The ministers who had climbed the observation tower started shouting down to the rest of the crowd below.
“It’s vanished! The writing! It’s vanished!”
The crowd, confused, went silent for a moment. Then one man stood up, looking belligerently at the ministers, and shouted, “Treachery! More lies from the kingdom!”
People started to join him; yells of “Sabotage!”, “Lies!” and “Violation of the people!” echoed like a Mexican wave across the arena, and people surged toward the royal box demanding answers.
The crowd had quickly turned into a mob.
With difficulty, I untangled myself from Tejus. Ruby rushed toward me and I enveloped her in an equally fierce hug. I closed my eyes briefly, relieved to feel her slim frame against mine.
“What happened?” I shouted in her ear, trying to be heard above the cries of the sentries. I still couldn’t fathom how they’d managed to escape Jenus.
“There was meant to be something above the disk,” she shouted back, misunderstanding my question. “The sentries, some of them use this magic yogi thing to see through stuff. Something was meant to be up there that would stop whatever was causing the pain—the winner was meant to see it before their mind was destroyed!”
The cries of sabotage now made more sense—somehow, someone or something had removed the writing that I’d seen on the disk yesterday. My stomach churned as I realized the implications of that… If none of the candidates were able to see the hidden message, then none of them would have been able to stop the disk.
They all would have died.
I looked at the bodies left on the floor of the arena. A guard was covering one of them with a red cloth, while an old woman and man stood by the body, clutching one another as the woman cried bitterly and the man just looked unbearably lost.
Some had died. The trials had taken a fatal turn, and I wondered who was responsible.
Judging from the uproar of the crowds, and the traumatized look of the ministers, it was unlikely to have been anyone within Hellswan Kingdom, and Jenus was certainly ruled out. It also made logical sense that someone from outside the kingdom would have most to gain—if all the best candidates for the Hellswan kingship were out of the running this early in the contest, then the other kingdoms would be at an advantage for the position of emperor.
The richly dressed woman in the royal box was still shouting, trying her best to raise her voice over the sounds of the crowd and gain the ministers’ attention. Her beautiful face was contorted as she raged at anyone who would listen.
“Disqualified!” she cried. “The winner is disqualified!”
Gradually, the crowd started to pay attention to her. The cries broke down to murmurs, and those nearest to her stopped talking altogether, waiting to hear what she had to say.
“There are two Hellswans in the arena—the rules clearly state that only one member from each family is allowed!” she screeched. “Which means that the Hellswans should be disqualified from the trial! They have broken the rules!”
Her statement was met with more muttering and looks of indignation. I looked over at the Hellswan ministers. They looked displeased with her interruption, and glanced wildly about them at the rest of the crowd, as if they were waiting for the people’s verdict. I sensed that they wanted to overrule the woman, but didn’t want an angry mob on their hands that they wouldn’t be able to control. Though the guards were numerous, they wouldn’t be able to gain control over rioting sentries. Unfortunately for them, the crowd had decided—the mutterings started to become shouts of approval and agreement that the Hellswans should be disqualified from the trial.
“Therefore”—the woman looked around her with a smug smile on her face, the distortion of it gone, leaving the cool and calm regality of her position—“the winner is him!” She leaned forward out of the royal box to point down at the arena floor where Ruby’s sentry stood. “He is the one still standing! The only one who is not of the Hellswan name!” she cried gleefully. “But—what is your name, champion?”
“Ash,” the big sentry replied, seeming unruffled by the mayhem that was happening around him.
“Well then,” she declared, “Ash wins the first trial! His is the leading score!”
The crowd fell silent. The sentry, Ash, gazed dumbfounded at the woman, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.
Slowly the crowd reanimated. An applause began, starting at the very lowest tiers of the stone seats. Soon it swelled and grew steadily louder. People started standing up and cheering, their faces pink with exultation, chanting his name over and over again till it blurred into one long syllable.
It was the most authentic display of emotion I had seen in Nevertide yet. The normally morose populace of the castle and the surrounding areas seemed to be transformed by the news, alight with elation. What I also found interesting was that it was the commoners who had led the applause. I looked up again at those in the royal box and at the ministers. Many of them sat stony-faced, others looked around at the cheering crowds with barely concealed disdain.
I didn’t know what standing Ash had within the kingdom, but judging by his attire he was unlikely born to a wealthy family, or related to any of the current ministers. I wondered what this would mean for Nevertide—what kind of effect this might have on how the kingdom’s political elite started to view its people.
I smiled to myself, suddenly aware that I might be witnessing the first ripples of a full-blown revolution.
Ash grinned. I could see that his victory was just starting to sink in, and he gave the cheering crowd a tentative wave and then a bow. From the flush in his face, it was obvious that he wasn’t used to being the center of attention, but I admired his stoicism—he might not have been born into a royal family, but right then, surrounded by a worshipping audience, his feet planted hip-width apart and his countenance calm, he looked like the hero his people claimed him to be.
Tejus gripped my shoulder. It was a warning to stay near him with the crowd getting so rowdy, but all I could think was how hard this must be for him to watch. Despite the opinions of the crowd and the hoity-toity woman in the royal box, it was Tejus who was the true champion—he had stopped the orb. Not Ash.
Without thinking, I placed my hand over Tejus’s. His hand was calloused—more of a warrior’s hand than one that belonged to a prince. Not for the first time, I wondered which version of himself Tejus identified with most.
At the same time that my hand covered his, Ruby placed hers on Ash’s shoulder. He seized it, raising it into the air with his own, a symbol of their joint victory. The crowd went berserk. Now all were standing, wildly cheering on a human for what must have been the first time in their lives.
Hazel
On returning to Tejus’s living quarters, it was a relief to be away from the hysterical crowds and back in the relative tranquility of his living space. It surprised me to find that I felt safe here—not exactly at home, but it was the one place in the castle that I felt at least semi-comfortable.
As soon as we had arrived, Tejus had ordered his servants to fetch me food. It now lay on the low table in his living room, plates and platters piled with the most extravagant food I’d ever seen in my life, certainly a million times superior to what I’d been fed in Nevertide previously. The food was fresh, for a start—leafy green salads with bright red tomatoes and what looked like pomegranates, a succulently roasted main dish stuffed with fragrant herbs, golden roasted potatoes, and artfully created pastries for dessert. They had brought a flagon of water—I had greedily gulped down its icy contents, while Tejus nursed an intricately patterned goblet filled with deep burgundy liquid.
He watched me impassively as I ate. Normally I would have felt unnerved by it, but I was too famished to care. I gobbled down the food as quickly as I could, reveling in the warm, expanding sensation of my stomach and the joy of actually being able to taste flavors for the first time since we’d left The Shade.
When I ate my
fill, too stuffed to manage another morsel, I sat back on the sofa and pulled my feet up beneath me. I wanted to ask for a shower and some new clothes, but at the same time I didn’t want to push my luck just now. I didn’t know how long Tejus’s congenial mood would last.
As it was, he was now staring at me with a perplexed expression, as if he was trying to understand something. I was thrown by his scrutiny—I had explained everything to him when our minds melded, leaving nothing out.
“I want to thank you,” he said, taking a sip from his goblet.
“Um, why?”
“Well, you and the rest of the humans were largely unaffected by the disk’s powers. You could have easily let it kill off the sentries—the champions and those seated in the arena. All the humans could have gone free… but you saved a lot of lives today, Hazel Achilles.” He raised his glass to me.
I didn’t know what to say. It hadn’t even crossed my mind that I could have let the orb continue to destroy the sentries. If it had occurred to me, I wondered if I still would have done what I did. I didn’t want to share my thoughts with Tejus—or admit that I hadn’t been quick-thinking enough to realize the potential power I’d had.
“Oh, well… It’s nothing—equal opportunities and all that…” My voice trailed off and I shrugged, looking down so he wouldn’t see the heat starting to flush up onto my face. “What do you think will happen now?” I asked—partly because I was genuinely curious, and partly because I wanted to change the subject.
Tejus put his glass down on the table and rubbed at his temples. “I’m not entirely certain. I’ve told my father’s ministers about Jenus’s actions—his manipulation of my disqualification, the blackmailing of you using your brother’s life. They are serious claims indeed, and Ash and Ruby have both verified them. How seriously they will take them, I do not know. How seriously my father will take them?” He shrugged. “He has denied such claims in the past—always wanting to see the best of Jenus, not listening to evidence that so clearly refuted the persona Jenus presented to the emperor alone.”
“Why wouldn’t the ministers take the claims seriously?” I asked in bewilderment. The fact that the emperor would ignore Jenus’s devious behavior didn’t surprise me in the slightest—if anything, in the first trial I felt that he’d encouraged it. The apple really hadn’t fallen far from the tree when it came to the emperor and Jenus.
“They might take them seriously—but they are largely crimes against humans. In the past that hasn’t meant much to the ministers, but…” He hesitated and I could see that he was thinking back to the events of this afternoon and the mini-revolution that seemed to have taken place within the arena. “That might be about to change—whether they like it or not.”
“It’s disgusting they think that way, like humans are second-class citizens—worse than that! Like we’re animals.” Their attitudes enraged me, and Tejus himself wasn’t immune to it. He and his brothers had been the first to start the ‘trend’ for siphoning off humans during the trials.
There was a pause as Tejus avoided my gaze, before saying stiffly, “This is the way of sentries.”
I clenched my jaw. Sometimes I would think that Tejus was starting to grow a touch of compassion, but then he would say something like this and return to the large, deadly and unapproachable sentry I’d first encountered.
I suddenly felt glad that Ash had won the trial—from the way that he and Ruby interacted it was clear that he didn’t have an issue with the fact that she was a human. If there was anyone in Nevertide who was going to put in motion the banning of human siphoning, I sensed it would be Ash.
Tejus took another sip of his goblet, and we sat in silence for a while. I tried to calm down a bit. There was no point in me getting angry about the way sentries treated humans—maybe when the trials were over it would stop, and if not, as soon as we were out of here, GASP would work to put a stop to the kidnappings on Earth.
“Were you hurt?” Tejus asked, and it took me a moment to realize he was referring to my time in the arena. For a wild moment I had thought he was asking about his comment.
“I’m not hurt,” I replied. “I’m just exhausted and desperate to have a bath. Jenus does not treat his prisoners well.”
Tejus smiled tightly. “I can help you with the exhausted part—that’s if you’ll let me.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, we could try the mind-melding again, if you’re willing,” he said.
Him asking politely if he could influence my mind made a refreshing change. I wasn’t completely happy with the idea though. Especially after the conversation we’d just had—I was pretty sick and tired of sentries digging around in my mind for their own gain.
The only thing stopping me replying with an outright ‘no’ was the recollection of our first mind-meld—the blissful sensation I’d experienced that had been like no other feeling in the world. I could do with a bit of bliss right about now, a break from all the horrors I’d seen today, the worries I had about Benedict, Ruby and Julian, and the uncertainty about our future.
“Okay.” I sighed. “Let’s give it a go—but you’ll stop if I need you to, won’t you?”
“Naturally,” he replied shortly. My question had irritated him somewhat, but that wasn’t my problem—he hadn’t always in the past, and I still didn’t trust Tejus one hundred percent.
“Let me start,” I commanded. When he nodded, I closed my eyes and settled myself back on the sofa, trying to get as comfortable as possible.
I tried to empty my mind of everything that had happened today, and focused on imagining a white, quiet light. When I was sure that I was calm enough, and the white light was all-consuming, I sent it out toward Tejus.
I felt our energy meet somewhere in the middle, and his emotions filtered down to me over the connection. They took color in my head—blue for his sadness, yellow for his unease, red for his rage, and a small sliver of gold that glinted and vanished before I could properly feel it. His hope.
The connection grew steadily stronger as emotions flitted and flew between us. Soon, I felt the feathery light touches of Tejus entering my mind, and the connection between us opening wider.
I realized I wanted to send him a specific image—just not one from the last few days. I wanted it to be something tranquil and beautiful, and the first image that came to mind was one of The Shade’s beaches, near the Port. The moon illuminated the waves before me, making them shine and sparkle. The sound of the ocean was soothing, along with the crunch of wet sand beneath my bare feet. Before I saw him, I could hear Tejus breathe out quietly in contentment.
“Where are we?” he murmured.
I turned to look at him. Like last time, his image flickered in and out of focus—I was so deep into the dream or hallucination that it was the only evidence that none of it was real.
“In my home,” I whispered, in a daze. “I used to watch the sunsets cross the ocean beyond the boundary.”
Tejus turned his gaze toward the waves. I could see his profile this way—the stern nose, the normally furrowed brow smooth and clear. I looked down at his figure. He was wearing his silk warrior uniform of a black shirt and pants, with no shoes on his feet.
“Were you happy here, Hazel?” he asked softly, without looking at me.
“Very,” I answered without hesitating, and felt an intense pang for all that I’d felt I had lost. The truth was, if my family couldn’t find us, and if the outcome of the trials ended up going against our favor, I might never see The Shade again.
“This was supposed to be a happy image,” I muttered. “Sorry.”
“I like it here.”
He dug his toes deeper in the sand and I smiled. It was strange seeing his bare feet – it was a vulnerable side of Tejus that I didn’t think I’d ever get the opportunity to see in the ‘real world’ of Nevertide.
“You don’t smile much,” he remarked, his eyes taking on a distant quality. “That is my fault, I suppose. Sometimes I
feel like I have taken an exotic bird and locked it in a cage, hoping that it will sing for me as sweetly as it would have done in the wild.”
Before I could respond, I felt the memory of my haven closing in on us – the night’s sky suddenly feeling oppressive, like it might collapse in at any moment, and the dark surroundings moving closer and closer.
“I’m frightened I’m trapped here,” I whispered.
“When the time comes, I will release you… though, selfishly, I will admit that I hope that is a long time coming...”
His intense eyes fixed on mine, and the next thing I knew, he was running his thumb along the bottom of my lip, his coarse skin grazing it slightly. Shivers ran down my spine, and the world twirled on its axis – everything flickering and spinning around me.
“Hazel.” Tejus’ deep voice filled my ears, hesitating. “Would you…”
BANG.
For a split second I looked at him curiously—what was that? But his face flickered from my vision, and soon the ocean and the beach and the sky had gone. Tejus had broken the connection abruptly.
I came to, back in Tejus’s living quarters. I quickly realized that the banging noise I’d heard in the vision was due to a knocking on Tejus’s door. He rose and went to answer it.
I sat on the sofa, quite astounded by how I was feeling, almost as if I’d taken a really long nap and felt replenished and revived. If that was how Tejus felt whenever he’d drained me, then I understood the appeal. I wondered what had caused it to happen—was it because he’d broken the connection too soon? Maybe I was building up an immunity, or at least developing better ‘mind’ muscles that could withstand more siphoning than I could before.
“Yes?” Tejus barked at whoever was at the door.
I turned to look, and saw two servants, one male, one female, standing in front of him.
“I am here to take you with me.” The male servant spoke in my direction, ignoring Tejus completely.