In the blink of an eye he had her thrown across the room and pushed up against a wall, her arms pinned above her head, his body pressed firmly against hers to trap her in place.
Panicking now, she struggled fiercely against him, but his hold on her was unyielding. She bucked her torso to no avail. She kicked out at him, but he just moved to the side. She even tried head-butting him, but he just laughed and swiftly moved out of range. In her horror-stricken state, she couldn’t begin to try tapping into her Meyarin abilities, and her human weakness meant she was entirely at his disposal.
“Keep fighting, sweet,” his greasy voice whispered into her ear, sounding sickly satisfied by her miserable attempts to free herself.
“Let go of me!” Alex shrieked in his face again. Then, appealing to their riveted audience, she yelled, “Please! Someone help me!” Knowing her common words were useless, she managed to call up what Roka had taught her last night and cried, “Nalahi suros rae!” But still, no one moved to intervene, not even Tohro, who had slunk back behind the bar and was wiping glasses to avoid her pleading gaze.
What was wrong with these people? Why were they just allowing this thug of a Meyarin to attack her in front of them?
She heard the door to the tavern blow open just as Skraegon grabbed both of her wrists in one hand, freeing his other to wander sleazily down her body.
Repulsed by his touch, Alex renewed her frantic struggle against him, but still to no effect. She sucked in a shuddering, horrified lungful of air and screamed one more time straight into his face, as loud and shrill as she possibly could, “LET ME GO!”
And then suddenly she wasn’t propped up against him anymore, because he was ripped away and tossed into a table across the room.
“It appears the girl wants to be released, Skraegon,” the rain-soaked newcomer said, his voice low and furious. But more than that, it was familiar.
He had his back to her, but even dressed in sodden, tattered clothing, Alex would have recognised his dark-skinned, bulky physique anywhere.
“Zain?” Her voice was barely a whisper, but it was enough for his Meyarin ears to catch, and he turned back to look at her in puzzlement. Her eyes widened as Skraegon took advantage of his distraction and leapt forward. “Zain, look out!”
Her future friend turned back just in time to duck Skraegon’s attack. What proceeded next was the bar brawl to end all bar brawls, with suddenly everyone jumping in on the action. The Meyarins moved like flashes, so fast that Alex was unable to track them with her human sight, but she was still too freaked out to try and calm down enough to access her heightened senses. More than ever, she wished she’d had more training on how to act like a Meyarin, because instead of grabbing Zain and fighting their way out of there together, she was stuck cowering in the corner, waiting and hoping that they would both make it out in one piece.
A crackle of thunder roared so loudly from outside that Alex had to clap her hands over her ears, along with many of the fighting Meyarins who had to pause mid-attack to do so. A heartbeat later came a lightning strike so close and full of energy that her hair stood on end, but that wasn’t all that happened. Somehow the strike caused the low-lit myraes illuminating the tavern to splutter out as if blowing a fuse. Instant darkness surrounded them, with unending surges of lightning from outside keeping the well-seeing Meyarins nearly as blind as Alex with her mortal sight.
When someone grabbed her in the dark, she didn’t hesitate to throw her free hand out in a solid uppercut to what she presumed was her assailant’s jaw. A low curse came in response, and recognising the tone of Zain’s voice, Alex cried out, “Crap, I’m sorry!”
He uttered another terse oath and started dragging her after him in the pitch-black, lightning stunned tavern.
She followed without question, even when he led her outside onto the stormy street and started jogging down the alley. She kept up as best as she could despite the blinding flashes, deafening thunder and piercing rain, only managing to do so because he wasn’t using Meyarin speed.
When they were what Alex judged to be about three blocks away from The Scarlet Thief, Zain yanked her to the side of the road and kicked open a doorway, pushing her inside ahead of him.
Gasping for breath in the shadowy room, Alex bent at the waist, placing her hands on her knees to steady her raging heartbeat. A light bloomed into existence when Zain lit a sconce of myraes and shadows flickered around the dilapidated room they were in, bouncing across his uncharacteristically scruffy and rain-drenched features.
“Thanks so much for your help back there,” Alex told him wholeheartedly, wiping her scraggly wet hair off her face. Seeing his questioning look at her use of the common tongue, she repeated what she could in broken Meyarin, “Atari sae… suros… Narsae de Trigon.”
“How do you speak the tongue of mortals so well and yet you do not know your own language?”
Alex blinked at him, stunned. “You know the common tongue?”
Zain crossed his massive arms and water fell from the creases in his shabby clothes. “Much of my time is spent amongst mortals. It helps if we can understand each other.”
Confused and quite frankly feeling out of her right mind, Alex said, “But… how can you spend much time with them if you’re busy leading the Zeltora? Don’t you have responsibilities with Roka?”
The look Zain levelled towards Alex made her feel as if she were a few too many seeds short of a strawberry.
“Roka? As in, Prince Roka?” Zain let out a burst of laughter. “He’d call for my imprisonment before so much as thinking of allowing me into his precious elite guard.” He snorted, still amused but why, Alex had no idea. “What is this nonsense of which you speak?”
“But… If you’re not with Roka or the Zeltora… Then…” Alex looked around the empty room in helpless confusion. “Didn’t he send you to come find me tonight? Isn’t that why you saved me?”
Zain shrugged carelessly, more water sloshing with the movement. “Narsae de Trigon might not be the most reputable establishment, but you learn to ignore the regulars after you’ve tasted their glaeron. You won’t find a finer brew anywhere else in the city.”
“Wait… Are you saying…?”
“I was on my way there for a drink when I heard your screams from down the street,” Zain told her. “It’s suicide to call the Valispath in a storm like this, otherwise I would have made it to you sooner. But you at least looked like you were holding your own when I arrived, I’ll give you that.”
It was Alex’s turn to snort. “I don’t think so. That Skraegon guy was about to—about to—” She couldn’t finish the sentence, not allowing her mind to go there.
“Skraegon is a bully,” Zain said, his voice harsh. “Tonight wasn’t the first time he and I have scrapped. And since he continues to ignore common decency, it likely won’t be the last.”
“Scrapped?” Alex repeated, incredulous at his choice of description. “That’s what you call what happened tonight?”
“Tonight was nothing.” Zain brushed aside her concern with a wave of his hand, flinging more water everywhere. “But back to the prince—you seem under the impression that he sent me after you like some hound doing his master’s bidding, but you’re wrong. I just happened upon you at the right time to hear your distress, nothing more.”
Reeling from the idea that Zain and Roka weren’t, well, Zain and Roka, all Alex could do was nod and offer her gratitude again. “Well, thank you, Zain. I really appreciate you stepping in for me.”
Eyeing her thoughtfully, Zain’s lips pursed at what he saw. He raised his hands to unclasp his cloak, swinging it from his shoulders—again, with water flying everywhere—and then stepped determinedly towards Alex, handing it to her. “Here. It’s only wet on the outside. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you look like you’re freezing.”
That’s because Alex was freezing—from the rain and wind, but more from the shock of the last twenty minutes. However, she also knew Meyarins were supposed to be
hardier than humans. A little storm shouldn’t have caused her to be so shiveringly cold, regardless of how minimal her clothing was.
“Thanks again,” Alex said quietly, throwing his bulky cloak around her, pleasantly surprised to discover his words true since it offered instant, dry heat.
“You can thank me properly by telling me two things,” he returned, his dark eyes watching her closely. “First, why would the crown prince send his Zeltora after you?”
That was easy, at least.
“I’m a guest of the palace,” Alex answered. “I was meant to meet with Roka tonight but I spent the day in the city with Aven. He, uh, had to take off unexpectedly, leaving me to walk back. I figured since I didn’t make my meeting with Roka that he would have found out what happened and sent someone to come find me.”
“Why didn’t you use the Valispath? The storm didn’t begin until after sundown. You could have activated it anytime before then.”
“I’m new to Meya,” Alex said, mentally adding, this one, anyway. “There’s a lot I don’t know, including how to call upon the Eternal Path.”
Zain’s eyes narrowed. “How can you be new to Meya if you are Meyarin?”
“I grew up with humans,” Alex said as casually as she could manage, neither accepting nor denying his assertion of her race. “I don’t know anything about Meya or the ways of Meyarins—including how to activate the Valispath. Roka and Aven have just started to teach me.”
Zain placed his hands on his hips, his stance wide, his features alert. “That brings me to the second thing you’re going to tell me.”
“And that is?”
“You know me,” he accused. “You called my name back in Narsae de Trigon, but I’ve never seen you before. I want to know how you know who I am, and I want to know right now.”
Alex stilled, and all she could think was, Well, triple crap.
Eighteen
“You called me by my name,” Zain repeated when Alex remained silent. “Without hesitation, like you knew exactly who I was.”
She quickly tried to recover from her unnatural stillness and lack of speech, figuring her only option was to lie. “No, I didn’t.”
His lips thinned. “You said it twice in the tavern; once just my name, the second time you yelled, ‘Zain, look out!’”
“You’re name’s Zain?” Alex asked, playing dumb. “That’s so weird—I was actually calling out ‘rain’ since the door was open and the rain was blowing inside from the wind. Half the benches in there were wood which would have ended up wet and rotting, and no one wants to sit on rotting wood, don’t you agree?” Reading his expression, she cleared her throat. “So you must have heard me wrong. But nice to meet you, Zain. I’m Ale—Aeylia.”
His voice was dripping with disbelief when he repeated, “Ale-Aeylia?”
At the second stuff up of her name that day, Alex wondered what the chances were of her stepping outside and convincing the lightning to strike her. Given her lack of fortune to date, it would be more likely to strike everywhere else and she’d still be left facing the irate Meyarin across from her, only surrounded by more water and wind than the dark, abandoned room they currently inhabited.
“That’s right,” she said, rallying. “But mostly I’m known here as Aeylia. Fewer syllables. Easier to say. You know how it is.” She almost tacked on a question about whether ‘Zain’ was short for anything, but she figured she was already pushing her luck.
She was right.
“Well, Aeylia,” Zain said, his tone as hard as his features, “even if I believed for one second that you called out, ‘Rain, look out!’ back at the bar—which I don’t—then how do you explain two minutes ago when you thanked me by name?”
Flipping heck. Alex had done that.
“I’m a mind reader,” she blurted out, wincing internally at how stupid she sounded.
Zain shook his head. “Try again.”
“No, really,” she said, rolling with it. “Right now, for example, you’re thinking I’m crazy.”
“And right now I’m thinking those might be the only true words I’ve heard you say all night.”
It seemed they were at an impasse. Zain’s stance was unwavering, but Alex couldn’t give him what he wanted to hear. She let out a deep sigh, her shoulders slumping.
“Zain, please,” she said in a quiet voice. “I know you have absolutely no reason to trust me, but I’m asking you—I’m begging you—please let this go.”
He held her gaze, his own eyes roaming over her face, reading her. She forced herself to maintain eye contact, only blinking again when he gave one short, terse nod.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll let it go, but only if you swear by the stars that you’ll answer one day.”
Alex bobbed her head emphatically. “That I can do.” One day in the far, far future she would do exactly that.
“Swear it.”
Unsure exactly what to say, Alex made it up on the fly. “Uh, I swear by the stars that one day I’ll tell you how I know your name.”
Jaw clenched, it was Zain’s turn to sigh, and Alex wasn’t sure if it was in frustration, acceptance or both.
“It sounds like the storm’s fading,” he said, holding to his promise to let it go. “You should be fine to head back out there now.”
Alex mustered up her best cutesy-cute expression and socked it to him. Apparently even immortal, badass Meyarins weren’t immune to her doe-eyed, ‘please-help-poor-little-old-me’ expression, since he sighed again, much deeper this time.
“The Valispath should be safe again,” he said, stalking past her and towards the door. “Hurry up and I’ll get you back to your prince.”
“He’s not my prince,” Alex stated, rushing after him through the lingering drizzle of rain, the lightning now flashing far off in the distance.
“I don’t care who he is as long as you’re his problem, not mine.”
Alex didn’t deign to respond, but she did pull a face at Zain’s back.
“Move, Aeylia,” Zain barked. “I don’t have all night.”
She jumped, thinking he’d caught her immature gesture, but realised he was just eager to be rid of her. Rolling her eyes at this younger but decidedly crabbier version of Zain, she hurried over to his side and braced herself in preparation for the ground moving out from underneath them. But it didn’t help, as she still went slamming into the barrier.
Ignoring Zain’s disdainful look, she glanced around as they zoomed through the weather-beaten city. The damage was nowhere near as bad as she would have imagined in the storm’s wake. There was hardly any indication that there had been any kind of severe meteorological event at all. Clearly the city was not only architecturally beautiful, but also structurally sound. No wonder it lasted so well throughout the millennia—as Alex could attest to first hand.
When the Valispath came to a stop outside the grand archway entrance to the palace, Alex turned to thank Zain when another voice jumped in before she could speak.
“Aeylia! Thank the light!”
Alex glanced over to see Roka jogging in her direction, soaked from head to toe. The relief on his face was stark as his eyes took her in, assessing her physical state. He then turned to Zain and his features tightened.
“If you hurt her, I swear—”
Zain’s face darkened. “Calm yourself, princeling. Your precious Aeylia is safe. You should be grateful I happened upon her at The Scarlet Thief when I did, otherwise I likely wouldn’t be able to offer the same assurance.”
Alex shuddered, knowing his words were true.
All eyes flicked to her, noting her reaction to words she shouldn’t have comprehended, so she covered by unclasping Zain’s cloak and handing it back to him.
“Thanks for this,” she said.
He didn’t respond other than reaching for the material, and she wondered if perhaps he didn’t want Roka to know he’d understood her use of the common tongue.
Casting one last piercing glare at the prince, Zain took
off on the Valispath again.
Roka watched until he was out of sight before turning to Alex. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Aven said—He told me—” Roka broke off, swiping his drenched dark hair off his face. “Stars, I’m sorry, Aeylia. I don’t know what he was thinking leaving you out here on your own. I never would have asked him to look after you today if I thought he’d abandon you.”
“Hey, it’s okay,” Alex said, placing her freezing fingers on Roka’s arm. Feeling his wet but warm skin, she quickly retracted her hand in renewed realisation that a Meyarin wouldn’t be as cold as she was. “I’m good, see? No harm done.”
He looked at her incredulously. “No harm done? How can you say that when I found you standing at the entrance to the palace with one of Meya’s most notorious criminals?”
Zain, a criminal? Alex couldn’t help it, she burst out laughing.
Roka looked at her in concern. “Come, let’s get you inside. I can’t imagine how you ended up at Narsae de Trigon but you’ve clearly had a traumatic evening. You should rest.”
“Could this place get any weirder?” Alex asked between guffaws as the Valispath zoomed them straight to her bedroom. When they came to a stop in the hallway next to her door, she laughingly added, “Next you’ll be telling me that you and Kyia hate each other.”
Roka’s brow furrowed. “Hate is a very strong word. But I’m surprised you picked up on that—usually we try to hide how we feel about each other when we’re around others.”
That brought Alex up short and she immediately sobered. “Wait, what?” At Roka’s questioning look, she added, “Aren’t you two betrothed?”
It was the prince’s turn to burst out laughing. His head fell back and everything, so great was his mirth. “By all the stars in the sky, where did you hear that?”
Alex felt like everything she knew was crumbling around her. “But you’re… You’re…” She paused, gathered her thoughts, and tried again. “You’re Roka and Kyia. That’s who you are.”
Roka was still laughing as he shook his head. “We put on a good front in public, since both of us grew up in court and know how to play the political game. But we can barely stand each other, Aeylia.”