by Starla Night
More time for Lotar to find the assassin before he struck the final blow.
“My king.” Warlord Yashu approached Lotar’s father. “You look as unwell as the prince. Please rest and eat.”
King Falki shook his head. “Thank you, my friend, but I will remain until the end.”
“Until the end.” Warlord Yashu lowered his head, a deep pain echoing in his soul. He floated back to his rightful place with the elders and bowed his head in respect.
Oska could have no better guard.
Lotar approached the armory and asked to see the training daggers.
“Training daggers?” The trainers glanced at each other. “You wish to train now?”
“Revert to a young fry?” one asked. “You do not need training daggers. The weapons on your sheaths are dangerous enough.”
“Perhaps ones that have been used recently,” Lotar said. “The most popular ones.”
They shrugged and brought over the case. No blades gleamed with the glassy sheen of the poison.
What was the next possibility?
A traitor had three problems. Carrying the poison to the Life Tree unseen. Applying it to Prince Oska, under guard, while no one noticed. Getting rid of it after he showed the effects.
Which were instant and very noticeable.
Getting rid of it…
Lotar flew down the stalk of the Life Tree.
The villain would not have had much time. How could he have painted a whole hand on a convulsing, groaning, tortured prince without anyone noticing? Someone had noticed, and he’d broken off before completing the thumb. If grief did not blind his father, he would hear the healer and know that a human, Hazel, could never acquire this unknown-to-her poison, much less use it right in front of everyone. Lotar was an obvious suspect, despite never actually touching his brother, but not Hazel.
So the poison must be in a protective bag. Like a waist pouch.
But it would be dangerous to carry. What if the traitor had only shoved the vial inside without being able to carefully contain it? Or what if it bounced open against his waist? It would seep through and poison him, and everyone would know.
Keeping it would be far too dangerous.
But while everyone’s attention was on the prince, it would be easy to drop it off the dais. Maybe while disturbing a few mating gemstones, so their fall masked the true poison.
Mating gemstones piled around the reef. The coral grew over and around them, absorbing life-giving energy from their surfaces.
He cast his gaze over the familiar reef. Nothing caught his eye, so he started at the Life Tree and swam in a spiral outward, until…
A small dark spot flickered at the edge of his awareness like a shadow.
Ah.
Lotar swooped down to it. A woven seaweed pouch. He used his trident to manipulate the bag. Inside was a long stick like the drawing implement young trainee Zain had used to write his human letters and a small bowl with an imperfect seal.
There must be a way to identify the ownership.
If not, it might cut through his father’s confused thinking and prove that there was a traitor who was not Hazel.
Lotar carefully looped the band on the tip of his trident to swim back to his father.
“Freeze.”
First Lieutenant Anik materialized from the coral. The other guards surrounded him.
“He collected the poison pouch. He is the traitor after all.” The first lieutenant’s expression was unnaturally euphoric. “Take him to the prison and inform the king.”
Curse it.
Lotar dropped the poison bag and followed their directions. His heart raced, but his thoughts moved faster.
He should have known.
The first lieutenant was the traitor.
He had set this trap.
And Lotar had swum right into it.
Thirty-Two
“You are going to be in such big trouble,” Hazel muttered as she stumbled and teetered over the sharp rocks up to the hard, icy shore. “If not from me, then from somebody else, when I’m not there to help you.”
The frigid wind whipped away her words.
And the snow and ice were brutal on her feet. Sure, she hardly felt cold water, but the bone-deep ache on her pinkie pigs was unrelenting.
“How could you be so arrogant? I am so. Mad. At you.”
She should have seen it coming. As soon as she’d confessed she might be pregnant, he’d freaked out and treated her differently. She’d thought he was being sweet. No, he wasn’t being sweet. He was wrapping her in bubble wrap and sending her to the surface as if he’d forgotten the whole point of soul mates was being together.
This was the kind of crap people with complicated relationships, like Nora and that loyal All-Council General Giru, must enjoy.
Not Hazel.
“I can’t resonate with you if I’m not close enough to your resonance.” Hazel trudged through the aching snow to the highest point to get her bearings. “Jerk.”
Right in front of her stood a reindeer.
Okay. “Where’s the nearest sign of civilization?” she asked.
The reindeer stared like a deer—er, reindeer—in headlights.
“Houses? Cabins? Yurts?”
Nothing.
“Do you speak English?” she asked the animal, which very clearly didn’t speak English or anything else. And she totally knew that, but she had to catch a break sometime, and asking a wild animal was better than asking the rocks or the big old trees. “Come on, Prancer, point me in a direction.”
Its ears flicked back and forth. It ambled past her, picked up its hooves and minced a little faster, and then raced away into the snowy woods, leaving a shower of brush and snow behind it.
“Well, that can’t be good.” She took a few steps after it. The snow plunged up to her knees. Ouch. Cold.
A modern roar echoed over the snow, growling louder and louder, and a snowmobile bounced into view. The driver was fully bundled in a thick long coat, boots, gloves, hat, scarf, and goggles. He—because even through the bulk, she calculated it was a guy—glanced her way, did a double take, and crashed into the brush. The motor stalled, started again, and he piloted a now messier snowmobile out from under the heavy branches.
She waved with both hands. “Hi!”
He jabbered at her in a foreign language. Lots of words and gestures to express deep sentiments, like, did she know she was naked and it was freezing?
“Yes, I know.” She waded toward him, breaking through the top layers of snow. “I’m sorry to bother you, but could you possibly help me make an international phone call?”
He shook his head while jabbering more.
“English?” She gave his frosty goggles a hopeful smile and held her hand to her ear. “Cell phone?”
“Ja, ja, sell phone,” the man repeated, and patted the seat behind him.
Well, good deal.
She clambered on behind him and grabbed his scratchy wool coat. The motor growled, and they whirred off across the landscape. Wind, snow, and brush whipped her bare skin. He hadn’t offered his coat, but maybe he figured she was a nudist by choice and must be more used to the elements than him.
They pulled up in front of a perfectly pleasant square wooden house, like the kind she might have seen in any rustic tourism magazine advertising off-the-beaten-track stays in Eastern Europe. The driver led her inside without knocking. A couple of blue-eyed men with light brown hair blinked at her in shock while the driver rattled off something.
“English?” she asked hopefully.
The men looked at each other as if each was hoping the other one knew it.
“Cell phone?”
The driver jabbered, waved his hands emphatically, got back on his snowmobile, and zoomed down the road.
She stood awkwardly in what looked like a warm tiled kitchen. At least her feet weren’t going to freeze off anymore.
Her stomach growled.
“Um, anything to eat?” she aske
d.
One man brought her a wool blanket, which she wrapped around herself like a toga, and the other put a strangely shaped kettle on the gas burner. They ushered her to a chair and put a plate of bread and cheese—oops, not cheese, more like a pig-flavored jelly. Lard?—in front of her along with a steaming cup of bitter, herby tea. The men loitered outside the kitchen murmuring and glancing at her as though terrified. The front door opened from time to time, and more strange men piled in, gaped at her, and left.
Well, she was in a house getting fed. This would all be fixed as soon as she figured out…
Figured out what the heck she was going to do now that Lotar had abandoned her.
Her chest heaved.
It was a hiccup. Not a sob. Definitely not a sob.
Yeah, she understood why he did it, and she knew it was coming from the best of intentions, but at the end of the day, she was still naked in some stranger’s kitchen because the man she’d intended to marry, her soul mate, the father of her future child had kicked her out. Unilaterally. Which meant without even discussing it with her.
He’d made a serious decision that had affected her life, both their lives, and expected her to deal with it.
Like finding out your fiancé spent your wedding savings on a once-in-a-lifetime solo trip to Asia, or your best friend borrowed your grandmother’s wedding ring without asking and lost it, or…
Or your business partners took the grant money you’d earned and bought a gaming PC and laughed at you for thinking you’d use that money to accomplish something.
She hiccupped a few more times, sniffed down what was definitely not uncried tears, and puckered her lips over the bitter tea. Not because she was stuck a thousand miles from home, naked, pregnant, and alone.
A man with a uniform and a trimmed mustache sat across from her. “Amerik? Ingles?”
“Amerik?” She wiped her nose and cheeks on the edge of the blanket, accidentally flashing him, and he politely looked away. “Ah, yeah. America. I’m American.”
He nodded, still looking away, and pulled a chunky black car phone from his pocket. He pressed something and handed it over to her. “Amerik. Mobile telephone.”
“It’s a cell phone. Oh my God, thank you so much.” She clutched the precious heavy object and dialed.
An automated female voice chastised her in a foreign language.
The man frowned and took back the cell phone, pressed buttons, and started the call again. “Code. Amerik. Code.”
“Code? Oh, the country code. Sorry.” She pressed it and redialed the office.
It rang and rang and finally sent her to an automated message about hours.
God, what time was it?
She’d caught Flora during office hours both times before. Now, when it was really an emergency, she had no after-hours contingency.
The man stared at her as though wanting to know when she would give his cell phone back and get the heck out of his neighbor’s house.
Cavalry. She needed cavalry.
Hazel barely knew anyone’s phone number. Who knew phone numbers in the age of cell phones? But there was one she’d dialed or put on enough résumés for character references that she could pull it up. The phone rang and she silently prayed. Answer, answer, please answer…
Pia did not answer.
It was a guy. “Who’s this?”
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I was looking for Pia. I must have misdialed.” She pulled the phone away and handed it back to the guy because she still hadn’t figured out which button ended the call. There were no red or green phone symbols. It was a total mystery.
“Hazel?” the guy asked. “Is that you?”
Ah!
She squeaked and lunged across the table, startling the man into dropping the phone before he disconnected. “Hello? Hello?”
“Hello?” the familiar voice said. “Hazel, I can hear you.”
“Oh, thank God.” Wait. “Owen?”
“Yeah, here’s Pia.” The phone crackled.
Pia’s sleepy voice came over the line. “Do you know what time it is?”
Hearing her friend’s voice, familiar in this crazy land, sent Hazel into a hiccupping fit. “Pia, I am so glad to hear your voice. I tried calling the office, but they’re closed and Lotar kicked me out of his home city after his dad accused me of being a witch and I’m stuck somewhere in Siberia naked and alone and pregnant.” She took a huge, blubbering, sniffling breath and let it out with a high-pitched whine. “Help me.”
“Oh my God, Hazel.” Pia sounded a lot more awake. “Um, what do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know. Look up the number for the foundation or something. Find someone who can speak…” She looked at the man, who gazed back at her with serious intensity, as though he were trying to listen with all his concentration. “Any arctic language.”
Pia rustled, making comforting noises to let Hazel know she was still on the line.
Hazel sighed, the first rush of relief from at least reaching out to one friend still on her side. “It’s not the glamour of the post office, I’m telling you.”
“Oh, yeah, I never thought the post office was all that glamorous.”
“You were right.”
“Okay, Owen found something. The New York office of MerMatch closed. They moved to Sanctuary Island, but they planned this? And now the only office is in Miami.”
“That’s the foundation.”
“Yeah, okay. That’s what Owen says too. He’s trying to call…but there’s no answer. We’ll try again in a few hours when they open, but they also have an active Facebook page. If you have internet, maybe you could reach out?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Hm, okay, Owen’s looking into it…”
Hazel tapped her fingertips on the table. The man stared at her like he was willing her to end the conversation, but how could she end it without anyone knowing where she was?
A plump woman with gray hair put the kettle on again.
“So, Owen, huh?” Hazel mostly said it to make it look to the man like she was still having a conversation. “When did that happen?”
“Ah…it’s kind of complicated.”
“Well, congratulations. I like him way better than any of your exes. I hope he doesn’t leave you naked and alone in a foreign country after getting you pregnant.”
“Yeah,” Pia laughed, “I seriously doubt that. Oh, he’s saying something. Yeah?…Okay, I’ll tell her. He says he got motivated when Lotar said my ex wasn’t my soul mate.”
“That was obvious,” Hazel agreed, ignoring the pang from Lotar’s name. “Your soul mate would never steal your fries.”
“I know.”
“And call you fat. In the same sentence.”
“I know!” Pia sighed aloud. “After that night, Owen started a campaign to make me see that I was worth more than these fry-stealing musicians thought. It took me a while to come around, but… Oh, hey. I have an audition on Thursday! It’s for a dance. It’s coming up a little too fast, I haven’t quite had enough time to get back in my groove, but I’m going for it. And if I don’t get it, I’ll get the next one, or I’ll write my own and perform it solo off-Broadway.”
“Double congratulations.” Hazel could just imagine her friends in Pia’s apartment, Pia in her robe huddled around the phone, Owen nearby being his stable, steady presence. “And since Owen won’t have a performance, he can be there to watch.”
“Shh.” Pia giggled. “You’ll give him ideas.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t need them,” Hazel said, but Pia was conveying her statement to Owen, and Hazel had to let it go.
Everything was the same back in New York, and yet everything was different. The world turned. People changed.
There was no expiration date on dreams. One of her guru mentors had said so once.
But right now…
Hazel didn’t know.
The man leaned forward and opened his palm.
Time to say goodby
e. “I’ve got to go, you guys. Tell the foundation to call me.”
Pia promised they would, and Hazel hung up.
The man took the phone with a grimace.
The older woman leaned against the counter drinking tea. She peered into Hazel’s empty cup. “You want some?”
Oh, God. She spoke English. Her accent was slightly British, slightly Nordic. Maybe Finnish?
“That would be great,” Hazel said, and the woman poured from a chipped ceramic teapot into Hazel’s cup. “Um, what is it?”
“Earl Grey.”
“What? Are you serious?”
The woman laughed. “You think it’s a woodland potion? Haha, yes, Earl Grey.”
Hazel shared her laughter. It was funny.
The woman’s laughter faded. “So you are American. I tell him”—she jerked her thumb at the serious man—“ you were calling America talking about boyfriends, and he has a heart attack. That is a work phone.”
“Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”
“No, you fine. Chocolate cracker?”
“Yes, thank you.”
The woman spread out a second meal of bread, pungent cheese, stringy meat, and dishes Hazel didn’t recognize, but after everything she’d eaten underwater, this was nothing. Besides chocolate-covered crackers, there was a box of shortbread cookies and jam. Yum.
“Where are we?” Hazel asked around bites.
“Lapland, Finnmark. Many names.”
Great, she could arrange Hazel’s travel back to New York. “I’m so glad you speak English.”
“You think I don’t study in school?”
“They didn’t.”
“Yes, they lazy. They know I speak it, so they don’t worry. Only speak the local three languages, ignore the rest of the world. They think this day’s not coming. Ha. It came.” She ate through an entire box of chocolate crackers and opened a second one. “Here. You don’t eat this underwater.”
Hazel was full, but she took another one.
She still clenched Lotar’s necklace in her hand.
The woman inspected it. “So, you have the necklace of Oska and Lotar.”
“Lotar,” Hazel said, startled. “Wait, you recognize it? You were a sacred bride!”
“Jup.”
