Cyrene awoke with a start, shooting straight up, as she gasped out in a panic. Her side roared with fire, and she crumpled backward.
While her body recoiled from the pain of sitting up, her mind raced ahead of her. She desperately touched her stomach, her side, her face. She was herself again. She wasn’t trapped any longer.
It was just a dream, a strange dream.
Or was it?
Her hands rested back down, and she finally realized that she was touching something soft. Her eyes flew open, and she peered around at her surroundings. The room was small with a single bed and two chairs. She couldn’t make anything else out in the darkness. If I’m not in the tunnel and I’m not in the castle, where am I?
Before she could move to investigate, someone cracked open the door and walked in, carrying a tray with a candle and a bowl. The woman hummed to herself as she set it down on a table and went about rearranging the contents. Cyrene waited until the woman turned back toward her with a wooden bowl and pestle.
“Where am I?” Cyrene pushed herself up on one elbow despite the ache in her side.
“Oh!” the woman cried, jumping and bobbling the bowl. “Oh, honey, you’re awake!”
“Where am I?” Cyrene repeated.
“Orden!” She ran to the door. “Orden! She’s awake! She survived!”
Orden walked through the door and stared at Cyrene in surprise. “Go wake the boy and his friends,” he said, ushering the woman out.
He placed a lantern on the table next to the tray, illuminating the room. The man looked vaguely familiar. She peered at him as she tried to place him.
“Yes. You’ve seen me before,” he answered in a gruff deep voice as he seated himself in the chair farthest from her.
Even when he sat, it was obvious that he was one of the tallest people she had ever seen in her life. She had no idea how she knew him, but he had confirmed her thoughts.
“Where?” she asked.
“Your first day in Albion. You looked right at me when you were riding toward the castle.”
“I did!” She coughed at her own exclamation.
I knew that I had seen him! He had stood out to her in the crowd for having such a severe expression. And now, he was sitting here before her, still lacking a smile.
“I didn’t think you would recognize me.” He leaned backward and stared at her with his deep-set brown eyes.
Orden started to speak again when Ahlvie skidded to a halt in the doorway, still pulling one arm through his shirtsleeve. His dark brown hair was mussed from where he had just woken up, and his eyes were wide. She had never really considered how young he looked until that moment.
“You’re alive,” he whispered.
He rushed to the bed and threw his arms around her. Pain hit her side, and she cried out. He hastily retreated.
“Sorry. I’m sorry.”
“By the Creator, Ahlvie, she just woke up,” Maelia said, appearing in the doorway.
A second later, Rhea stepped into view behind her.
“It’s all right,” Cyrene said. She shifted her weight to lean more into her uninjured side. “I’m just glad to see you all. I really am. But can someone please tell me where I am and what happened?”
“We don’t know,” Rhea said. “Ahlvie came and got us in the middle of the night. We all thought you…you weren’t going to make it.”
“We thought you might be able to tell us what you remember.” Orden leaned forward in the chair, resting his elbow on his knee.
Everything came back to her in a wave—the bar fight, the dead woman, the sword to her side, the tunnel, the terrifying voice whispering into her ear and clouding her mind, her finding a way to block the voice, the dead Affiliate’s face, the Braj and the prophecies and her powers, and then the look of shock on its face when something had exploded out of her.
Then, she had woken up, only she hadn’t. She had dreamed of Serafina. But how could it have been a dream when it had felt so real? She had seen Serafina walk away from Viktor Dremylon. She had been at Serafina’s Ascension ritual before the Doma court. She had been there when the book opened itself to them, and she had realized, just as Serafina had, that she had powers.
Now, she needed to learn how to control them. She needed someone to teach her. She needed Matilde and Vera. Everything finally clicked into place.
“Go on, Cyrene.” Ahlvie sat in the chair next to Orden.
She suspiciously eyed Orden. While she appreciated that he was housing her after her injury in the tunnels, she didn’t know or trust him.
“He’s a friend. He’s not going to tell anyone,” Ahlvie said.
“I’d feel more comfortable talking without him,” she whispered. “No offense.”
Ahlvie began to protest, but Orden cut him off, “I understand your concerns, and I respect them. I’m very much interested in your story and how I can help, but until the time you need it, I’ll just go see if Younda needs anything.” He stood, pushed past the girls, and exited the room without further complaint.
“He’s really a friend, Cyrene. You can trust him,” Ahlvie said.
“We don’t know him like you do,” Maelia said. She took Orden’s abandoned seat. “We didn’t even trust you until…recently.”
“Today, you mean.”
Maelia shrugged.
Rhea shut the door and crossed her arms. “What she means is that we’re a team. We should decide together who else to include in our plans.”
“She was going to die!” Ahlvie cried.
“It’s okay!” Cyrene interjected. “Can we get back to the matter at hand?”
They nodded, and Cyrene began to fill them in on everything that had happened last night. She didn’t tell them about the explosion of energy or the dream. She couldn’t trust even her closest friends with that information yet. She didn’t know how she could tell them that she had powers.
“Wait…a Braj?” Rhea asked in disbelief.
“Braj are from fairy tales,” Maelia said.
“No, really, I saw it!” Ahlvie said, backing her up.
Cyrene shook her head. “You believe…in the Braj?” she asked, a little surprised that he was taking this all so lightly.
“I saw it with my own two eyes down in that tunnel. If I didn’t believe in them before, then I believe in them now,” he said with a nervous chuckle.
“And did you believe in them beforehand?” she questioned.
Ahlvie glanced away and back. “Yes,” he said without elaborating.
She wanted to know why when she hadn’t even thought they were real until tonight. But she would respect his silence since she wasn’t even telling him everything.
“Okay. It’s a Braj,” Rhea said, throwing up her arms.
Maelia shook her head like she didn’t want to believe it.
“So,” Ahlvie said, “you don’t know what happened after the Braj attacked you?”
Cyrene shook her head. “No.”
Rhea gave her a sidelong look that said, You’re not telling us everything, but Cyrene just raised her eyebrows.
“Well,” Ahlvie said, scratching the back of his head, “I just know that as I reached the tunnel, something like a wave hit me, and then out of nowhere, the skies opened up. I could have sworn it was a cloudless night, but it was an almost instantaneous downpour. I hurried into the tunnel and found you passed out on the ground with a dead Braj at your side.”
“Dead?” she squeaked.
“I know! Someone must have killed it. I thought it was impossible, but there it was. I panicked when I saw how much blood you had lost, and I rushed you to Orden’s. It’s much closer than the castle, and I knew he would understand.”
What kind of person is Orden that he expects half-dead people on his doorstep?
“His help attended to you. She said the wound had started to heal in on itself too soon, and she barely had time to withdraw the venom before it closed completely.”
Cyrene gingerly touched her side. The skin through her shift wasn’t gaping open. Rather, it was a tender puckered bit of flesh. The last time she had looked at it, she had lost too much blood, and the Braj had told her that it wouldn’t clot. How had new skin already covered its place?
The word hit her mind anew. Magic. It still felt wrong to think, but it was the only thing that made sense. It had to have been the outburst of her powers.
“Look, I don’t know what happened to you down there, but whoever saved you is one crazy fighter to take on a Braj,” Ahlvie said.
“We’re really sitting here, contemplating the assumption that someone killed a Braj? That Braj exist?” Maelia asked.
“I’m telling you that’s what it was.”
Cyrene nodded. “I saw it, too, Maelia. It spoke to me and said that it had killed the other Affiliates and High Order to try to get to me.”
“So, a Braj came after you as a mark and killed others in your place along the way? Why?” Rhea asked.
Cyrene sighed as the silence dragged. She bit her lip and considered what to tell them next. “I haven’t been completely up front about what happened.”
Ahlvie narrowed his eyes, Maelia leaned forward in her chair, and Rhea just crossed her arms.
“I don’t really know how to explain it, but it has to do with what I told you guys at Master Barca’s.”
“About something happening to you?” Ahlvie asked.
“Yes. Well, it happened down in the tunnels.” Magic. Magic had happened.
“It?” Maelia asked. “What did?”
“I don’t know,” Cyrene said. “All I know is…I was the only one down in those tunnels with the Braj, and it was about to kill me when it happened. So, I think…I must have killed it.”
The next few moments felt like an eternity as Cyrene waited for something, anything—laughter, ridicule, disbelief. At Master Barca’s, she hadn’t heard it when she first told them about the strange things happening to her, but now, she was saying that she had killed a Braj. The more she put it into perspective with her dream of Serafina, it was the only thing that made sense. No one else had been there to save her, and Ahlvie had felt the explosion she produced from her body, so it must have been powerful.
“Cyrene, I don’t want to doubt you, but you’re sure about this?” Rhea asked.
“No. Yes. No. I don’t know. I think so. That probably doesn’t help, but what else could explain my wound? I’m still sore and hurting, but it’s healed.”
“I saw the hole in your side. If it’s healed, then something must have made that happen in a matter of hours,” Ahlvie said.
“Exactly. I can’t think of another explanation.”
Ahlvie seemed to mull this over for a second, as if trying it out for size, like she had earlier. “All right.”
“All right? That’s it?”
“All right. I believe you. What do we do next?”
She stared at him in awe. Where had he come from? And why had it taken him this long to get into my life?
“What do you mean all right, and that’s it?” Maelia asked. “A killer is out to get Cyrene. Don’t you all realize the most important detail we’re missing about Braj?”
“They never stop coming,” Rhea filled in.
“That’s right. Maybe you’re not the real mark, but if you are and they’re real, then we need to have a plan to stop them. We need to figure out how they were killed in the first place.” Maelia stood and planted her hands on her hips. “We should alert the Royal Guard and let the King know what happened. You know he would be worried for your safety.”
“We can’t go to the Guard!” Ahlvie protested.
“Or the King!” Cyrene cried.
She remembered all too clearly the Braj talking about the rightful Dremylon heir. She didn’t want to believe that it was Edric, but the only other horrifying alternative was that it was talking about…Kael. And if Kael could control Braj…they were all in trouble.
Rhea sighed heavily and shook her head. “I assume you have a crazy plan, Cyrene,” she prompted.
“Yes.” And it was really crazy after the information in her dream. “I need to get to Eleysia.”
Maelia plopped back into her seat in disbelief. “You’re honestly thinking of still going there now that you’ve been attacked? The two safest places in all of Emporia are here in Albion and back in Byern. How could you consider leaving?”
“I have to go,” she insisted. She was surer than ever before.
“Do you even know what you’re looking for?” Maelia looked down like she hadn’t wanted to ask it.
“Yeah, I think I do,” Cyrene said.
“You think so?” Rhea asked.
“I know how determined you are, but I don’t want this to be a wild goose chase,” Maelia chimed in.
Cyrene swallowed. If she told everyone the truth, then she was going to sound insane, but she knew it was all connected to that dream. “There are two women in Eleysia who I need to see.”
“Who are they?” Maelia asked curiously.
“Matilde and Vera.”
Everyone blankly stared at her.
“Who?” Maelia asked.
“How do you know you need to see them?” Rhea asked.
“It’s complicated. I met a peddler back in Byern who said that there were people in Eleysia who knew how to help me. He told me to go find them.”
Cyrene didn’t tell them about the connection to the dream. It felt crazy that they could be the same people as the ones Basille Selby had told her to find.
“How are you even going to be able to find them?” Maelia asked.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I know it doesn’t seem like much, but it’s all I have.”
“Not much? That’s nothing,” Maelia said. “You’re risking your safety on the whim of a peddler.”
“It’s my safety to risk, Maelia. Are you guys with me or not?” Cyrene said.
Ahlvie tilted his head at her. “I’m in.”
Rhea leaned against the wall and nodded, too.
“Maelia? We’re going with or without you, but I want you with us,” Cyrene told her. She hated doing this. She understood where Maelia was coming from, but this was too important to stay hidden behind the walls of the castle. She couldn’t live her life like that.
“I’d like to go down saying this was a bad idea, but I’ll not let you leave with this reckless scoundrel,” she said, gesturing to Ahlvie. “Plus, you’ll probably need a medic.”
“I think she likes me,” Ahlvie said dryly.
“Look, as long as we’re a team, we’ll be fine out there. I just don’t know how we’re going to get there. Our last endeavor to get a ship didn’t exactly go as planned.”
Ahlvie smirked. “Sorry about that.”
Cyrene shook her head. “Does anyone have a better idea?”
“I think we should talk to Orden,” Ahlvie told her. “I know you don’t know him. I get it. He doesn’t exactly look like the trustworthiest guy. But he’s going to be our best bet.”
Cyrene looked around the group. Everyone seemed apprehensive, but she didn’t really see another option. If Orden could help them, then she needed to use his help. She wasn’t exactly going to be getting on an Eleysian ship anytime soon.
“All right, Ahlvie.”
He stood and exited the room.
A minute later, Orden walked back into the now very crowded small bedroom with Ahlvie on his heels. Orden took the seat Ahlvie had abandoned. He had the appearance as if he had known this was going to happen all along.
Cyrene gulped as she tried to decide how to begin. She glanced at Ahlvie, who nodded at her.
She had to do this her way. “We need a way out of the city, and we need to get out as soon as possible—today preferably.”
Orden sat back in his chair.
“We need your help,” Ahlvie continued, giving Cyrene a dirty look.
“How can I help you with getting out of the city?” Orden asked gruffly.
“You know your way around Albion, around much more of the world than Albion. You taught me some of the tunnel systems,” Ahlvie said. “You can find us safe passage, so we can get a boat and get out of here.”
“That’s all true.” Orden’s dark eyes remained stern.
“Please,” Cyrene said, her voice lowering, “if you know all these things, can you show us the way out?”
“You kids want out of Albion? Walk right out the city walls. No one is stopping you.”
“I would, if every Guard in the city didn’t know my face,” Cyrene said.
Orden stiffened.
“The mysterious deaths throughout Byern were linked back to me. As a confidant to the King, Consort, and Prince,” she breathed, “I was put under heavy guard. They were worried I would be the next target.”
“And you were,” he said.
She nodded. “The Braj was after me.”
“Brajs are always after someone for a reason. What was yours?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t understand what it was saying. Everything was jumbled.”
“Did it speak into your mind?” Orden asked.
“Yes.”
His mouth dropped open.
Did I say too much?
“For how long? When do you remember it first happening?”
“I…I don’t know. Maybe as far back as my Presenting…maybe as soon as the procession,” she told him softly. “I didn’t know it was touching my mind until the tunnel. How did you know that? I’d never read that anywhere.”
“When a Braj has touched your mind, you never forget it,” he told her stonily.
Silence followed that statement.
“Look, I don’t know how you know all of this, but at this point, I don’t need all the information,” Cyrene began.
“I think you do. If you’ve had a Braj speak to you, then you’re in far worse trouble than I thought.”
Cyrene swallowed, but Ahlvie was the one who spoke up, “What do you mean?”
“Braj are killers. You’ve all heard the folklore saying that they never stop. Well, it’s true. One dead Braj doesn’t mean the end of it. It means the end of that Braj. I’ve seen them keep coming until even the best couldn’t fight them off. And I saw my master fall under their swift curved blade.”
Maelia sent her an I-told-you-so look.
“Cyrene,” Ahlvie whispered. His eyes looked fearful.
“I understand what you’re saying,” she said. “But I need to go to Eleysia.”
“What’s for you there?” Orden asked. He contemplatively stared at her.
“That’s none of your concern. It’s my ticket out of this mess, and that’s all that is important.”
“That’s a vague enough answer.” Orden narrowed his eyes at Cyrene.
“She needs to go,” Ahlvie said. “And we’re all going with her, Orden. Will you help us?”
Orden sighed, glancing between them. “All right. On one condition,” he said. “Take me with you.”