Two Worlds of Redemption Page 4

  “That is before Corey and you came along.” Jemin’s eyebrows climbed toward his hairline.

  Maray watched him quietly for a moment. Shalleyn demons. Laura and Maray had been on the right track. She wasn’t sure, though, if she was pleased or terrified. But in no way had she thought of Gan Krai as powerful enough to ban an entire group of demons—in whatever way banning worked. He was the one making everything more of a theoretical concept than real-life experience documentation in his books. Everything that involved magic passing through more than one layer of skin was virtually impossible in Gan Krai’s eyes. He had written about it in his ‘Laws and Rituals’, and Maray had studied the book backward and forward to understand some of the basics in order to control her magic. Talismans that protected someone, bracelets with magic resources, which could heal soldiers in the field, sleeping potions. And once magic was stored in an object, it became bland, less powerful. All it could do was follow the exact rules of a spell that was connected to its release. Also, the longer magic was stored in an object, the weaker it became. It was like a shimmer of brass that turned green over time.

  “I thought Krai was more of a scholar than an actual warlock,” Maray suggested. “His book reads more like a history and law textbook rather than an actual magic-book.”

  “You mean an instruction-book,” Jemin corrected. “And, yes, Gan Krai was a real warlock, always testing the limits of his magic. But he never managed battle magic or double-layered skin-passing.” Jemin’s forehead creased. “Why do you think they call gifted warlocks such as Corey ‘devil-children’?”

  Maray watched the cleft between Jemin’s eyebrows deepen.

  “They are unexplained phenomena even Gan Krai was afraid of. Hundreds of years ago, people hunted them down and drowned them for fear of what would become of them if they grew up and developed full power.”

  Maray shuddered. “Like a witch-hunt.” She thought of history books and religion. Inquisition. Burning people at stakes. “This is like medieval Europe,” she commented, half-aware she was even speaking.

  “That might be because it’s only been since Gan Krai that the borders between the worlds have been sealed and guarded the way they are now.”

  “And before?”

  “They were closed, but there was trade between the worlds which allowed for smugglers and creatures to pass through in both directions.” Jemin’s young face was shaded by a sudden wisdom Maray had never before appreciated. “What do you think your witches were?”

  Maray waited for an answer. She knew magic didn’t work in the other world. Any warlock who passed through lost their power while in the other realm. And while they might go to the other world and take a tourist-look at the palace without needing one of those magical bracelets, they’d never return without one. “Enlighten me.”

  Jemin took a deep breath, as if he was going to hold a lecture. “They were of this realm. Warlocks who travelled and never found a way back,” he confirmed Maray’s thoughts. “They were trying to retrieve their powers and cross the borders once more, but they never stood a chance. Not unless they went to the one, dangerous group that had powers in the other world.” He gave Maray a significant look. “The Shalleyn.”

  “They smuggled warlocks?” Maray wondered.

  “More or less. The Shalleyn used to secretly control the flow of magically-capable across the borders of Allinan. Until Gan Krai banned them.” Jemin shifted his legs as if he wanted to get to his feet, but remained where he was. “The Shalleyn helped the warlocks use their magic in order to cross the borders, but in return, they always wanted the same thing—power in Allinan. And the ones who didn’t pay up were returned out of Allinan and sold out to the Inquisition.”

  Maray listened intently as Jemin painted a picture of how inter-woven their two worlds actually had been in the past. But the thought of demons wandering right under her nose in the other world made her uneasy. At least now in Allinan, no matter what other dangers there were, she should be safe from demons. “But they were banned by Gan Krai, right?” she voiced her hope.

  “They were,” Jemin confirmed once again. “But that doesn’t mean they haven’t done things to gain power in Allinan. Look at Rhia and her plan. If we look at the history of Shalleyn and their ‘assistance’ of warlocks in the other world—for a price—who knows if the revolutionaries and Rhia are the only fractions plotting in secret at court.”

  Maray instantly thought of Neelis LeBronn and his pack of Yutu-shifters. Her mother didn’t trust them as much as she should after they broke her out of the dungeons. Was there more to Neelis’ story than he actually let on?

  “Rhia has promised the Shalleyn Allinan if they help her reopen the rift,” Jemin informed her as if this was old news. And to her own surprise, his words didn’t truly shock her. Something about Rhia’s blind ambitions just didn’t add up. “They have been plotting for a while, letting the public forget about the First Breach of Dimensions, getting rid of liabilities…”

  “Like your father,” Maray added in.

  “Like my father,” Jemin confirmed. “But Rhia’s plan was a different one than what she had told them. The same way she betrayed Allinan, she was planning to betray the Shalleyn.”

  An image of grey clouds and smoke and fire rose before Maray’s eyes. Not because she knew what Shalleyn looked like or what would happen if they found out she was about to betray them, but because she felt the need to release her anger in a wildfire.

  “She has been playing with fire,” Jemin said.

  And Maray murmured, “Literally.”

  “They are waiting for her sign to invade Allinan, and Feris might be on his way to them, giving them the go-ahead to help free Rhia.”

  Maray swallowed a lump that was forming in her throat. “When you say ‘invade’ Allinan you mean—?”

  “I mean exactly that.” Jemin’s bright-blue eyes were shadowed waters, with but a speck of light, and that seemed to be there purely by the force of his own will. “Invade.” He tamed back his locks which kept jumping out of his ponytail at every turn of his head. “An invasion by the Shalleyn demons would mean that the Allinan we know and love—with all its beauty and all its dangers—will cease to exist.”

  Maray’s shock was real. Even after little more than a few weeks since her arrival in her world, this world had become her own—with all of its strangeness and restrictions, all of its beauty and the delight of her hard-to-control magic.

  “Mom knows and didn’t tell me,” Maray realized, and for a moment, she softened in her anger toward her mother. “She actually is trying to protect me,” she continued and had another epiphany, “not from the knowledge, but from myself.”

  Jemin didn’t object or add anything that would let her believe that he had been acting on anything other than purely those same intentions. As his eyes tightened a bit under her stare, she knew she was right. This was about so much more than the Shalleyn. It was about her wandering off by herself to save the world—in her case, the world was Jemin—and leaving her family worrying. She could have been killed, and she knew—if nothing else—in Allinan, her blood was worth more than others’. Not just for its magic properties.

  “She is worried I am going to do something stupid,” Maray thought aloud, and when Jemin still didn’t object, “Now is the time for you to say something. Anything.”

  He eyed her with pursed lips and shrugged apologetically, a gesture she’d normally expect from Heck, but Jemin pulled it off just as well. He could as well have been listening to the icy wind outside instead of her words and shown the same reaction.

  Maray ground her teeth and grabbed the armrests of her chair. “Anything else I should know?” Directing her growing disturbance into the cushioned brocade, she managed a somewhat polite tone. “Any other demons? An army at the gates of the palace?”

  “Not in this world,” Jemin stated, and his mouth twitched in a forced grin that indicated he was actually trying to help the situation by using humor.

&nb
sp; “Even Heck wouldn’t joke about something like this,” Maray said with a sour edge, but Jemin’s face relaxed at the mention of Heck’s name.

  “Heck jokes about everything and anything,” he corrected. “Especially dire things. That’s his coping mechanism.”

  Maray pondered for a moment. “If Rhia is telling the truth, she must be getting something out of it—besides the fun of watching all of us go crazy with worry.”

  Jemin nodded. His hand moved onto Maray’s wrist where his fingers were now drawing circles on the bottom of her sleeve. Maray didn’t stop him. His touch brought back the familiar feeling of wanting to be closer to him the way every one of his touches did. She ignored the dull ache to leave everything heavy behind and simply be with him for a moment, just for a kiss, and focused on the matter at hand. Rhia had teamed up with a bunch of power-hungry demons, which were probably even worse than her, and she had betrayed them, leaving a looming sword over Allinan, and all of the Cornay family, if she didn’t keep her word.

  “What is she getting out of telling us?”

  Jemin shook his head. “Now this is something only Rhia herself can answer.” A shimmer of light had returned to his eyes, suggesting he had a plan.

  “What are we going to do?” Maray asked and, by her tone, let Jemin know that by no means was he going to leave her out of whatever happened next.

  “Why don’t we ask her?”

  Maray swallowed signs of increasing distress. “Now?”

  To her relief, Jemin shook his head. “Now, for once, I have you all to myself. He bent forward and pulled her closer with a quick gesture of his slender fingers. He hesitated, the crease on his forehead never truly smoothing, and kissed her, setting off an army of butterflies in her squeamish stomach. “We’ll need to find a time window where we can sneak down there and confront her.”

  “Or we ask Mom,” Maray suggested, but by the look on Jemin’s face, she knew that wasn’t a good idea. “She would never agree to that, am I right?”

  Jemin nodded and brushed his lips against hers in slow motion. “For now, it’s best we act as if you haven’t got a clue. Stay upset with Laura or make up, but don’t let her know I told you—”

  “Or she might take you away from me,” Maray finished his sentence. But Jemin again shook his head, making strands of caramel bounce onto her cheeks.

  “I don’t actually think she’s that cruel. She wants you to be happy.”

  “I am happy with you.” Maray wondered if she sounded like a defiant child to him or if he felt the same.

  “For now, focus on all your court duties, and let me do the rest,” he whispered in her ear as he grazed along the side of her face, and Maray wondered, if she opened her eyes, beneath the crease on his forehead, she’d find the blue fire in his eyes. “Don’t you have princess stuff to do?” he joked, tone lighter than before. “Picking a handmaiden?” He reminded her of what she had been dreading almost equally as facing her evil grandmother or her accomplices.

  She nodded into his kiss. “I have no idea what to expect,” she admitted.

  “I’ve heard ‘handmaiden choosings’ can be quite interesting,” said Jemin with the slightest of chuckles.

  “I’ve heard the same. I’d rather go straight to the dungeons. At least I know what to expect there.”

  “I’ll let you know when it’s time to face the monster.”

  “Which one?”

  Corey

  Corey’s fingers were impossible to control. It had been one week since she had watched the crowd cheer for their new princess. It was as if they believed anything that came from the court. Rhia had done a great job over those past twenty-something years. What exactly had she done? She hadn’t been visible except to the elect three of her council, and she had spent her days plotting to take over both worlds. And at the top of her team, Master Feris, the court warlock and Corey’s adoptive father. As if that wasn’t enough, none of her experiments worked. While Jem and Heck had been spending the days either guarding Maray or questioning Rhia in the dungeons, after putting up the wards to keep anything from crossing between worlds there, her assignment and only task was to find out what exactly Rhia was; if she was still human, if she was a demon, if she was some other sort of creature that wasn’t documented in the books.

  With Gan Krai’s ‘Laws and Rituals’ on her lap, she kept going back and forth between possibilities with a small piece of Rhia’s skin in a Petri dish, and nothing happened.

  “You don’t look so great.” Wil’s gentle tone came from the side, observing what had to be obvious on her dark features. Even if she was sitting bent over the lab desk, curls hiding what she hoped was most of her face, she couldn’t hide much from Wil and his trained soldier-eyes.

  With a sigh, she set down the tweezers in her left hand and turned to the side to find Wil closer than she had expected. “Just…” She stopped, not even bothering to explain, and thought of her childhood and how Feris had protected her, how he had helped her learn about her gifts, and how he had always made sure she was taken care of. She shook her head.

  “What are you trying this time?” He pulled one of the chairs from the small round table in the back of the room closer and settled down, resting his chin in his hand.

  Corey eyed the setup before her. A Petri dish, a couple of flasks and bottles, and one tiny piece of evil queen. “What happened to her?” she asked instead of answering his question. “The First Breach of Dimensions must have really destroyed her substance. How has she been running around for decades without falling apart?”

  Wil raised one ginger eyebrow and reached for the tweezers. Corey, with a fast, slender hand, smacked his grasp away before his fingers had even closed around the metal instrument. “I am failing enough without your interference,” she explained sourly and picked up a scalpel from the low shelf behind the desk.

  “You know, if you let me help, I might actually be able to contribute something to this situation.”

  Corey gave him a sideways glance which, she hoped, was going to make clear that even his six-pack and incredible smile couldn’t rescue the situation. “I need to figure out what Feris did,” she said more to herself. “Better, how he did it.” She flipped a page over in ‘Laws and Rituals’, and it dawned on her.

  With a movement so quick it startled even skilled soldier Wil, Corey dropped her tools and was on her feet, already roaming the shelves at the back of the room, when Wil appeared beside her, his face one big question mark.

  “Where is it?” She didn’t stop to pick up the bundle of herbs she accidentally pushed off the boards, but continued ferociously along the rows of books.

  “Where is what?” Wil followed her cautiously.

  “Feris’ version of ‘Laws and Rituals’ had extra chapters,” Corey explained half-heartedly, disgruntled enough with her slow progress—nonexistent progress.

  An image of the page with the binding spell flickered through her mind. She remembered scribbles and burn marks. But where was the actual book? Had Feris taken it with him when he had bolted from court with Rhia?

  Wil eyed her and kept shadowing her every move until she stopped in the middle of a stride and spun around, facing him with slit eyes. “A little bit of space if you don’t mind.”

  Wil’s lips twitched at the sides. “You know, you are adorable when you are annoyed with me.” He didn’t shy away from her the way others would, even knowing she was a devil-child, her power second only to Maray and the evil queen herself. His eyes, warm and welcoming, didn’t blink as he measured her. “You are beautiful, Corey. You are strong and fierce and gifted…” He paused to pull one of her rogue curls out of her face. “You can do anything.”

  Corey considered melting away on the spot but couldn’t get her mind to focus on anything but the fact that she needed Feris’ book to figure out what he’d done with that binding spell. She reached for the seam of Wil’s shirt with a slow gesture and played with the heavy fabric. “You could find Feris for me,” she said, mor
e a thought than a request, but Wil’s reaction was instantaneous. A sweet smile on his lips, he wrapped his hand around her fiddling one and pulled it upward along his chest.

  “Anything for you, Corey.” He bowed all knightly before he kissed the back of her hand. Then, leaving her in a momentary spiral of hormones, Wil turned and marched out the door, picking up his cloak from the hook beside the entrance on his way.

  “I didn’t actually mean now—” Corey called after him, finding herself able, for the first time in days, to think about something other than the evil queen or her absent adoptive father and court warlock. But Wil had slipped out the door, leaving it to fall shut with the familiar bang.

  For a minute, maybe longer, Corey remained there by the shelf, staring into her memories of Feris. She had stored blood for him; ‘“the Queen’s blood,” he had said, “In case anything happens to her, and needs a special healing spell”. By now, Corey suspected that ‘special healing spell’ was probably directly connected to Rhia’s eternal life—if it was even Rhia’s blood… Another scenario opened up in Corey’s mind. What if the blood was the blood Feris had used to experiment on Langley and Neelis with? Both of them, the former ambassador and the nobleman, had been turned into Yutu-shifters through the injection of Yutu blood into their system.

  Corey couldn’t help but marvel at what magic could potentially do. Feris had turned humans into Yutu and helped Rhia become immortal through a binding spell. Maray and Corey herself had used the type of battle magic Gan Krai had always warned about in his books and talked about as hypothetical, theoretical concepts. What if all theories were actual possibilities and their execution only depended on the power of the warlock? What else was possible?

  Before she could wrap her head around the amazing horizon that magic potentially held, Corey’s mind went back to the darker sides. The binding spell. If she could find a way to break it, Rhia would no longer be a threat and Maray no longer a target.

  Corey shoved her hands into her pockets and rested her frizzy hair against the shelf. “Where are you, Feris?”