“Thank you. I can’t…I can’t…” This time, it wasn’t my teeth chattering that kept me from speaking. It was the fact that I didn’t have the first clue what to say. “I know that I should be stronger than this, that I shouldn’t want to cry, but…Everything is different. I can feel it in the air. Something is evil here in the castle. Can you feel it too?”
“I can. Which is why it’s imperative that you don’t give up, my darling girl. You and Anatole together are the only ones who have a prayer of saving us.”
Oh, this old line again. I couldn’t stop the wave of anger that rose up in me at her repeated insistence that Anatole and I were meant to save the world together. I had foolishly believed it for too long, and look where it had gotten me. Stuck in the dungeons of a castle, with my heart broken and my world on the brink of invasion.
“But I can’t, your majesty. He’s not…He doesn’t want me. He hasn’t even come to find me down here yet.”
“He’ll come. Of course he will. He loves you.”
There was a note in Queen Freia’s voice that sent a cold shiver down my spine despite the spell of warmth she’d cast over me. My words went bitter again. As relieved as I had been to see her at first, now I realized that resentment towards her and the path she’d set me down had started to curdle the blood all around my heart.
She didn’t believe that Anatole really loved me or that he would come down here to my rescue any more than I did. The fact that she suddenly wouldn’t look me in the eye only confirmed that suspicion.
“Is that what the future tells you? You’re the one who can see what’s going to happen.”
“Nothing is certain.”
At that reply, the breath left my lungs. Any time I’d asked Queen Freia before about the future, she’d always laugh and brush the question off, teasingly reminding me that you couldn’t know you future for fear of interfering with it actually happening. But today, she hadn’t said anything of the sort. I couldn’t find a smile even hidden in the depths of her eyes. She was just…uncertain. For the first time, I don’t think she knew at all what was going to happen.
That scared me more than the evil in the air or the dungeons all around me.
“You…” I tried to piece the truth together, hoping all the while that I was wrong, that she really hadn’t somehow lost her gift. “You can’t see what’s going to happen anymore, can you?”
By now, she was wringing her hands, rubbing them nearly raw as she tried to tell me the truth without destroying me completely. I could tell she was hedging and trying to put a positive spin on things, but I could also tell that there was very, very little room for hope.
“Everything is changing so quickly. I can’t see anything with clarity. One minute, our victory is certain, the next minute…” Her voice trailed off. When it picked up, it was smaller and less confident than I’d ever heard it before. Her hands dropped limply in her lap. “We’re lost again.”
The heat of anger rose up in me, competing for the spell’s control over my body. I was trapped here, in a foreign, magical land where I had no power, no sway, no control over my own life. Every card in the deck was stacked against me. The whole universe felt stacked against me.
“I don’t know what you want me to do about it. I’m trapped down here and it’s your sons who put me here.”
Queen Freia didn’t miss a beat. “You have the Magic Killer, don’t you?”
Does it look like I have your stupid, magical sword? I wanted to scream, but I didn’t. Instead, I thought about the last time I’d used it. Against Anatole in a make-believe fight that had ended with the sweetest, softest, most wonderful kiss I’d ever received.
I had been so ridiculous, giving into love like that. Believing that someone could actually care for me.
It had also been ridiculous to let the most powerful weapon in all of the magical world, one passed down from Queen to Queen throughout the history of Velkin, out of my sight. But how was I to know that Anatole would betray me and banish me back to the human world? No one told me that the damn sword needed to be attached to my hip at all times.
“…No.”
“You don’t have it?” Queen Freia asked, her voice tightening and tensing in a worried way I’d never heard from her before.
Worried. She was worried. And I knew I’d failed.
“When Anatole banished me to Earth, he didn’t exactly give me any time to pack. He left me some money and some clothes and that was it.”
“Where is it now?”
That was the million dollar question, wasn’t it? Where was the most powerful magical object in all of the realm? All of my instincts told me that it had to be somewhere hidden, captured by the same man who captured the castle and intended to capture Earth as well. But my heart didn’t want to believe that. If King Adric had his hands on the Magic-Killer, then we were all surely doomed. I didn’t exactly know what the sword did, just that if it fell into the wrong hands, then there would be no getting out of the damage that could be done.
On the other hand, perhaps it wasn’t too optimistic to think that perhaps Adric didn’t have the Magic-Killer. After all, if it was in his possession, he wouldn’t be the type to hide that sort of information. He would probably be running around the castle with it, telling everyone who would listen that he was the most powerful magic-wielder in the entire universe, and that with the power of the Magic-Killer, no one could ever dare to stand against him.
I shrugged, not knowing what else to do. “In the castle, I’m assuming. I haven’t seen it since—”
“That might be why my vision is so clouded,” Queen Freia tutted, going back to wringing her hands. The action was so small and so genteel that anyone else would have probably written it off. But I knew what worry, what fear looked like. And try as she did to hide it, Queen Freia was displaying nearly all of the symptoms. “Without the Magic-Killer, you are defenseless. You must find it, Carolyn. You must find the sword and be reunited with Anatole. It’s the only way.”
If that was true, then I think everyone needed to start preparing themselves for a long, hard, difficult life during the reign of King Adric. Because I didn’t know the first thing about saving the universe, and after the way I’d been tossed into this cell and left to rot, I didn’t exactly feel up to the task of teaming up with Anatole. Not now. Not ever again.
My heart still wanted him. Parts of me were still in love with him. But after everything I’d been through, parts of me hated him, too. If he did come waltzing back into my life and try to save the world at my side, needless to say, he was going to have a lot of apologizing and explaining to do.
“I’ll try, Queen Freia, but I don’t think I’m—”
“You are strong enough,” Queen Freia said, answering my doubt before I’d even been able to speak it out loud. “You have been through to much, but you will get through this, too. One day, we will be reunited. One day, Velkin will be whole again.”
There was hope in her voice again. Hope that I desperately prayed I could answer. But there was something else that nettled me, that confused me to no end. The woman loved speaking in riddles, but this was something altogether different.
“Reunited? What do you mean?”
Something at the edges of her flickered, as if the light within her was going out. As if she were some kind of candle that had gotten caught in a wind, but was fighting against being extinguished. That’s when I recognized it. The telltale glimmer of Velkin magic, hovering around the edges of her.
She wasn’t here at all, I realized with a sinking feeling.
Queen Freia’s eyes crinkled around the edges as she gave me a weary, good-natured smile. “I’m afraid I haven’t been completely honest with you, my dear. You see, I’m not a captive in the castle. You’ll have to face this battle alone.”
Alone. That one syllable hit me like a barreling freight train right to the center of my chest. Without thinking, I reached my hand out towards the small crack in the wall that allowed me to see her,
as if I could reach through the brick and keep her from leaving me.
As angry as I had been with her, I didn’t want to face this alone. I couldn’t do this by myself. For someone who hadn’t ever needed anybody, all of the sudden the thought of facing the universe and all of its evils alone made me want to cry.
“No, no, please don’t go. Please—”
“Stay strong.”
And just like that, her image disintegrated. Vanished as easily as someone turning off a night light. Falling back against the cold wall behind me, I did everything in my power to keep from crying. It was miserable, to be so close to someone only to have them ripped out of your grasp just when they were beginning to make you feel even a little bit better, a little bit more alright.
For too long, I sat there, staring at the place where she had been, wishing for her to return. Eventually, though, my silent staring was interrupted by the stoic, brazen footfall of a stranger.
“Prisoner! You have a guest!”
I turned deeper into the wall, once again huddling against it for warmth as the power of Queen Freia’s spell slipped out of my pores. But before I could open my mouth, the soldier spoke again, his booming call practically shaking the already pathetically constructed bars of my prison.
“Rise for Prince Anatole, of House Starborn.”
My heart stopped. My pulse roared in my ears before going painfully silent. And then, in that silence, a cool, familiar voice crooned through the cell.
“So. Human. You’ve returned.”
Chapter Four
Anatole
So, human. You’ve returned. The cold in my own voice was enough to chill me down to my very bones, but that was the point. He needed to freeze. To shut out any feelings that weren’t ice cold. I needed to see her, to ensure that she was alive and well, and I needed to do what I was told by Adric. Disobedience would not be tolerated. But I couldn’t allow my even a brief second of warmth towards their prisoner.
If I wanted to save her, I had to keep her as far away from myself as possible. I was close to Adric, and the closer Adric was to Carolyn, then the closer she was to danger.
I couldn’t put her in anymore danger.
But I also couldn’t help the rush of dread and fear that filled me when I caught sight of Carolyn there, in the back corner of the cell, shivering and clinging to her bruised body to try and keep warm. As a castle only used as a school, the dungeons in this place hadn’t been occupied for nearly two-thousand years, and the grime and sick that clung to the walls after ages of disuse seemed to seep into Carolyn’s body.
My stomach turned. But despite everything, Carolyn smirked at me, in that graveyard kind of way she always did when things looked especially grim.
“Oh. Well, with hospitality like this, how could I stay away? I’ve always said, if you can get trapped in the dungeons of Castle Bloc, there’s no reason to ever go to Bali.”
I used to admire the way that she could laugh in the face of the gravest danger, the way that she could keep her chin held high and not let anyone know she was thoroughly breaking inside. Now, he hated it. All he wanted her to do was sprint up to the bars and claw at him, to tell him she hated his guts and wouldn’t be caught dead ever touching him again. He wanted her to hate him, to feel something for him, to call him a liar and a cheat and to scream profanities in his direction.
But she didn’t. Instead, she kept that damn smirk of hers perfectly in place, hiding whatever it was she truly felt behind a thin veneer of jokes.
I turned to the guard who’d led me down to the depths of the dungeon, but barely glancing at him. That was a power move I hadn’t had to learn from Adric; to barely glance at one’s inferiors was to remind them that they weren’t worth your attention, and therefore, were so far below you as to not allow for the possibility of backtalk.
“Leave us.”
This guard, however, apparently took his duties far more seriously than I’d anticipated. Gripping the staff in his hands, he set his shoulders. “King Adric said—”
“Leave us,” I shot back, my voice sharper than any weapon he could wield against me. “I won’t repeat myself again.”
This, apparently, was enough to sway him. After a breath of hesitation, he retreated. The sound of his footfall echoed in the empty hall of cells. Eventually, the echoes died off, but I waited another full minute to make sure that he was really gone.
The walls in this castle had always had ears. But now, any secret that might have been whispered—in public or in private—were almost certain to end up in the hands of the most powerful and most corrupted man in the entire realm. I couldn’t take any chances, not even when I expected myself to remain disciplined and out of Carolyn’s pull of influence.
“We’re alone now,” Carolyn said, finally breaking the silence. Too early for my taste. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on-end as she croaked out the punctuation to her first statement. “Anything you want to say to me or did you just come here to tell me again how you don’t love me and could never love a human as long as you live?”
My heart stabbed through with pain. I hadn’t wanted to do that to her, but telling her my life no longer had a place for her was the only way that I could think to get her away from Velkin forever. I had thought she would hate me for what I’d done and leave my realm behind for all time.
Apparently, I’d only been half right.
“What are you doing here?”
I couldn’t say her name. Wouldn’t let it pass my lips. Words, as I knew from years upon years of studying magic, had power. If you put a name to something, you gave it even more power than it might otherwise have had. And considering how much power Carolyn already had over me, I didn’t want to give her even a drop more.
It was the only way to protect us both.
Carolyn pulled her arms in tighter around her chest, something I hadn’t thought possible a moment ago. Her entire body shivered from the cold of the dungeons. Everything in me wanted to cast a regeneration spell over the air, to keep her warm and comfortable even if I couldn’t rescue her. But just as the walls had ears, sometimes, they had eyes, too, and I knew I couldn’t help her.
No matter how badly that tore me up inside.
“Oh, you know. Trying to save the world. The usual for us pathetic humans. And, just like you always said we would, I’ve failed. Spectacularly.”
“You could never defeat the Velkin.”
The cold fingers of Adric’s dark magic wrapped around my heart, tightening every time I so much as thought of rebelling against him. The only safe thing for us both was for me to keep playing Adric’s game. To act like the humble servant to his dark workings.
Carolyn scoffed. A sound too bold for a setting such as this. Her breath even created a small puff of air in front of her lips. “Just like you would never fall for a human. Right. Why are you here? Doesn’t seem like you wanted any kind of friendly meeting. What? Are you going to kill me yourself? Take me as your personal prisoner? Feed me to the loch monster swimming out in the moonlight?”
The thought of ever harming a hard on her head filled me with physical pain. The thought that Adric might make me do it made matters even worse. Straightening to my full height, I chose a spot on the wall above her head and delivered my reply to it instead of to her wide, beautiful, pleading eyes.
“My King commanded that I come and get a good look at you. That I test the limits of my dark powers by keeping you in my close proximity.”
I couldn’t see it, but I could almost feel her lifting a skeptical eyebrow. Even damaged and broken and tossed into the lowest part of this keep, she was still my Carolyn. My sardonic, brilliant Carolyn. “And how’s that test going for you so far?”
“The powers I’ve been given by our king are unparalleled. I could destroy you with a single thought if I wished it.”
That part was absolutely true. There were many, many testing dummies in the King’s study—our makeshift training ground—that could attest to that. When I l
ost control of my emotions, when I let them free and let the dark magic roll over me like waves during a sea storm, there was no stopping my magical powers…or the destruction they brought with them.
“And do you?” Carolyn asked. “Do you wish it?”
Finally, I braved a glance down at her, only to see that she wasn’t even looking at me. She was staring at her hands, which were shaking from the cold. I wanted to reach out and take them in my own, to hold her and warm her from the inside out. But I couldn’t. I didn’t.
“You aren’t even worth me using my powers on you,” I said.
It was the only thing I could think to say. The only thing that would satisfy the evil swirling around in my heart, the evil I was too weak and too cowardly to fight. The moment Adric had infected me with it, I’d begun to lose my grip on humanity. Now, I saw the effects of that loss first hand, in the way that Carolyn’s eyes hardened and her hands clenched into fists.
She stared at me like I was a monster.
And she was right. I was a monster. But a monster who was doing my best to protect her.
“You are vile. You could help save all of these people, help save everyone on Earth, and you’re going to let your brother control you just because he can give you some power? A little more strength in your spells?” A bitter laugh fell from her lips, and I watched as her eyes filled with tears. My fingers itched to reach out and wipe them from her face once they started trickling down, but I knew that such an action would risk everything. When finally she spoke again, she shook her head, sending even more of those taunting tears down her cheeks. “You’re right. I really shouldn’t have ever come here. At least on Earth, I wouldn’t have had to be so disappointed in you.”
I lifted my chin, trying to play the defiant conquerer when all I really wanted to do was rescue her from her cell and whisk her away to some safe, secret place.
”Your tears won’t work on me, human.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, chuckling darkly. “The tears aren’t for you.”
I’d never heard her sound so defeated before.
Magic Captive: A Supernatural Academy Romance (The Velkin Royal Academy Series Book 2) Page 3
