“I don’t know. I’ve never seen her before.” I glanced at Ryan, who shrugged. “She was old. Dark skin, dark hair. Bracelets on her wrist.” There was something else. Something that she’d— “She called me chava.”

“Chava?” Mom said, sounding slightly choked.

“And dook?” I said. “She said it couldn’t touch her? I don’t know what that—”

Dad paled as he looked back at Mom. “You don’t think…?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s—I suppose it’s possible. Why here? Why now?”

That didn’t bode well for me. “What are you—”

The door to the offices opened behind us. The knights spun on their heels, drawing their swords, closing in around me. While my focus was Justin and the King, theirs included me, which was touching but extraordinarily uncomfortable.

But it was just Morgan, glaring at all of us, though it softened slightly when his gaze fell upon me. “Do I even want to know why you’re all just standing around out here? Let them through. Quickly, if you please.”

“We were trying, you old codger,” Pete said. “Except we learned now that Ryan beats Sam or white dragon assassins or something. Who even knows anymore.”

“I don’t beat him, oh my gods, that’s how rumors start—”

“He punched me in the face,” I said morosely. “But he’s gonna change for the baby, I swear.”

“I taught him that,” Gary said quite loudly. “In case you didn’t know.”

“Would you get in here,” Morgan said as he pushed through the knights. He grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and started pulling me toward the offices of the King. It was meant to be rough, his grip harsh, but as soon as his hand touched my neck, I felt calmer. Stronger. The tripping of my heart slowed, and I thought maybe I could finally catch my breath. Morgan was like that for me. He always had been, ever since the beginning. He knew it too, if the way he gently squeezed my neck meant anything. “Knight Commander, make sure your knights are prepared and then join us inside if you please. Gary, Tiggy, bring Joshua and Rosemary. Step to it.”

When Morgan spoke, everyone obeyed.

Or at least it sounded as if they did. I wouldn’t know, because Morgan wouldn’t let me turn around and look behind us. He kept a firm hand on me, pushing me inside the offices.

Inside, there were three more knights that I recognized, shields and swords drawn, standing in front of a large, ornate bookcase. They nodded at me, relief palpable on their faces.

The office was large, the walls and floors made of stone, the ceiling high, a massive candle chandelier hanging from the middle. There were two fireplaces, one at either end of the room, both roaring. The far wall was adorned with an intricately drawn map of Verania, which had been a gift from the elves upon his coronation. It was supposed to show when the country of Verania herself was in danger, imbued with some sort of elven magic that not even Randall understood completely. It’d never moved, not even once, since the King had received it, not that we knew of. Sure, there may have been a blip when the Darks had tried to take the castle last year, but no one had been in the room to see it. I glanced over it now, just to be safe. It looked the same as always. The frozen mountains of the north. The Luri Desert in the west. The jungles of the east. The coastal south. The Port. City of Lockes. Meridian City. All the villages, no matter how small.

Still, it didn’t move. Not even now. Which, if there was a threat upon the King, I would have hoped it would have done something. But it hadn’t even done anything when Justin had been taken by Kevin. For all we knew, the elves were full of shit, which wouldn’t surprise me.

There was a desk made from trees in the Dark Woods, heavy and foreboding, sitting in front of the wall of bookcases. Scrolls lay strewn across it, the King’s feather pen discarded hastily across the top. Like he’d been in the middle of something and pulled away as soon as the alarms rang, which was probably exactly what happened. It’s what should have happened.

“He’s probably really annoyed,” I said, staring at the bookcase. Behind it, there was a room encased with magic that only Morgan or I could break through. In the event that something happened to the both of us, the King would wait for a sign from Randall before attempting to leave. He didn’t like hiding away very much, but he knew the reasons behind it. Especially in the face of the unknown.

“Undoubtedly,” Morgan said, moving toward the bookcase.

“Do you think he’s—” I started to say but was cut off when Morgan pressed the spines of seven books in quick succession, leaving behind green glowing fingerprints that flared, then faded. There was a large click and the sound of gears grinding together. The bookcase shifted forward, the large hinges groaning as it opened.

“What’s he doing?” Ryan asked, coming into the office and closing the door behind him. “Why’s he letting them out? We don’t even know what’s happening yet.”

“I don’t know,” I said. My mother and father stood off to the side near one of the fireplaces, whispering furiously at each other. They must have felt me staring at them, because they immediately stopped talking and waved at me frantically. “You ever get the feeling that people know more than they’re saying?”

Ryan snorted. “Hate to break it to you, but that’s pretty much the life I lead these days.”

I glanced at him, only to find him watching my parents with a small smile on his face. It did traitorous things to my heart, to see him watching them as he did. After the whole… debacle that was our fucked-up courtship, my mother and father had invited Ryan out to lunch, telling me in no uncertain terms that I was not allowed to join them. Four hours later, they returned to the castle looking smug, whereas Ryan was pale. None of them would tell me what they spoke about, only that Ryan said my mother was the scariest woman he’d ever met in his entire life, and that it also had turned him on a little bit.

“Damn right it did,” my father had said. “Why, I bet even Sam—”

“Nope,” I’d said, cutting that off before it went too far. “Absolutely not.”

But since then, there’d seemed to be an understanding betwe

en the three of them. Sure, Ryan still stuttered and blushed his way through conversations with them, like he was nervous and was still trying to find out the best way to impress them. But they treated him just like they’d treated Tiggy and Gary when I’d brought them back from the Dark Woods: like he already belonged to them. He didn’t have anyone else to call his family. His mother was gone, his father only gods know where. He never had any brothers or sisters. And my parents knew this, which is why they loved him the way they did. It gave me feelings that I didn’t even know what to do with.

Tags: T.J. Klune Tales From Verania Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net