by M. L. Greye
“Good question.” Will glanced around. “I saw him down here a little while ago.”
“My cousin was looking for him.”
“Arynn?” Will couldn’t help but smile at that. Ever since Zedgry returned from the Vrenyx, Fuladrik’s daughter, Arynn, had rarely left his side.
Dallyn nodded. “She’s taken a fancy to High Royalty.”
At the mention of High Royalty, Olinia’s face came to Will’s mind. He winced inwardly. The twinge of regret he felt for leaving her behind in Ethon was largely overshadowed by his newfound inner necessity to be near her. Somehow kissing her that once had changed him. Even though it had been a necessary choice to part with her and her brother for a time, it didn’t mean that it hurt any less to have her away from him.
“It’s nice to know I can be invisible without even trying,” Zedgry murmured from behind Will and Dallyn.
“How long have you been there?” Will faced Olinia’s twin. The resemblance between Zedgry and his uncle was still astounding to him. Yes, Olinia and Zedgry appeared to be siblings, same as Legann. Out of the three though, it was Zedgry who looked like he could be Dagon’s son. They both shared the same oval face, deep-set eyes, and angled jaw. If Dagon’s hair hadn’t been the black hair of the Eves, Zedgry would’ve looked like a younger version of the emperor.
Zedgry grinned at Will. “Long enough. I guess we Wends are silent.”
“You Wends are arrogant,” Dallyn retorted.
“And you Eves are jealous.” Zedgry winked. He glanced at Will. “When was the last time you slept?”
“I can’t remember,” he admitted.
“Go get some rest.”
Will shook his head. “Not yet.”
“That was a command by High Royalty.”
“Really?” Will raised an eyebrow. “You realize High Royalty doesn’t have jurisdiction over an Ethon, right?”
“I do when you’re on Other World soil.” Zedgry smirked.
“What will you do when I refuse to follow your orders?”
“I’ll have Dallyn force you into submission.”
“How?” Will blinked.
“A duel?” Dallyn suggested.
Zedgry nodded. “Yes, a duel.”
“You’re just dying for a rematch, aren’t you, Dallyn?” Will chuckled. “I beat you before, I can beat you again.”
“But this time you’re so close to passing out on your feet that you couldn’t possibly win.” Dallyn grinned.
“So, you’re saying you can’t succeed when I’m fully awake and able?”
“You’re missing the point, Will,” Zedgry interjected. “You look like death. As your friends, we have to make you sleep.”
Will sighed. It was no use fighting with them. He knew he didn’t appear to be the greatest specimen of health at the moment. Besides, there was somewhere he had to be. “Alright. Where’s Fuladrik? He told me to get him before I leave to bed.”
“Thank you.” Zedgry smiled. “He’s inside with my grandfather.”
“Great. I’ll see you later,” Will tossed over his shoulder as he began for the house on the opposite side of the willow-encircled courtyard.
Once through the front doors, Will noticed candlelight streaming out into a hall to his left. It was the hall leading to Fuladrik’s personal study. That was most likely where Zedgry’s grandfather was. As Will made his way to the study’s door, he saw that it was partially closed. Hushed voices slipped through the door’s cracks. Will slowed his step, wondering if he should intrude. Then, he heard Fuladrik whisper in Eveon, “I cannot believe it. My friend Oldron is dead.”
That stopped Will in his tracks. Oldron the Wise and his daughter Aeorin were the sovereigns of the Relivaynt world. During the attack on the Vrenyx world, many of Dagon’s Nagreth were aiding the Velvitors in capturing Relivaynt. Will had heard nothing of their plight until now.
“Lady Aeorin is now a prisoner of the Velvitors,” King Yrond, Zedgry’s grandfather, replied sadly. “My sources tell me that she has been wed to King Talik.”
Will wasn’t sure who Talik was, but he assumed he was the Velvitor king. He frowned. The Velvitors were Craeles, half-human and half-animal, but not like the Craeles who lived among the Saerds and Eves. Velvitors were allies to Dagon, sworn to support him.
“Then, Relivaynt is lost,” Fuladrik said.
Slowly, Will backed away from the door, keeping his feet silent on the floor. His hand drifted to the shimmer stone, dangling from his neck. It was Legann’s. Will had taken it from him when he’d left him and Olinia with Trenton. It was time for Will to use it once more. The Other Worlds were in need of their princess. True, Dagon and his allies had taken some failure of late, but the fall of Relivaynt was evidence that they were still thriving. Lifting the stone with one hand, Will thought back to when he had last seen Olinia, and then opened a portal.
: : : : :
“Hi, Lillie.” Legann sat down across from her bent white head. Her short hair was, as always, flared out around her thin face. As for her eyes, she was focused on the textbook in front of her on the table.
They were in the cafeteria. It was perhaps Legann’s least favorite room in the high school. Even though the eating area was entirely enclosed, the school had filled it with outdoor metal picnic tables, the type he would find in a park. The benches were cold and uncomfortable.
“Hi.” She didn’t even lift her eyes from the book.
“Should we decide on a poem to study?”
“No.”
Legann rolled his eyes and dropped his books on the table. This was going to be a wonderful encounter. It wasn’t like he wanted to be talking to her either. “Did you forget we have a project to do?”
She shut her book and took off her glasses, revealing teal eyes with contact lenses on. “We don’t need to find a poem.”
“We were assigned to work together.” He was staring at her eyes. It was weird that she was wearing contacts. Why the need for glasses? Were her eyes really that bad? He frowned. “Are you wanting to fail?”
“Hardly.” She grunted, reaching into her bag.
“I’m not doing your work for you.” He noticed one of her contacts looked like it was clear, while the other was colored. Did she have mismatched eyes? Not that that meant anything in Ethon. In the Other Worlds, it was the mark of the Craeles, but in Ethon it was just the random alignment of her genes.
“I never asked you to,” Lillie retorted, tossing him a spiral-bound notebook.
Legann glanced down at it. “What’s this?”
“Our homework.”
He opened the notebook and began thumbing through the pages filled with her handwriting. “When did you do all of this?”
“Last night.”
“How long did it take you?” He blinked.
“A few hours.” She shrugged. “I wish it had lasted longer.”
“Longer? Why?”
“I don’t sleep much. I have insomnia.” She pointed to the notebook. “Doing this gives me something to do.”
“Insomnia?”
“Yeah, have you ever heard of it?”
“I know what it is,” Legann told her. “I’m just wondering why you don’t take a sleeping pill or something.”
“I have before,” she admitted, “but pills do things to me.”
“What sort of things?”
“Just things.” She shrugged. “I’m better off without them.”
Legann nodded, not feeling like he entirely believed her, as he returned his attention to the notebook, scanning through what Lillie had written. She had basically finished the assignment – an in-depth dissection of a nineteenth-century poem – on her own. There wasn’t really anything left for him to do. He pulled a face. As much as he wanted to just use what she had done, he felt guilty at not doing the work himself.
He sighed and extended the notebook back to her. “I shouldn’t take credit for your work.”
She shook her head. “It’s a little late. Look, I’ve alr
eady done it. Just paraphrase what I wrote if you really feel like you need to make it your own.”
Just then, Todd and Emilio passed by the table Legann and Lillie were at. Todd was carrying a tray of food while Emilio only held a can of soda. As they walked by, Todd smirked. “Hey, check it out, the loner finally found himself a girlfriend that’s not imaginary.”
Legann ignored the jibe, but Lillie reacted once the two were out of earshot. “DS rejects.”
“DS?” He blinked, remembering his previous conversation with Olinia. He had forgotten all about the academy.
“You’ve been here long enough to know about DS, right?”
“It’s some private school for the brilliant.”
She let out a short laugh. “It’s more like an after-school cult. Parents here are obsessed with it.”
“Why do parents like it so much?”
“Their kids can go to it while they work. Plus, nine out of ten kids who attend end up with full-ride scholarships to the university of their choice, anywhere within the nation. According to their website, they provide advanced tutoring in math, English, and science.” She grunted. “It’s every parent’s dream.”
“How do you know so much about it?” Legann glanced over his shoulder, watching as Todd and Emilio took a seat beside two brunette girls, a year younger than them. They were clearly flirting.
For a brief moment, Legann envied them – wondered what it would be like to be around girls that were his own age and breed. He’d never really had a chance to do so growing up, even in his village back in the Other Worlds. He’d always been too focused on learning some sort of warfare so as to destroy the Kendrens. His determination placed him outside of the small social scene. Now though, even in the midst of so many teens, he was still an outcast. Being a Wend from another planet wasn’t really an advantage here.
He turned back to Lillie and noticed that she was observing Todd and Emilio too. She had a distant look in her eyes. Legann frowned. It almost appeared as if she were thinking the same thing that he had been.
“My older brother taught there,” she answered the question that Legann had forgotten he’d asked. Apparently she hadn’t been thinking the same thing as him after all. “He’s dead now.”
“I’m sorry.” Legann paused, before nodding his head in Todd and Emilio’s direction. “So, how are they DS rejects?”
“They applied but failed the test to get in.”
“Test?”
“To be admitted you must take a test,” she replied. “Only fifty new students total are taken on each year, though. It makes the competition tough.”
“So, to attend you have to take some test?”
She shook her head. “Not if you’re invited to attend.”
Legann nodded. “Did you apply?”
“No.” She grunted. “I was offered admittance, but I refused.”
“Why?”
“Let’s just say I’m not one to pretend within a program I care very little about.” She offered him a tight smile.
He furrowed his eyebrows. “Why would you ever have to pretend to be smart?”
“I’m not talking about being smart.”
“Then, what do you mean?”
Lillie laughed lightly, amused by some personal joke. “You know, we’re a lot more alike than you may realize.”
Legann was about to refute her claim when the bell rang. Lunch was over. Lillie stood, reaching for her bag. “Keep the notebook tonight. We can meet up tomorrow to figure out how to split up the presentation.”
: : : : :
It was raining. Olinia watched as the drops fell on the kitchen window before sliding down the glass. She would have liked to listen to the rain, but because she wanted to feel alone she had the music app on her phone blasting in her ears again. Legann and Sazx had gone to bed hours ago as she had, except she hadn’t fallen asleep like they had. Her mind was restless – too much to think about.
A little more than twenty-four hours ago, Sazx had reentered her life. Not exactly the person she had imagined finding in Ethon, but it was a pleasant surprise. Having Sazx with her and Legann was oddly soothing. He gave them another set of understanding ears. Just earlier that night they had discussed over dinner the main differences between Saerd and Eve lifestyles. Both Olinia and Legann had laughed hard over the comments. Even the former Nagreth had cracked a few smiles.
It was easy being around Sazx, easier than she would have expected from a former enemy. But he was one of them – an Other Worlder. When they would reference a world or term, he knew what they were talking about. It was so marvelously refreshing.
Outside, the rain grew heavier. Olinia pulled the fleece blanket she had brought downstairs from her room tighter around her shoulders. With all the lights off inside, Olinia could peer out into the rain and trees easily. She lifted her bare feet onto the wood chair she was sitting on and hugged her knees, tucking her feet beneath the cover of the blanket.
It was on nights like these that she felt closest to her realm. Somehow the dreary skies, howling wind, and pouring rain would tug at the edges of her senses until they almost swallowed her up entirely, leaving her breathless over memories of a place that was so far away now it seemed made-up. Olinia craved those moments. Too bad they were few and far between. The absolute bliss was similar to the high she had once received from her Globing.
Her heart really did ache for the gifts she had lost. She’d like to say that it was worth the sacrifice, but she really wasn’t sure. Had the destruction of the Vrenyx really been for the best? Sazx didn’t know if her uncle was dead. Wasn’t Dagon’s death the purpose of the attack? Or had it been to free Zedgry? Olinia rubbed her eyes with her hands. She couldn’t even remember the reason why she’d given up her gifts. It’d been too long.
As the song switched in her ears, Olinia felt a slight shiver down her spine. Someone was watching her. She’d learned what the feeling meant during her time in Ethon. She whirled and found Sazx standing in the archway where the kitchen met the family room. Olinia yanked out the earbuds and fumbled with her iPhone to shut it off.
I didn’t mean to startle you, Sazx thought as he joined her at the table, lowering himself into the seat beside her.
“I know,” she replied. “I just wasn’t listening. I was trying not to, actually.”
He nodded once, but held his mind blank of thought, keeping only the images he saw. Olinia smiled inwardly at that. In the Other Worlds, he had retained his thoughts to himself. She was pleased to discover he was still careful not to reveal much to her. He was once again so refreshing, such a good change of pace. But then, his inner silence was probably in part due to his former training as a Nagreth. He was most likely schooled in putting up mental barriers when he encountered an Eve. Whatever the reason though, Olinia loved the fact that he could sneak up on her. She couldn’t remember the last person who had been able to do so consistently.
“Why are you still awake?” He thought and asked simultaneously in Eveon. “It’s after midnight.”
She shrugged, holding his gaze in the semi-darkness. “I couldn’t sleep. What about you?”
“I’m still accustomed to living on only three hours of rest,” he answered. “I also heard you down here.”
“Was I being too loud?” She was speaking in Eveon as well. It felt so good to use it with someone other than Legann, even though Sazx’s accent was strange to her. Her ears needed a little more time to adjust to his tones.
He shook his head. “I heard your chair creak.”
“You’re such a soldier.” She laughed softly.
Sazx was quiet for a moment, his thoughts only showing a picture of Olinia in front of him. Then, he whispered, “Princess, I feel like our conversation this morning was cut short.”
She winced. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have run off like that.”
He nodded once, acknowledging her apology. “My question is why did you run off?”
“I-” She stopped. What could she reall
y tell him? Technically, he was still a stranger to her.
Olinia frowned, recalling the day she had first met him. He had been gray then, wearing the ashen skin of a Nagreth. At the time, he found her a nuisance, but that was before he discovered who she was. Releasing a sigh, Olinia pressed one hand to her forehead, allowing her cool fingertips to glide over the smooth skin of her face.
Princess, Sazx prodded silently.
She let out a short laugh. “Sorry. It’s just that Legann and I have been stuck here for over a year and a half. But come to find out it’s only been a few hours for everyone I knew.” She pulled a face. “What you told me was a little hard to take in at first. I needed some time to process it.”
“Understandably so,” he remarked. “Yet, I feel like there’s more to why you left.”
“It’s not important.” She returned her gaze to the rain, while Sazx contemplated pushing her further. He was too polite though to pry.
The regard he had for those of High Royalty was impressive. That was really what had deterred him from his life as a Nagreth. Yet, Olinia still did not fully understand his choice. To simply desert all he knew over a title seemed a little far-fetched. It was such an extreme change.
“You look confused.”
She turned back to him, surprised that he was watching her so intently. “I guess I am a little.”
“Why?”
“I’m wondering why you left the Nagreth. I know you said it was because of my right to rule, but it had to have been more complicated than that. You were a very powerful man.” She paused. “I’m not saying it wasn’t a good choice. I’m just not sure why you decided to switch sides after I told you to. Why right then?”
Sazx sat back in his chair, watching her while his mind remained thoughtless. Olinia didn’t care to force herself past his mental barriers. She wanted to have him tell her. She was so sick of discovering everyone’s secrets on her own. It felt good to have a normal conversation with someone for once. After another moment, Sazx said, “I’d supposed you had already discerned the reason on your own.”
She shook her head. “No, you do a decent job at masking your thoughts from me for the most part. I can’t hear everything you think.”
