In a brief moment of clarity, I see Briar aiming his knee on my face with a wild expression, like he wants nothing but to finish me off.
For the first time during this whole fight, I feel it. The fear that this might turn into something more serious than I anticipated, that this whole thing might not even be worth it. The possible consequences flash before my eyes as blood continues to flow down my nostrils, his armored knee rushing towards my face to crack open whatever is left intact. I close my eyes, waiting for it to come, to end—
“STOP!”
Alistair’s voice rings out in the field. Or maybe that’s just in my ears. Either way, I sense the slow decline of the energy in the place. I open one eye, then the next, only to see that Alistair is standing over me while Briar is on the ground.
“What was that for?” Briar demands, quickly getting to his feet. “Why did you push me?”
“Because you’
“Prostitute?” I explode. “A prostitute? Seriously?”“Yeah,” Gynith says with a small smile, which quickly vanishes. “Fake prostitute, by the way. Emphasis on ‘fake’.”“Prostitutes,” I repeat weakly, leaning against the sink, barely able to support my weight. I feel like my knees just turned to jelly upon hearing that word. “And you agreed to this?”Jossie and Gynith exchange dubious looks, like this is something they never really considered before. I don’t know why, but that annoys me more than anything. Have they never really thought about this? Have they never stopped to consider why this is their role?I let out a breath to prepare for a tirade, but Jossie beats me to it. “Look, Lora. I didn’t say it’s a perfect plan with zero snags. Either we’re in it, or we’re not. And the only way to be in it, to be in the actual operation and the
“Let’s go,” Gynith urges, suddenly getting out of her bunk and jumping to my side. “Come on. We need all hands on deck. This is bad news.”Bad news indeed. I don’t want to move. “I can’t.”She looks baffled. “What? Why? Lora, this is no joke.”“I know.” I gulp, my gaze flitting from her face to the window. When she widens her eyes questioningly, I say, “Because. . . .”I can’t continue. My tongue seems to have frozen up. For a second, my desperation almost wins and I nearly confess to her about everything. Who I am, what I am, and where I’m supposed to be. I open my mouth to begin, but Hendrik’s yell in the distance stops me from making this mistake.If I don’t go out, there’s still a chance Hendrik might find me. If I do go out, he will surely recognize me.That is, if he doesn’t already know that I’m here.
Gynith takes me to Alistair’s office, and to my surprise, the things that were displayed there when I first came are no longer around. It’s nothing more than a bare room now, and I think it’s because of the inspection. Alistair most likely hid everything, because they would surely draw suspicion. And he’s not alone in the room. “Hey, Lora,” Jossie greets me blandly, sitting on the floor in the corner, her arm draped around a big bag. “Where have you been hiding?” I don’t answer, mainly because Alistair is looking at me. “Did I do something wrong?” Alistair and Jossie exchange glances, and he bursts out laughing. Usually she joins him, but tonight she looks somber. A little annoyed too. “Well, I brought you here because of this.” He gets the bag from Jossie, opens it, and lifts one of its contents: a strip of shimmery red fabric. “Your dresses for the mission.” “Our prostitute attire,” Jossie says dryly, flashing him a pointed look. “Fo
"Is everyone ready?" Alistair's voice is ringing across the field. Tonight is the night of the mission, and every single one of the members of the group, including those who aren't included in the quest, are gathered here to listen. Those of us who will join are all dressed up, with weapons hidden in unconventional places, standing before Alistair and taking in all the things he's pointing out at the map of the fortuneteller's shop called Kismet's Wheel. "Women, Briar will take you in and present you to Ylendez, the fortuneteller and the owner of the place," he announces. "Ylendez will take you in and immediately make you work. You will be facing the customers of the brothel. Since I will go there first, I will be there waiting for you. And after Briar collects the fees for your services, he will be joining us shortly." He points at a big square space in the blueprint of the shop, but my gaze is fixed on him.
I try to pry the man's hand off my wrist, but he holds on. In fact, his grip only gets tighter as he pulls me through the door and leads me to another narrow hallway.There are a series of doors on one side, and I know immediately even without looking that these are the rooms for the clients and the prostitutes they chose.The man opens the first door he sees and shoves me inside, where I stumble on my feet and nearly fall face first on the floor. I fumble around and feel the mattress before he turns on the lights and closes the door behind him."Take off your dress," he orders as soon as I get to my feet. He takes a chair beside the bed and watches me intently. "Slowly."With shaking hands, I lift my hands to the straps of my dress. His gaze is lustful, pinned on me as though I am already undressed.Should I really do this? Do I really have no choice?I swallow hard. I just have to play for time. I don't know if anyone is coming to save me
Alistair and I exchange looks. This is the first time I see genuine, chilling dread in his eyes, much more intense than that time we saw the guards in the marketplace, and in turn it makes my heart go crazy with fear.Knowing that people are after us is scary, but not knowing what gave our whole operation away is what makes me want to cower in the corner.The footsteps grow louder, closer. Alistair grabs my hand and steers me along the hall, kicking open the first door we see and rushing inside. There’s a window in this room, and it seems that it’s exactly the thing he’s looking for, because he immediately jumps on the bed and pries the window open before turning back to me.“Come on,” he urges, beckoning at the window. “Let’s go.”My panic reaches its peak. “What?”“Let’s jump through the window.” He pulls me on top of the bed with ease. “Come on.”I h
My instincts kick in. The moment Alistair takes a step forward, I swerve to the right, hoping to avoid his direct attack. Unfortunately, his reflexes are much sharper, much more accurate than mine. He changes direction seamlessly, meeting me perfectly halfway as I try to get away from him.Now he’s directly in front of me, and I have nowhere to go.“Alistair, calm down,” I say breathlessly. “Please.”He swings his right hand, which is now a fully fledged paw tipped with sharp, pointed nails. This move would have reduced my face into bacon strips, but I manage to duck at the last moment. His paw hits the tree and slashes four deep lines on the bark. The impact is so strong that some of the smaller twigs fall off, causing a shower of leaves and little shrapnel to fall on us like a cascade of rain.I take this as my chance to go around and hide behind a tree, but his heightened senses allow him to track me down. Just as I stay f
Alistair used to run with a pack. He used to have his own family, his real family, yet all he wanted was to give humanity a fair chance to be truly prosperous, for no one to be left behind.Yet the Palace Guards, led by my very own Father and Uncle, attacked them for absolutely no reason. Now alone, Alistair created a group for himself and is vowing to do whatever he can to make his vision a reality.And now here I am, the heir to the throne, working alongside the one who wants to bring down the entire system.The sheer shock of this realization pulls me out of the vision in one go. All sorts of thoughts are swimming inside my head, sometimes making sense but most of the time jumbled. I’m teetering over the edge, rendering me almost sick as the momentary darkness settles in again. Just when I start to think I’ll throw up, I find myself back in the clearing with Alistair in front of me, slowly turning back to his human form before my eyes.He b
⇼ E L O R A ⇼ Days passed. Then weeks. Before I knew it, a whole month had passed, and when I woke up earlier with this realization, I just felt like a gigantic weight had been lifted off my chest. Life goes on, I realize. No matter how bad the situations were, my life still went on. And so did the lives of the others. The past month proved that. I open my eyes and look at the ceiling of the guest room, which we have designated among ourselves due to the renovation and the reconstruction that we’re doing for the palace. Some of the people from other city-states are going in and out of the Capital to help, also to take part in the planning process of our biggest project ever: tearing down the walls from the palace and the Capital. From outside the window of the room I share with Alistair, I can already see the shrine of the heroes in the courtyard. It’s a ten feet tall marble obelisk with all the names of the fallen. I didn’t include
⇼ E L O R A ⇼A scream builds up in my throat and escapes my mouth, ringing inside the chapel and out into the forest.With my entire body shaking, I scramble out of the dark building, my skin still covered in goosebumps. I slip and slide against the marble floor and almost fall more than three times, but I don’t care. All I want is to put as much space between me and the monstrosity that is my uncle’s dead body, which was missing just hours ago.How did it get there? What is it doing there? Why did it look at me? Why am I here? How did I get here?These questions all swirl in my head like a deadly mix, making me whimper all the way back around the lakeside. Small stones are digging into my soles and I’m just slipping everywhere, but I keep going like a wild prey getting away from its predator. No matter how many times I blink, I can’t get rid of the picture in my head, the picture of Uncle Osman’s glassy eyes staring at me.My feet keep sinking in
⇼ E L O R A ⇼I want to scream, but no sound escapes me. It’s as though my voice completely vanished, and now I’m left here staring at my dead uncle as he grabs my arm and forces me to walk with him.And the weird thing is, I can actually feel his hand clasping my ruined wrist. It’s almost as though he’s more solid than anything in here, more solid than me. It’s like I’m a dream but he’s in a higher form of reality that conquers mine. This notion only gets stronger when I try to struggle but he just doesn’t budge. He’s solid. He’s stronger than me.“Why do you want to leave so bad?” he asks me, his voice as gentle and as good-natured as I remember. He points at the chapel with his other hand, and as if on cue, the lights from inside glow brighter. I can actually see silhouettes of people from the windows, and they’re not moving. They’re all just standing there, completely still.
⇼ A L I S T A I R ⇼“No,” I hear Elora whisper, and my heart just cracks for her. She sounds so broken and so lost that I forget just how confused and afraid I am. I go up to her side and put a hand on her shoulder, and she wheels around to face me. “Are you sure this is the place?”“Yes,” I say, my voice low. I point at the smear of blood scattered along the massive elevated platform in the middle of the circular room. “Kalem said that they gathered the remains of the King’s brother and put him in the catacombs behind the chapel, in the room at the end of the tunnel.”Even though I remember what Kalem said perfectly, I still look around just to make sure we are indeed in the right place. There’s no other room in the catacombs, just these hallways with cubby holes on the walls, each containing either porcelain jars or wooden boxes with peeling gold paint. Apart from the blood on the slab of rock, there
⇼ E L O R A ⇼Coldness creeps into my body, from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. Madam Mara’s eyes are filled with nothing but pure and cold fear, the kind that will petrify you on the spot. For a vague moment I wonder what she actually knew, what she has seen and heard that still makes her shake like this even though Uncle Osman is already dead.But when she said he’s not human . . . I felt that was true.It was in the way he fought Alistair and I. We’re both Supernaturals, and I know we’re not used to fighting, but we should have been able to overpower him in a second, no sweat. But no. He was prepared. He was resilient. He was fighting back. And at some point he was even winning. It really wasn’t normal, and I was definitely thinking about it, but I don’t think I truly considered the possibility of it until Madam Mara came to me.And now she’s staring at me intensely like she’s going to explode
⇼ A L I S T A I R ⇼The sheer shock that thundered inside my body is enough to make time seem to slow down. I watch numbly as the Queen’s hand, still clasping the fork, draws closer and closer to her swollen belly. . . .I sweep closer, landing on my knees in front of the prison cell. I slide my hand through the metal bars just in time to move my hand right between the fork and her pregnant belly. She ends up stabbing my hand with enough force to let the tines sink into my palm with an abrupt squelching sound.The pain makes me gasp, but I take this accident as an opportunity to grab the fork and take it away from her.With my hand dripping blood, I turn to Jossie and Kalem, who are both horrified at the scene. “Do you have the key? Let’s take her—”“NO!” Queen Zuri shrieks, ramming against the metal bars. “It’s evil! Evil, I tell you! Get me out of here, please . . . I am begging you. Just take
⇼ A L I S T A I R ⇼The way to the prison cells of the palace is steep, dark, and incredibly eerie. Jossie and Kalem are right beside me as we walk along the narrow hallways leading down, but I feel alone. I feel cold. It’s as though this part of the palace is full of invisible hands, slowly pulling me under a pool of freezing water.After my talk with Elora, Jossie found me and informed me that I must oversee what’s being done to the new prisoners.“We need to know how we’re going to do all these things and just . . . make a process,” she said, her confusion very apparent on her face. “I honestly don’t know what we’re going to do with all these people, Alistair. I don’t know if we can trust them to be here when there are still soldiers around. Even the soldiers of their own city-state are here too.”“I understand, and don’t worry, I will find a way,” I told her then, pretty con
⇼ A L I S T A I R ⇼The Queen holds out her arms for me to bind them, but I’m empty handed apart from the cannon I stole from a guard just moments ago. I look at Elora, and she cuts off a strip from the hem of her shirt and ties it around the Queen’s wrists before pulling her up to her feet.Around us, the handmaidens all get to their knees, touching the ground with their foreheads as they face us. For a brief second I have to wonder what they are doing exactly, but then it occurs to me that this is their sign of surrender. They are changing their allegiance. They are showing that they are now ready to serve us since we basically dethroned the Queen and invaded the whole palace.To be frank, I don’t know how to feel about all of this. I want to tell them that it’s alright, that they don’t need to bow, but I can’t find the right words to say.Would it even be alright to show some kind of consideration or sympathy after I
⇼ A L I S T A I R ⇼ The path down has absolutely no amount of illumination, not even the tiniest one. The light from the throne room isn’t sneaking into the hole, which makes me think that it’s nothing but a black hole gaping at the floor of the dais, with nothing inside it. But Elora is just making her way down as though this isn’t a problem. I want to stop her and ask if she is certain, but the determination on her face and her slow deliberate movements are the answer for me. I peek down and notice that she’s holding onto metal bars and not just floating down, but this does very little to assure me. The darkness reminds me of shadows. And shadows remind me of my magic. The magic that killed those innocent guards. The magic that poisoned them to death, blackened their veins, and mangled their bodies. . . . “Are you going to follow me or not?” Elora’s voice, thin and fragile and barely audible, snaps me out of my reverie. I quickly nod