“This changes everything.”
Rafe split off a piece of bread from the chunk he was holding and passed it over to Cedric, who quickly put it in his mouth. He left it on his tongue for a few moments, even though he was so hungry his stomach felt like a hollow pit. The bread tasted—well, not good, necessarily, but familiar. Whole, and thick, and just a bit hard. It had obviously been made by hand, wrapped in cloth, and carried around in a pack for days.
It tasted like home.
“The fact that a whole other world exists?” Cedric spoke around the bread in his mouth. “I’d say it changes more than a little.”
“Not that,” Rafe said, waving his hand. He’d seemed mostly skeptical at Cedric’s tale of escaping from Malquin and surviving in Los Angeles for months. “I meant that you are alive. So few Guardians made it out of the wrath attack on Westing, and none who knew what had happened in the palace. After all this time . . . we assumed the worst.”
Cedric shook his head. “Our families were alive when we left, and we have reason to believe they are alive still.”
“All of them?” Rafe asked, his voice thick.
“Yes, all.”
Rafe sagged back a bit, his eyes closed in what looked to Cedric like relief. The four of his men who also sat in the circle around the fire exchanged glances, as though they weren’t sure they believed Cedric’s claims. But at the moment, Cedric didn’t care.
They had food, and some herbs and poultices to treat Kat’s wound.
Although Cedric had begged her to get some rest, Kat had refused, instead staying wide-awake as the gash in her lower back was wrapped. She sat now next to a bundle of weapons, fighting to keep her eyes open.
“It is true,” Kat said, her voice sluggish but still forceful as she looked around the men at the fire. “Our parents—all the royals—live.”
Rafe narrowed his eyes. “But my brother went with you? Where is he now?”
Cedric hesitated, then forced himself to look Rafe squarely in the face. “He is alive, or at least he was before we left. He was injured and could not make the journey here. But we will go back for him, I swear it.”
Rafe looked to Cedric, but his expression was inscrutable. The orange flames of the fires reflected in his dark eyes. He had always been a strong fighter, and capable. But he was also unpredictable. Rafe had never wasted an opportunity in letting it be known who was the superior sibling. And yet he loved his brother, Cedric knew. When Merek’s mouth would get him into trouble with one knight-in-training or another, Rafe’s fists would often end the conflict.
Rafe nodded, and a piece of Cedric, the piece tightly wrapped into a ball of guilt over what he’d done to Merek and how he’d left him behind, loosened just a fraction.
“I have no doubt,” Rafe said, his voice even.
“He’s being taken care of,” Liv piped up from her position on the other side of the fire. “LA has some of the best doctors in the world. Or worlds, I guess I should say.”
Liv popped a piece of bread in her mouth and chewed slowly. Seeing her sitting there, across the fire, calmly eating a piece of hardtack, was extremely disconcerting to Cedric. Here he was, finally home in Caelum, surrounded by the trees and the air he’d grown up with, but nothing felt quite the same as when he’d left. His whole world looked different now that she was walking around in it.
Liv—clever, fast-talking Liv—was a creature of Los Angeles, with its lights and sounds and oddities. To see her here, resting on the long grass and wrapping a blanket around herself to keep out the night chill as if she were completely at ease could not be more strange.
He knew that allowing her to take up too much space in his thoughts was distracting at best and dangerous at worst, especially when there was so much at stake. But it was incredibly hard to ignore her as she sat there, just five feet away, her hair like burnished gold in the firelight. She looked as natural as could be, although she was in his world, under his sky. She looked almost as though she could belong here, which was the most terrifying prospect of all.
Cedric could not afford to start thinking Liv had any place in his life.
“Merek in another world,” Rafe said, shaking his head. “Hard to imagine.”
“It is best if you don’t,” Cedric cut in. “Merek is safe, but he does not belong in that place.”
“None of us do,” Kat said.
Cedric frowned at Kat’s words, but he knew she was right. The sooner he turned his mind away from Los Angeles and toward his mission here, the better.
“Is it truly that awful?” Rafe asked.
Cedric saw Liv look at him, waiting for his response. “I certainly understand now why our ancestors thought it was hell,” he forced himself to say. Liv’s eyes filled with hurt, and she looked away. It was better this way, for all of them.
“Well,” Rafe said, raising his voice as if to smooth over the tension Cedric had purposely created, “If this world created a creature as lovely as the one who sits across from me now, I do not see how it could be all bad.”
Liv quickly rolled her eyes at the compliment. But in the light of the fire, Cedric could see she was flushed. He resisted the urge to throw the rest of his bread at Rafe’s head.
Instead, he took a deep breath and told himself to focus, again, on what mattered. “What can you tell me of the situation here?”
Rafe picked up an arrow that was lying by his knee and began to turn it over in his hands. The silver tip caught the glow of the fire as it slowly twirled.
“The initial attack happened quickly, from all accounts,” Rafe began. “I was on a hunting trip near Lake Vorail, due back at the castle for the summit. I thought it odd that we found not a single wrath on that trip, but there was no way I could have guessed . . .”
Rafe shook his head slightly. “Our party was halfway back to the castle when we came across the first refugees from Westing. Barely a hundred managed to get out. They were the ones who told us what happened. The wraths amassed with their full numbers in the forestland just outside the city. No one knows how the first of them found their way into the city walls, but once they did, they knew immediately who to kill. They slit the throats of every single lookout guard, seemingly at the same time, since not one alarm was raised.”
Cedric’s jaw tightened as he remembered the men who manned the lookout posts at the city walls. How many times in his life had he passed those men as he went in and out of the city? How many times had they bowed their heads to him and managed to hide their smiles as he struggled under the weight of a sword half the size of his body?
“After the lookouts were killed, the wraths killed the guards at every gate on the wall,” Rafe continued. “Then they opened the gates. The city was overrun almost instantly. Some stayed to terrorize homes, while the others went directly to the palace.”
Rafe stabbed the tip of his arrowhead into the ground. “I have never heard of wraths mobilizing in such a way as the refugees described. They have always lived and hunted separately, in small clans. For them to come together in this way and take the city so quickly . . .”
“We were not prepared,” Kat murmured, her voice thick.
“The wraths had help,” Cedric added. “They had someone to bring them together, someone who knew when the summit would take place, someone who maybe even knew a way into the city. Malquin.”
Rafe raised an eyebrow. “I heard that rumor as well. But why would a Guardian—even a crazy, outcast one—help the wraths overthrow our castle? It makes no sense.”
“He is not a Guardian,” Cedric said, his voice steely. “He is from the other world.”
Cedric looked up, briefly, and locked eyes with Liv across the fire. He then explained to Rafe how Malquin had created a portal to Caelum years before and, unable to get home on his own, had struck a bargain with the wraths. He would help them raise an army and organize an attack on the heart of Caelum so that they might have free rein over the realm. In exchange they would send some soldiers to Earth to help Malquin defeat his own enemies there.
Rafe shook his head slightly. “It is difficult to believe. That one man could cause so much destruction.”
Cedric did not reply. Malquin was not a formidable figure on his own, but he had enough cunning to somehow rally the wraths to a single cause. How could no one in the palace—no one in the kingdom—have seen that alliance coming?
“How many wraths are in Westing now?” Cedric asked. “My father said there were hundreds outside the castle that night. It is why we went through the portal instead of trying our luck escaping through the city.”
Rafe shrugged. “We have been trying to determine that very thing. At first, we organized major assaults, but the wrath numbers were too large, and they were safe behind the walls we built to keep enemies out.” Rafe took a breath, his eyes on the ground. “All attempts to take back Westing have failed.”
Cedric lowered his own eyes as this information sank in. If Guardian forces hadn’t even been able to broach the city walls since the attack, the situation in Caelum was worse than he’d imagined.
“We send mostly small scouting parties now, and raiding groups. We have had more success in picking off small groups of wraths like the one that nearly caught you all tonight. Our whole plan has been to weaken their numbers slowly until we can starve them out, but if it is true the royals—our families—are still alive inside the castle . . . as I said, that changes everything.”
Cedric nodded. “Now that I am back, we can amass every remaining Guardian and launch an assault large enough to take back Westing.”
Rafe cocked his head and opened his mouth as if to respond, but then paused a moment. Finally, he met Cedric’s eyes. “I am not sure that is the wisest plan . . . my prince.”
A silence fell around the fire.
“Before we go into talk of plans and wisdom, we should get to a stronghold,” Kat said, sitting up with a grimace. She looked to Rafe. “I assume you have one?”
Rafe slowly nodded. “We do, about a ten-hour walk from here. The old village of Duoin.”
“And are there any fighters left?”
“About two hundred. Many of the country folk have fled south, believing the royals dead and the city fallen.”
“Has anyone come from my family’s lands? The northern regions have a thousand fighters, easily,” Kat said.
“None yet,” Rafe replied. “We’ve sent groups to ask for help, but none have returned. The wraths around Westing have also blocked the passages to the north.”
Kat looked dismayed.
Cedric turned to Rafe. “And at this stronghold, who’s in charge?”
Rafe turned to Cedric and tilted his head. “At your service.”
Cedric managed a weak smile in return.
“Though, I suppose now you’ve returned from the dead, you will be looking to take command yourself,” Rafe said, almost as an afterthought. His tone was light, but Cedric sensed something else behind his words, a question.
Cedric smiled again, and struggled to think of the right response. Something diplomatic and thankful, yet firm. He was the crowned prince, and leadership should, by rights, fall to him. But Rafe had three months of wartime leadership under his belt already, and likely the loyalty of the fighters. It would be smart to stay on his good side.
My father would know the exact words to say, Cedric thought. But as the seconds passed, his tongue grew thicker in his mouth. His eyes bounced to—of all people—Liv for help. But it was Kat who responded.
“I am sure that together we can find the best solution to free Caelum once again.”
“Of course,” Rafe replied. He pushed his arrow against a log in the fire, stoking a flame. The fire reflected in his eyes, and his expression was now blank, impossible to read. “I will take you to Duoin at first light.”
Cedric shot Kat a grateful look and breathed an internal sigh of relief. What would he ever do without her?