The Scale Empire

by Cate Farren

  I looked around, finding Remus standing in the corner, not interacting with anyone. I suddenly felt sorry for him. He seemed to be a decent person caught in a war. Still, he should’ve been more brutal with me. I could’ve been anyone. He needed to learn to be more aggressive. No wonder the Scale Empire were winning this war or whatever it was.

  “Where is my brother?” I asked.

  “I just got reports come in,” she said between mouthfuls of oatmeal. “It’s not good news.”

  If he was dead, then I’d already be dead. As long as Dorian was still alive then it didn’t matter. I had time.

  “He and my brother have been spotted with the Scale Empire in Australia,” Rebecca explained. She was tapping her wooden spoon, her lips curled up in distaste. “I’m not sure why.”

  “I’m not sure why my brother does anything – or more precisely, what the demon inside him is up to. If I knew that…” I picked a blueberry from Rebecca’s bowl and popped it into my mouth. It was a little sour but I ate it anyway. “What do you know of the demon inside him?”

  “Nothing,” Rebecca admitted. “It came out of a fossil, right? The demon inside him is millions, maybe billions of years old.”

  I nodded. “I knew nothing either. Nobody did.”

  “But it has a purpose, a plan. I know that much.”

  I nodded again. “I just wish I knew what it was.”

  It seemed we were both confused [NJA3]as to the demon’s plans. Why did it travel to alternative dimensions? Was it searching for something, or was it merely travelling, wanting to see what the multiverse had to offer? I didn’t think it was merely a tourist, but I couldn’t see what it got out of what it was doing other than trying to keep out of my grasp.

  “What do you remember about that day?” she asked. She didn’t look at me as she said it.

  “The day everything changed,” I whispered.

  She nodded her head. “The day everything changed.”

  We both looked at each and said simultaneously, “I remember everything.”

  Chapter 5

  “Are you sure we’re allowed in here?” Dorian asked.

  I grinned, loving how awed he was. I still couldn’t get used to the splendour of Buckingham Palace myself, even though I’d been working in the place for three months. I still got lost. The building was a gargantuan maze of ancient artefacts and belittled household staff.

  “Her Majesty said it was fine,” I told him.

  He appeared even more shocked. “You talk to her? You talk to her like she’s a regular person?”

  He was beginning to show signs of losing his American accent. It was subtle but it was there. It made me a little sad. My American twang was still as strong as ever. I was proud of it.

  He’s also very tall and very handsome. Why had I never noticed that before? It’s odd that he never talks about getting married or having children. Then again, neither do I.

  “We talk about things like her security,” I admitted. “We don’t chat like friends. She’s not that sort of person, even for a queen. She’s…sad. She’s sad all the time. I feel sorry for her.”

  Dorian was ignoring me as he stared up at a painting of Henry VIII. I could feel other eyes on me, watching from farther down the hall. I smiled shyly, knowing he liked my smile.

  “Who are you smiling at?” he asked.

  I curtsied as Prince Leopold came to join us. He looked exceedingly handsome today. It took all my willpower to stop myself from running my hands over his face.

  “This is Prince Leopold,” I introduced. “And Your Highness, this is my brother Dorian.”

  Leopold shook my brother’s hand like an equal, which surprised Dorian. He wasn’t used to being treated like this. They may have banned slavery in Great Britain a while ago, but that didn’t mean black people were treated with any decency.

  Dorian and Leopold began to talk. I knew I shouldn’t love him. He was married. His wife was expecting their second child together. Yet he didn’t love Princess Helena. His mother had more or less forced him to get married. I knew he loved me.

  Leopold was supposed to be in Cannes at the moment, but he was staying at the palace in secret. He’d told his mother he needed a break from his domineering wife. In reality he wanted to be near me.

  “I hope to be married one day,” Dorian said to Leopold, surprising me. My brother was twenty-five and still acted somewhat childishly sometimes. “I want a beautiful wife and three children.”

  Leopold stared at me as he said, “One day you will meet her. It may only take a moment in time to fall in love.”

  “Is Princess Helena beautiful?”

  The prince’s eyes devoured me. I could feel him wanting me so badly I’m surprised he didn’t push me to the carpet and have his way with me right there and then. He was a gentle though ravenous lover. He always made me feel loved.

  “Helena is fiercely intelligent and supports the rights of women,” Leopold explained. “She is a fine wife.”

  I felt a little jealousy leak out of me. I’d never met Helena. I didn’t want to meet her. But Queen Victoria spoke highly of her daughter-in-law, which was a wonder as she generally disliked most of her children’s spouses.

  “Would you like to see something no commoner has ever seen?” Leopold asked him.

  Dorian grinned. “I’d love to!”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  Leopold was stroking his moustache, which he was wont to do when he wanted to do something rebellious. I liked his moustache. It tickled me downstairs when he pleasured me.

  “The treasure vaults,” Leopold revealed. “How would you like to see the treasure vaults?”

  ***

  Even now I could close my eyes and feel the way the hairs on his face would tickle me.

  Leopold.

  My forever.

  “Did you ever meet Helena?” I asked.

  “No, and I didn’t want to,” said Rebecca angrily. “She got to be his wife. I wanted to be his wife.”

  I understood completely. I’d ached to be his wife, to be the only woman he came home to. The jealousy I’d felt for Helena was sometimes so consuming I even dreamed about killing her. They were gloriously gruesome dreams that made me feel alternatively satisfied and racked with guilt.

  “I met her at the palace on the day I left,” I admitted. “She came up to me and told me she knew I was sleeping with her husband. You know what she said? She said she knew he never loved her, and she never loved him either. That was it. We never spoke again.”

  “I would’ve punched her,” said Rebecca.

  I tried not to grin. I’d wanted to do so much more than punch her.

  “She was a good woman,” I said. “I couldn’t do that to her. I actually respected her. She did a lot for feminism.”

  I also suspected she’d been a lesbian and a lover of Mary Benson, wife to the Archbishop of Canterbury. It had been impolite to speak of such things back then.

  Rebecca slammed her hands down onto the table. The porridge spilled. “She had him for years. What did we get? Barely any time at all. We got nothing!”

  “I had enough time with him to know…”

  My sentence was rudely interrupted by the siren going crazy. It wasn’t exactly the same noise it made when I teleported into the town. It was louder, more urgent.

  “Shit,” said Rebecca, standing up. The rest of the rebels in the mess hall were alert too. “They’re coming.”

  “I thought this place was secure?” I demanded.

  “Nowhere is secure.”

  I was torn what to do as Rebecca, Remus and the others made their exit. I’d help protect them any way I could, but not at the cost of my own life. If I died my family died. I wouldn’t put them in jeopardy for a group of people I didn’t know.

  Damn it. I can’t let these people die. I can help them.

  I ran down the corridor after them just as something huge impacted against the building. The walls around me shook violently, ra
ining plaster dust on my shoulders. Even from down here in the basement area under the town hall I could hear the roars of dragons and other reptilian shifters coming from the town above. It sounded like a scene from Jurassic Park.

  I stopped, momentarily frightened. I’d never faced anything like this before. I was trained to fight other witches, maybe vampires and werewolves. What could I do against a dragon?

  I’d never been so scared in my life.

  “What are you doing just standing there?” Rebecca demanded. “You have to get out of here!”

  “You need my help,” I insisted.

  “We can handle this. Go! Get Dorian!”

  I was about to summon a portal when the walls exploded around me. I managed to erect a partial shield as concrete crashed against me and the whole world seemed to spin. I heard Rebecca shouting and the sound of a dragon roaring as everything went black.

  Chapter 6

  I woke to the sound of dripping blood.

  “Hello?” I called.

  I was under what seemed to be a sea of concrete beams. I coughed, my mouth full of dust. I was so desperate for a drink of water.

  I’d been buried alive.

  I started to panic, pushing at the beams pinning me in place, but I wasn’t nearly strong enough. I tried erecting a shield to force the beams away from me but all I did was cause pain to rip through my legs. I was certain I had broken both my knees. That I could still feel pain was a good sign that I wasn’t paralysed.

  “Hello?” I called again. “Rebecca? Essian?”

  I tried to slither out, using my own blood as a sort of lubricant, but I was pinned in place. I started to feel dizzy.

  “Shit,” I whispered. “I’m losing too much blood.”

  I had to stop my legs bleeding before I died of blood loss. I closed my eyes and used a spell to locate the source of the wound. There were two deep gouges on both of my knees. I sighed, dreading the pain that was about to come.

  “You can do this,” I whispered.

  I gritted my teeth as I made tiny fires erupt on my skin. I held in a scream as the hot flames cauterised the wounds[NJA4], halting the bleeding.

  I passed out as the pain became too much.

  ***

  “She looks so much like her. It’s uncanny.”

  “Our religion was wrong. There is such a thing as other Earths. My pastor won’t be pleased.”

  “I don’t give a shit what your pastor thinks. Just be glad she’s alive. The Scale Empire killed so many. It’s a miracle she survived.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in miracles?”

  “Shut up.”

  I tried to tune out the voices, but they just kept going on and on, bickering about this pastor of theirs. I didn’t understand much about this religion of theirs, but I did glean that they were opposed to the truth.

  “She’s listening to us, Bram,” one of them whispered.

  “I know,” said Bram. “Just give her time. She’s been through a terrible ordeal.”

  I opened one eye and speared the man standing over me with my disapproving gaze.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “You were the only survivor,” Bram told me bluntly.

  “Oh.”

  I knew I should be more upset, but I didn’t really know the people who’d died, even Rebecca and Remus. I’d save my grief for those I cared about.

  Essian.

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “I had a white fox companion with me. He has to be okay.”

  They looked at each other and shrugged. They probably thought I was concussed, talking about foxes.

  “You should stop worrying,” Bram assured her. “Just close your eyes and heal.”

  All I wanted was to sleep and heal and dream of good memories, but I couldn’t do it. How could I sleep in a strange place, with a strange man looking down at me?

  “Are you friend or foe?” I asked cautiously.

  I wasn’t sure I even had it in me to attack him at this moment. If he was the enemy, I was utterly at his mercy.

  “Do you know who I am?” I asked.

  “Yes.” He hesitated. “You’re from another Earth.”

  I’d heard him talking to his friend earlier, so he knew where I was from. But how? Does he work for my brother? Or is he part of the Scale Empire?

  Am I a prisoner?

  “How do you know that?” I asked. I was ready to leap into action at any second. I didn’t want to. I felt like shit, but I had to protect myself. “Tell me!”

  “It’s a long story, but let’s just say I had the misfortune of meeting your brother.”

  I sat up, curious. “Do you know where he is?”

  “Yes,” he said, pushing me back down again. “I certainly do.”

  I’d sat up too quick, causing pain to shoot through my knees. I hated being in pain, despite the fact that I should be used to it by now.

  “Then let me go,” I pleaded. “I have to kill him. You don’t understand what will happen if I die or I’m not the one to kill him.”

  “You’re not a prisoner,” he insisted. “I want him dead almost as much as you do, perhaps more.”

  I closed my ears, feeling tired. I started to drift off into sleep, images of Rebecca flitting through my mind. She didn’t deserve to die like that. Essian didn’t deserve to die like that. I should have protected him. Circe would never forgive me for getting her friend killed.

  “What did he do to you?” I asked, opening my eyes a fraction.

  I wasn’t sure whether I’d slept or not, but Bram seemed to be in the same position he was before. His friend was gone.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said quietly.

  Anger, grief and hatred radiated from him. It reminded me uncomfortably of how I’d felt in the days following Leopold’s death.

  Dorian murdered someone Bram loved more than life itself.

  “Tell me,” I demanded. He looked away from me, fighting back tears. “Please.”

  “He murdered my wife and our unborn child,” said Bram. He put his hand to his mouth, his eyes brimming with tears. “I haven’t said it out loud before. It…it doesn’t feel real.” He slammed his fists against the bed, narrowly missing my legs. “We were in his way. He was looking for something under the palace. My servants managed to get me out, but my wife wasn’t as lucky. He just…he just killed her like she was a fly sent to annoy him.”

  “Palace…”

  “I’m the former king of the Scale Empire.”

  Shit. This man was the enemy, or at least the enemy of my double on this world.

  “You look frightened,” he said gently. “There’s no need to be.”

  I had to get out of there.

  “You’re trying to exterminate all other life but the cold-blooded shifters on this planet,” I said, searching for a way to escape. “You’re a monster. You’re literally a cold-blooded monster.”

  I knew the words were harsh as soon as they left my mouth, but I didn’t apologize. His people had killed Rebecca and all the people living here. They deserved my scorn. Quite why they’d saved me, I had no idea. Perhaps they wanted to use me to get at my brother? I know I’d done things I wasn’t proud of in the past to try and get at Dorian.

  “That was my father, and his father,” he explained. “I was changing things. I wanted to change things. I was going to do so much good. But then your brother colluded with his duplicate on this world, and my sister, to get into the palace. She’s queen now, continuing my family’s legacy of genocide and death. It’s all a complete mess. Your brother has brought such misery and destruction and I still don’t know why.”

  He seemed to be telling the truth, though I still wasn’t sure. I was surrounded by strangers in a strange land, injured and alone. I didn’t know who to trust.

  “Neither do I,” I admitted. I stretched my neck, starting to hate lying down and doing nothing. I had to keep myself on this man’s good side, just in case he really was up to something. Besides, I needed info
rmation. “You say he was searching for something in the palace, something specific?”

  “That’s what he told me,” said Bram.

  “Did he give you any ideas? The demon inside him is going from dimension to dimension with a purpose. If I knew that purpose…”

  “Maybe we’ll find out.”

  I started to cough. My throat was dry and I could taste plaster dust in my mouth. Bram held a glass of water to my mouth and I drank greedily. When I was finished I fell back to sleep again.

  ***

  I woke to the sound of someone weeping. It was me. Hearing about Bram losing his wife had brought back a lot of memories about Leopold. Most of them were good, tempered with the bittersweet. His death had replayed on a loop in my dreams ever since the day it happened.

  “We need to head out soon,” a voice whispered.

  I sat up, feeling much healthier. There was just a dull ache in my knees now. The pain was gone. I felt like I could literally take on the world. If Bram was my enemy he’d regret the day he ever saved my life.

  “How long have I been out this time?” I asked.

  “Three days,” said Bram.

  I climbed out of the makeshift bed and stretched my limbs. I felt refreshed, like I’d spent a week in a health spa. My skin and bones and even my insides felt new.

  “Your witches are extraordinary healers,” I said, pulling up my pants leg to inspect my knee. There was a tiny scar. “My knees and legs were practically pulverised.”

  “Our witch is certainly formidable,” Bram admitted.

  I grabbed a glass of water from the bedside table and took a long drink. Not only did my body feel energised, but my mind as well. I was more eager to find Dorian and kill him than I’d ever been. My near death experience had certainly galvanised me.

  I looked at Bram, suddenly suspicious. Had they done something to me to make me feel this vigorous? Had they put a spell on me?

  “What have you done to me?” I demanded.

  “We’ve saved you,” said Bram. His look of confusion was actually kind of adorable. “I’m confused.”

  I sat back on the bed, feeling dizzy all of a sudden. I looked within myself, finding no spells or potions had been used to alter my mind.