Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Evadine
Iopened my eyes, blinking away my blurry vision. Everything was fuzzy around the edges, soft and light and shimmering.
Until the world came into focus.
Colors slammed into me, brighter than before, with a sharpness that made my head pound.
I took in my surroundings. It looked strangely familiar, except everything was silver, like a layer of snow and starlight had been thrown across it.
I was sitting in an enormous chamber with a silver chandelier directly above me, marble columns along the walls, and a lush rug beneath my fingers that ran up the center and to a pair of gleaming silver thrones.
I was in the throne room of the palace. Only…it wasn’t.
Glass shattered to my left, and I jumped to my feet when a window blew inward, raining shards of glass through the chamber. It was as if all sound returned to me. Flames crackled right outside the windows, and the disembodied voices of shouting and screaming reached my ears.
A thunderous crash rang out. I looked up to see dust and debris falling from the ceiling, the very walls trembling from the force. My heart lurched into my throat when the chandelier creaked and swung precariously back and forth.
“Branock!” I called, whipping around to search for him. He hadn’t appeared next to me when I woke up. What had that crazy Alchemist drugged us with?
The throne room shook again. I lurched forward and hurried away from the chandelier in case that was the next to go. The smoke from the fires outside was beginning to clog the chamber, making me cough and rub my eyes.
As I neared the two sparkling thrones, another sound echoed through the rumbling. It sounded like…like crying.
Another window shattered, and this time, a lit torch flew through and landed mere feet away from me.
I scrambled back with a yelp as it consumed the rug, creating a blazing path down the length of the throne room.
Sweat dripped down the back of my neck. I ran toward the thrones and listened for the sound of crying.
I peered into the shadowed crevice behind one of the thrones and gasped.
“Branock?”
He was sitting on the floor with his back against the marble, his hands clutching his hair like he was trying to pull it out. I instantly fell to his side.
“Branock, what’s wrong? What happened?” My voice was frantic as I searched him for an injury, then clutched his cheeks in my hands. “Talk to me.”
“It’s my fault,” he said, his low voice now scratchy and rough. “It’s my fault.”
“What are you talking about?”
More screams pierced the air, and he flinched. “I did this. I couldn’t lead them. It all fell apart.”
My brow furrowed. “Branock, none of this is real. You didn’t cause anything. It’s that Alchemist, he must have done something.”
He shook his head and tore away from me, unable to look me in the eyes. “I always hurt people. I—I can’t control it. I won’t be able to help them.”
Was this what was beneath the mask he always wore? The one of the cocky, brash, headstrong young man he let the world see. Under all the anger rested a future leader who was just like anyone else. Scared of failure. Scared of letting others down. Scared of what he might do when he lost control.
Not unlike the fears of a Shifter, I realized. Perhaps we weren’t so different after all.
“Look at me.” I took his face in my hands and forced him to face me.
The rough stubble of his beard scraped against my palms. “You’re Branock Aris, next in line to the throne of the Veridian Empire.
But you’re also human. You make mistakes.
I never thought I’d say this, but maybe you aren’t the selfish, arrogant heir I always thought you were,” I said, trying to keep the words light while my heart raced from the chaos unfolding around us.
Another tremble wracked the chamber, and a column near the thrones protecting us fell, sending fragments of marble and dust flying in our direction.
“I get that you’re scared, Branock,” I said, more urgently this time. “To be honest, I am too. But your father wouldn’t pass the crown to you if he didn’t think you could do this. You’ll learn how to deal with it. All of it. The anger, the injustices, the fear. You’ll get through it, day by day.”
I could hear his erratic heartbeats beginning to even out, could smell the despair slowly fading from his normal scent. Without thinking, I breathed him in, the crisp snow from earlier still lingering with pine and cinnamon and soap.
“How do you know?” he whispered, his face mere inches from mine. Those hesitant onyx eyes bore into me, so very different from the man I’d met a couple days ago.
“Because I’ll be with you,” I promised. “Whether or not it’s our choice, we’re in this together.”
He swallowed hard, and I couldn’t stop myself from watching the column of his throat as it moved up and down. “Maybe that doesn’t sound as miserable as I thought.”
My lips tugged upward at his teasing tone. “Come on, Your Highness. Let’s figure out how to get—”
My words were cut off as something heavy came flying through one of the shattered windows and crashed into the throne at Branock’s back.
He immediately grabbed my shoulders and shoved me away, slamming me into the ground.
His body landed on top of mine, his arms covering my head and large frame shielding me.
He grunted as bits of marble showered down on his back and head, but still, he didn’t move, taking the brunt of the blast.
“Are you alright?” he asked, looking down at me with his corded forearms caging me in.
“I’m a Shifter, you idiot,” I said breathlessly. “I would’ve healed. You could’ve gotten yourself killed!”
“You said none of this is real, right?”
I smacked his shoulder. “That doesn’t mean you can’t be hurt! I have no idea how this world works.”
“You can’t just let me be the hero, can you?” He shook his head as he pulled himself off of me.
On instinct, I reached out and grabbed his hand before he moved away. “Thank you, Branock,” I murmured.
His eyes lingered on mine for a moment, then he nodded stiffly. I thought I imagined his thumb rubbing a soft circle against my palm, but then he stood up and dusted off his pants. “Come on,” he said, nodding toward the entrance doors.
We ran toward them, dodging glass from the broken windows and flames that were eating up the rug and spreading to the walls.
Crumbled marble and wood formed a path of destruction across the entire throne room.
But as we neared, the doors to the chamber were thrown open by an invisible force, and more columns of fire raced through the opening.
I grabbed his elbow and we came to a screeching halt. “Window it is,” I said.
We veered right and sprinted to the nearest floor-to-ceiling window. Branock yanked out his leather pouch, put a couple of leaves on his tongue, and muttered “Praetum firma.”
A shimmering shield erupted on all sides of us right as we barreled through the glass.
It shattered on impact, sending glass into the force field then bouncing to the ground. Flames from the devastation outside the palace tried to engulf us, but his spell held firm.
We fell from the open window and landed several feet below onto a blanket of snow. I gasped as I took in the sight around us, nearly stumbling to my knees.
This was not Veridia City.
The real palace was surrounded by beautiful gardens and a forest on all sides. Here, however, we were at the base of an enormous mountain, reaching so high into the sky that I could barely see the glistening white tip covered in snow.
“Evadine,” Branock said, gripping my arm. I whirled around to find the false palace shaking, tremors pulsing from its center and into the ground hard enough to make us lose our balance. With a final thunderous boom, flames overwhelmed the walls and the entire building caved in on itself.
We scrambled backward to avoid the chunks of stone that sailed through the air, watching in mingled awe and terror as the magnificent palace was reduced to rubble before our very eyes.
“What is this place?” Branock mumbled under his breath.
“I don’t know, but we shouldn’t have drunk that tea,” I said on an exhale.
“Hmm. I wish someone would have warned us.”
I crossed my arms. “Is this the part where I’m supposed to say, ‘oh wait, you did?’”
“That would be nice, yes.”
I threw my hands up. “Look, I thought he was just a quirky old man who liked the occasional hallucinogenic. I didn’t think he was going to drug us and dump us in some alternate world!”
“Maybe if you’d listened to me, we would be on our way back to the real palace and not stuck here.”
I took a deep breath and bit down on my bottom lip. Fates, he was infuriating. But what was more infuriating was that he was right, and I hated admitting I was wrong.
“Fine,” I said, drawing the word out. “I should have listened to you.”
The smug look on his too-handsome face made me want to hit something. “Thank you,” he said. “Maybe next time you can say it without looking like you're contemplating dismemberment.”
“Not likely.”
He smirked. “What happened to ‘we’re in this together?’”
“That was a lapse in judgement. People say anything when they think they’re about to—” My words were cut off when a low rumble reached my ears.
I jerked my head toward the mountain, ignoring Branock’s questioning gaze.
I shifted my ear into my wolf form and felt the gentle brush of my gray fur sweeping at the edge of my face. Putting a hand to my ear, I listened.
More rumbling. Like the slow roll of thunder right before a storm hits. But there wasn’t a single cloud in the bright blue sky—it couldn’t be a storm.
It grew louder, and suddenly, I realized what it was.
I grabbed Branock’s arm. “We have to move. Now.”
“What are you talking—” His breath hitched. Dust filled the air at the base of the mountain, and we both looked up to see a solid wall of rock tumbling from the peak.
“It’s an avalanche!” I screamed over the noise. “We need to go!”
He pulled my hand into a death grip and cupped my neck before I could turn away. “I have an idea. Do you trust me, Evadine?”
Heart pounding from fear and the force of the oncoming tide, I said, “Do I have a choice?”
“Then let’s go.”
And we ran.