The escape

“We have to go now.”

I looked into his eyes. I could see the fear in them, making me feel nervous. He’d been in such awful situations before, but I’d never seen him look so scared.

“I’m not going anywhere with you.” I whispered, “I thought I made it clear earlier. I’m with Luca now.”

“This isn’t about that. It’s about your safety,” he urged.

“What is it? I need to warn everyone.” Thoughts of the bomb at my own palace flittered through my head and I could feel the panic starting to rise.

“No time,” urged Cynder. I noticed that in the few moments we were dancing before he spoke to me, he’d been leading me quickly and quietly towards the exit. To me it had been a wonderful dance, for him, it was a way to get me away without being noticed. He pulled me through a door and into a corridor. There was another door open, and by the cold breeze coming through it, I guessed we were heading outside. A small woman in a chef’s outfit handed me a warm woolen shawl as I was pulled through the door. I stumbled as we ran down some stone steps. One of my shoes fell off as we ran. The cold stone against the heel of my foot jolted me back to reality. I turned. If I was in danger, so was everybody else. I couldn’t leave them.

“I have to warn the others,” I said steadfastly. “I’m not going anywhere until Luca knows what’s going on.

“They aren’t after the others. They are after you.”

Cynder pulled me onwards ignoring my protests. I could barely keep up with my one heeled foot and one bare.

A black stallion was waiting for us.

“I can’t go with you,” I cried. “Whatever the danger is, I need to tell Luca’s family.”

A noise rattled past my ear.

“Gunshots!” hissed Cynder, picking me up and practically throwing me on the horse. Knowing we were being shot at was enough to bring me to my senses. I moved back to give Cynder room to jump on. Within seconds we were riding at breakneck speed into the night. I heard another gunshot, but it missed. We were too far away.

“Turn around!” I shouted loudly after ten minutes had passed and we were well out of view of the gunman.

“No can do. You might have made a promise to marry the prince, but I made a promise to protect you. If I turned around now, I’d be breaking that promise.” His voice was whipped up into the howling wind, and I had to strain my ears to hear him. I had no choice but to cling to him and see where it was that we ended up.

We rode like the wind for what felt like hours. I clutched onto Cynder’s waist tightly, afraid that if I let go, I’d fall. Despite the shawl, I was freezing. The wind whipped my hair and rain that had begun to fall was drenching my face. My bare foot felt like ice, and even though my other shoe would probably be useless wherever we were going, it was still better than none. Losing my shoe on the palace steps took me back to last year when Cynder had done the exact same thing. Dropping my shoe at the ball when a bomb went off. It was that action that had made him the prime suspect. No one had ever traced the shoe back to me. They would this time though. I was gone, but my shoe would be still sitting on the steps of the palace, waiting for someone to discover it.

The horse slowed down slightly, so I took the opportunity to look around me. I’d spent most of the journey with my face buried in Cynder’s back and my eyes closed. The lights of Thalia’s capital city twinkled below us, Luca’s parents’ castle easily recognizable in the center. The moon shone out between the grey clouds bathing it in a dull light. I recognized where I was. I’d been here not long before. Cynder had brought me to the mountains between Silverwood and Thalia. This was where I’d been so fearful of my life just days before. How ironic I was back here for my safety. Cynder veered off the road onto a rocky track I’d not seen on the journey here. A sheer cliff fell to one side into a canyon so deep I could barely make out the bottom in the darkness. Eventually, we stopped at a rocky outcrop. Behind a couple of bushes, I could make out the mouth of a cave. Cynder waved his wand, and a fire appeared. The light from it illuminated the cave. It was shallow but had ample cover from the elements. There were two thick blankets and pillows near the front.

Helping me down from the horse, he led me to the cave. Once inside he waved his wand again. My dress transformed from the beautiful gown into a plain green tunic and pants and on my feet were the warmest pair of slippers I’d ever encountered. He picked up a large fur-lined coat from the floor of the cave and wrapped it around me. Immediately I felt warm and dry.

“People are going to wonder where I am,” I said. “I don’t even know myself. Why are we here?” Cynder sat beside the fire and waved his wand for a third time. A couple of sandwiches appeared out of thin air. He handed one to me as I sat beside him.

“I can’t make food, but I can transport it here. Someone close by must have made these. I’m sorry I don’t have anything better.”

“You shouldn’t have taken me. What if there was a bomb?” I asked, ignoring the sandwich.

On his face, he wore a look of resignation.

“I had to take you. They wouldn’t stop until they found you and then you’d be dead. There was no bomb. I already told you that they are after you, not the Thalian Royal Family.”

“Who are ‘they’? Why do they want me dead?” My stomach growled, but my sandwich went uneaten. “Is this something to do with the MDS?”

Cynder sighed. “There is a lot you don’t know.”

I sat up straight now. I could tell by the way he was looking at me that this was going to be important. I was ready to hear the full truth.

He began to talk, his voice low and even. “I’ve always been a big supporter of Magi rights as you know, but I’m very involved in certain groups.”

“I know that you attended demonstrations,” I replied.

“I didn’t just attend. I organized some of them, back before it all got so dangerous and before I had to go on the run. There is a group of militant anti-Magi, and we were working to overcome them.”

“Everyone is anti-Magi in Silverwood it seems,”

“It seems that way at the moment,” Cynder replied with a sigh. “I should start at the beginning.”

I noticed he twiddled his thumbs as he spoke. It reminded me of my own habit of fiddling with things when I was nervous. “My parents grew up here in Thalia. My mother was the head chef at a hotel, and my father was the pastry chef.”

“So that’s where you learned your cooking skills,” I interjected.

“Yes. I’d often go into the kitchens and help them. I loved it there, but when I was seven, a job opportunity came up in Silverwood. There was a restaurant for sale. It was cheap because the previous owners weren’t very good at cooking. My parents snapped it up and bought one of the apartments above it. The restaurant was just outside the palace making it a prime spot.”

I knew where he was referring to. I’d been in his parents’ apartment a couple of times. I’d not noticed a restaurant on the ground floor though. Not that I’d really been paying attention. I’d always been too eager to get to Cynder.

“The restaurant was a great success. Word began to spread quickly, and within a few months of opening, we were fully booked every night. Things couldn’t have been better. Even at my young age, I was allowed to help out in the kitchens, and I loved it.”

“It sounds like quite the exciting childhood.” The only thing I’d been doing at seven years of age was climbing trees and scraping my knees. To think that we had grown up just a few hundred feet from each other, with only a wall separating us.

“It was except for one thing. Anti Magi feelings were high even then. My mother reminded me every night that I was not to tell anyone that I was a Mage. I was forbidden to use my magic anywhere except in the apartment. For a few years, everything was great, but I got careless. We were so busy in the restaurant, and I was just a kid. I thought it would be ok to use my magic. I chopped up some carrots using my wand. The door between the kitchen and the restaurant opened, and someone saw me. Instead of keeping it to themselves, they told the local newspapers. People stopped coming to the restaurant. The people that we considered regulars just stopped coming back. The rumors started. People said we conjured up all our food and it wasn’t even real.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I interjected. I’d seen Cynder cooking on enough occasions to know he was an excellent chef.

“It’s what the people thought. No one believed that we did it all by hand. Things just got worse. We were targeted for attacks. People threw eggs at us, smashed our windows, that kind of thing. A couple of months after the newspaper went out we had to close the restaurant. It was our last night of opening. My parents had long since stopped me working there.”

“They blamed you for what happened?”

“No. They never blamed me. It just wasn’t a safe environment anymore. We were threatened all the time. I don’t know why my parents kept it open as long as they did, but I think they were trying to close it down with some dignity. They were also trying to save just a few more pennies to move back to Thalia where it was safe. That night, there was a fire. The fire brigade managed to evacuate the apartments above, but the restaurant was gutted. My parents never got out. The official cause was a fire in the kitchen. A magical fire the newspapers reported. I saw the truth though. Someone had barricaded the exit. I could smell petrol. Someone had done it on purpose. My parents were murdered for being Magi. Next to the door, someone had painted the letters MDS.”

My hand flew to my mouth “Oh, Cynder!”

I desperately wanted to comfort him, but I sensed he wanted to keep talking. My heart went out to the little boy watching his parents die in the most horrific way.

“The MDS,” I said, remembering what Frederick Pittser had said to me on the day of my coronation. “Frederick Pittser is one of them.”

“It stands for Magi Death Squad and basically means death to Magi. They’ve been around for a long time, but since your father died, they have been a lot more open with their actions. You are right about Pittser. I’m pretty sure it was him shooting at us back at the castle. If not him, it was one of his lackeys. They probably heard about me sniffing around for information and decided to kill the pair of us in one go.”

I took it all in. From the little I’d seen of the MDS, my death was becoming a priority, probably thanks to my public work on behalf of the Magi.

“What happened to you after your parents were killed?” I asked.

“The authorities wanted to take me in. I was ten years old.”

I slipped my hand in his, but he barely noticed. He was lost in the past. The best thing I could do was listen, so I did.

“I was shipped from foster family to foster family. Basically, anyone willing to take in a Magi, but I never lasted very long. Most families took away my wand and told me not to use magic as it was against the law. The last family I was with were the opposite. They pretty much made me their slave. I spent every hour of every day cleaning their house with magic. They were important and powerful enough not to have to worry about getting caught by the law. I guess it was good training to become a dishwasher. At fifteen I finally had enough and ran away. Luckily, I was found living on the streets by a Magi family. They lived in a rundown shack, constantly starving because they were not allowed to use their wands. Even then, jobs were incredibly hard to get for people like us.”

I thought back to the magi family I’d met when out with Leo. They’d lived in the most horrific conditions. I could imagine quite well how he lived.

“Many people visited the house,” Cynder continued. “It was always full. At first, I didn’t understand who they all were, but as I got older, I realized they were fighting a war. A war against the MDS... and your father.”