Claiming the Prince: Book One (22 page)

Kaelan’s face closed off again. “The roc is here.”

Kaelan led her to an outcrop where the trees had failed to take root in the rocky soil. It overlooked an endless canopy of gold and green leaves below.

Perched near the ledge was the tawny and red-tipped feathered beast of a bird with piercing yellow-ringed eyes and a beak big enough to swallow all of them at once. Damion hung back by the tree line, his swords drawn. His color had paled to something like ash.

Standing before the bird, Honey sang softly to it. The roc lowered its head, big as a bull elephant’s, and nuzzled Honey. The nymph stumbled back a bit, laughing.

“I’m not doing this,” Damion growled at Magda. “We can’t really mean to—”

Magda, who had been doing her damnedest to ignore her own fears, swallowed them back and moved closer.

The black and gold ring of the roc’s eye zeroed in on her. She froze, heart hammering.

“Anqa, these are my friends,” Honey said to the bird, still running her hands down its neck. The feathers there looked as long as the nymph’s arms. “I would like to ask you to take us all to the Petra Islands, the northern cluster across the gulf. Will you, please?”

Anqa cocked her head, her eye tracking from Magda to Kaelan to Damion.

She opened up her ungodly large beak and let out a call that brought fear-sweat out on Magda’s chest and left her ears ringing.

Honey clapped her hands and jumped up and down, grinning. “She said she will.”

A wave of dizziness overcame Magda as she gazed up at the bird and then beyond it, where the land gave way. Her chest squeezed around her lungs, cutting off the air. Her pulse skittered and fluttered.

What had she been thinking? She’d never flown—not once. Not even when the fairies would give the Pixie children rides through the garden. The children would squeal with delight, chubby Pixie feet knocking petals from the flowers.

“Magda?” Kaelan’s voice was right next to her.

She flinched, not realizing he’d drawn so close.

“We must leave soon,” Honey called. “Anqa and her mate are in the midst of nesting. She cannot allow more than a couple of days away.”

“That beast is mating?” Damion sneered.

The roc lowered its head, eye fixed on the warrior, and let out a low clucking in the back of its throat—not a friendly sound.

Honey patted Anqa’s neck again. “It’s all right. He is nothing more than a Pixie. You don’t need to worry about what he says.” She smiled brightly at Damion. “Although, if you insult her again, she might eat you.”

Damion growled and charged up to Magda, crowding her, sucking up her oxygen. She took a step back from both him and Kaelan.

“We cannot do this,” he said. “I won’t.”

Her breath was too short and shallow to respond.

Kaelan’s hand skimmed her bare arm lightly. A cool energy passed through her, calming. She managed to pull a deep breath that slowed the dizzy swirl in her head.

“Then you can stay here,” she said to Damion. “But if we don’t find the Enneahedron, we may as well quit now.”

“You don’t know—”

“It’s our best chance,” she said. “Do you think I want to”—her throat clenched, but she pushed through—“fly on
that
to the Realms of the Throne?”

Kaelan’s fingers touched her shoulder gently, shaving away the lingering panic. “You don’t want to go,” he said. “So maybe . . . you shouldn’t.”

She shrugged his hand off and turned on him. “I have to go. And I can’t stop Honey from joining—”

“You can if it’s only the two of us,” he said. “I’ll take you.” His voice lowered to a whisper. “I know you don’t want to fly.”

“I thought you weren’t going to help me,” she said.

“If you don’t need Honey’s roc, then she won’t have any excuse to join you.”

“You could take both of us?” Damion asked, leaning over Magda’s shoulder.

Kaelan’s face darkened. “No. And I couldn’t come back for you either, not over such a great distance, not for a day at least.”

Damion scowled. “Well, then, we take the bird.”

“I can’t leave Damion behind,” she said, as much as she hated to.

Traveling with Kaelan through the Shadow Realms was far preferable to flying on the back of that giant Pixie-eater. But once on the Elf King’s islands, she would be taking an even greater risk traveling without Damion. She’d already almost died twice in the two weeks since she’d returned.

“I can come back for him,” Kaelan said. “We can find a safe place and wait until I’m recovered enough to travel again.”

“Then I’d have to wait another day, alone, for you to return with Damion?” she asked.

He nodded.

“I don’t like it,” Damion growled.

“Would you rather fly on that?” she asked, nodding to the bird.

“Why are you offering to do this, Prince?” Damion said. “Suddenly you want to help us?”

“I don’t want Honey involved in this any more than she has to be,” he said softly.

“Then we’ll leave at dusk,” Magda said, her pulse slowing.

“Wait . . .” Damion interjected. “I should go first. You stay here, rest another day.”

Honey bounded over, grinning. “When shall we leave?”

Magda smiled thinly at Damion. “I’m going first.”

V
OICES WHISPERED
through the shadows around her—hundreds, thousands. The words were indistinguishable, bleeding into each other, rising and falling like waves. All around, nothing but darkness.

And then they arrived on the island.

Kaelan sagged. She held onto his arm, easing him down into the tall, rustling grasses.

She knelt before him. “Are you all right?”

His head hung between his knees. “Yes. I’m just . . . I haven’t done this very often.” He fell back, forcing the stiff grasses to bend and break under him.

She gave a quick look around, rising to peer above the grasses. Rolling hills sprawled in all directions. No light or smoke, or any other signs of life.

“Okay,” she said. “Rest here. I’m going to take a look around.”

His eyes opened, but he didn’t lift his head. “Alone?”

She touched Hero’s head, where he nestled against her neck. “I’m never alone.”

“He’s a rat.”

“A highly intelligent rat.”

“
Thank you.
”

“It’s true,” she said. “Enough talking. If there’s anyone else around, we don’t want to draw their attention.”

“Anyone like us?” a new voice quipped.

She snapped her knives out and spun to greet whoever had spoken. But there was no one. The night was calm, nothing moved.

The grasses murmured and protested as Kaelan pushed up to his feet.

She was just about to ask Kaelan if he’d heard what she’d heard when another voice, this one gruff and low, said, “Twitchy, isn’t she?”

The first voice, higher and nasal, said, “A criminal, no doubt.”

A third gravel-filled voice asked, “Those knives certainly look stolen to me.”

“Who are you?” she demanded. “Where are you?”

“
Down! They’re down!
”

But Hero’s warning came too late. He leapt from her shoulder. The ground undulated as if filling up with water from below or . . . collapsing.

She grabbed Kaelan’s tunic to throw him clear, but not fast enough. Under them, the land gave way.

They plunged.

The fall lasted less than a second, a couple of blinks, but the impact knocked the wind out of her. She choked on loose dirt. Grasses had fallen on top of her too, slicing and clawing at her with their sharp edges.

In the next moment, she was trampled upon by crushing feet, as though she were caught in a rhinoceros stampede. They pinned her, preventing her from moving and breathing, while they tied and trussed her up like a lamb set for Python’s chopping block. Grasses and dirt still lay over her face, preventing her from seeing anything. Fortunately, she had just enough time to thrust her fingers into her shadow’s vault and release her knives. An oily tasting rag was stuffed into her mouth. She was flipped over onto her stomach and slammed down again. Tears stung her eyes as her hands were roughly bound.

“You didn’t get the knives?” the nasal voice cried.

“Why didn’t you get them?” the gravelly voice demanded.

“I was tying up this one.” A hard thumping sound was followed by a muffled cry.

Magda lifted her head as much as she could, considering a boot was planted between her shoulder blades.

Kaelan was on his side, bound and gagged too, limp. Though they weren’t touching and true telepathy wasn’t possible between a Rae and a Prince until after they claimed each other, she could see his thoughts quite clearly in his reddened and watery eyes.

Now what?

A hand like an anvil barreled into her head, smashing it against the rough dirt tunnel they’d been dropped into.

The lowest voice said, “Don’t matter. She’ll hand them over . . . eventually.”

The hand came away, and she was flipped over again quickly, like she was no heavier than a wooden spoon. Fairies, the size of her pinky finger, darted around, casting their ghostly luminescence through the tunnel. Three squat men with long beards and faces like wet paper sacks glowered down at her.

“Elves have to learn,” the one with the lowest voice said. His beard was the rusty hue of dried blood. “This land belongs to the dwarfs.”

Though no taller than three feet, the gruff one lifted her up and threw her over his broad shoulder with apparent ease. He had a hard, yet damp scent, like the bug-covered underside of a stone.

He may have been inordinately strong, but due to his height, her forehead struck the floor every time he shifted her weight or took a step down, which seemed to be often. They moved from the tunnel where she and Kaelan had been captured to another and another, each seeming to take them farther down.

Bringing up the rear was the one with the nasal voice. He had piercing blue eyes and his pocked nose looked like a dried up sponge glued into his fuzzy black moustache. As she attempted to keep her head clear of the ground, she glimpsed Sponge-Nose building a stone wall over the tunnel behind them. His thick hands moved in a blurred flurry. Seconds later, the entrance was filled. After giving it a pat, he caught up with them easily.

As often as she avoided smacking her head, she failed. Soon, she hung as limp as a sack of sand, gazing dully at her blood. Red drips first trailed onto dirt floors and then rough stone pavers, then onto smoother ones, and at last puddled upon dark, polished marble.

At the same time, the bobbing pale glows of fairies increased. Eventually, this was joined by the wavering flamelight of torches, which then transformed into the glinting sheen and rainbow flashes of fire burning behind cut crystal.

It grew quieter as they traveled downwards. Deafening clangs and the stomps of hundreds of boots gave way to the shuffle of softer soled feet and hushed whispers, to near silence when she and Kaelan were finally and unceremoniously dumped onto their butts.

Her head pounded. Her vision blurred. Blood ran along the bridge of her nose, skating hot and salty over her lips. But at least she was sitting up. Kaelan rolled onto his side next to her, his eyes fluttering. He, too, had a bloody wound on his forehead.