The Kingdoms of Evernow Box Set

by Heidi Catherine

  MICAH

  THE NOW

  Micah stepped out of the cage and waited for Pip and Griffen to follow and secure the door once more.

  “You didn’t check them for knives?” Micah shook her head, unable to believe what had happened.

  “I did check them,” said Griffen. “But it was hectic and they must’ve had them well hidden.”

  “How do you know they don’t have more?” Micah crossed her arms and scowled at the men.

  “Because if they pull out another knife, I’m going to slit their throats with it.” Griffen looked directly at the men as he spoke.

  The men held up their hands, blinking innocently.

  “What did you do with the boy?” asked Micah, not wanting to waste another second.

  “What boy?” They shrugged their shoulders.

  “The boy.” Surely, she didn’t need to spell it out.

  The two men looked at each other. Either they were exceptional liars or they really didn’t know what boy she spoke of.

  “I’m so sorry, Micah,” said Azrael, but Micah didn’t have time for apologies now.

  “The boy who was with us when we were taken,” said Pip, stepping forward. “He disappeared when we saw a white light.”

  “Oh,” said both men at once.

  “Oh?” Micah jabbed her finger through the bars of the cage. “What does ‘oh’ mean?”

  “Nothing,” said the larger of the two men.

  Griffen waved one of the knives at them. “The lady asked you a question. Might be a good idea to answer it.”

  “Lady?” The man laughed, elbowing his friend in the ribs. “Didn’t seem much a lady before.”

  Griffen tore open the door and grabbed the man by the front of his shirt, dragging him out into the open and holding his knife to his throat.

  “Too much of a coward to make it a fair fight,” the man spluttered. “Give me a knife and I’ll fight you properly.”

  “We don’t have time for this!” cried Micah. “Please Griffen. I don’t care what he called me.”

  “I do.” Griffen tossed the knife to Micah and she plucked it out of the air by the handle. “I’ll give you a fair fight, but not with knives.”

  The man brought up his fists and shuffled his feet in the dirt. He stretched out his arm to try to land the first blow, and Griffen caught his fist in the palm of his hand and twisted his arm, sending the man thumping to the earth.

  The man scrambled to his feet. “Protecting your whore of a girlfriend, are you? Or does she belong to your skinny friend over there?”

  He took another swipe at Griffen but this time Griffen landed a blow of his own, his fist slamming into the man’s face, sending him to the ground once more.

  “I think you killed him,” said Azrael rushing to the man’s side.

  “Careful,” said Micah, trying to pull Azrael back. But she was too late. The man’s eyes sprang open and he grabbed Azrael around the neck.

  “Should’a killed ya when I had the chance,” he snarled as he tightened his grip.

  Azrael gasped, her hands flying to her throat as she tried to pull the man’s hands away.

  Micah didn’t hesitate. Using the knife Griffen had thrown her, she lunged forward and plunged it into the man’s chest.

  He groaned as he loosened the grip on Azrael’s throat. Then his wide eyes went blank. It seemed she’d gotten him in the right spot. This wasn’t the first time she’d killed a man, but it’d been a long time since she’d had to.

  Azrael peeled the man’s limp hands from her throat and stumbled back.

  “You killed him,” she said, her eyes wide with either shock or awe.

  “Thanks for saving one for me.” Micah pulled the knife out of the man’s chest and wiped it on her trousers.

  She knew she shouldn’t joke about a man’s death but this piece of work had tried to kill a woman as she’d been checking on his welfare. She’d done the world a favor by removing him from it.

  “Three down, one to go,” said Pip, glaring at the man in the cage. “Have you still got no idea where the boy is?”

  Micah was impressed. Pip would never have had the courage to speak like this when they’d first set out on this quest.

  “He’ll be in the mines!” The man got to his knees and clasped his hands. “With the Fossickers. They’re all in the mines!”

  “What’s a Fossicker?” Micah stepped forward, wondering if Lily might also be in the mines.

  “The children are Fossickers. They can get into tight places. All the children become Fossickers.” The man said this like it was perfectly normal, not registering the shock on all their faces.

  “What do they mine for?” asked Griffen.

  “Crystals.”

  Now, this was interesting. The vision of Lily that Micah had shared with Raphael and Azrael had been of her underwater holding a purple crystal. She was now more certain than ever that they’d come to the right place to find her. But why had she been underwater instead of in a mine?

  “What do you do with all the crystals?” asked Pip.

  “They go to the palace. The King collects them. Takes them out to sea for his Queen.”

  “The sea?” asked Micah, trying to put the pieces together.

  “She lives in a lighthouse,” said the man. “I’ve never seen it though, so don’t ask me where it is. Middle of nowhere somewhere.”

  “What’s the Queen look like?” asked Micah, desperately hoping the King hadn’t taken Lily as his young bride. It just seemed too coincidental that their vision of Lily had been under the water and now there was a Queen who lived in the middle of the sea.

  “I’ve told you enough, I reckon.”

  “That’s strange.” Griffen brandished his knife at the man. “Because I don’t reckon you have.”

  “Nobody’s seen Her Majesty for years now. But last time I saw her. She… well, she looked like you.”

  He fixed his gaze on Micah and she flinched. This was a nightmare! Lily was too young to be a King’s bride.

  “How old is she?” asked Raphael.

  The man shrugged. “Twice what you are.”

  Micah let out a deep breath. It couldn’t possibly be Lily.

  “Who lives there with her?” asked Raphael.

  “Forget it, Raphael.” Micah touched him gently on the arm. “It can’t be her. She’s too old.”

  “There’s a girl out there with her,” said the man. “I’ve never seen her, but I’m told she has the same red hair as the Queen.”

  Raphael raised his eyebrows at Micah.

  “And how old’s the girl?” he asked.

  The man shrugged again. “Half what you are.”

  “Tell us where the lighthouse is.” Micah paced in front of the cage, certain now he was talking about Lily.

  “I told you, I don’t know!” The man held out the palms of his hands. “You’d have to find one of the oarsmen and ask them. They’re the only ones who’ve been out there.”

  “And where do we find them?” Micah’s pacing came to a halt, in direct contrast to her mind, which was whirling with plans of how they might get themselves to a lighthouse in the middle of the sea.

  The man rolled his eyes. “Well, they ain’t out here, are they?”

  “Nobody’s out here,” said Azrael, rubbing at the purple streaks on her neck.

  “Point us in the right direction and we’ll let you live,” said Griffen.

  “That way.” He pointed to his left.

  “And where are the mines?” asked Micah, wondering if they were better to go after Lily or Gabe first.

  “Same, same,” said the man, still pointing to his left.

  “Do we trust him?” Micah looked at her companions one by one to see what they thought.

  “Not sure we have a lot of choice,” said Raphael, shrugging.

  “If we find out you’re lying to us.” Griffen shook his knife at the man. “I’ll come and find you.”

  “That way.” The man pointed to
his left again. “I swear it.”

  Micah walked immediately away from the cage in the direction the man pointed, despite being totally unsure if he was telling them the truth.

  The others followed, and the man shouted after them. “You can’t leave me here! It’s not right!”

  “Thanks for the chat,” Griffen called over his shoulder.

  “Should we let him out?” asked Azrael. “He’s going to die if we leave him there.”

  “Someone will find him,” said Griffen. “No great loss if they don’t.”

  “This doesn’t feel like the right direction.” Raphael stopped and looked around.

  “How can something feel like the right direction?” asked Pip, stopping by his side.

  “Let’s just keep going and see what’s out here.” Micah kept walking, pleased to see that Raphael and Pip followed. They couldn’t afford to lose any time.

  “Micah,” said Azrael, placing her hand gently on her arm. “I really am very sorry about Gabe. He let go of my hand for only a moment. I feel terrible about it.”

  “I was the one who left him,” said Micah. “It’s my fault.”

  Pip shook her head and Micah sighed. The truth was that she couldn’t help but blame Pip just a tiny bit, but she knew this was unfair. The only people truly to blame were the men who’d dragged them away. And they’d paid the price for that now.

  “We’ll get him back,” said Micah, forcing a smile.

  “We will,” said Pip, falling back into step with Azrael and Griffen, leaving Micah to talk to Raphael.

  “What would you do if you were that man?” she asked. “Would you have given us true directions?”

  He shook his head. “I’d probably tell them the truth in the hope they thought I was lying.”

  “Clever,” she smirked. “If only we had some way to know. We have to find Lily. And Gabe. This might sound strange, but finding Gabe felt just like coming home. Like I was meant to be his mother.”

  “Can I try something on you?” asked Raphael, his eyes twinkling in the way they did whenever he had an idea.

  “Of course.” She’d learned to trust this man completely. There was no way he’d ever hurt her.

  Raphael reached for his bag of elixirs. “Hold up for a moment.”

  “She needs energy?” asked Azrael, coming to a stop behind them.

  “No. This is an experimental elixir I was working on when Micah came looking for me in my apothecary. It’s a homing elixir.” He shuffled about in his bag until he found the bottle he was looking for.

  “But I don’t want to go home,” said Micah. “I want to find Lily and Gabe.”

  Raphael nodded. “I got close with this elixir, but I could never quite get it to work. Something was wrong with it. This is just a theory, but I think I might have figured out what it was.”

  Micah let out a deep sigh. He wasn’t listening to her. “But I don’t want to go home,” she said again.

  “What did you just say to me?” he asked, dabbing some of the elixir onto a clean cloth. “About Gabe.”

  “I said… that finding Gabe was like coming home.” She smiled, his enthusiasm infectious.

  “That’s right!” he said. “What if my elixir is already working perfectly? What if home isn’t about the building you live in or the land it’s set on? What if it’s about the people in your heart? What if they’re your home?”

  “You think if I smell this elixir, I’ll know what direction we should walk?”

  Raphael nodded. “We already know what direction your home is in, so if you’re drawn in that direction, we can dismiss that. But what if you’re drawn somewhere else.”

  “I don’t know about this,” said Pip.

  “I think we should try it,” said Azrael. “Raphael’s elixirs work. We know they do.”

  “Probably more chance of that elixir leading us to the Princess than that swine in the cage,” said Griffen.

  Pip nodded, realizing she was outvoted.

  Micah stretched out her hand to take the cloth from Raphael. She held it to her nose and inhaled deeply.

  “Bring them to your mind,” said Raphael. “Both Lily and Gabe.”

  That made sense. Both of them were in her heart. Hopefully, if one of them was nearby, she’d be able to feel it. She pictured Lily’s sad face under the ocean, and the trusting way Gabe looked up at her.

  “Do you feel a pull?” asked Raphael.

  She could, but wanting to be certain, she held up her hand and inhaled again.

  “That way,” she said, pointing south, almost the exact opposite direction to which they’d been walking.

  “You sure?” asked Raphael.

  “Positive.”

  LILY

  THE NOW

  When Lily had heard Father speak of ‘the Terrace’, she’d imagined a pretty walled garden with flowers and fountains and a woman sitting in the corner playing the harp.

  But the Terrace wasn’t like that.

  The Terrace was more like a version of hell. Dark. Isolated. Hopeless. And… cold.

  The guards had dragged her up some stairs, then through a door and up more stairs. They’d climbed and climbed and Lily had been genuinely surprised that so many stairs could exist within the one building. She’d have been able to climb the lighthouse three times over by the time they arrived at a large steel hatch at the top of the stairs.

  The guards had opened the hatch and instructed her to climb a ladder. Once she reached the top, they’d slammed it closed again and she heard them turn the lock, leaving her alone and confused about where she was and what Father hoped to achieve by keeping her here.

  Two days and two nights had passed since then and in that time, Lily had explored every inch of this so-called Terrace.

  What it really was, was a roof. The roof of the palace to be more accurate. It was essentially a giant stone rectangle, painted white, without a single railing or barrier to stop her from walking straight off the edge if she were to get close enough.

  And that was it. Nothing else. Not a seat. Not a plant. Not a table. Not a blanket. Just a white rectangle perched in the sky with an impenetrable hatch at one end and two wooden buckets beside it. One for water and one for waste. Not once since she’d been here had the water been replenished or the waste taken away. She was tempted to throw the contents at the next person who opened that door. Especially if it were the King.

  She’d lain down on her stomach and wriggled over to the edge to see if there was anything she could use to climb down but there was nothing except sheer walls on all four sides. And the distance to the ground had made her stomach flip. The dirt below was hard and barren, not a single tree or moat to break her fall. Not that either of those things would help her from this height.

  In the distance, she could see the ocean. It was a strange thought knowing that the lighthouse was somewhere out there. What was Mother doing without her? Polishing her own crystals? Telling herself bedtimes stories?

  How long Father intended to keep her up here was a mystery. He’d said she needed time to remember who she was. Who she really was. Which meant who he wanted her to be. Because no amount of time spent in hell would make her forget who she was. What she needed to decide was whether or not she was better off pretending to be who Father wanted her to be, or if she’d die holding onto her name.

  When she’d first been brought up here, she’d thought her name was the most important thing. But after two days without food or shelter, she was leaning toward survival. She’d already lived more than half her life pretending to be someone else. She could do that again until she figured out how she was going to get back home to Forte Cadence.

  Worse still, her angels seemed to have all but abandoned her. She knew she should’ve tried harder to take the amethysts with her. Carved them out of the rock somehow. How naive she’d been to have believed that her visions belonged to her.

  She lay down on her back and closed her eyes, trying to speak to her angels. Where was her golden Pr
ince? Had something happened to him? Had he decided she wasn’t worth rescuing after all? And what about Aunt Micah and the woman with the black hair? Had the woman in the shadows behind them decided to step out and join them or had she convinced them to turn around?

  “Father!” she called, knowing he’d never hear her. Her voice was dry and cracked under the strain of being used for the first time since she’d left that room covered in diamonds. “Father!”

  She closed her eyes once again and covered her face with her hands. She was so cold. But thankfully her daily plunge into the ocean had taught her how to withstand extreme temperatures like this.

  A noise startled her and it took a moment to figure out it was the sound of the hatch opening.

  Sitting up, then pulling her weak body into a stand she took some steps forward.

  “Father!” she called again, her voice gaining strength now that she knew it could be heard.

  The doors of the hatch opened and swung back to lay against the stone surface of the terrace.

  Lily’s shoulders slumped to see it was a guard and not Father.

  The guard set down a fresh bucket of water and picked up her bucket of waste. If she weren’t so hungry and cold, she’d have been humiliated by this.

  When the guard turned around, ready to head back down the ladder, she ran to him.

  “Stop!”

  The guard put down the bucket and held out his hands, warning her to keep her distance.

  “Please, tell the King I wish to see him,” she said.

  “Who wishes to see him?” He smirked at her.

  “I do.” She felt her brow furrow as she tried to make sense of his question.

  “And who are you?” asked the guard.

  “Oh.” She understood now. Father had put this guard up to this. Testing her.

  The guard tapped his foot as he waited. “You have no name?”

  “I do have a name.” Her stomach growled loudly at her, as if reminding her that she needed food.

  “And what is this name, so I can pass on your message to the King?”

  Lily bit down on her bottom lip. Did saying she was Angel, make her Angel?