Page 50 of The Princes of Stone and Steel

“She was attempting escape, Your Highness.”

“Flesh,” he spat. It sounded, well, the word sounded abhorrent coming from his mouth. The normal delicate tinkling, tinny sound around the fringes of his words when he spoke to me clanked garishly. Hostilely. And I didn’t think until the end of my days, that I would ever forget the look of absolute hatred on his face.

I tried to tell myself that this was an act, to keep Stipator, working for the Forfex, in the dark. Or maybe it was because Stipator stood only a foot away, ready to strike at a moment’s notice. Either way, I hated having it aimed at me. It felt wrong, off. “Were you attempting escape?” Steele asked. The formality shone through. If I hadn’t known he was royalty before, I’d sure as heck know it now.

“No,” I answered honestly. “The pain. Shooting through my hands. It… It became too much and I stopped to regroup.”

“Are you quite ready to continue?” he asked, no warmth behind his words.

“No. If you just give me a moment…” I trailed off because I found I couldn’t talk and cry at the same time and every word caused me to choke on the buildup of saliva in my mouth that I couldn’t swallow down fast enough.

When I pressed the palms of my hands against the ground to help shove me up, something startling happened. The pain in my hands siphoned into the soil along with the excess power. The residual power flowed upward to my ear, where the blood stopped flowing and my hearing in that ear that had been muffled now cleared. Only the blood on my skin, which had dried from the heat of the power, remained as a sign of injury.

Neither Steele nor Stipator offered a hand to help me up, just peered down their noses at me. I pushed up slowly, then bent to brush the dirt from my clothing. When I straightened, I started moving again.

Casually, I brushed my hand against one of the trees I passed, digging my fingers underneath the peeling bark of the white birch for maximum contact. Maximum contact I needed to relay a message to the trees to open a passageway for us. They’d closed off the path to try to protect me, I felt it. But the sooner we made it to Castle Metallum, the sooner I could do what?

Okay, so I didn’t have a plan of attack. I needed a plan of attack to rescue Korrigan without anyone getting hurt, or at least too many people getting hurt.

I felt the tree’s hesitation, but after a moment watched as all its brothers and sisters inconspicuously clear and widen the path for us. Stipator was none the wiser.

Even though the trees did as I asked, our trip seemed to take forever, like we hadn’t moved from the spot where I fell. A moment later, when I heard the loud, low growl I knew instinctively belonged to the warecats, I understood why.

The warecat habitat lay within the boundaries of the Vráchos lands.

“Where have you led us?” Steele barked at Stipator as he eased us to a stop to gain our bearings.

“My lord, the forest shifted. I meant to lead us back to the castle.”

“Your sword,” the prince ordered his soldier.

“My lord?” Stipator rested his hand against the hilt but held back from unsheathing or handing over his weapon.

“Your sword, Stipator. Now. You have your spear and as I’ve been on the other side chasing the prisoner, I am weaponless. We both know I am more adept with sword than even you. Hand it over. That is an order.”

With his only other option being to defy an order given by the crowned prince of his people, which would mean turning his back on his vow of loyalty to the monarchy, Stipator pulled his sword from the sheath and handed over the heavy, dual-sided blade. It gleamed cold and impersonal, even in the low light.

Steele gripped it in his dominant hand, swinging it around in a tight circle several times. I knew this action was meant to get a feel for the weight and how much power it would take to wield the deadly instrument.

We’d only just started to push forward again when the rustling of branches and snapping of twigs parted the air. Next came the heavy breathing and the smell of dirty fur. When the growls hit, I knew we were in trouble. Both Steele and Stipator backed up, their backs to each other, sandwiching me between them. Unlike during my last encounter with the warecats, the beasts sprung from their cover, three of them attacking at once.

Stipator jabbed at one with the sharpened tip of his spear while Steele took on the other two. They fought for their lives, for my life. Their arms whirled like dervishes, striking some blows and missing others as they jumped out of the way of razor-sharp claw swipes or bites.

Action continued around me as I stood helpless, lost in my thoughts. No, lost in one thought.Unlike during my last encounter… My last encounter. But I’d never had an encounter with warecats. Dream Millie, nineteenth-century Millie faced off with the warecats.Unlike during my last encounter…

The lightbulb moment hit with the force of a sun gone supernova. That was what Steele couldn’t tell me. That was what I had to remember on my own. There was no dream Millie. There was only me. Millicent Merchant. Daughter to Anson and Miriam Merchant. Sister to Margaret, Charles and Jules. Promised toLeland Barnabas. I didn’t know how it was possible—the drugs maybe, but it was more than possible. It was fact. And Steele had been right. I never would have believed him.

Suddenly I felt incredibly stupid for not putting the pieces together sooner. Where had Cynthia kept me hidden before we got to Michigan? In this world? In my world? Were there other lands beyond the borders of Roshambo? Here I always thought I was your average eighteen-year-old who happened to be important in another world, and it turned out I was more like your average two-hundred-and-eighteen-year-old who happened to be important in another world.

I blinked, hearing Steele scream, and it brought me out of my stupor. For far too long I stood by helpless, because I was far from it and I was about to prove it. Digging my feet into the ground, I called up the power of the land. Although the current felt weaker here than in the outliers, power still surged into my body. I pushed my hand out in front of me and while I couldn’t see the energy, I felt it leave me in a burst. A sonic pulse shot toward the warecat coming at Steele as he fended off another.

When I lifted my foot to move, the pulse weakened. As soon as I stepped down again, the power picked back up. It wasn’t a great time to be distracted, but needing to know how this worked, I picked my foot up again. The pulse weakened again. When my foot came down, it strengthened.

After two more times of testing this out, I decided to try something else that came to mind, and I jumped. When both feet left the ground, the pulse completely stopped. As soon as my feet touched down, the pulse didn’t pick back up.

It should have come back. I jumped again. Nothing. And again. Nothing. What the heck was going on? How could it just turn off? My purpose in testing the connection was to help. It was my only purpose and I failed. Time had run out. I heard Stipator’s frantic cry and watched his now-limp body get carried off by the warecat he’d been fighting. The monster feline’s fangs pressed into the ruff of skin and hair at the nape of his neck.

I hoped for him to merely be unconscious, not departed. I mean, I didn’t like the guy and I knew if given the order, he’d try to kill me. Still, it went against everything in me to let him die. I lunged for him, though I missed my target and fell with a hardoomphonto the dirt.

---