Beyan and I turned and ran down the corridor, leaving Taryn behind us screaming for the guards. It wasn’t long before we heard several boots running after us, and a gruff male voice yelling, “Stop!”
We had a good head start, but hampered by our heavy wedding finery, we would soon lose our lead. “Where should we go?” Beyan said.
“I have no idea!”
“It’s your castle!”
He had a point.
Passing my mother’s rooms, we skidded around the corner and kept running.
“Jennica!” Beyan huffed behind me. “We can’t just run back to the courtyard. They’ll catch us for sure.”
To my right were the doors to King Hendon’s rooms. There was the large ornate door that opened into the king’s bedroom; nearby was the smaller, plain door to the bedroom’s antechamber.
The guards’ footsteps echoed off the stone floor—they would be upon us soon. Frantically, I flung open the antechamber door, my relief palpable when it opened easily at my touch. Beyan crowded into the room after me, and I shut the door as quietly as I could in my haste, quickly reciting a spell to magically seal the lock.
The spell took hold just in time.
We could hear the guards outside, their voices muffled through the heavy wooden doors.
“Should we check the king’s rooms?” one guard asked.
Beyan instinctively reached for his sword, realizing belatedly that, per wedding protocol, he wasn’t carrying it. He reached down and pulled out a hidden dagger in his boot.
“You know you were supposed to turn in all your weapons!” I hissed into his ear.
“And aren’t you glad I don’t always follow orders?” he smirked in a barely audible voice.
The handle of the antechamber door rattled, but held firm.
There was muffled cursing from the guard who was nearest the door. “It’s locked. As is the other door.”
A second guard, a little further away, snorted. “If you want to break into the king’s rooms to search, be my guest. It’s your head.”
The guard by our room stepped away. “No, you’re right. They must have kept running, there’s no way they could have gotten through a locked door.”
Their footsteps echoed down the hallway as they continued their search. Finally, all was quiet.
Beyan said softly, “Good job on the locking spell.”
“Thanks.” I exhaled, trying to still my frantically beating heart. “Do you think it’s safe to leave now?”
“I think so, but let’s wait a little bit. Just to give them time to look around and give up for good. Do you think they got a good look at us?”
“I hope not. But if we could disguise ourselves, that might help.”
Turning to the curtained windows, I flung them open, sneezing from the dust that flicked off the curtains as I moved them. “Maybe we can find something in here while we wait.”
Sunlight streamed in. Outside, we could see the revelry continuing below. Inside, the light from the window angled across the floor, through an open doorway that led into the king’s bedroom.
Following the ray of light, I found myself staring through the doorway, drawn to explore the room beyond. Now that the danger had passed, another feeling had surfaced. Something in King Hendon’s room was calling to me. Something magical. Something … kindred.
Beyan was rifling through a chest, examining musty clothes and shaking out a pair of pants. Doubtfully, he held up a linen tunic that had probably been in fashion in my grandfather’s day. “If we can’t find anything else, I guess this will do.” He caught my mesmerized expression. “Uh. Princess?”
I didn’t respond as I followed my instincts into Hendon’s bedroom. The room was lush and ostentatious—much like its owner. I crossed the room to an ornate chest of jewelry, wondering if perhaps what I was sensing was Hendon’s ruby soulstone. But I found nothing unusual. Disappointed, I closed the chest, although I knew that Hendon wasn’t stupid enough to leave behind the soulstone he prized so highly.
Beyan appeared in the doorway between the antechamber and the king’s bedroom. His search had been successful. There were two short, hooded cloaks in his hands. “Jennica? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” I said, turning around and around, trying to find the source of my discomfort. “There’s something here. I don’t know what, but it wants me to find it.”
Blindly reaching out, I ran my hands along one of the walls of the bedroom. Then another. Then—
“Here. It’s here.”
Noting the urgency in my voice, Beyan dropped the cloaks by the door and stepped quickly to my side. I continued to run my hands over the wall, frustrated that I couldn’t just break through to find out what was hidden inside. Beyan joined me, searching the wall on the opposite end.
My fingers found a very small catch, so minute it seemed like a chink in the stone wall. Flipping the latch, I gasped when a small panel noiselessly slid open to reveal a hidden recessed area.
I hastily called up some light, bringing the magical sphere closer to the wall.
Before us was a myriad of glass vials with cork stoppers, holding various amounts of colored liquid. I drew the light closer to the vials. The liquid in the vials sparked in the glow of my magical light as they changed from blue to green to red to gold. Most vials were labeled, although some were unmarked. Darya. Petan. Sava.
Sava.
Horrified, I stepped back, trying not to retch.
“What is all of that?” Beyan asked, uncomprehending.
I forced myself to speak, although my breath was coming in fast pants as I fought my rising panic. “It’s … it’s magical essence. The people in the dungeons … he’s been experimenting on them, somehow stealing their magical power and taking it for his own.”
Beyan breathed a curse as he looked over all the vials. “There’s so many.”
“All those people … some didn’t survive the experiments … the others he locked away. Maybe to take more from them in the future.”
Beyan reached a hand out, intending to grab a vial for closer examination, but was stopped short by an invisible magical barrier. At the same time, a spark flew from the invisible wall and Beyan snatched his hand back, shaking it. “Ouch!”
I felt I had seen enough—too much, really—but Beyan pulled my attention back to the hidden cache. “Jennica, there’s something else in there.”
“There is?” I stepped up to the wall again, joining Beyan where he peered intently inside. He was right: there was something beyond the vials, tucked away in a dark corner. I could just see it if I angled my light correctly. A brightly glowing, blood red jewel, it was a twin to Hendon’s soulstone.
