Chapter 49
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
L yss and I are standing at the entrance to the torture cave. Her hand is pinching her nose and covering her mouth as she stares, horrified at the sight before her. I’m not sure which is worse for her, the clear evidence of torture littered about, the two blood-covered dead bodies that soiled themselves before—or after—their death, or the unconscious pale Erduborn man in the center of the room.
“You hogtied him,” she says into her hand, not a question.
“Of course. Now help me.”
Lyss helps me drag the imposter king’s limp form, still hogtied, to my old alcove, attaching the manacles to him.
The Divine plays a weird game when she blesses you. No Gift is the same as the next. Maybe not even when you steal it. I have the same strength—I assume—as I would as this six-foot man.
The other prisoners are stirring. I’m keeping my shifted form in case another guard comes down. I can hear their whispers, but some are not afraid to yell their queries at me or Lyss, like, “Why is she no longer manacled?” and “Who is that man?”. All of which we entirely ignore for now.
Lyss grabs me and pulls me out of view of everyone else. “You need to fix your eye color,” she whispers.
“What’s wrong with it? I’m going to need specifics because I only ever saw his violet eyes,” I say, frustrated.
“Uhh…They are just wrong . Can you just–” Lyss gestures vaguely in my face, “–make them…” She grimaces.
I close my eyes and think of the imposter king, and the tingle presses against my eyes, but when I open them again, Lyss scrunches her nose and tells me they’re violet again. Even after she explains what they should look like, it doesn’t work. That is until I remember the painting in Eryn’s room, the one so scarily detailed I thought they were real. The pressure bordering on pain catches me off guard, and I scrunch them shut.
“Yes!” she hisses when I open my eyes again.
My brain gutters to a halt. I had planned to kill him, and that’s it. There wasn’t really an after. I thought I was likely to die trying. I certainly didn’t expect to steal his Gift.
“Where’s the exit?”
Lyss tips her head, and I follow her until we’re at the cave opening she says will take me out.
“I have not been any further than this since I arrived. I was not sure I would ever get to see daylight again,” her voice hitches, and she lets out a tiny sob.
“Do you want to come with me now? The king is secure, everyone can wait.”
“No. I will not leave until we leave with all of them. They need reassurance that they are not alone or abandoned.”
“I’ll find Riley and the others, and we’ll come and get you all out. We can figure out the next steps later. An hour. Two, tops,” I say as I hand her the keys to the manacles.
Her unexpected hug makes my skin crawl. Apparently, I’m touch-averse down to whatever is left of my blackened soul. I hug her back, my awkwardly large limbs around her softness, and then she leaves me to walk the long, dark passage alone.
The stone stairs leading up look like they’re a natural occurrence. Each step is a different height and shape. When I reach the top, out of breath, I’m surprised to find no door. There is a large step down, and I am in the center of a tiny canyon. Looking left and right, sporadic patches of spidergrass sprout up from the hard-packed earth. It looks like it leads nowhere, just a hidden crack in the mountain. I follow the footprints in the sand and discover another dark cave opening on the opposite wall of the canyon, hidden behind bushes and disguised by the natural rock formation.
Fully clothed, I feel more naked like this than when I’m wearing my sneaksuit. According to the sun, it must be nearing midday, so there is no sneaking in the shadows. Keeping my shift as the imposter king, I take a tentative step into the other cave entrance.
This passage is also a long one, and I’m walking for at least five minutes before I see the end. A locked door. I fumble around with the keys. Of course, it’s the second to last one I try that works. The lock clicks, and I listen and wait. But I hear nothing and no one.
Swinging the door inward, I see the back of a tapestry, and I push it out of the way to find myself in a bedroom. A grand one at that, similar to Eryn’s yet much larger and significantly more gaudy. I sneak about, trying not to make a sound.
There is a washroom fit for a king , a short passage that ends in a door, and then another door I assume leads to the sitting room. I use a key to unlock the door at the end of the passage, confirming it’s the rooms Bitty had found belonging to the late queen. They were right, it looks like it hasn’t been touched in a decade.
After quietly unlocking the door to the sitting room with the third key I try, I am greeted by confusion—not mine, but the four guards who stand abruptly, scampering to attention. They all mutter apologies and bow awkwardly after I give them what I hope is a kingly glare.
“Where are Andt and Riko, Your Majesty?” one asks.
Of course. I would have been preceded by my guards, who are lying dead in a cave.
“Busy,” I say with a cool indifference that I remember sent chills down my spine when I first heard the king’s voice.
Eryn saved my life that day, so he needs to know what’s going on, too. But Tovi first. The four men look at me like they’re waiting for me to do something—say something. I’m trying to formulate my plan while pretending I know what’s going on, but I need time.
“Take me to my son’s doxy, the Erduborn woman,” I say as I stride toward the exit. The men are scrambling behind me, one almost sprinting so that he can reach the door before me.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” he all but whimpers, his violet eyes looking downward in terror.
I stride through the familiar doors to the chambers I share with Tovi. She’s sitting awkwardly straight in her seat, which makes me think I’ve interrupted something. Standing quickly, she curtsies, greeting the king in front of her. Both sets of doors finally closing, I relax so much I almost melt into the ground.
She clears her throat, schooling her facial expressions. But not before I see everything on her face first. Tovi looks at me with barely veiled horror as I sag against the bench along the wall.
I laugh—an unhinged, breathless laugh that sounds horrifying to my ears because it’s the king’s voice, but somehow, it's still my laugh, which only adds fuel to my hysteria.
“I fucking missed you,” I say between the hiccups of the laughter I’m trying to stem.
Tovi is slowly reaching behind her, her look turning to steel. I catch the movement in time, launching myself into a tuck and roll to avoid the blade that hits the wall behind me. My tuck and roll is more of a splat and groan as I land with a thud. This large body is useless. My mind is racing too fast to concentrate on shifting, so I resort to putting my hands up in defense as she runs for her knife.
“It’s Mika! I’m Mika. Stop trying to kill your innocent friend!” I yell, with the slightest of snickers at the end. “If you give me a minute, I’ll shift, but I can’t do that with you throwing sharp things at me.”
A thud sounds in the washroom, and the both of us whip our heads toward the noise. I get up as quickly as I can while controlling a large body that isn’t my own. A gobsmacked Bitty looks between Tovi and me.
“Bitty! What the fuck?” Tovi blasts, edging toward them while still aiming the knife at me.
But Bitty ignores her and runs at me for a classic Bitty hug-slam. “It’s Mika!”
For the first time since I hugged my kids in Osraed, I’m able to wrap someone in a hug instead of being the wrapped one. The hugged. The receiver. Unshed tears are already threatening me as I squeeze them tighter.
“How are you so sure?” I whisper, eyes squeezed shut.
“I can hear your heart. ”
I pull them back, holding their shoulders. “Oh, fuck off!” I laugh. “Are you serious?” A tear overflows onto the cheek that doesn’t belong to me.
Bitty is nodding with their dimpled cheeks in full display as Tovi is walking toward us, knife still aimed at me. Her hand is reaching for Bitty’s shoulder, still not convinced.
I need to do something before she gets stabby. Closing my eyes, I concentrate on me . It’s not as easy as I thought, as my mind keeps wandering to all the ways I've looked over the revolutions.
The pain is easier this time, shrinking hurts much less than growing. But still, I reach for Bitty’s shoulder, now above mine, to steady myself in a bout of nausea. I look down, checking to make sure I’m me and not a version of me . But it’s all me, clothes, cuts, bruises, and even the stain of bile on the side of my shirt, and unfortunately, a lot more blood than I was anticipating. I stink.
The blood is still wet as if it only just happened. The blood on my hands and wrists has not even a crust of dryness. Disgusted, I wipe my hands down my shirt and look up to see Tovi still hasn’t put away her knife. She pulls Bitty behind her, firmly shielding them with her imposing frame, fury in her eyes. It’s not enough. Of course, it’s not. The king could have just shifted into me.
We don’t have time for this. “Tovi, what do you need to make you understand? Bitty knows it’s me,” I say with an edge of anxiety coloring my tone. We need to get back to Lyss.
“How?”
“I tried to kill him. He’s alive. Or he was when I left him. Lyss might have killed him by now.”
“ Lyss? ” they both screech.
“Buxom Nemorisborn? The normal -heighted twin? Definitely the flower to Riley’s overgrown red weed. ”
Silence. I open my mouth for more rambling, but Tovi lowers her weapon. “I would hug you, but you smell so bad, ” she says, scrunching her nose and giving me a wild look. “I could have killed you. I would have killed you,” she marvels. “That deranged laugh nearly undid me. What the fuck…”
“ ‘What the fuck’ yourself, Tovi! What were you thinking trying to kill the king?” My incredulous voice rises an octave with the question.
“Sorry to interrupt, but also not. You can shift! ” Bitty exclaims.
“I can now. I stole his Gift…I think. He looks just like a pitiful, ordinary man now. I don’t know how any of this works. But we can discuss that later. Right now, we need to get to Eryn, then Riley and Beans, so we can save Lyss and the others.”
“Others…” they both repeat, and I sense the questions coming.
“He was torturing them,” I blurt. “Us. Nulls. Trying to force Gifts to the surface.”
Their eyes look me over, a closer inspection. I spot the moment they see all the new scars under the blood and death that covers me. Tovi goes to speak, concern on her face. But I shake my head, I can’t talk about it yet.
“Eryn will be relieved,” Bitty states, half changing the subject, and I give them an appreciative smile.
“Apparently, the king told him that we had gotten food poisoning—” Tovi rolls her eyes. “—and that you had taken very ill and required significant healer attention. Then refused to answer where you were since you weren’t in the healer’s wing.”
I scoff. What an asshole .
“We all thought you were dead. Again.”
I poke Bitty in the shoulder. “I promise to do my Divine hardest not to be kidnapped again, okay? ”
“Sure. We’ll believe that when you can go a whole moon without being kidnapped or thrown in a dungeon,” Tovi tries to joke but immediately frowns at her feet and swallows hard. My heart plummets into my stomach at the same time. One day. One day, we will be able to joke about it. And I look forward to that day.
“What’s the plan now?” Bitty asks before the two of us are lost in our memories.