Shades of Prophecy

by Tessonja Odette

  I closed my eyes at the pain that shot up my wounded arm, biting back a whimper. Darius released the chair and my wrists and took a few steps away. When I opened my eyes, he was staring at the black hilt of the knife.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you just now,” he said, his face and tone without emotion. “I know what it is like to be struck by that blade. Did she tell you about that? How she nearly killed me with that very knife?”

  Slowly, I nodded.

  “Made with a rare Elvan metal, that one is. It is what allowed my sister to outsmart me and is what keeps you here with me now.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Try to worldwalk away,” he said. “You won’t be able to.”

  My heart stilled as I realized he knew of my abilities. I’d been on the brink of worldwalking just before—or as—he’d stabbed me. That meant he’d been prepared. “How did you know?”

  “About you being a worldwalker? I didn’t. Not until I found you in your throne room.” His answer didn’t make sense. I opened my mouth to speak but he held up a hand to quiet me. “Let’s not get off topic. You want to know why it is I deserve to be Morkaius—”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “—and how you are going to help me. It’s simple. I’m going to give you Lela.”

  I froze. “What?”

  “You are going to help me by securing Lela’s Royal Force in my favor, and I am going to reclaim my rightful place as Morkaius of El’Ara. As a reward, I’m going to leave Lela in the human realm under your rule.”

  My mouth hung open. “That’s…impossible.”

  “Nothing is impossible for the Morkaius.” Darius paused, studying me again. “You worked hard to defend Lela against my son. You risked your life. Would you not do anything to protect your people? Wouldn’t you prefer to avoid bloodshed if you could?”

  “Yes, and that means stopping you.”

  “So quick to judge, so slow to listen,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “What do you think will happen to Lela if I am defeated and my pathetic sister is able to reclaim her place as Morkara?”

  “She is Morkara.”

  He ignored my comment. “If the Mora is seeping from El’Ara like the prophecy of the Morkaius suggested, then El’Ara is losing power. The people of El’Ara will want Lela to return where it belongs. The tribunal will never let Ailan leave Lela in the human world, even if there was a way to safely do so. What do you think will happen to you and all those you care so much about?”

  I paled. How did he know? How could he read the fear that weighed heaviest on my heart? I shook my head and forced a mask of confidence. “Ailan cares just as much as I do. She will do what it takes to make sure we have homes. To make sure we will be cared—”

  “Slaves, Queen Coralaine. The Elvan will make slaves of you. Sure, they will call you citizens, but you will never be one of them. You will be considered beneath even the animals. And your animals! They will be killed, along with the majority of your human population. Few of you will be allowed to live. You’ll either be slaves, dead, or exiled.”

  His words seemed so certain. He’s just trying to get into my head. “Ailan has promised otherwise. She gave me her word.”

  He laughed, this time throwing his head back as Morkai would have done. The resemblance made me shudder. “That’s just it! You can’t trust them. They say one thing, then do another. Ailan may be speaking honestly, I’ll give you that. But she isn’t the only power in El’Ara. The tribunal will never allow fair treatment of humans. Once the threat is over, they would turn her mind against your kind as they once did with my mother’s.”

  “It sounds more like you’re bitter, if you ask me.”

  His eyes went steely as they cut into me like daggers. He stepped closer, and when he spoke, his voice was quiet, filled with icy calm. “I am bitter. I was raised to be the next Morkara from the day I was born. They knew from the beginning that my father was human, yet they allowed me to believe I’d been accepted. Do you know what my mother used to call me?”

  I shook my head.

  “Min’Elle Morkai. My little King of Magic. You see, my father was Prince Tristaine of Syrus, heir to his father’s crown. Mother told me how I was, in a way, a prince of two worlds, and how I would one day be something like a king in El’Ara. I remember how she looked at me back then, like I was the only thing that could make her smile. She’d look at me and remember him.

  “Then my sister was born. The light in her eyes that she once reserved only for me and my father’s memory now belonged to her consort and her daughter. Tales of kings and princes and the human realm dried from Mother’s lips. Suspicion replaced the love I once saw in her eyes when she looked at me. The tribunal began to watch me with eyes that burned with fear—there was so much fear in them. They feared me when I used the term Morkaius. My own mother taught me the term! I was simply trying to fill the role she’d made for me!”

  His voice had risen to a shout, startling me.

  He seemed to notice and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he put his hands behind his back, regaining his composure. His voice returned to its quiet tone. “Most of all, they feared my power. No, not my power as a weaver. They feared my human power, the power to walk between worlds.

  “It was quite by accident, on my part, that I even learned I had such a power. You should have seen the look on my father’s face when I showed up in front of him one morning! Took me a bit of trial and error to understand what I’d done, even more so to learn how to return home. Once I did return, rumors of my shameful power quickly spread, alarming the tribunal, my tutors, even those I’d considered my friends. Despite this, I refused to be shamed for what was naturally mine. In fact, I took pride in what I could do. I grew stronger in my powers, and dare I say a little arrogant.

  “That’s when they turned Mother against me. The tribunal convinced her I wasn’t fit to rule, and she agreed with them. All because of my power—a power that could have done so much for El’Ara, could have made it a realm far greater than anything we could have imagined. But I was the only one who saw it that way.”

  His eyes grew unfocused as his lips pulled into a sneer. “Mother then attempted to banish me, did you know that? With the same weaving she’d used on my father, no less. As if I wouldn’t have known! Do you know how she did it?”

  I opened my mouth to reply but stopped myself. The tears welling in his angry eyes stripped me of words. Not because of pity, but because of something else. Fear. His fervor was terrifying.

  “She hugged me,” he said, without so much as a tremble in his voice, though a single tear streamed down his cheek. “Just as she had done with my father. She took me to a glade under the pretense of showing me where she’d met him. Then, with a hug, she told me she loved me. That’s when I felt the weaving begin to wrap around me, and I remembered what she had done to my father. It was the exact same thing. I pulled away from her and looked into her cold eyes. There was no love for me there. I worldwalked away before she could weave another strand.”

  My stomach sank, as if I could feel the full weight of the betrayal. None of that had been mentioned in Garot’s stories. Still, I knew there had to have been a good reason why he’d been banished in the first place. Of course, there was little chance I’d get that fact from Darius.

  He went on. “I returned to my father with the intention to stay for good, to take my place at his side as his eldest son. He was a very old man by then, but he accepted me into his home and named me heir. When he died, I was prepared to inherit his crown, not knowing my siblings had other plans. They enlightened me about many things, primarily the fact that Father hadn’t named me the heir, but one of many heirs, to follow my seven brothers and two sisters in the line of succession. They thought they could bully me into submission, seeing me as the youngest sibling, despite me being born before any of them. Worse yet, they saw me as nothing other than an illegitimate bastard, born of their father’s youthful dalliances.

/>   “They were wrong about me. Again, I was set aside as inconsequential because of my parentage, but this time, I wouldn’t be cowed. I bided my time. I waited until all my brothers and sisters were dead, then claimed what was rightfully mine.”

  Did you kill them? I wanted to ask. I frowned in suspicion but remained quiet. I didn’t need to hear his answer to know the truth he’d left unsaid. Besides, I knew what happened next. Next he invaded El’Ara.

  Darius must have taken my frown for sympathy. “Do you see now how I have suffered?”

  I bit back a laugh. While I was surprised to learn his side of the story, I was far from convinced he was the innocent party. If anything, he was blind to his own flaws. “Is pity supposed to convince me to help you?” I finally said. “It isn’t working.”

  He seemed unaffected by my spiteful tone. “I don’t expect you to pity me. I expect you to understand. Being of two worlds, I have seen injustices that no one should tolerate. I seek to make them right here and in El’Ara. Both worlds are corrupt. Both worlds favor bloodline yet retract their own rules when it suits them. Tell me, how many times have the rules of your world seemed unfair to you? How many wars have been fought over crowns? How many cold marriages have been forced to gain alliances? How many capable citizens have been suppressed based on class and bloodline?”

  I opened my mouth to argue against him, but I came up speechless yet again. It’s just the way things are, was the only excuse I could find. And I hated that it was true.

  Darius raised an eyebrow as if he saw the conflict on my face. “As a woman, I’m certain you’ve been slighted, whether princess, queen, or peasant. Here, a woman is nothing without a husband. I don’t say that as a taunt, I say that to put injustice on display. From what I’ve heard, you weren’t allowed to inherit your place as queen until you married your husband, correct? Due to some suspicion about you?”

  I clenched my jaw. “What’s your point?”

  “My point is that you weren’t respected for your gender, and you were feared for your power. That’s what both our worlds are missing—respect for power. Blood and birth order are nothing compared to power, am I wrong? If you’d been measured by your power, you’d have been queen without a second thought for whom you married. Likewise, if I’d been assessed by power, I would have been named heir of El’Ara without a glance at my sister. In Syrus, I would have had my father’s crown as soon as he breathed his last breath.”

  “You dream of a world run by power?” I shook my head with disbelief. “That would mean chaos. Each man would be constantly at war with another to prove who was most powerful.”

  “I’m not proposing an end to all the rules and order we know,” Darius said. “All I’m saying is in my new world, power will be the deciding factor.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I thought you said you weren’t like your idiot son. You sound just like him.”

  “He was an idiot because he failed to see what was right in front of him. You have a power no one should deny. My son saw it, but he interpreted it wrong. He was drawn to you, obsessed even. He made mistakes because of his fascination with you, all along never guessing the truth.”

  I swallowed hard, not sure I wanted to rise to the bait. “What’s the truth?”

  “That he wasn’t drawn to you because of your place in some prophecy. He was drawn to you because you were his kin.”

  “His…kin?”

  Darius nodded. “The Elvan can sense their kin when in close proximity. As soon as I saw you in your throne room, I felt it. I knew who and what you were right away. You are a worldwalker, like I am. Like my father was. Your blood is a distant line from his. You and I are kin.

  “In fact, you could almost be my heir.”

  25

  HEIR

  Teryn

  I stared at the ceiling of my bedroom, watching the morning light slowly spread from one corner to the other. Had I even slept a wink? Every time I’d closed my eyes, I saw nothing but Cora’s blood. My own voice echoed in my head throughout the night, declaring war on Darius, on Norun, on Syrus.

  Had I really meant what I’d said? Cora has been captured, I reminded myself. What else can I do but fight him? Yet, as I listened to my shallow breathing, alone in my room, I felt too small to fight. Too small to win. But I must get her back.

  With the morning light now fully blazing through the window, I forced myself to roll from my bed. My legs felt heavy as I made my way to the vanity and downed a glass of water. My reflection caught my eye in the mirror, showing me a haggard stranger—tousled hair, bloodshot eyes, and too much scruff on my chin. I’d probably looked better when Morkai had taken over my body and nearly killed me in the process.

  No. That was a lie. I definitely looked better then.

  At least I could still joke. Idiot. None of this is funny. I glared at the man in the mirror.

  A knock at my door saved me from further altercations with myself. “Your Majesty,” came Lord Jonston’s voice.

  “Come in,” I said, though it sounded more like a grumble.

  Jonston entered, frowning when his eyes found me.

  I hadn’t changed since the night before, which meant I was still shirtless. I turned and stalked toward my wardrobe, acting as if he’d caught me in the middle of my hurried morning preparations. “Yes, Lord Jonston? What is it?” I said as I pulled an undershirt over my head.

  He closed the door behind him, his face apprehensive. “Your Majesty, I wanted to speak with you about what you said last night.”

  I donned a gray tunic, adjusting its hem to keep from having to meet his eyes. “And what is it you wish to say about it?”

  “Your Majesty, the council is worried over this…plan of yours. They wonder if you should perhaps take a day or two to recover from the events of last night.”

  I let my eyes meet his. “They think I’m crazy.”

  Jonston sighed. “They think you have suffered much, Your Majesty, which you undoubtedly have.” He took a few steps closer to me, his voice pitched low. “No one would blame you if you retracted last night’s orders.”

  Heat rose to my cheeks. “Is that what you think I should do, Lord Jonston? Take back my declaration of war? Continue to wait for an attack by a man who assaulted our queen?”

  Jonston’s jaw shifted back and forth before he answered. “No, Your Majesty. I agree measures must be taken, and Queen Coralaine’s abduction solidifies the threat you foresaw. But if you want the support of the council, you need a solid plan.”

  His words struck me hard, as I knew he was right. My declaration of war wasn’t the calculated strategy of a king; it was the wounded cry of a boy. I swallowed the tears that stung my eyes. “Then what do we do? I must do something.”

  “And we will,” Jonston said. “Let us continue with our original orders while the council considers any additional actions we can take.”

  I hated how right he was. I hated that I had no better plan. I hated the thought of a single moment going by that I wasn’t actively fighting to get Cora back. Yet, no matter how right he was, I couldn’t bring myself to voice my agreement.

  “Your Majesty,” a new voice said from behind the door. I nodded, and Jonston turned to open it. A guard entered, face flushed as he gave a hurried bow.

  I walked toward the man. “Speak.”

  “Your Majesty, there’s some kind of commotion on the grounds,” the guard said. “A white horse was reported circling the castle all night. Ever since second bell, it has been trying to get inside through every window and doorway it can find. And now that it’s daylight, we can see it’s clearly not a white horse, but a…”

  “Unicorn,” I said, then cursed under my breath as I darted from the room. How could I have forgotten Valorre?

  Lord Jonston and the guard caught up to me as I pounded down the stairs to the main hall. “He hasn’t been hurt, has he?” I asked, looking left and right. At the entrance, guards clustered in the doorway.

  “No,” said the guard. “Last I
saw, he was trying to get into the kitchen.”

  I took off toward the kitchen, hearing gasps of surprise the closer I got. When I entered, I found Sadie, the cook, struggling with a broom in the doorway, while Beca, the kitchen maid, threw bits of bread. The guards had the table on its side, pushing it against the doorway so it blocked the bottom half.

  “Go on, you,” Beca said, tossing an entire loaf this time.

  “What a nuisance,” Sadie chided, giving another jab with her broom. “They sure never mentioned this in the stories.”

  “It’s all right,” I said, approaching the flustered crowd. “Let him in.”

  Sadie and Beca started with squeals as they attempted curtsies. The guards stood and bowed, which in turn allowed Valorre to clamber over the table. If the situation weren’t so grim, I would have found his unusual lack of grace amusing.

  Valorre seemed to calm when he saw me, although his teeth were bared and his breathing labored as he made his way to my side.

  “Easy, Valorre. You’re all right. I’m here.” My audience stared with stunned faces as I stroked Valorre’s neck as I’d seen Cora do many times. He tossed his mane with a whinny that sounded far too much like a cry. “I know, Val, I know. She isn’t here.” My voice caught in my throat, sending fresh tears to my eyes.

  Valorre lowered his head and nuzzled me in the shoulder. His entire body quivered with distress.

  “I’m so sorry, Val,” I whispered, bringing my forehead to his soft coat. “I should have come and found you. You must have felt it as soon as she was gone. It’s my fault. I didn’t protect her.”

  Valorre whinnied again, scraping his front hoof on the stone floor with an agitated stomp.

  I pulled away, a sudden idea coming to mind. “Can you sense where she is? Can you take me to her?”