The ministers all lowered their heads, avoiding his glare.
“The subject of the boy.” Tejus broke the silence with a tone that gave no indication of the threat that he’d just made against his council. “I wish to have him located as swiftly as possible. I don’t wish more effort to be expended on this than is necessary. Commander Varga, can we spare men?” Tejus turned to the commander.
“We can. Five will be enough,” Commander Varga replied in the same brisk tone.
“Your highness—” The first minister wavered.
“What now, Qentos?” Tejus interjected in exasperation.
“Should we be expending our men to help with such a…trifle of a matter?”
The minister quailed under Tejus’s answering glare.
“These particular humans assisted me in the trials. It is my responsibility—and surely,” Tejus continued with a smirk, “you too are grateful, Qentos, that it is I who succeeded in the trials, are you not? Don’t you wish to repay the favor?”
“Of course, your highness,” said the minister, color rising in his cheeks.
“I thought so,” Tejus replied. “Then the matter is settled. Five guards under the command of Varga will seek out the wayfaring human.”
I heaved a sigh of relief.
The ministers started to draw back their chairs from the table. There was no muttering now, only the sound of grating wood against stone, and their rapid footsteps as they all hurried from the room.
Commander Varga approached the table.
“Your Highness, I will dispatch the men in an hour.” He bowed slightly and then turned to me. “Do you have any indication of where he might have gone?”
“I suppose…we didn’t want it to be true, but probably to find the borders. He wanted to get out—but … but none of us would take him seriously.” I stumbled, feeling ashamed that it had come to this. “We were waiting for Tejus or Ash to ask the ministers to lift them…” I stared around the empty room.
What a waste of time that had been.
“You were right to wait. No human can lift them,” Commander Varga stated, but not unkindly. “We will find him, Hazel Achilles.”
“Thank you,” I murmured. I was so grateful for his help, but I couldn’t help feeling that we’d abandoned our friend. The last time I’d seen Julian he’d told me that he’d informed Ruby about the stone—and I’d been so annoyed with him, annoyed that he’d exposed my secret. More worried about Tejus being disqualified than Julian’s feelings, or even Ruby’s feelings.
What had I done?
Commander Varga nodded, and then, after placing a hand briefly on Tejus’s shoulder, he left the room. I looked over at Tejus. He was still seated in his chair, looking out to the morning light that was coming through the windows, deep in thought—his brow creased in concentration.
“What’s going on, Tejus?” I demanded.
We had gotten so far—so close to getting the borders open, the whole reason that I’d agreed to assist him in the trials—and I couldn’t quite believe that we were being held up by a bunch of whispering sentries, who to me all seemed pretty useless in the grand scheme of things.
He ran his knuckles beneath his jaw, and then with a sigh he turned to me.
“I don’t know. I don’t truly understand their reluctance. To wait until we appoint a new emperor is madness—who knows how long those trials will take…but then the matter of my father’s death is still unresolved. I wonder if that is the true motive behind their opposition to my request.”
“But that’s ridiculous!” I retorted. “Can’t we at least lower them just so we can leave—and then put them back up again?”
Tejus smiled bleakly. “It doesn’t quite work like that. It takes a tremendous amount of power to uphold such a large boundary—lowering it for even a moment would require a prodigious effort from the ministers. I can’t do it without them.”
I groaned in frustration. “But they’re the ones who put it up in the first place, right? They got the Hellswan borders open – why not the outer ones?”
“I thought so,” Tejus replied softly, staring back off into the distance again, the furrow returning to his brow.
“What do you mean, you thought so? Who else would have done it?”
A flash of irritation crossed his face, and he glared at me.
“Hazel, I find this as frustrating as you do. I too want the borders opened. But I have to question everything at this stage…there is something that I’m missing here.”
That silenced me. What had he said earlier? That the humans were wasting his resources. His rejection and dismissal of me hurt more than I’d ever thought words could. Growing up in The Shade I’d understood the dangers of the supernatural—fangs, spells, claws, those were dangers that I was always half-ready for. I’d read countless romances, and I understood the language of heartbreak, but I’d always dismissed it as the bump in the road before people found their happy ending. I just wasn’t prepared for it to hurt so…physically.
Have I gone and fallen in love with him?
Is that what this pain is?
“Because you want me gone?” I dared to ask—testing my theory, morbidly wondering how much he could hurt me.
A long silence ensued, and Tejus wouldn’t meet my questioning gaze.
“It’s safer for you,” he managed eventually.
“Is that the only reason?”
He looked slowly up at me, eyes black, his mouth cut in an uncompromising line, and a faint color burning at his cheekbones.
“Yes.”
Liar.
I left him sitting in the council room, moving through the doorway as fast as I could without betraying my desperation to get a million miles’ distance between us. When I reached the hallway, I ran.
Ruby
After our fruitless search for Julian, we’d all taken ourselves back to the living quarters. The kids taken in from the trials were all still more subdued than I was comfortable with—I felt that they should have recovered from the mind syphoning by now, but their mental barriers probably weren’t as strong as ours.
To get some privacy, Ash, Benedict, Jenney, Yelena and I had all locked ourselves in my room, the largest in our living quarters. As glad as I was that we were all together, I couldn’t help but wish Ash and I could get some time on our own. Every so often I could feel his eyes traveling over to me, or he would place a reassuring hand near mine, and I guessed that he was feeling the same way too. But we hadn’t had a chance to speak about what had happened between us after the trials. With all the celebrations and then Julian vanishing, I’d not had a moment to process how I felt about Ash, or really, about us.
It felt strange to be having romantic feelings toward a sentry. The supernatural wasn’t anything new to me, but before Nevertide I’d never come across anything like the sentries, and there was still so much I felt I didn’t know about them as a species—or Ash himself. For the most part, Ash always seemed so human to me, but then he would do something, like show me his True Sight abilities, or reference strange food, strange customs, and I would feel separate from him, knowing that our worlds were miles apart.
“What do we do now?” Jenney addressed the room.
I was brought back into the present with a jolt. My focus needed to be on Julian, not my feelings for Ash.
Pull yourself together.
“I think we need to start widening our search, going outside the castle for starters,” I replied. “Maybe he hasn’t gotten far, especially if he was traveling at night.”
Ash looked out of the window. “I don’t know…sunset will be in an hour or so, I don’t think it’s sensible for us to go out at night either.”
I followed his gaze. He was right. I could see the darkening sky and the sun slowly turning redder as it began its descent.
“Have we been looking that long?” I asked, confused.
“The days are getting shorter. We’re in the ninth moon now. Colder too—another reason I’d say that
we should wait until morning to look for Julian again.”
I had no idea what Ash meant. Was it that the seasons were changing here already? I looked out at the trees, and I could see the dark greens of their leaves were already starting to yellow and age. Wow. It had seemed like the beginning of summer when we’d arrived.
Did time warp in Nevertide?
I guessed we’d only find out once we left.
“So we wait, then?” Jenney replied resignedly.
“I guess we do.” I didn’t like the idea any more than she did, but I didn’t feel like we had a choice. Maybe if it was just Ash and me on our own, I’d be more willing to venture out—but there was no way I was taking Benedict out of the castle after dark.
“Okay,” Jenney replied with a sigh. “Come on, Yelena, let’s get some rest.”
I looked over at the young girl in the corner. Her eyelids had already started to droop as we’d been talking. She was leaning, unaware, toward Benedict, who was eyeing her half-asleep form with his arms tightly folded.
“You too, Benedict.”
He grumbled at me, but rose to his feet and padded out behind the girls.
Ash was sitting at one end of the bed, and me at the other. He made no motion to get up and move, so I smiled tentatively at him, wanting more than anything for him to stay.
“So, how are you doing?” he asked eventually, color rising in his cheeks.
I could feel the tension growing in the room, and I too blushed as I replied, “Fine. You?”
“Good. I think we probably need to talk about—”
“Hey.” Hazel poked her head around the door, cutting Ash off. “Am I interrupting?” she asked, looking at us both.
“No,” I replied too hastily. “It’s fine.”
“Tejus has guards looking for Julian,” Hazel said. “They’re out there now, searching around the borders.” She came to sit down next to me on the bed. I shoved over to give her space, and she nestled her frame against me. There was something not quite right with Hazel—I could tell when my friend was out of sorts, and I’d never seen her look quite as miserable as this.
“Are you all right?” I asked her softly. “That’s good news about Julian, right?”
“Yeah, it is. Sorry. I just feel a bit…” She trailed off. I got the impression that she didn’t want to discuss anything further in front of Ash, which meant her problems were personal. And judging by the look on her face, they were Tejus-related. I left it alone.
“What about the borders?” I asked. “When are they lifting them?”
“That’s part of the problem,” she replied, her voice hardening. “The ministers have lifted the Hellswan borders, but not the Nevertide borders. They’re saying that it’s not a good idea right now—not when there’s no emperor in place.”
Ash muttered a profanity under his breath. “I knew it. This is so typical.”
“It’s the ministers,” Hazel continued, “they’re hesitating for some reason—and I don’t think it really has anything to do with the lack of an emperor, but that’s what they’re saying. They said they’d discuss it with Tejus in private.”
“That’s convenient.” Ash snorted with derision. I cast him a warning glare.
“It’s not Tejus. He wants the borders lifted.” Hazel looked so lost all of a sudden. As much as I privately agreed with Ash—Tejus was king now, I doubted that much happened without his say-so—I wanted to comfort my friend more than start an argument about who was to blame. That would no doubt happen later.
“When did you last eat?” I asked Hazel, noticing how pale she looked.
“At the council meeting —I’m fine… I probably just need some sleep.”
“I agree, but you should eat some more first,” I replied firmly.
“We can go down to the kitchens,” Ash said, standing up from the bed. “Come on.”
Ash found us some leftovers, and we sat around a chopping board gnawing on cheese and bread. Seeing Ash back in the kitchen, and the ease with which he moved around the place, prompted me to ask what he’d be doing in Hellswan now—I hadn’t seen him return to kitchen duties, but didn’t know if it was a special holiday he’d been allowed or if it was a permanent thing.
He shrugged in reply. “Not sure. Usually when someone competes in the championships it changes how they’re seen…but no one of common blood has ever gotten as far as I did—the sons and daughters of ministers, they’re usually the ones who compete, then they become ministers too.”
“Has anyone of common blood ever become a minister?” I asked, finding the term ‘common’ to describe Ash a bit hard to take. The social hierarchy in Nevertide did my head in—the fact that anyone could enter the kingship championships was impressively democratic, but we’d seen first-hand the bias of the ministers on point scoring.
“Not that I know of. Some must have, a long time ago. But the ministers…they like to keep their circle tight.”
“Tell me about it,” muttered Hazel darkly.
“Have you thought about asking Tejus? Asking to join his ministry?” I asked.
Ash nearly spat out his bread, and then roared with laughter. I glanced over at Hazel, but she looked as baffled by his outburst as I did.
“No!” he gasped out eventually. “No Hellswan would give me a job if I was the last sentry in Nevertide.” He wiped tears of mirth from his cheeks. “No offense,” he added after a moment, looking at Hazel.
“None taken,” she muttered.
“Well, I don’t see why,” I continued. “You helped each other in the trials. He’s no Jenus.”
“No—I don’t think the ministers here would take kindly to a kitchen boy joining their little secret meetings. I’d always be an outsider,” he added more somberly.
That I understood, as unfair as it was.
“They’d be lucky to have you,” I murmured, slightly embarrassed that Hazel was with us. She and I hadn’t spoken about what had been going on with Ash and me, but judging from the small smile she was directing at the plate in front of her, she was starting to guess.
“Thanks, Shortie.” Ash shot me a warm smile and reached for my hand under the table. I grasped it tightly, my heartbeat jumping a little while I tried to pretend, for Hazel’s sake, that everything was perfectly normal.
Ash saw my unease, and the furtive glance I’d given Hazel. Giving me another squeeze, he released my hand.
“I’m going to call it a night. We’ll go out early in the morning, look around the village. We’ll have better luck than the guards there, the townspeople will be more inclined to talk to us.”
“Good night then,” I replied softly.
“’Night, Ash.” Hazel yawned. She was looking a bit better color-wise, though obviously still tired, but I was glad I’d forced her to eat something.
“Are you really okay?” I asked her once Ash had left the room.
“I’m not sure. It’s Tejus.” She fiddled with a piece of bread, avoiding looking at me. “It’s gotten… complicated somehow.”
I knew that feeling.
“He’s quite a… complicated character,” I replied slowly, picking my words carefully.
“Yeah, you can say that again.” She sighed. “I thought he might actually like me, but now I’m not sure. I don’t even know why I care.”
“Well, you obviously do… Think of your grandma, Sofia. I bet Derek was the last person in the world she thought she’d fall in love with.”
Hazel smiled. “But I bet my grandpa was less of a total ass.”
We shared a chuckle. Sofia might have a different opinion on that, given Derek’s dark history.
It felt good to finally be spending alone time with Hazel. It had been too long. Though our evening was overshadowed by Julian’s disappearance, I felt lighter than I had in a long time.
“Just follow your heart.” I nudged Hazel, giving her a cheesy grin. “Isn’t that what your books tell you, anyway?”
Hazel rolled her eyes. “I don’t think they
’d be so keen on that mantra if they’d ever met Tejus… but you too, Ruby. Don’t think I can’t see what’s been going on between you and Ash.”
I blushed again, fiercely. Hazel smirked. “Don’t worry, I don’t need a play-by-play, just as long as he makes you happy… And I think he does.”
“He does,” I managed, my cheeks heating. More than I care to admit.
Julian
When I woke it was dark. After I’d met Queen Trina Seraq in the courtyard of her palace, she’d escorted me to a lavishly decorated room that I’d been locked in all day. I’d tried a million times to pry open the door, which wouldn’t budge and eventually in frustration I’d given up. After that, I kept dropping off to sleep, not knowing what else I was supposed to do. There was one large window in the room, without bars or glass, but when I’d taken a chance and tried to climb out, I’d been faced with a sheer drop down to the ocean below, with nothing but air between me and the rocky shore.
I was well and truly trapped.
Now I sat up on the bed, shivering in the cold night air that came hurtling off the sea. Walking over to a large closet, I rifled through shelves of blankets and robes, picking the thickest and wrapping it around me. In front of the window, I’d been left a platter of exotic fruit, but after seeing the presence of nymphs in the castle, I wasn’t so sure what I should or shouldn’t be eating. I wouldn’t be surprised if the brightly saturated food was poisonous, or at least contained hallucinatory properties.
No, thanks.
I paced up and down the room, more to keep warm than anything else.
I tried to work out why Queen Trina wanted me here. Clearly she was manipulating Benedict somehow, but I just couldn’t understand why. When I’d seen him in the hallways of the castle that night he’d seemed to be acting alone, but what I’d assumed was sleepwalking was probably some spell or hypnotism—and maybe Queen Trina was behind it all. The last thing I’d seen before blacking out and being dragged away was Ruby falling to the floor with Benedict standing over her, completely motionless, as if he didn’t even recognize her. I felt sick when I recalled the image, not knowing whether she was alive or dead. But why had Queen Trina taken me? She could have just knocked me out…unless I’d seen too much already.