Chapter 13 #2
‘He’s trying to control you. I can’t shield you through this bubble,’ Val said.
Sleep tugged at my thoughts, thick and warm, like someone trying to smother my awareness with a blanket. My knees wobbled.
‘Get inside the Elite’s protection spell! Now, brYNN!’
Val’s voice cracked like a whip. The command jolted clarity back into me.
I didn’t think. I ran.
The shimmering dome loomed ahead, humming with power. Halfway there, something pressed deeper into my mind, probing, a cold finger tracing the edges of my thoughts. An urge hit me to stop, turn around, and maybe lie down and sleep. I fought the feeling, gritting my teeth as I forced my legs faster.
I leaped.
Instead of slamming into a wall, I slipped straight through the barrier like diving through a curtain of water. The Elite jerked his head toward me, surprise widening his features, and then I crashed directly into him. We hit the stone in a tangled heap.
‘I’m here,’ I told Val.
Something cracked in the air above us, and a sudden drain ripped through my body.
My vision blurred, and dizziness washed over me like I had fallen underwater.
From the well, Valkaryn shot upward as a streak of gleaming power.
I lifted my hand without thinking, and she dropped into it, slapping against my palm with the familiarity of an old friend as water dripped down my arm.
Power poured through me, wild, ancient, hungry. My fingers tingled, bones buzzing like they were turning to light. I didn’t have time to marvel.
The Elite beside me jerked upright and swung his fist. His knuckles cracked against my jaw, exploding pain through my skull. My teeth clanked together, and stars burst behind my eyes. I scrambled to my feet, still clutching Val. Heat flared against my fingertips, sharp enough to sting.
‘You’re getting hot.’
‘He’s trying to melt me, the bastard,’ Val groaned.
Melt.
He could melt her?
The thought made my stomach churn.
I glanced at him. He stood eerily still, blue magic rippling off his shoulders, making no attempt to rush me. His calm unnerved me more than any shouting would have.
I tried stepping back, planning to retreat out of the dome and think, but I slammed into an invisible wall. Solid. Cold.
Panic spiked. Getting in had been easy. Getting out… not so much.
Hot.
Hot.
Hot.
The word pulsed through me as Valkaryn heated in my palm. I switched her awkwardly to my left hand, biting back a yelp. If she melted before I did anything, this whole insane plan would be pointless.
‘Blast him,’ I told her, desperation licking at the edges of my thoughts.
‘I’m trying. I’m also fighting him melting me, while keeping Mind Render from controlling either of us. He’s powerful.’
So she was tied up doing three jobs at once. Perfect.
Which meant the distraction part was up to me.
“Look out! Chicken!” I shrieked, pointing behind him with a face full of horror. My voice cracked like I’d seen death itself.
He risked a glance over his shoulder.
I lunged.
I shot forward, intending to stab him straight through, but Valkaryn froze mid-swing—my entire arm locked in place as if someone had hit pause. Probably a safeguard preventing a controlled wielder from simply stabbing her captor.
Fine.
No sword?
Then feet it was.
I kicked him right between the legs, sharp and upward, as hard as I could, still holding my arm rigid and useless behind me.
My boot connected with soft parts. He let out a strangled, choking groan and folded, eyes bulging.
Valkaryn jerked free of whatever hold had frozen her, and the blistering heat vanished in an instant.
Before he could recover, a pulse of purple light shot from her tip, clean and precise. It ripped through his forehead, right between the eyes. He didn’t even gasp. He just dropped, crumpling into a heap as blood dribbled down his nose and lips, soaking the cobblestones beneath him.
The shield around us collapsed like cobwebs dissolving in rain.
Shouts erupted from the guards outside the courtyard. Metal clanged. Voices rose.
Val stirred in my grip, urgent.
‘Okay, I think Mind Render is watching everything that’s gone on through these soldiers’ eyes, and he’s going to send anyone in your path at you.’
‘Anyone?’ I balked.
‘Like bees, thousands of bees in this city, but we need to find the queen.’
I couldn’t help it. I grinned.
King Harrow being called a queen was the best insult I’d heard all week. He’d hate being called that.
‘I don’t want to kill innocents,’ I told her as I clanged swords with one of the soldiers nearest me.
The metal rang like a bell, jolting through my arm.
Howls rose up in the night air, eerie and layered, and I wondered if he was sending wolves after me.
I thought shifting into wolf form was against the rules here, but maybe he allowed it in this case.
‘You need to hide out somewhere, then sneak into the castle,’ Val told me.
I parried a blow, sparks flying, then cracked the soldier across the side of the head with enough force to make him slump. My lungs burned as I rushed to the back of the courtyard, darted past the bathhouse, and leaped over the wall. My boots landed on hard earth, knees bending to absorb the fall.
Sorry, chicken, you’ll have to find your own way home.
I asked Val: ‘Hide where? He has eyes all over the city if he’s using everyone.’
‘Not everyone. Remember what you found when you first came here?’
Children.
My stomach dropped.
‘Where am I going to find a bunch of kids without adults?’
‘Lunaria Children’s Orphanage. On Spring Street. If it’s still standing.’
Orphanage.
The word itself ached. My heart squeezed as I took off again, keeping to the narrow edges of houses.
I asked Val for directions while pressing against the shadows, hugging dark corners and narrow alleyways.
She guided me, working through my sight and memory, hers and mine, as the city shifted and blurred around me.
People began turning lights on, doors opening, voices filtering into the night, forcing me to slip through back yards and hop fences to avoid being seen.
King Harrow knew I was here, wielding Val, and he was using everything and everyone at his disposal to find me.
‘Hop the next fence, go south two back yards, and you are there,’ Val said.
I did as instructed. The second my feet hit the yard of a pretty red-brick house, a man holding a rake stood there in his nightclothes. His eyes were glassy, blank.
I screamed in surprise as he lunged. Val shot off a burst of pink light that slammed into his chest. He crumpled onto the grass like a dropped sack of grain.
‘Val, don’t kill him!’ I panicked, dropping to my knees, my fingers pressed to his neck.
‘He’s just knocked out. Keep going. You’re almost there.’
A pulse fluttered beneath my fingertips. Relief flooded me. I scrambled up and sprinted, vaulting a low fence before slipping into the back courtyard of the orphanage.
The building was quiet and eerie, the structure sagging beneath dried vines that peeled off the tattered brick like old scabs. The back doors were painted pale yellow, the paint cracked and curling.
I grasped the brass handle.
Locked.
Dang.
‘Hold my blade close to it,’ Val said.
I raised one eyebrow but obeyed, pressing Valkaryn toward the lock. A soft click sounded, and the door eased. My jaw nearly dropped.
‘You were hiding that power from me?’
I could almost feel her smiling. ‘There is a lot more that I can do now that you are wolfkin and can self-heal. My magic breaks down your body, which, as a human, would have killed you to use constantly. But as a wolfkin, what I break down immediately gets built back up. Theoretically, anyway.’
‘Theoretically?’ I pushed inside and shut the door behind me. The air was stale, smelling faintly of dust and old cloth.
‘Check in, Brynn. Godric said he’s been captured!’
‘I’m totally fine, and I’ll free him soon. Tell him to stay alive.’
I tiptoed down the hallway, every footstep silent on the warped wood. Shadows pooled in corners, and I felt like some kind of intruder creeping around looking for hidden treasure, only this treasure was children.
Creepy.
A siren blared outside, rattling the windows. I flinched, then hurried down the hall toward a pair of double doors.
‘I’ve got Val, and we are en route to rescuing Godric.’
‘Alone? When do my men and I meet you?’
I cracked open the door and froze.
A dozen pairs of eyes stared back at me. Little faces, some pale with sleep, others wide and watering with fear. They huddled on low cots and scratched mattresses, blankets pulled up to chins.
I slipped inside and shut the door as one girl clicked on a lamp. The glow was weak but enough to see the children clearly. Small. Scared. Fragile. I imagined adults under Harrow’s control screaming orders at them, punishing them. Their fear made sense. They didn’t have a reason to trust strangers.
“Children!” a shrill woman called down the hall.
I had seconds.
“I’m here to kill King Harrow and break his control over everyone, and I need you to hide me,” I blurted, voice cracking with urgency.
The words hung in the air. Eyes widened. Mouths fell open.
Footsteps drew closer.
One girl, the eldest, maybe twelve, flung off her blanket, crossed the room, and grabbed my arm with surprising strength. She dragged me toward a closet on the far wall and shoved me inside right as the main door swung open.
The closet wasn’t well-built; a narrow seam between the planks left a half-inch gap. Perfect for spying.
“Mrs. Clay, what’s going on? Why are the sirens sounding?”
The girl who’d hidden me spoke casually, bringing a blanket to a younger child with deliberate ease, like she’d practiced lying to adults her whole life.
Through the sliver, I saw the woman enter. She wore sleep clothes and a robe, hair in a messy twist, eyes alert and sharp.
Her voice, though soft at first, held weight. She was dangerous in a different way.
“There is a very dangerous young woman with dark hair and a sword around here. She is looking to hurt little children. Have you seen her?”
Oh crap.
She’s looking to hurt little children?
He was good. The bastard. Turning me into the villain with a single lie. Of course they would give me up. I looked insane, running in here in the middle of the night with a sword. Honestly, I’d snitch on me too.
“No, Mrs. Clay. The sirens woke us up, and then Mitzy got cold, so I got her a blanket. Should we go out and help look for this woman?” the girl asked, voice steady in a way that sounded rehearsed from a life of lying to survive.
Mrs. Clay scanned each small face. The silence was thick, but the children held firm, still and blank, smarter than most adults I’d ever met.
They were lying for me…
“No. You are not permitted to be outside. Naturally, we want to keep you safe. Get back to sleep. Tomorrow morning, take your lessons in the library with the boys.”
“Yes, Mrs. Clay,” they chimed together, as if they’d practiced that, too.
She slipped out. I heard her feet clicking down the hall, then a distant door opening, likely the boys’ room.
The closet door jerked open, and I found myself staring at the stern glare of the twelve-year-old. Her hand held a sharp fountain pen, pointed squarely at my gut. The girl’s eyes narrowed at my sword, and the pen tightened in her little fist.
“You here to hurt us?”
Her voice didn’t tremble. She meant it.
Creator, I loved her already. She genuinely believed she could take me with that pen. Brave, stubborn, ready to die defending her friends, she had a spirit that reminded me of home, of a Dreg-born who would do anything to survive.
I shook my head. “I’m here to save you. I need this to defeat Harrow, but if you want to hide it under your bed until I leave, that’s okay with me.”
I held the sword out to her carefully. Val wouldn’t harm the girl, not when she could recognize fierce loyalty like her own.
“She’s acting normal. Like a kid!” another older girl whisper-screamed from across the room, awe slipping into her tone.
I nodded. “My sword protects me from being under the control of the king.”
The girl with the pen studied Val again, then suddenly dropped to one knee.
“She wields the power of Queen Valkaryn.” Her voice held awe.
Gasps rippled across the beds. Blankets rustled.
Tiny hands clasped. They stared at me with huge, round eyes, reverence, fear, and hope mixing together.
They looked at me as if I were the Creator himself stepping out of a storybook.
They wouldn’t even be old enough to remember Val ruling here, but clearly her story lived on.
Val’s reputation was here, alive, still breathing through this city even after all these years. People remembered her. They loved her. The weight of that reverence pressed into my ribs. I wanted, desperately, to be half the leader she once was one day.
‘You will be,’ Val said quietly.
The girl rose again. “Are you really going to defeat the mind witch?”
The mind witch.
So that’s what they called him.
Fitting.
I nodded. “I am. But I need a place to hide out until he stops looking for me.”
The fountain-pen girl tucked her weapon into her little pocket like a seasoned warrior sheathing a blade. Her hand came out, small but sure.
“I’m Karla.”
She held her fist out, thumb extended. Unsure, I mirrored her. She tapped her thumb to mine in a silent promise. A secret handshake, maybe. Or a vow.
“We’ll keep you hidden,” she declared.
She dragged over an extra blanket and pillow, building a tiny makeshift nest inside the closet. I whispered my thanks and curled into the little space, still clutching Val.
‘You get some rest. I’ll make sure your mind remains your own,’ Val promised, humming in my skull like a guardian.
‘I can stay up,’ I told her stubbornly.
‘Get some rest. You will need it for what is to come.’
She was right. As usual.
I reached out to Kaelric. He was probably pacing a hole in the ground with worry.
‘I’m hiding out with the children in the Lunaria Orphanage,’ I told him. ‘I’m going to get some rest and check in around morning time.’
His reply was instant, a warm pressure at my heart. ‘Smart, he can’t control the kids. They won’t turn on you. I’ll await your next move, little wolf. Please be safe.’
I grinned despite everything, delighted I’d gone from little human to little wolf. The endearment felt perfect.
‘Tell Godric to hang in there. I’ll come for him tomorrow night at the latest.’
I pictured King Harrow tearing through the city, demanding every inch be searched. He could manipulate minds all he wanted, but bodies still needed sleep.
Eventually, even tyrants blink.
Tomorrow night… that’s when I’d strike.