“I’m sorry, but one of the children is in need of my help,” I gasped, forcing as much emotion in my voice as possible. “If you’ll excuse me.”
I didn’t even wait for her response, for her farewell; I immediately turned and left. I had learned hundreds of years before not to keep Edmund and Ovailia waiting. And, while I had given them my fair share of defiance before, it was not a game I was willing to risk when I needed them as much as they needed me, not that I would let them use me.
Darting through the people left in the courtyard, I made a beeline for the tiny passage hidden behind the main barracks. The dark hollow called to me the closer I moved. Luckily, the corner was far enough out of the way that no one noticed as I slipped behind the old, brick structure.
Begin at the third mark. Her voice was a growl. Obviously, she wasn’t looking forward to seeing me.
I would love to tell her the feeling was mutual, but I still had a role to play.
Heart pounding, I moved into the shadowed, overgrown narrow that war had rendered forgotten. It was like walking into a jungle—a perfect, little jungle fit to escape, fit to store a certain piece of incriminating black fabric.
Grabbing the latter, I took a few more steps before opening the old, wooden door that had served as an escape during the coup in the twelfth century. Ironic that I was using it for much the same purpose now.
The doorway glimmered with a faint sheen of white, the thick barrier Ilyan had placed to protect us, to keep everyone in, glowing brightly.
Most people avoided it like the plague. Most people would get a shock if they even got close.
Not me.
Heat and waves of binding density pressed against me as I forced my way through the powerful barrier. I wanted to scream with the pain, but everything had been sucked out of me. Struggling to move, I pressed on, desperate for the gasp of air I would find on the other side.
Like a struggling infant, I emerged from Ilyan’s barrier, falling to the ground, my hands spread on the cold, bloodstained road. The shadowed darkness swallowed me as I coughed and sputtered in an attempt to catch my breath.
It was something that should have been impossible—to move through Ilyan’s barrier as I had—but there was one design flaw that the foolish man had overlooked. One little loophole that suited me perfectly.
The shield was made to keep all of Ilyan’s people inside, to keep them safe. However, it was also made to let all of those who served Edmund see nothing more than the destruction, their eyes shielded from the cathedral as it really was.
Ilyan, in all of his naivety, never assumed someone could be both, that someone could be inside the barrier and see the world as it was yet pass through without his blessing into the destruction of Prague.
He had never assumed someone could serve two masters or, in my case, none at all.
Coughing, I lifted my head toward the alley, toward the numerous pairs of hungry, yellow eyes that peered through the dark, their vicious natures awakened by my sudden appearance.
Hissing rang around me, gnashing teeth glinting through the dark as the tiny, infected creatures took off into the air, making a beeline for me.
Heart seizing in fear and exhilaration, I let the fear fill me, the smile spreading wide, knowing full well the vile things couldn’t touch me if they tried.
“Zdechnout,” The tiny things froze in mid-flight at the word, their bodies falling with a dull thud. Blood seeped out of the tangles of flesh and bone, staining everything around them with shimmering pools.
Rippling waves of heavy material broke through the silence as I unwound the fabric, throwing a heavy cape over my shoulders. The hood lay low over my head as I shrouded myself in the dark.
You have twenty minutes. To the third. Her voice made me grind my teeth in agitation. I didn’t like being ordered around, especially from her. Not with what the divine magic of the earth had created me for.
I was one of the first, after all, and soon, I would be viewed as such again. Soon, even she would bow to me.
Centuries of planning, of plotting, of scheming were about to come to fruition. It had been that long since my reign had ended, since the first four who had come from the mud had been stripped of their title in favor of Edmund, a snot-nosed brat with no right to hold my magic, to hold any magic. Regardless, they had seen a god who held everything inside of him.
I had told them then what fools they were, but the order of the council had been in place since the beginning, and therefore, the council took control.
The people had won, and their precious kingdom had fallen to the wayside because of their conceit. I would gain it back, remind them of what we were put here for.
Edmund was trying for the same thing, or at least, that’s what I had made him believe. In the end, however, he only wanted power, not to reinstate our true purpose. He didn’t understand what we had been, because he was the one to ruin it.