Chapter 45 The Puppets
Once we are in the central parts of the palace, moving forward becomes much more of a struggle.
There are guards in every hall and what seems like almost every doorway.
Most of them are human, luckily, which is what allows us to slip through undetected, weaving our way closer and closer to the rooms where the king dwells.
The palace is much like it was in the lying dreams the king fed me, but a few crucial differences are evident.
The number and species of the palace guards, for one.
The exact layout of the halls, for another.
I rely on Cherry to navigate us through the space, her memory unfaltering even after all these years.
The next nonhuman guard we come across is a woman, and I know instantly that she is a dragon.
The greenish tint to her skin gives her away.
We have no time to sneak or plan before the female guard's gaze is jerking in our direction, amber eyes locked on us with unfaltering precision.
A smile creeps across her face. It confuses me for a moment.
She reaches for something at her neck; I can't see what it is.
She puts it to her lips and then—
SHREEEEEEE.
The sound of a whistle splits the air.
I curse, gripping Cherry by the wrist. We dart down a hall in the opposite direction.
There is a commotion behind us, all around us.
The sound of running feet and shouting fills the palace like an overflowing pot.
"This way!" Cherry tugs me down a servants' hall, narrow and out of the way.
We trip over one another in the dark of the passage, shushing each other and gasping.
Cherry presses us back into an alcove lined with storage shelves holding bed linens and towels.
"They'll be able to smell us," I hiss.
"We can't stay here."
Cherry opens her mouth to reply.
Clamps if shut as we listen to the sounds of a dozen guards thundering past our hallway.
"Maybe there are too many scents for them to make us out," Cherry whispers.
"When they realize they've lost us they'll double back.
"
"Okay." Cherry leads the way as we tiptoe out of our hiding place, sticking close to the shadows near the wall as we slip down the narrow servants' corridor.
She peaks her head out at the end of the passage.
It opens out into a deserted residence hall, very similar to the rooms where Marton, Vakh, and I stayed in my false memories of the palace.
The lights are dimmed, no noise coming from any of the rooms.
One of the doors swings open at the end of the hall.
A figure steps out, momentarily backlit by the dim candlelight behind him.
I tense. Another step, and his face is in the light.
"Vakh," Cherry gasps.
Something is wrong with him, and it's immediately clear what.
He doesn't respond to Cherry's voice or even look in our direction.
His gaze is distant as if there is a film over his eyes, and the world he is seeing is not the one around him.
He stands for a moment as if he is talking to someone.
He nods, gestures. His lips make no sound, though they move.
I witness firsthand the horror Cherry must have felt, watching the king's magic take hold of all her friends' minds, that day weeks ago.
But there is a buzzing adrenaline in my veins, a single-minded need, and the need is not to wake Vakhrin up or even to inspect him closer to ensure he is unharmed.
Every fiber in my body screams at me to find Marton.
If Vakh is here, then surely Marton must be too?
I fly past Vakhrin's puppeteered body, flinging myself through the ajar door to the bedroom he has exited.
It is an ordinary room, bedding rumpled, half-eaten dinner tray on the side table, a few discarded clothing items on the floor.
Whatever dreams the basilisk king has been feeding Vakhrin, he seems to have been living a fairly safe and ordinary existence.
I have trouble appreciating the relief of that thought, knowing the distress of my own safe and ordinary time under the king's influence.
And more critical than that, Marton is not here.
As Cherry stands at a distance, keeping one eye on the hall and the other on Vakh, I check the surrounding rooms for signs of Marton.
None of them are locked, but none of them seem to be occupied either.
Stately, pristine rooms with no signs of habitation or of anything familiar that might belong to Marton.
I want to grab Vakh and shake him, demand he wake up, come with us, help us find Marton.
But if he hasn't woken up on his own, I don't know if anything I could do would help. What reality is Vakh seeing? What would he need to remember in order to realize that it's false?
"Talk to him," I whisper to Cherry.
She shoots me a bewildered look.
"When I was under," I confide, words coming thickly, "I could hear your voice. I heard you calling my name, telling me to wake. Tell Vakh...tell him something he would need to hear."
Cherry steps closer, leaning in to whisper in Vakh's ear. I don't hear what she says, but whatever it is, Vakh twitches. His limbs swing out violently, and I pull Cherry out of the way just in time to avoid a blow.
"You never did that," she breathes, staring at him.
We are both watching Vakhrin in trepidation as he slowly straightens up. He turns in our direction, dead eyes fixing straight on us.
"Vakh?" Cherry asks.
Then our friend begins to laugh. It is not Vakhrin's laugh, which always sounded surprised out of him, as if he never imagined he could find anything amusing until suddenly it struck him. This laugh is too loud, deliberate and cold.
"Vakh?" he mimics the exact tone of Cherry's concerned question. "Silly girl. As if you could reach him that easily. His mind is mine."
I don't realize how tightly I am gripping Cherry's hand until she whimpers. I release her, and she rubs at her fingers.
"King Coatl?" I ask.
Vakh's storm gray eyes, flat and wrong, fix on me. "Our king has better things to do than play with your manticore. He gave him to me."
"Who are you?"
A hissing laugh. "You'll know soon enough."
Vakh reaches into his pocket, extracting a small hunting knife. He sets the blade against the inside of his wrist. Where all of those tender veins and arteries lie.
"Stop!" Cherry cries.
I lunge. Vakh and I go tumbling to the floor, a sharp bite of pain piercing me in the side. I know it's the knife and that it can't be good, but all I can feel is relief. Relief, because if the knife cut me, it didn't cut Vakhrin.
I choke when Vakh's weight rolls us over, his forearm against my throat just above the iron collar, pinning me to the floor. "Ignorant dragon. His kind are nothing to us."
"Nothing to you, maybe," I spit.
"Tarah!" Cherry is standing behind Vakhrin, brandishing her sword. She has it pointed at the back of his head. "Tarah, what do I do?"
"Don't," I manage, before Vakh/not Vakh applies more pressure to my neck, cutting off my words.
Vakh's laugh is wild, unhinged and delighted. "Do it!" he tells Cherry without taking his eyes off me. "You kill him, or I kill her." His free hand reaches down to press into my knife wound. I cry out as the pain erupts, dark spots momentarily dancing before my eyes.
Cherry doesn't do it, and I'm proud of her for that. And then I realize it's because she's waiting for me to act. She expects me to fix this somehow.
My weapons are claws and fire, and I don't feel comfortable using either.
"Vakhrin," I grit out, looking right into those dead eyes. "Wake the hell up. Do you hear me? I need you to wake. The hell. Up." I slam my head forward on the last word, my forehead cracking against his nose.
I don't know if it will do any good, if the basilisk controlling Vakh's mind is able to feel pain through the connection that allows him to speak with Vakh's mouth. But it seems to be enough to shock Vakh's body. He rolls off me, hands going to his bleeding nose, and I scramble to my feet.
Vakh stares up at me from his knees, red painting the lower half of his face.
"Tarah?" For a moment his eyes are clear, his voice familiar and confused.
"Stay with me, Vakh. Whatever he's showing you, it's a lie. Stay with us—"
I break off when he springs at me. Cherry throws her weight at him from the side, knocking him into the wall with her shoulder. He goes down alongside a decorative vase and the tapestry behind it, torn from its hooks. Cherry points her sword at him, stepping close to my side.
"Tarah," her voice is laced with fear, "are you alright?"
I press my hand to the wound on the lower right side of my abdomen. There is blood, but not too much, and I think the knife missed anything vital. "Fine," I breathe.
Vakh is himself again for a moment, peering up at us from the floor. "You need to run," he says.
"We need to run," I correct him.
He shakes his head. "You have to go, Tarah.
I won't be able to keep my—" He breaks off with a groan, hands grappling against the marble floor, eyes squeezed shut.
His struggle ends with a gasp, and our Vakhrin looks up at us again.
"He's doing this—on—purpose. Distraction.
"
Cold fear grips me.
"Cherry," I begin, ready to voice the impossible conversation.
Cherry is not looking at me.
Her eyes are fixed on the far end of the hall.
"Tarah." But I already know what she sees, because over her shoulder, on the opposite end of the hall, I see the same thing.
Palace guards, liveried in gold. More of them than I can count.
And they have us surrounded.
Vakhrin starts laughing again.
Cherry and I move to the center of the hall, backing away from the basilisk that has our friend's mind in his grasp.
Palace guards flank us on either side, blocking all the exits.
I consider the bedrooms around us.
Their breakable exterior windows. But we are on the sixth floor, and I still do not have access to my wings.
"Drop your weapons," says the dragon woman from before, moving to the front of the palace guards.
In the sea of gold behind her, I can see flashes of blue and green skin, slitted pupils, claws and scales.
Pale skin and bone white eyes like the gorgon.
My instincts roar and scream inside me, letting me know we are outmatched in every way.
Danger, they unequivocally say.
As I let my claws fade back into ragged human nails, Cherry keeps her sword up, blade pointed out at our captors.
Several of the guards begin to advance.
Cherry braces herself in a fighting stance as if she plans to go down swinging.
The dragon woman speaks, "I said drop—"
I grab the sword from Cherry's hands, the metal biting into my palm.
She struggles minimally as I rip the sword from her grip.
With the blade in my possession, I toss it at the feet of the female dragon.
"We surrender."
Cherry spits, "Like hell.
"
"We surrender," I reiterate, hand latching on to Cherry's wrist. She is breathing heavily, fight or flight instincts clearly riding her hard to do the former.
The dragon woman seems amused.
"Pity," she says. "We were looking forward to a fight.
Although it wouldn't have been much fun, with that collar on your neck.
" She taps her own throat with a sharp black claw, as if to remind me where the collar sits.
"It was forged by dragon fire, you know.
"
My hand latches onto the forbidding iron.
No bolt or lock. Hardly any seam. I wonder if dragon fire could unforge it.
One of the other guards says something to the dragon woman.
She raises her brows, turning her attention back to us.
"I knew you must have snuck past Sthenno, but did you really cut off his hand?
" I realize the question is for Cherry as the dragon woman goes on.
"I would have expected more consideration, from his princess.
"
I can't help it. I snarl.
"You cannot claim her as your princess when you've kept her locked in a dungeon, starving.
"
Her sardonic expression is unfazed.
"I haven't kept her locked anywhere, but I take your point.
"Do you."
She rolls her eyes to the heavens.
"Younglings," she says to herself. Drops her gaze back to me.
"You don't know anything about the world yet, little dragon.
You cannot possibly understand the choices you have to make in this life.
"
"What? Serve a basilisk king or scrape out an existence all alone, in hiding?
Be part of the lie keeping our world in the dark, or be persecuted for the truth?
Those choices?"
The momentary blankness to her expression tells me I have surprised her.
"You have been busy, it seems."
"I'm sure the king could have told you that, after he went digging through my mind.
Doesn't he trust you?"
A snarl rips out of her bared teeth.
"Why, you insolent—"
"Yroa," one of the other guards interrupts.
A gorgon, I think, from his pale skin and eyes.
"We have our orders."
"I know what our orders are.
" The woman—Yroa—waves him off. "Take them," she raises her voice to the guards across the hall. Cherry and I are swarmed.