Page 8 of Somber Prince

The prince turned his white camel back toward the gate, and General Oskura followed him.

Her men prodded us, urging us to move. “Come on. Let’s go.”

Serus shoved his hand in my back. I tripped, almost losing my balance. Somehow, I regained it but lost my patience instead.

“Go where?” I snapped. “Where are we? What is this place? Who the fuck are you? What do you want with us?”

Serus huffed, hiking his chin up. “We are the shadow fae of Under. This is the City of Teneris. It belongs to Prince Rha.”

“Did you just say ‘fae?’ And what’s Under? What does it mean?” Little of what he’d said made sense.

Elaine squinted at the giant hill in front of us.

“This doesn’t look like a city,” she muttered.

“Teneris is one of the most thriving cities in Alveari, second only to Kalmena, the Queen’s City,” another man said. “If you do what’s expected of you, you can be very happy here.”

“And if we don’t?” Melanie rasped.

Her question remained unanswered as they ushered us through the gate.

Chapter Four

DAWN

Teneris looked bigger inside than it did from the outside. Inside the hill, there were cobblestone streets, multiple-story buildings, and a large open plaza where they brought all of us who had arrived with the caravan.

Instead of streetlights, tall, glowing columns illuminated the place with soft, yellow light. Intricate mosaics covered the floor of the city square that wasn’t actually shaped like a square but like a hexagon, with each corner leading into a narrow side street. The yellow clay walls of the buildings edged the plaza. On their roofs, the tall grass swayed, making the city look like a giant hill from the outside. An anthill, I thought, looking up at all the openings and balconies of the two-story walls surrounding the city plaza.

It truly looked like a different world. A place from a dream. Or from a nightmare.

“Maybe that black smoke in your basement made us all hallucinate?” Elaine speculated out loud, echoing my own misgivings and disbeliefs.

Oh, how I wished that was the case. That all three of us just got high on some weird hallucinogen seeping from the walls of our old house. Someone would find us lying on the floor soon. They would air the place. We’d wake up and go on with our lives that might not be great but were real.

A big problem was that this world also felt real. Unlike in a dream or a hallucination, the events here occurred continuously and in a logical order, with no time or space jumps. All my senses absorbed my surroundings in a regular, realistic way, even if the surroundings seemed as fantastic as if conjured by a feverish imagination.

Behind her glasses, Elaine’s eyes darted around the plaza, taking it in. “I really have no other explanation for any of this.”

Neither did I.

Please, let it all be just a hallucination.

Everything inside me—confusion, fear, even grief—hung suspended in anticipation of waking up.

Meanwhile, we were herded into the middle of the hexagonal plaza, along with the others. The shadow people placed us shoulder to shoulder, forming a line. All humans in line appeared to be adults, some younger than us, some older. There were men and women of all races here. Some wore pajamas or sleepwear, like Elaine and I. Others were dressed in street clothes that seemed to come from all over the globe. One woman wore a sari. A stout man had a wool coat and a fur hat on. Two younger girls had thong flip-flops on their feet.

It appeared the shadow folks had just dashed into our world and grabbed whomever they could get their hands on before heading out. Kind of like the way I did my grocery shopping twenty minutes before the store closed. And now, I desperately hoped these creatures weren’t intending to eat us.

What did they need us for?

A tall man sauntered onto the plaza, and I recognized the rider of the white camel. He’d left his camel elsewhere but retained his royal attitude and the regal posture.

General Oskura marched up to him. “Eighteen, Your Highness. Eight males. Ten females. All here, as per your order.”

He nodded, slowly moving his gaze along our line, as if surveying his new property. In long strides, he moved down the line, giving each of us a brief glance.

The closer he got to me, the harder it was to breathe.

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