Traitors

by Bella Forrest

  “Tell me about it.” I grimaced, still feeling a little woozy from whatever Kaido had given me. “So, we’re sneaking out tomorrow then, during the public execution?”

  We’d discussed a few ways we might get word to Navan and the others, in the days that had followed since our arrival at the Idrax house, but only one solution had presented itself so far. We knew that Ianthan might have one of the black boxes at his hidden cabin—the kind of black box Navan had once used to transfer sensitive material to Orion. According to Ronad, it was what he and the others—Navan, Bashrik, Jethro, and Ianthan—had used to secretly communicate during their creation of the deep-space tech. Those black boxes were the only way of contacting Brisha’s side without detection.

  I wished Navan still had his. His cabin would be way easier to find and break into, especially as Ronad had lived there for a while, but that black box was lost to us. As far as I knew, it was still trapped at Queen Gianne’s palace, in the hands of Navan’s IT buddies, never to see the light of day again.

  Ronad nodded. “It might be our only shot.”

  “What about Kaido? Won’t he be watching from the lounge, like he did last week?” I wondered. “I’m not being funny, but I think he’d notice if the two of us were suddenly missing.”

  A grin spread across Ronad’s face. “Already dealt with. I sent a message to his comm device this morning, demanding his attendance at the execution tomorrow. I made it look very official.”

  “Who’s going to look after Lorela?”

  “We’ll only be gone a few hours, tops. She’ll be fine until we get back,” Ronad assured me. “Besides, I’ve already offered up my services to Kaido, to take his place as caregiver while he’s out, and he’s agreed. He might love his mother, but he loves his queen a whole lot more.”

  I sighed, feeling very nervous all of a sudden. “And you’re sure you know where Ianthan’s cabin is?”

  “We used to go there all the time,” Ronad replied confidently. “I mean, I can’t promise it’ll still be there, what with Jethro being a traitor and all, but I’m hopeful.”

  I wished I was as hopeful, but a niggling fear remained in the back of my mind. This part of Vysanthe was getting more dangerous by the second, especially for outsiders like us, and we were risking everything for a communication device that might not even be there anymore.

  “What if Navan is already making his way over here? What if we’re too late?” I asked, unable to help myself.

  Ronad flashed me a comforting glance. “He’s not stupid, Riley. He’ll know he needs to wait until some of the heat has died down before he can come after us. Besides, he’ll have Queen Brisha to deal with before he can do anything about you and me.”

  That thought didn’t exactly ease my racing mind. I still couldn’t shake the concern that Navan and the others hadn’t been well-received by Queen Brisha, not only because Pandora wasn’t with us anymore, but also because we’d come back with no solution to the elixir problem. At any other time, Brisha might have been more understanding, but she was at war—her people needed immortality more than ever. After all, it was a sure-fire way to win.

  I was starting to realize that the gamble Kaido had taken in bringing us here was massive. Navan didn’t have an easy route back to Queen Gianne’s side. Plus, if they did make it over, that would immediately put us in Queen Brisha’s bad books. The whole thing was a complete mess, but even though it seemed like Kaido was to blame, I knew he wasn’t the puppet master; he was merely following the orders of Jareth Idrax, who wanted his sons home at all costs.

  “You’re sure we can get in touch with the others through this black box thing? I’ve only seen Navan try to use one, and that wasn’t exactly a roaring success,” I muttered, as we continued on through the labyrinth of the Idrax house.

  Ronad grinned. “Trust me, I can make this work. I can MacGyver anything.”

  I laughed. “MacGyver anything? You really have watched too much Earth TV.”

  “What can I say? I love a rerun!” Ronad said. “Do Navan and Bashrik have a comms device on them?”

  I shook my head, remembering how Pandora had removed all personal devices. “We’ll have to get through to them via Brisha herself, or someone close to her. A soldier, a guard, an advisor—anyone in her court,” I replied grimly, knowing it was easier said than done. As I spoke, an idea popped into my head. “Or, we could try getting a transmission through to her central control room. I’ve seen Gianne hack the system, so we could always try that on a smaller scale. One screen would be all we’d need to hijack, to get her attention.”

  “Damn, I can see why Navan likes you.” Ronad whistled. “Brains, beauty, banter… the ultimate trifecta. My Naya was the same.” I hadn’t wanted to ask too many personal questions about Naya, but piece by piece, he was giving me a better picture of her.

  “This would be so much easier if Seraphina had just agreed to help us out,” I muttered. I was still disappointed she couldn’t do anything for us. Then again, I hadn’t exactly stuck my neck out for her either. Navan was still in the dark about her engagement to Aurelius. Now, I had no idea if I’d ever get the chance to tell him about it.

  Shuffling off the guilt that stung me whenever I thought about Seraphina’s unfulfilled request, I focused on keeping up with Ronad. We’d gone down two floors, taking lefts and rights seemingly at random. It still surprised me just how many corridors and hallways there were in this place. Without a guide, it would be easy to get lost within its walls.

  “I imagine she’s got a lot on her plate. She’s a busy woman,” Ronad said with a shrug. “I’ve got to say, I admire your balls where she’s concerned.”

  I laughed. “You really shouldn’t go around admiring people’s balls.”

  “No, I mean it. I’m guessing you know the situation between her and Navan. It can’t be easy, knowing he’s engaged to another woman,” he said. “I mean, obviously nothing will ever come of it, and he definitely doesn’t have romantic feelings for her, but it must still sting a bit. Jareth tried to marry Naya off to a bunch of unworthy dudes, and that almost drove me mad.”

  The words twisted in my stomach. I really hoped that nothing would ever come of it, but then where did that leave Seraphina? I knew the choice would be taken out of my hands once the truth was truly out, especially if Navan returned here.

  “So, once we’ve snuck out, what do we do then?” I asked, not wanting to dwell on the subject of Navan and Seraphina. Ronad didn’t know what I knew about Aurelius, and the thought of what might happen made me too sad.

  Taking the hint, Ronad turned away. “Well, once we’re away from the house, we’ll need to get a cab. We can’t exactly risk stealing a Snapper, as much as I’d like to,” he said wryly. “The only problem is, we need some credit to pay for the cab. For that, we need a pay device.”

  “The Idraxes must have one lying around somewhere…”

  “Let’s hope so,” Ronad murmured. “I know Kaido has one, if you can figure out a way to get it from him.”

  I frowned. “I’ll have to see what I can do. He seemed eager to stay in his lab all night, going over the findings of our experiment. If you show me where his room is, we can have a look around.”

  A sad expression fell across Ronad’s face. “I’ll show you where it is, but I can’t go in there anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “It used to be Naya’s room. Being the only girl, she always had the biggest room in the house, aside from Jareth and Lorela’s. When she died and everyone flew the nest, Kaido moved his things into her room,” he explained bitterly.

  Now, I was beginning to understand where Ronad’s resentment stemmed from. Then again, I had a feeling Kaido probably had no idea he’d caused offense. He would have seen it simply as the biggest room, with the most space for his day-to-day needs. He wouldn’t have seen it as improper to take the room of a dead girl, because his mind didn’t work that way. That was my guess, anyway, but I imagined Ronad didn’t want to hear any
of that reasoning.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, resting a hand on his arm.

  He offered a sad smile. “Even with all her stuff moved into the attic, I can’t go into that room. I can still feel her presence there.” During the many times we’d scouted out the house, I had noticed that he avoided a certain hallway on the second floor, and now I knew why.

  “Did you visit her there?” I asked, hoping I wasn’t overstepping any lines.

  He grinned, his eyes twinkling. “I certainly did. It was easy when I lived here. I could sneak along the landing at night and wrap her in my arms. But when things got awkward, and I left, it wasn’t so simple. Still, we made it work. We stole any moment we could together.” He sighed wistfully, closing his eyes as though picturing her. “Rask, I miss her. What’s worse, she fades a little more each day—her face, her scent, her laugh, her voice. The harder I try and grab for her memory, the faster it slips through my fingers.”

  I felt a lump in my throat. I couldn’t even begin to imagine his pain. “I’m sorry,” was all I could give in return.

  “Her hair always smelled so sweet, like Sakaros, this flower that grows at the bottom of the Idrax garden. The other day, when I was in Lorela’s room, the same smell drifted toward me, and it all came rushing back,” he murmured. “Lorela had a vase full of Sakaros by her bed, and the scent almost killed me. I wanted my heart to stop, then and there, so I wouldn’t have to live another day without my Naya. But then the scent faded, and my mind cleared, and life carried on, same as always.”

  “She sounds like quite a woman,” I said as we reached a stairwell on the lower ground floor. It led down into the darkness of what looked like a basement. I paused, uncertain about descending any deeper.

  “That’s the cruel beauty of death—you only ever remember the good things,” he mused, smiling. “Don’t get me wrong, me and Naya used to fight like savage beasts, but we’d always kiss and make up. The funny thing is, now I can’t even remember what we used to argue about. Small, stupid things, probably.”

  It was almost refreshing to know that a seemingly perfect relationship had the same problems as everyone else’s. Throughout my childhood and into my teens, my role models in love had been Jean and Roger, and though they adored the very bones of each other, they always argued over silly things, too. It seemed it wasn’t just human nature, but universal nature.

  I was just glad I hadn’t taken any relationship goals from my biological parents. Who knows where I’d be if I had.

  With Ronad leading the way, we descended into the basement. It was colder down here, where the rest of the house was deceptively warm. Ahead of us lay a wide hallway, which opened out into a cavernous room. The walls were made of exposed brick, and the vaulted ceiling was drenched in shadow, the whole place dimly lit by two feeble lamps.

  It didn’t look like anyone had been down here in a long time, but the floor was surprisingly clean, although the bric-a-brac that surrounded us was covered in a thick layer of dust. In fact, there was sheeted furniture scattered all over the place. This was evidently the dumping ground for things the Idraxes no longer wanted upstairs.

  “Why have you brought me here?” I asked, confused.

  “You’ll see.” Ronad weaved through the junk to the far corner of the room, where a large piece of furniture stood, draped in a moldering sheet of white fabric. He pulled the sheet to one side, revealing a tall wardrobe, the doors of which were fastened shut.

  With a look of determination, Ronad whipped a pin of some kind out of his pocket and set to work picking the lock of the wardrobe door. I watched, enraptured, until I heard the subtle click of it opening. However, what followed was something of an anticlimax. Ronad opened the wardrobe door, and I expected to see something incredible beyond, but there was nothing inside except a rail and a wooden backboard.

  “Are we going to Narnia?” I joked.

  “I doubt there are any fauns where we’re going,” he answered, impressing me with his knowledge of Earth literature. Stepping into the wardrobe, he pushed hard on the back of it. Something whirred as the panel slid back.

  I waited with bated breath, only to be disappointed again. There was nothing behind it except more exposed brick. I couldn’t see anything amiss at all, until I took a closer look. There, subtly carved into the masonry, was a faint outline—the merest hint of a doorway.

  Ronad grinned, turning over his shoulder to look at me. “It’s a secret passageway!”

  I guessed we were about to find out what lay beyond it.

  Chapter Four

  I gawked at the outline as Ronad fiddled with a button at the bottom of the brickwork. A moment later, the door swung outward, revealing the passageway.

  “How did you even know this was here?” I asked in disbelief.

  Ronad smiled. “I’ve lived here most of my life. When something new is added, I notice! Not a lot of people pay the same kind of attention to detail as I do, but it pays off,” he explained. “I was down here earlier, looking to see if the Idraxes had thrown away any old comm devices. That’s when I noticed the wardrobe. It wasn’t here a few days ago, when I came here to try and find a box of my old things—which seemed really weird to me. I took a closer look and knew there had to be something hidden behind it. The thing is nailed to the floor, for Rask’s sake, and who in their right mind locks a wardrobe door?”

  I had to hand it to Ronad: he was a master of deduction. I would have glanced around the basement, seen a bunch of junk, and moved on.

  “Where do you think it leads?” I wondered, peering into the darkness beyond.

  “No idea, but I say we find out,” Ronad replied, stepping into the passageway itself. “I have a feeling Jareth built this in the wake of Gianne’s growing nuttiness. It makes sense to have an escape route, especially if your family members are known defectors.”

  I grimaced, feeling slightly responsible for the situation the Idrax family was in. Then again, a man like Jareth would find a way to endure whatever came his way, with or without an escape route.

  Before following Ronad into the shadowed passage, I pulled the dusty sheet back down and closed the wardrobe door firmly behind us, not wanting to leave any evidence we’d been here. Realizing he needed to re-lock the door, Ronad came back through from the passageway and squeezed past me in the cramped interior of the wardrobe. He paused.

  “Something the matter?” I asked.

  He pulled a face. “I think I’ll leave it unlocked for now. Just in case.”

  I didn’t need him to elaborate. If we had to make a quick exit, messing around with locks would only slow us down. Besides, as long as it looked closed from the outside, it was probably good enough.

  I moved into the pitch-black corridor, feeling my way along the walls. A set of lights flickered to life. Apparently, the passage was equipped with motion-sensor lights, illuminating the darkness. I breathed a sigh of relief, glad to see my hand in front of my face.

  Behind me, Ronad slid the panel shut and closed the passage door. I waited for him to catch up before continuing down the corridor. It was wider than I’d expected, with a ceiling high enough to comfortably allow a coldblood to walk along it. Even Navan would’ve had a bit of room to spare above his head.

  In fact, it looked almost like a cylinder of chrome, the floor clean and clinical, the sides curved and metallic. Whatever this passageway was for, it had not come with the house when it was first built. Most surprisingly of all, however, was the heat that hit me, in a stifling gust of air that engulfed my senses. It was musty and stale, like the warmth of an ancient attic, feeling very at odds with the cleanliness of the tunnel.

  “This reminds me of the storm drains we used to play in as kids. We’d challenge each other to run through them and put our mark on the wall. Whoever got the farthest won,” Ronad said thoughtfully as we moved along a short hallway, which curved back on itself. At the end of the snaking passage, two more tunnels branched off to the left and right.

  “W
ho played?” I asked, feeling the tickle of dust in the back of my throat.

  “Me, Bashrik, Navan, Ianthan, sometimes Harko—he’s one of the lesser evils of the Idrax brothers.” Ronad smirked, his voice tight.

  I smiled at the thought of a young Navan playing in the storm drains of Vysanthe, charging through the water to put his mark on the wall. Knowing him, I imagined it had brought out his competitive streak.

  “I bet Navan used to win a lot, right?” I said.

  Ronad snorted. “You’ve got to be kidding! Navan hated when we played in the storm drains. They were pitch-black, and we were only allowed to carry a candle—it was part of the challenge. Naturally, the candle would blow out within a few seconds of getting into the drain, with all the icy wind, which used to freak Navan out,” he said. “For years, he was afraid of the dark. He’d always have to have a nightlight on. Jareth hated it, of course, seeing it as a sign of weakness, but Lorela talked him down, saying Navan would grow out of it. I suppose he did, in the end.”

  I stared at Ronad in shock. I couldn’t imagine Navan being afraid of anything, let alone something as innocuous as the dark. It was like hearing that a world-champion wrestler was afraid of spiders. Truthfully, it made me love Navan even more, to imagine him as a vulnerable child, with the same fears as other kids.

  “He was really afraid of the dark?”

  Ronad nodded. “Don’t tell him I told you so, though. He’d kill me.”

  “So, what changed? How come he’s not afraid anymore?”

  “He saved my life in those storm drains. After that, he was never afraid again,” Ronad said with a smile, as we pressed on down the hall, reaching the fork in the tunnel.

  I gazed at him in awe. “Come on, you have to tell me more!”

  Ronad chuckled. “We must have been about ten or eleven, and two of Navan’s brothers had been giving me a hard time. They were teasing me because my own parents didn’t want me, telling me I’d never fit in here—that I’d never be one of them, no matter what Jareth and Lorela said,” he began, his tone thick with emotion. “They were trying to get me to go back to my own house, not realizing I had nowhere to go. They didn’t like sharing any more attention than they already had to, and I guess they hated me for it. Still do, by all accounts, though that might have a few things to do with Naya, too.” He gave a wry laugh before continuing.