got off of the hammock and took a few steps away from me and Ben.

  “Your hesitation makes me uneasy,” Ben confessed.

  Emry let out a huff of frustration. “I just don’t know how.”

  “Enough.” Ben stood now, too. “No more excuses. We all know the obvious, that you don’t know how. You can learn. I can teach you. You know the real question, Emry, what exactly I’m asking. Do you want, are you willing to be king?”

  It was dark, but I could feel Emry’s stare as he attempted to meet my eyes, needing some sort of answer, reassurance from me. I didn’t know what to tell him to do. I was just as confused as everyone else in the situation. I didn’t know how to be a queen, and I didn’t know if I was willing to be a queen, but as long as I was titled Emry’s queen, I knew I’d do it. I couldn’t be anywhere other than where he was. Somehow though, I didn’t think the contributors were going to be too thrilled to have a powerless human as their authority figure.

  “I’ll do it.”

  I gasped a little as I heard the words escape from Emry’s lips.

  “You will?” Ben seemed to be just as shocked.

  “For my father. I refuse to think he was as evil as my mother.”

  Ben’s entire demeanor changed to one of relief. “Your father was a good man. You’re a lot like him.”

  “I don’t know how, but I’m going to try to fix the mess that my mother has created in Evadere. I want to make it back into a kingdom that my father could be proud of.”

  Emry walked back over to me. I was sitting on the edge of the hammock, my feet dangling back and forth.

  “Anna?”

  “Hmm?” I looked up as he extended his hands out to me. Placing mine in his, he lifted me to a standing position.

  He exhaled as he pressed his forehead against mine. “Do this with me, please?” A little laugh escaped my throat.

  “Oh, that’s funny?” he asked with his own smirk.

  “It is a little funny,” I said, nodding. “To think that I’d be anywhere other than here with you. I thought we were past all this.”

  “Well, Ben, you’re my mentor. I guess in a way you’ve always been my mentor, but officially so now.” Emry chuckled.

  “I think we should have a celebration … big, huge, enormous celebration,” Ben suggested.

  “Whoa, why?” Emry asked, already jumping back on the defensive side.

  “It’s a big deal to become a king, you know, Emry,” I whispered.

  “We need to bring the contributors in, make them feel comfortable around you. You need to meet the people, become acquainted with how everyone lives around here. It’s not like Earth,” Ben added.

  I remembered how the land went from dust to luscious green grass in a matter of a few steps when I was trying to find my way to the castle with Jo.

  “Like how big?”

  “Invite every contributor,” Ben replied.

  “You’ve done fine in front of them before,” I reminded him.

  He pressed his lips together. “That was different. All attention will be directed on me this time.”

  “Do you know what the king title consists of?” Ben asked, a hint of annoyance in his voice. “Contributors will look up to you. They all have to know you, to at least have seen your face. They’re afraid because of what happened to Atavia. They’ve seen her become weak, but at your hand. They need to know that their strong leader is also kind.”

  Emry began to pace. “I do realize what being king entails … sort of, but you don’t have to treat me like some kind of idiot.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” Ben snapped. “But sometimes it’s not always about you, it’s about a bigger picture.”

  As Ben stormed off, I couldn’t help but let my jaw drop. I had never seen him have much of any emotion, especially show any sort of anger towards Emry. It was surprising, yet kind of refreshing. Ben had a human side to him, too.

  “Can you believe that?” Emry hissed.

  I took a deep breath before speaking. I didn’t want Emry to think that I wasn’t on his side, but Ben had just given me a revelation as well.

  I whispered, “He’s right.”

  “What?”

  “We’re only thinking about ourselves,” I continued.

  Emry shrugged. “So what. Why shouldn’t we be?”

  I returned to my position on the hammock while he paced around like always when he was upset or nervous. “There is a bigger picture here. There are more lives depending on us than just us. Get what I’m saying?”

  Emry remained silent. He just kept raking his hand through his hair and moving around on the large balcony.

  “I’m on your side, Emry,” I added. “I just understand what Ben’s trying to say.”

  “I get it,” he finally said. “One of those contributors is a murderer though.”

  I folded my hands together in my lap. The night air suddenly felt humid, stuffy. My thoughts turned to horrifying memories of waking up to find a murdered girl in my bed, Raleigh, her blood all over me as I had rolled around in it all night. Jilliane had been killed. Atavia had blamed me. I closed my eyes tight trying to escape the reliving nightmare. I blamed Atavia.

  “You didn’t just think it was over, did you?” Emry questioned, his head close to mine.

  I shook my head, hoping to rid myself of the tormenting memories. “You still don’t think it was Atavia?”

  “Jillianne was her best friend, as close as she could come to one. She mourned her death. I don’t think there was any faking that,” he admitted.

  I bit my lip. A shiver ran up along my arms causing goose bumps to appear.

  “We’re not safe,” I whispered.

  Emry wrapped his arms around me. “I didn’t mean to worry you, it’s just … it’s not over, you know? I need to find out who did that, why they killed Raleigh and Jillianne. It doesn’t make sense.”

  In the warmth of his skin, being safe was all I could feel.

  “No one is going to get close enough to you to do anything,” Emry promised.

  “And you?”

  “Me?” he pushed back to look at me.

  “Yes, you.” I poked him in the chest. “Who’s going to protect you?”

  Half of his face twisted into a smirk. “I can take care of myself.”

  THREE

  Something moving outside caught my eye. Having just gotten out of the shower, I wrapped a towel around myself and rushed to the window. A puff of gray smoke rose into the air. Was something on fire?

  I threw on a pair of pants and a loose white shirt and combed my dripping hair back with my fingers. My heart pounded as I took a quick glance at myself in the mirror, but all I saw was the reflection of the window and more smoke rising into the air.

  Taking two steps at a time, I made it quickly down the entire circular staircase. The stench hit my nostrils as I opened the door and slipped outside.

  What in the world …?

  The wind was fierce this morning. It lifted my heavy, wet hair up effortlessly as I thrust an arm up over my nose and continued to suffer through the thick odor.

  A group of people surrounded the fire. What was going on? A shiver went up my back as the wet hair had left my shirt dampened now. I pulled my hair all to one side to get it away from my back and attempted to wring it out, then quickly returned my arm to my nostrils to serve as shield against the sickening smoke.

  Emry was amongst the small group huddled around the fire. His eyes grew large as soon as he saw me coming. He hurried toward me before I could get to the group of people.

  “Emry,” I said, out of breath from trying not to inhale.

  “Anna.” He blocked me with his body from going any further. “What are you doing up? I thought you’d still be asleep.”

  I lowered my eyebrows but not my arm. “What? I woke up early, I guess. What’s going on and what is th
at smell? Who are those people?” I tried to look around him to get another peek, but he moved in front of me again.

  Emry was stalling. I narrowed my eyes at him.

  “What are you hiding, Emry Logan?”

  “Before you go over there, because I can see the determination in your eyes …”

  I darted around him before he could finish his sentence and walked up to the fire. It was at the edge of the grass where soil met dust. I looked at the small group of contributors who were focused on the thing burning. Whatever it was, was all black, and covered in ashes and then something sticking out upwards – fingers curled around as they burned.

  I jumped back. That was a body being burned. No wonder the stench was horrible. Burning flesh was making my stomach churn. Why did I seem to be the only one ill?

  Emry came up behind me. He put his hand on my shoulder. I moved away from him and snapped around.

  “Who is that?”

  “I can explain,” he mumbled.

  “Who is that?” I repeated my stomach on the verge of emptying its contents from the realization of the situation before me.

  Emry closed his eyes and sighed. “I didn’t want you to see this. I wanted it to happen early so you’d sleep through it.”

  “Just spit out a name, Emry,” I demanded.

  He sighed again. “It’s Mrs. Anderson.”

  Mrs. Anderson. I exhaled, at least glad to know that she was dead before they had lit a match to her.

  “So why not just bury her?” I asked.

  “It’s what they supposedly do with their traitors. Their bodies are burned back to ashes so they come apart, not buried as whole figures. Something like that was told to me by Ben,” Emry explained.

  Mrs. Anderson. I remembered how strange she had been on Earth, how she had been the leader of a conspiracy against Emry and wanted him locked up forever in prison. Now she was dead and gone. She had sons back on Earth. I remembered Lauren who had found me in her house and threw me down the basement stairs, and her other son who was a doctor who had fixed me up against his better judgment of getting involved. She had made somewhat of a life for herself when she had been exiled to Earth, yet she belonged to Evadere, and here she would stay. A stray ash lifted from what was left of Mrs. Anderson. My eyes followed it as it floated up into the air.

  I wanted to get a closer look.

  “Anna,” Emry protested.

  Ignoring him, I walked over to the blackened body. I peered down at her. This was the end of an era, an enemy who had pursued Emry Logan on Earth, knowing then he was the future heir of Evadere. How long ago it seemed that I was that girl back in John James’s house, living under his dictatorship and having no mind of my own. I took a deep breath. The stench wasn’t so bad. I could breathe now. I had found my own path. Even if it had ironically been the path to a strange, unknown world, it was my own. I glanced around at the contributors who were witnessing the burning of the traitor. I didn’t recognize anyone, and then my eyes settled on Ben Hanley. Mrs. Anderson was his sister. He stood over her, hands folded behind him and back straight, his eyes focused on the ground. Ben seemed so tangled between all of the confusion. He had jumped between Evadere and Earth at Atavia’s will to protect Emry all this time, and now the queen was as worthless as his own sister’s lifeless corpse lying before him.

  Ben looked up and met my stare. He wore certain sadness in his eyes as tears threatened at the edges of his lids. He looked away and turned to leave.

  I followed him.

  “Anna, where are you going?” Emry asked.

  I turned to look at my love. He had tried to protect my feelings this morning, his thoughts being that I would be abhorred by the sight of a burning body. Really though, I didn’t know what I felt, but it certainly wasn’t one of sympathy for Mrs. Anderson.

  I gave him a reassuring smile so that he knew I wasn’t upset. “Just need to talk to Ben for a sec.”

  Ben walked uphill to the shade of a tree and leaned against the bark, his back still toward me.

  “Hey,” I whispered, not wanting to take him by surprise.

  “Hey,” he said as if knowing I had been following him the entire time. “I’m fine.”

  He had this way of reading people as if knowing their thoughts and words before they even had to say them.

  I didn’t say anything for awhile, just stood beside him staring off into the same distance he was, trying to read him like he had me. I, on the other hand, wasn’t very good at it.

  “You know, I don’t get why people here feel as though emotions are a weakness. If you hold them in, you’re going to explode,” I finally said.

  Ben remained silent, so I went on.

  “Sadness is just a part of life. It sneaks up on us. It’s okay to let it in, Ben. Honestly, no one is going to judge you for it. She was your sister.”

  Still staring into the barren distance where grass no longer existed and just dusty trails remained, Ben took a deep breath and exhaled loudly.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ben said. “Sister is just a title. We share the same parents. So what? It doesn’t mean we belong to one another in any way. We’re not humans, Anna. We didn’t grow up together. I don’t regret not knowing her. In fact, I’m glad I didn’t knowing how she had turned out to be. We choose our own destinies. She chose hers. This is how it turned out.”

  Ben turned to face me then, his reddened eyes burning into mine.

  “I don’t judge you for your display of emotions. That seems like a constant thing humans have going for them.” He pressed his lips together for a moment. “So don’t judge me for my lack thereof. My so-called sister, she meant nothing to me.”

  With that, he turned and walked back down the hill leaving me and my open mouth to myself.

  ***

  Walking back into the castle, I headed back for Emry’s room to change and put some makeup on my face. Ben’s words were still echoing through my brain. He had been lying, hadn’t he? I couldn’t have mistaken his sorrow. I was sure his words had just been his attempt at building a wall around himself, and I was sure no one else had noticed his distress except me, the human.

  Once up the stairs and in the hall, I lifted my head up and saw Emry leaning against the wall, arms crossed, a smile playing on lips, his blue eyes gleaming in excitement and piercing as if he had been waiting for me.

  “Um, hi,” I said, breathless from the sight of him.

  He smiled then, his entire face illuminated. When was the last time I had seem Emry truly smile? I couldn’t even remember.

  “Hey,” he replied.

  I raised an eyebrow at him.

  “Where are you headed?” he asked.

  I looked toward the door leading to his room. “In there to change, get myself together now that I know the castle isn’t under attack and isn’t burning down to the ground.”

  His eyes trailed down to my feet and then back up to my face again. “You look beautiful. No need to change.”

  “Okay …”

  He held out a hand. “Come with me?”

  I sighed, my heart fluttering. What did he have up his sleeve? I couldn’t manage to find the strength to tell Emry Logan no when he looked like this, calling me beautiful with my hair still damp and laying in a clump on the side of my shoulder, his eyes having that wildness about them that I had fallen in love with.

  Of course, Emry, I would follow you right off a cliff looking like that …

  I reached out, my hand sliding into place in his. He was still smiling, his hair falling in his eyes as he peered down at me.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “For what?” I whispered.

  “Close your eyes,” he commanded.

  I gave him an uncertain look, though my intrigue was on fire. I closed them only halfway.

  “Anna James, you little peeker. Close them. Now.”

  I closed my eyes tight this time, Emry’s arms wrapping around me.

  “Keep them closed,” he
whispered his breath in my hair. “Okay, Anna. Open them up.”

  I pushed away from him and turned around. It was dark out. I looked up at the sky. Cloudy. Earth. He had transported me to Earth again. But why?

  We were at the edge of a patch of woods. Rain drizzled down on me, the droplets cold but the air warm indicating it was summer or at least close to it. I turned my head. In the distance, I saw bright lights on poles. My heart hammered in my chest as my eyes settled on it. Wow. How long had it been since I’d been here?

  The prison.

  I snapped around to face him. He was studying my reaction, his jaw clenching together, rain soaking his hair, little droplets running down his face and off of his chin.

  “Why have you brought me here?” I asked, fear creeping in as if someone would see us, recognize him and lock him up again even though he had been proven innocent. All the turmoil this place had caused me was roaring back to life making my insides shudder.

  He grabbed my hand and pulled me close. He stared deep into my eyes, my soul.

  “I remember sitting in this prison feeling as though my life had ended. I would never get out. I punished myself for my differences, for the mistakes I had made and kept making, never fully understanding who I was.” He paused to take a breath, the rain coming down faster. “That day you walked in, from the moment I first saw you, I knew, just knew.”

  “Knew what?” I whispered.

  He looked to the ground and then back to meet my eyes. “That somehow you knew who I was even if I didn’t. When you came to visit me … remember that?”

  I nodded, chuckling.

  “I felt so alive and actually full of hope for the first time that there was something more for me waiting out there.” He looked toward the prison. “Well, I’m out there now, with you, because of you. You believed in me, that I wasn’t some messed up criminal. You figured me out and didn’t even run when I showed you how twisted I was, that I could transport. I didn’t even know where I was transporting to at that point.”

  “But the beach was so beautiful. It had felt like a dream,” I reminisced. “Being with you is a wonderful dream for me.”

  “You saved my life in the courthouse when that woman tried to stab me. You saved me from Mrs. Anderson, your dad, everyone against me. You were trapped inside your dad’s house who wasn’t even your dad. You knew nothing about life, and look how far you’ve come, all to be with me.”