The healer stood slowly and placed his hand on her shoulder. Lis chanced a look at the prince again, just before he turned his back on her and left the room. She allowed the exhaustion to wash over her, and she stumbled. Yang caught her and, after a quick look around the room, led her to a step before the throne where he helped her sit down.
‘What happens now?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
Chapter 34
Lis woke from a strange dream where the prince had held her close as they lifted high above the Palace Isle, looking down on it as though it were the map.
She blinked back the strange mix of panic and elation to find him standing over her with a sword held out towards her. He stared at her silently as she sat up, threw the covers back and swung her legs around.
The tip of his sword wavered just a fraction.
Lis sighed, the comfort she had felt in the dream dissipating. Her heart beat fast. She stood, and he stepped back. She took a deep breath. ‘Please make it quick. I’m tired, and I don’t want to linger.’
She waited, but nothing happened.
He stood as he was. ‘You are one of them, and yet they want you dead.’
‘Everyone does,’ she sighed.
He shook his head and lowered the sword.
‘That is why your father took your family away.’
She nodded once.
‘He should have killed you.’
She stepped towards him. ‘I know.’
‘You are dangerous,’ he hissed.
The sound of hatred stopped her steps. ‘I don’t know what I am or what I can do, other than hiding and making flowers bloom early.’
‘And stopping a room full of soldiers determined to kill us all.’
‘I just pushed them,’ she said, looking down.
‘How?’ he asked, the sword forgotten. He stepped forward. But as she looked up, he stopped, and his curiosity was replaced with anger. ‘You killed my brother.’
‘I was on my island,’ she said, and suddenly she wanted so desperately to be there again. ‘Your brother was killed with fire, and I don’t have that skill.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I visited his room when I was hiding.’
‘This is why Hui Te-Sze is wary of you.’
‘He seems to sense something you do not.’
‘It doesn’t matter what I sense; I’ve seen it.’
She nodded slowly. ‘I wish you luck with the next hidden princess,’ she said, bowing before him.
‘Who would put their daughter forward with two dead?’ he asked, his voice strained, raising the sword again with a shaky hand. ‘They already lament the time, despite your knowledge and understanding of the world…’ He stopped as she straightened and looked at him.
‘You need to be very careful, Your Highness, for it sounds as though you might actually like me.’
‘I’ve had to kill others I have known,’ he murmured.
She stepped forward suddenly, pushing herself onto the tip of the outstretched sword. It was sharp against her skin. He pulled away from her and she grabbed the blade, wincing as it pulled through her hand. ‘I am not worthy even of a quick end,’ she murmured. ‘I have watched you run through a man without thought.’
She felt the tip of the sword move to her flesh as he pushed against her, just enough to break the skin. She still held the blade tight, the sting of the cut trying to find its way into her consciousness, telling her to run.
‘If you are hidden, can I still kill you?’
‘Do you want to find out?’ she asked, cocking her head. She no longer knew what she was doing.
‘What is happening?’ the healer asked from his sleepy pose across the room.
The prince didn’t take his eyes from her.
‘He is doing what he has to,’ she answered for him.
The healer was on his feet, and the sudden movement had the sword push further into her. She maintained her position despite the sharp pain as it pushed deeper. She held her hand out to the healer, stopping him in his tracks.
‘Are you the same sort of hunter that she is?’ the prince asked Yang.
Lis shook her head
‘You are hurting her,’ Yang said, his voice stronger than she had thought he had in him.
‘He is killing me slowly,’ she murmured, trying not to look at her hand wrapped tightly around the sword, knowing that the blood dripped through her fingers. She wondered absently if the tip was doing the same to her stomach. Would it ruin the dress when she died? Would anyone worry for such a thing?
‘Go,’ Yang said.
She shook her head again, pulling the blade closer as Remi turned to face him. ‘You know what she is?’
‘I was there when she saved us all,’ he growled, his eyes on the sword rather than the prince.
‘Maybe you could talk him into doing this a bit faster,’ Lis murmured.
‘Kill her,’ Hui Te-Sze called from the doorway, and the sword pushed deeper. The cool metal created a strange sensation inside her, as though she could feel every part of it. It was her hand that stung more as the sword cut deeper across her flesh.
When a groan escaped her, the prince looked at her with sudden fear and withdrew the sword. She dropped where she was, swatting away the healer as he raced to her. Her hand rested on her knee, a wide cut sliced through her palm and another across her fingers.
‘I…’ the prince started.
‘You are not a good hunter,’ she wheezed.
He turned to Hui Te-Sze and directed him out.
Yang knelt beside her, running his hand over hers as he hastily wrapped silk around it. She could feel the relief already.
A tear slid down her cheek, and she wiped at it hastily.
‘He doesn’t know what to do with you?’ Yang said, looking back towards the door.
‘He can’t let me live,’ she whispered, trying to stand and pushing her hand against her stomach.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To finish this,’ Lis said, but he caught her arm and held her back. ‘I can’t live like this,’ she whispered, leaning into him.
‘You will need to for a time longer, because I don’t think this is finished.’
‘It is for him.’ She wasn’t sure why she felt such a loss with the prince’s hatred of her. She had always known what he would do when he learnt of her true nature, and she had known she was nothing until the training was finished.
‘I don’t care,’ the prince’s angry voice boomed in the hallway just beyond the room. ‘This is not over, and I want her watched. Surely your men can guard against a girl.’
Yang raised an eyebrow as she tried to stand back from him, but her knees were weak. More of her blood had leaked through her dress than she had thought was possible.
As she focused on her hand, Yang pulled her back to the bed, half carrying, half dragging, and then his hand was pressing down hard over the wound in her stomach. The pain lessened, and she closed her eyes.
She could no longer hear the prince outside her door. She wondered if the guards would stay, or if the hunter would sneak in during the night and finish what the prince could not.
She sighed at the idea of it. There was nothing for her in the Empire now. No home, no family, no Peng and now, no prince. Perhaps he would be content to lock her away until the new empress was crowned, and she could decide what to do with her predecessor. The old ways came to mind, where they were all killed but one. But Lis wasn’t in prison. She was in a small room somewhere on the Palace Isle, maybe even in an old palace that once housed a hidden princess.
No one knew what she was or where she was, and she had no idea of what was to come.
Hidden Promises
Chapter 1
Remi walked with a determined gait through the front entrance of the prison. His anger at the magics burned across his skin. He couldn’t believe their audacity to attack the centre of the Empire and the emperor himself. He tried not to thi
nk about Lis. As angry as he was that she had hidden her true nature from him, it was more disappointment he felt when he thought of her. He had cared for her so much, and he hadn’t even guessed she was magic. It caused him to question the world he lived in.
He shook his head and refocused on his visit. He had made numerous visits to the prison since the attack, but he had yet to learn anything. One of them knew what had happened to his brother, and today he was going to get that information out of them, no matter what it took.
He strode along the cool, lengthy corridor, the pale, windowless stone wall to his right and the cells to his left. Each cell was separated from the next by a thick stone wall, but the only thing between the cells and the corridor was a wall of thick iron bars. Each cell, only just big enough for a man to lie down in, contained a single magic.
He noted that they all sat in the same position, backs against a side wall and staring silently at the floor. In the fifth cell along the corridor, the magic sat against the back wall of the cell and stared directly at Remi. When Remi stopped, the man grinned.
‘I will start here,’ Remi said, holding up his hand to stop the soldier walking behind him. He wanted to go into the cell, take the man by the scruff and demand answers, but the memory of what they had threatened Lis with was too close. As was what they had done to U’shi. Remi didn’t know what the man might do in close quarters. He could always stop the magic with his sharp sword, but dead men gave little information.
The hunter had tried talking to them, but he hadn’t managed to get any information. Remi needed to get something tangible from these men soon, or his father would have them killed no matter what he could learn from them.
‘I can tell you nothing else about your princess,’ the man said, standing slowly and swaying a little. They had been detained for several days and been offered nothing other than a little water. Yet Remi wondered what they could do for themselves if the need arose.
‘Can you add nothing more to the fact that you want her dead?’ he asked, although he wasn’t really sure he wanted to hear anything else. Lis had not been what he had thought she was, and he hadn’t seen her since the night he had discovered that. He still wasn’t sure if he wanted to see her or not. Several times he had found himself walking towards her little palace, then turning away again.
‘It is a fact you are already aware of. It is what we need to further our cause.’
‘Your cause,’ Remi said slowly. ‘And where did my brother fit into that?’
The man shrugged, although he didn’t look away. He knew something about Ta-Sho; Remi could see it clearly on his face.
‘Did you meet with the crown prince?’ Remi asked, trying hard to stand still. A nervousness he hadn’t felt previously made his legs itch, and he wanted desperately to move from foot to foot.
‘I am meeting with him now,’ the man said, a friendly smile surprising Remi.
‘Did you meet my brother?’ Remi asked firmly. He had no time or patience for games.
‘I did not have the pleasure.’
‘But you know who killed him.’ Remi didn’t ask, for he knew the answer.
The man shrugged again, as though it was not important, and Remi’s hand closed around the handle of his sword.
‘What makes you think it was one of us?’ the magic asked.
‘He was killed with fire.’
‘Magic fire? Or did his lover simply touch a torch to his fine clothes?’
Remi reached out quickly, pushing the sword between the bars. He was fast, but the magic was faster, stepping back just out of reach. Remi desperately wanted to enter the cell, but he didn’t know what this man might do, and he still had questions. If he frustrated Remi any further, he might kill the prisoner before he got the answers he needed.
‘Do you have any idea what might have happened to him?’ Remi asked, keeping his voice level despite the anger building in his chest.
‘I might,’ the man said, turning from the bars and sitting down on the floor. ‘But you wouldn’t believe me.’
‘I might,’ Remi said as the hunter appeared beside him.
The magic assumed the same position as the others and stared at the floor. Remi took a slow breath, trying to calm the frustrations threatening to burst through his skin. These men had the answers he had been looking for, yet he didn’t know how to get that information from them.
One of them knew what had happened, or maybe more of them knew. For all he was aware, several men could have been responsible for his brother’s death. He had made such a suggestion himself before, when his father had been sure there was one man—one normal man. But that wasn’t the case. There was clearly magic; even Lis had sensed it.
‘What else might she sense?’ he murmured to himself.
The man looked up then. His face was serious, and Remi waited for him to grin, but it didn’t come. They wanted her dead. How was their need to destroy Lis connected to Ta-Sho, and how could he get them to tell him the truth?
Remi indicated for the hunter to leave him with a quick sideways motion of his head. He gave Remi a hard look before he nodded and, taking the other soldier with him, left Remi with the magics.
Remi moved along to the next cell, where the man leaned against the wall just as the others did. He didn’t know what skills these people had or what they might do with it, and there was a nervous energy around the prison in holding them there.
‘Why did you need the crown prince dead?’ Remi asked. ‘How did his death benefit your cause?’
The man looked up at him slowly, but he shook his head.
‘Is the man who killed him here?’
The man continued to stare at Remi but said nothing. If the killer was amongst the group, Remi doubted any of them would give him up. ‘How did you get into the royal residence?’ he asked.
‘When?’ the man in the previous cell asked. Remi wondered if this man was their leader.
As Remi looked back towards him, the man in the cell before him stood slowly. Like the man who had spoken, he never took his eyes from Remi.
‘What exactly do you want to know?’ the man in the previous cell asked, a tiredness to his voice.
‘I want to know what happened to my brother. I want to know how you managed to work your way across the Palace Isle without our hunters knowing you were here.’
‘Someone knew we were. Did you not feel our magic?’
Remi could still feel the background hum. Although he could sense the magic when they used it, now it was as though he knew the magic was there yet couldn’t sense it. He sighed before he could stop himself.
‘We just want a chance to live.’
‘You want more than that, or you would have moved away to where you would be safe. Instead you attack our palace, the hidden princess, the emperor and empress—and before that, someone killed the crown prince.’
‘We want what is ours,’ the man said, and then no more.
Remi spent the next hour moving between the cells trying to determine what they knew. The only one to talk was the man in the fifth cell, and he wasn’t making enough sense for Remi, nor was he addressing what Remi wanted to know. He wouldn’t discuss Lis or anything pertaining to Ta-Sho’s death.
Did they not know what had happened to him, or why he had been killed? They were fairly clear about what their future was meant to be, and Remi could only guess Ta-Sho had stood in the way of that. He needed to find another way to get the information from them. But he also had to be careful not to provoke their magic. If a fire bearer was determined to burn through Remi, he might not be able to stop it. He was always quick with his sword, but he might not get the chance to use it within the small confines of this part of the prison.
Remi left the prison with the same determined step as when he’d entered it, only now he didn’t know where he was going or how he could get at the knowledge he needed. The man in the sixth cell had intrigued him—he’d been the only other one to look up from the floor—but only the magic in the fif
th cell had talked. Remi wondered if they had another way of communicating or if it was enough that the occupants of every cell could hear his conversation.
He stopped and looked about. Again, he was making his way towards the hidden princess.
Healer Yang lay back in the afternoon sunshine and tried not to sigh. He hadn’t wanted to leave Lis’s side, but he needed some fresh air. When another healer had come to check on his progress with the princess, he had made comment on Yang’s lack of skill. But it was her own doing. Lis wouldn’t allow the healing to take.
She was sure the crown prince was going to kill her in his own way, and she wanted to die on her own terms. The prince had been nowhere near them since he had tried to kill her.
It was fear of what she was, Yang thought, rather than a hatred of her, as Lis seemed so convinced was the truth.
She didn’t want to be where she was, as a hidden princess. She had only used her magic because she needed to, yet she was hurt by the prince’s sudden change towards her because of it.
Prince Remi had been too familiar, Yang decided. It was not the way for a prince to behave. He had wanted to be close to her. He had visited at all hours, sneaking in to watch over her sleeping, taking breakfast with them to ensure she ate.
A single soft cloud moved across the sky. If he concentrated, he could pretend that there were no walls around him, that he was lying out somewhere free, like the little island Lis had grown up on.
‘I told you she was not to be left alone,’ the hunter Hui Te-Sze snapped as he pushed open the gate with a bang. Yang stayed exactly where he was.
‘Sir,’ the guard said, a nervous edge to his voice.
‘I know what she can do,’ he continued.
‘Do you?’ Yang asked.
The hunter leaned over him, blocking his view of the sky and dragging him back to the world he lived in. ‘She can escape.’
‘She can barely move, and despite her illness…’ Yang wasn’t sure how else to describe it. ‘She is with the tutors.’
The Magics of Rei-Een Box Set Page 28
