As the golden-haired Queen Gloria of Lunaka exited the lower quarters of Rhydin’s podium, the crowd became so still that all anyone could hear was the sound of each other breathing. Rhydin glanced about the people slowly, wondering what the big deal was. Gloria may have been a beloved queen, but she was still a Royal and one who was married to a monster at that. The people should still be thrilled, Rhydin pondered, but they weren’t.
Frederick, Cornflower, Xavier, and Mira followed their parents and stepfamily out toward the gallows, and with each of them, many of the spectators’ eyes grew larger and larger. Puzzling, Rhydin mused. He thought he had done better at convincing the people of Nerahdis that the younger generation was just as bad as the older. Yet, the entire gathering erupted into cacophonous yelling when Frederick’s young son appeared with Eli, his Follower from Auklia, trailing closely behind to make sure the Royals kept moving.
“Yer not goin’ ta hang a child, are ya??” one woman’s scream broke through the chaos.
Another man’s bellow reached Rhydin’s ears, “Stop this! This is wrong! Just banish them or something!”
While each of the Royals were guided to their respective noose and several among the audience began to leave, Rhydin rapidly took another step forward and lifted his hands to calm the fervor. “People of Nerahdis! I know this is difficult, but this is the only way to make everything right again! Remember all the horrific things these people have imposed upon you! Outrageous taxes, flagrant disregard for the issues that plague you daily, the hanging of anyone who could possibly oppose-…!”
“What, so exactly what you’re doing at this very moment?”
The emperor froze. That voice. Female, but strong and gritty. It could only be one person. He turned ever so slowly, carefully bringing himself away from the view of the people.
Linaria stared back at him with her Allyen eyes. A glass-like feather gleamed upon her breastbone along with her locket, the reason he had not sensed her coming. Rhydin would have never suspected such overconfidence from her as to attempt sneaking up on him.
He smirked. How foolish.
“Are you here to watch as well, young Allyen?” Rhydin cackled.
A smile played at the edges of Linaria’s lips, and as gasps of surprise and fear echoed around them from the audience outside, she held her small, tanned hand out with a gesture back toward the gallows. She whispered, “No, I am not.”
For once, a small inkling of anxiety radiated down Rhydin’s veins, a feeling that was foreign to him. He rushed back to the railing to behold the scene unfolding below. As most of the crowd now fully disintegrated in fear or disapproval, five figures had appeared out of nowhere upon the gallows, each of them hurrying to one of the Royals and working furiously to remove their noose.
Anxiety turned to anger as Rhydin absorbed every little detail of the Ranguvariians in front of him. Their stature, ears, eyes, wingspan, the two who appeared human, all of it. The very creatures that he was working so hard to capture in order to reveal all their little secrets were in front of him now, and there was nothing he could do to stop them.
As the two who appeared mostly human disappeared in the blink of an eye with the Royals they had managed to free – Dominick and Xavier – Rhydin roared to Robert and Eli on the ground, “Do something!”
Another Ranguvariian vanished with Princess Cornflower in the seconds it took Eli to dash over to the lever while Robert stood stock-still, his eyes pinned upward at his daughter. Time slowed down as the last two Ranguvariians worked to free Frederick and Mira from their nooses just as the first two human-looking Ranguvariians reappeared without their charges, making beelines for Queen Gloria and-…
Rhydin dove out of the way for the second Ranguvariian-human, who flew right past him, batting his shard wings and slicing Rhydin’s cape to shreds. He growled in fury as the Ranguvariian swept over to Linaria to take her away as well, but that was when the deafening snap of wood reached his ears. All three of them paused. Linaria’s Allyen eyes met Rhydin’s amethyst ones.
That was when the wailing began, and Rhydin cracked a cruel smile.
Luke and I forgot Rhydin and rushed to the railing of the podium, desperate to see what had happened. My eyes glossed over the limp frames of Queen Jasmine and Princess Ren, not needing that mental image. But, my gaze snagged on King Adam, a third of his scalp still bald from the spell I’d fired at him during the compound attack. He had been my first enemy, who I always thought would die at my blade. The man who sold out his kingdom just so he could keep his throne away from his son. Who hunted people with magic relentlessly. Who tried to fling Frederick off a balcony and who spearheaded the war that made Rhydin emperor.
He was no more.
At Luke’s gasp, a sound like he’d been punched in the stomach, I jerked my gaze away from King Adam and to the source of the wailing. Relief flooded me when I saw Mira and Frederick both alive, freed from their nooses with only seconds to spare by Bartholomiiu and a female Ranguvariian whom I didn’t know, but my heart plummeted to my toes upon sight of Queen Gloria dangling from the gallows.
We were too late. We had been so close. James was right next her, clutching his hands like he’d been burned by the rope as he tried to get it off when the lever was pulled.
Mira screamed, clinging to her mother, and tears trickled down Frederick’s thin cheeks as he tried to pull his sister away. Half of the few remaining audience members cheered. Whether for the demise of the truly evil Royals or for the survival of the younger generation, I wasn’t sure. Others stared vacantly at what had transpired in front of them, and a few actually hurled insults at Rhydin.
Rhydin’s expression had been changing back and forth between victory at the death of four Royals and fury that five had been rescued, but it turned hard at the sound of the criticisms levied toward him. Dark power began building around him, and Luke grabbed onto my arm from behind.
I shuffled him off. I could end this now. Rhydin couldn’t use magic in front of people or his ruse as emperor was over.
My sword sprang forth, and I used it to cast a quick, powerful blast that should have knocked Rhydin flat. However, it was deflected back at me when a figure suddenly transported in front of Rhydin. Robert stared back at me, his sword drawn and gleaming purple as he channeled Rhydin’s dark magic instead of his own Allyen power.
“Move!” I shouted angrily.
“No,” Robert responded quietly, his eyes muddled but sure.
“This has to end, Robert! You know what he’s doing is wrong!” I pleaded, gesturing with my sword all around me before I tossed furious words in Rhydin’s direction, “You’ll never win!”
Robert squeezed his eyes shut in frustration, rubbing his gaunt face. He whispered slowly, almost so I couldn’t hear him, “It’s too late for me, Daughter.”
Behind him, Rhydin straightened and whirled to face us, the strips of his former cape flying about. He fixed Robert in his deathly gaze and stated clearly without emotion, “Kill her.”
The former Allyen took a couple, uncomfortable steps backward. “What? No! I must have another chance to turn her to our side!”
“So be it,” Rhydin spat. “Then kill her infuriating creature so I can conduct my experiments and crack all their secrets!”
Robert hadn’t so much as turned in Luke’s direction before my protector threw two tiny daggers that he must have had up his sleeve for a while. I barely saw that one nicked Robert’s cheek. The other bounced off a blade that Rhydin drew from nowhere before Luke’s hand abruptly grabbed my arm, and the world began to grow white and morph.
I fell hard to the ground when we arrived back in our campsite, feeling a bit of whiplash as well. Luke had landed on his own two feet, but he brushed himself off anyway before he said, “Sorry. Nothing good was going to come of that.”
Sighing loudly, I conceded, “Fair enough. Although we did confirm that Rhydin still wants to capture one of you.”
Luke looked at the ground sadly, his eyes ting
ing to a darker blue. “We can’t let that happen. We have such an advantage right now since he doesn’t understand how our power works, how our feathers can hide presences…any of it. If that changes…”
“I know,” I mumbled, but I tapered off of what I was going to say next as the yelling from closer to the campfire reached my ears.
“How could you not get to her in time?? Why didn’t you get more Ranguvariians or something?”
It took me a moment to recognize Frederick’s voice. I had never heard him shout before, much less roar like what I heard now.
Luke and I hurried over to the center of our campsite where the others were. Mira looked unwell as she rocked a bawling Cornflower while Frederick’s red face was very much in Evan’s bubble. Xavier, on the other hand, appeared…happy, of all things, most of him concealed under a large cloak. Meanwhile, Anne stood off to the side with her hand firmly on her sword hilt, her olive complexion paling at the sight of Bartholomiiu and the other two Ranguvariians who had been able to join us on such short notice.
Sam, it occurred to me finally, was still absent. He didn’t know any of this had happened because he’d never returned from Stellan.
Evan was as white as a sheet, trying to defend us when he hadn’t been there to even fully know what happened. I jogged over to rescue him now and placed myself between him and Frederick. I said calmly but firmly, “Frederick, we did everything we could-…”
“No, you did not!” the Lunakan prince yelled, a ferocious fire in his eyes that I’d never seen before. “You could have brought just one more Ranguvariian with you. You could have stayed here and let Luke retrieve my mother instead of you! For Nerahdis’s sake, I could have gotten myself out and my rescuer could have-…!”
“Stop,” I replied simply, not letting his words provoke me. I reached up and placed my gloved hands on his wiry shoulders as he looked ready to crumble. “Just stop, Frederick.”
Frederick gazed at me slowly, the anger in his eyes barely masking the grief underneath.
“I’m so sorry she’s gone. But playing ‘what if’ isn’t going to bring her back. It won’t bring back any of the ones we’ve lost to Rhydin,” I whispered, my voice rasping a bit.
The blond prince shook his head, his receding hairline making him appear far older than his years. He turned away from Evan and I, walking sluggishly toward his sisters when his stare happened across the smiling Xavier. I cringed, knowing what was coming. Frederick spat, “What could you possibly be happy about?”
“It may be a bad day in your world, Frederick,” Xavier answered with a strange, dark grin, “but it’s a very good day in mine.”
“How could you say such a thing? Your wife’s mother just…just suffered a terrible death.” Frederick’s voice broke.
“As regrettable as that is, it comes nowhere near to stifling the immense joy that the two witches who did this to me,” Xavier crowed as he shifted his large cloak to the side to reveal his right arm, which was stiff and bent at an odd angle, “got what they rightfully deserved.”
Frederick’s fury burned brighter. “You got that when your arm was smashed by a rock in an avalanche when you and Sam were trying to desert.”
“True,” Xavier conceded, smiling nonetheless, “but the months I spent being tortured for hours on end without proper treatment did their toll. Allow me my happiness in this.”
I watched Xavier move his arm awkwardly back under his bulky cape, the elbow not really bending and the fingers never leaving the tight fist, and decided to remove myself from the situation. I didn’t need to witness Frederick getting all his anger out of his system as Xavier inevitably stirred the pot.
Padding away softly, I found myself a nice tree to sit by as I tuned out Frederick and Xavier’s shouting. Despite my best hopes, all of their previous beef from the war came out, and I glanced back at the others in sadness only once. My thoughts wandered to Sam briefly, wondering if Kelsi was still alive, if he was still with her, and how long he would stay with her nonstop like this.
I lost myself in these thoughts so fully that I didn’t even notice when Anne came to sit with me. She arranged her Auklian silk sashes, which so cleverly hid a leather vest full of small weapons underneath, and thumbed one of the shiny baubles that hung from her sleeves.
After several minutes of silence, she adjusted her orange turban, grabbed a canteen from behind her, and took a swig. She muttered, “You wanna tell me about the pointy-eared dudes now or later?”
I chuckled in spite of myself. “Might as well do it now.”
Anne offered the canteen to me, and I pulled my leather gloves off. When I reached for the sloshing canteen, every thought of mine was derailed.
My fingers. Their veins were black. As if stained with ink.
Chapter Fifteen
“N o,” I breathed as I retracted my hand from Anne’s canteen. I rubbed the fingers of both hands against my trousers rigorously, willing the dark smudges to just be dirt. They wouldn’t come off.
Anne’s crimson eyes doubled in size. “The Epidemic,” she breathed.
I jumped up from the ground like lightning had struck me, barreling away from Anne. “Don’t touch me,” I cried, fumbling with my gloves to get them back on, “I thought I was immune because I didn’t get it back then, but…but…”
“It’s okay,” Anne said soothingly as she stood. “I got it the last time. I can’t get it now.”
I gaped at her. “I thought the Epidemic didn’t reach Auklia? You didn’t recognize the ink on the thresholds in Stellan.”
Anne adjusted her orange turban, her eyes darting to the ground briefly before meeting mine with a red ferocity. “Actually, I lived closer to Lunaka briefly when I was younger. But we didn’t live in a town, so I never saw those warning marks. Just…don’t worry about me. I’ve had it before.”
“But…” I stammered, panicking, “I’ve been around everyone else, what if I got them sick too?”
Anne leveled her scarlet gaze at me. “My father was a bit of a worrywart, but my mother always used to say ‘don’t worry ‘til ya have to.’ You’ve spent a lot of time in Stellan away from the rest of us, and ya can’t get me sick. Only Luke has been around you, but he’s been to the schoolhouse plenty of times too. You need attention first-…”
“Don’t tell anybody else,” I begged, fighting the urge to grab the muscular woman by the arms. “I have all the things I need to treat it from Stellan, and I’ll keep my distance from the others…”
“What about your husband?” Anne questioned sternly.
My eyes slid to the ground. Sam. He still hadn’t returned from Stellan. Was his sister more important than me? I shook my head and responded slowly, “Until his sister passes, I doubt we’ll be seeing him.”
A few moments of silence passed. Anne was strong-willed, and I could tell she was biting her tongue as to not enter the discord between Sam and I. But, to her credit, she remained silent. While Frederick and Xavier continued to argue in the background with the periodic interjection from poor Mira, sister and wife, Anne and I returned to our sitting positions against an ancient tree trunk. Anne changed the subject and suggested, “How about those creatures then?”
Anne was surprisingly receptive of the notion of Ranguvariians, although slightly less so of the Aatarilecs. I decided to go ahead and tell her about both since she seemed to have officially cast her lot with the rest of us. Plus, it kept my mind off my new predicament. She asked several questions, most notably about why Luke and James appeared human, why Bartholomiiu acted so strangely, as well as a few about the Aatarilecs. I didn’t know whether the information made her trust or question us more.
She was quiet once I’d answered all her queries, and as the day went on, she left with Evan to continue scouting for a rebellion location. I tried to create a new normal for myself away from the others. I had spent every day for the last few weeks in Stellan with Sam taking care of the sick, but now that he didn’t want my help and I was ill myself, I needed
to find something else to occupy my time.
The Royals, too, were in the same predicament. Apart from spending the last several days in Rhydin’s impenetrable dungeons, they too had to create a new normal. James and Bartholomiiu procured some new clothes for them to replace the dirty, tattered ones they had worn their entire stay with Rhydin as well as to make them look less conspicuous.
It was decided that the Royals would stay with us since we were close to finding a place to conceal and build our rebellion against Rhydin, so James was sent to pick up Taisyn, Xavier and Mira’s blind son. They had narrowly secreted him away with a maid just moments before they were captured, and I was immensely thankful. We’d lost Queen Gloria because we hadn’t had enough help or enough time to rescue everyone. I couldn’t imagine who else wouldn’t have made it if even one more Royal on our side had been present at those gallows.
Frederick and Xavier kept their distance from each other, using Mira and Cornflower as go-betweens, while I kept my distance from absolutely everyone else. Every evening, Anne aided me with the herbs we had been using to treat the infected in Stellan, yet each day the ink that stained my skin spread. Within twenty-four hours, it had stretched halfway up my forearms. After two days, my elbows were beginning to turn black. All of this, I kept hidden under my sleeves. There was no point in stressing everyone out if we were already trying everything we could.
Sometimes, I wondered if the treatment would work for me. Other times, especially as each meal and night went by with no sign of Sam, I wondered if it mattered.
As my energy started fading and food lost its flavor, Anne became my sole confidant. While Luke, James, and Bartholomiiu busied themselves with guarding us, searching for a hideout, and keeping tabs on Sam in Stellan, and the Royals kept to themselves to avoid arguing, Anne tried to keep Evan from me. However, it wasn’t long before he began to study me from across the campfire and question Anne more intensely when she made up some sort of excuse for my avoiding him.
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