Impulse (7 page)

I had no makeup with me so I had to do with what stared me back in the mirror, which, apart from my large, thickly lashed brown eyes, didn't impress me much. But after a few hard pinches of my cheeks, I at least looked alive. Perhaps I could ask Jilly to bring me some makeup the next time I saw her.

A few minutes later, I knocked on his door.

‘Come in,' he said.

With my stomach flipping, I entered. Marko was standing by the dining table, reading a document. He stuck it inside a black folder and closed it as I approached.

‘Hi.' I exhaled noisily. ‘Can I ask you something?'

He stared at me, his eyes sparkling with curiosity.

‘You can ask me anything.'

He rested his hands against the table behind him, and sort of slouched back, crossing his booted ankles. It was a sexy pose, but then Marko only needed to breathe and he smouldered.

Turning away from the distracting sight of him, I spoke to the nearest piece of furniture—a polished, wooden coffee table. I'd start with Anne first and work my way up to the touchy subject of Sylvia.

‘I hear Anne is working in the dungeons.' I gnawed on my bottom lip and turned back around. ‘It must be horrible for her.'

Marko raised his brows. ‘Anne? Yes. I thought so too when Sylvia first suggested it, but I don't believe I've seen Anne happier.'

I raised my brows. There was no way anyone could be happy about seeing psycho Damir—a man who'd committed patricide, and who also thought it was perfectly normal to slice girls up and sew their legs together to make a mermaid's tail—and his creepy men on a daily basis.

Marko pushed himself off the table before coming to stand beside me. He bent his head to meet my eyes. ‘I'd never force Anne to do something she didn't want to. I asked her, after a couple of weeks, to return to the main floor, and she refused.' He shrugged and rubbed his chin.
‘She likes working with the prisoners. She said it makes her feel good to be doing something charitable.'

‘Really?'

‘Her own words.'

Marko took hold of my hand and gave it a light squeeze. His touch felt reassuring and sensual all at once. But why was he giving off sensual vibes when he only saw me as a friend?

‘Okay. I suppose if she's happy then there's nothing we can do.' I shrugged, and tried not to focus on the fact that Marko still held my hand in his.

‘Correct. Remember, she is old enough to make her own decisions.'

‘Yep. She is.' I nodded, wondering if there was hidden meaning in his words. But I decided I was imagining things. All I was doing was avoiding the subject of Sylvia.

Marko eyed me thoughtfully and tugged on my hand. ‘Let me show you something, Miranda; something secret and very special.'

It was a bit of a derail, but I allowed myself to be dragged across his room to the far left-hand corner of his quarters, where two bare walls met.

‘Tell me what you see?' Marko asked, a crazy smile on his lips.

I stared at the unmarked grey stone walls and back at Marko, whose eyes were wide with expectation and twinkling with curiosity.

As far as I could tell it was just a boring old corner. What did he expect me to see?

He raised his brows. ‘So?'

‘Um…nothing. There's nothing here.'

Marko smiled and stepped forward, his eyes never leaving mine. My heart fluttered as he rested two hands against the
wall behind me, on either side of my head, trapping me. He was so close I could have stood up on my tiptoes and brushed my lips against his, and I almost thought he was about to do just that when a sudden warmth flooded my back. I gasped and turned around just as the solid stone behind me lit up with light crystals and disappeared into the ceiling, leaving a great, gaping opening, a doorway I very nearly fell into had Marko not wrapped an arm around my waist.

‘Oh my God! What just happened?' I asked, my breathing ragged—partly because of the weird stone-wall-turned-sci-fi-entryway, and partly because Marko still had me by the waist, pressing my back against his solid front. I could feel the rise and fall of his chest and the rampant beat of his heart.

‘This is my secret. Only you, my mother, my father and I have ever seen it.'

After finally catching my breath I drew slightly away from Marko, my eyes shooting up to where the wall had disappeared.

‘Wow.' I shook my head, unable to speak.

Marko came to stand beside me. ‘My father assumed the rooms behind it were of importance to the original rulers. They made this door especially so that only true and trusted people could enter.'

‘What do you mean?' I took another step forward. My eyes had now adjusted to the dim corridor. Small light crystals were embedded in its walls in a long line on either side, like strings of fairy lights. The air inside the narrow corridor smelt musty and damp. Marko took out his dagger and slashed at some of the thicker cobwebs that marred our path.

‘My grandfather discovered Marin, as you know, and yet he never, after years of sleeping in this very room,
discovered the door. My father, however, rested his hands against the walls one day and it warmed beneath his touch and opened. He showed my mother, and her hands did the same. But when they showed my grandfather, it would not open. He didn't believe them.

Then, one day, my father called Damir, Sylvia and myself to the room, in turn, oldest to youngest. When I was summoned in, after my brother and sister had left with looks of annoyance on their faces, my father led me to this very wall and asked me to touch it. It opened instantly.'

Marko wiped the cobwebs from his knife against his black trousers and beamed a smile that could have lit a football field. ‘He said that it opened because we loved and cherished the city of Marin above all else, and wanted only what was good for the city and its people. The wall had opened for us, to reveal the castle's heart, because it trusted us.
Marin
trusted us.'

I smiled. ‘That's a beautiful story. So does that mean your father knew that Damir was…well…bad?' I wanted to say Sylvia as well but decided against it.

Marko nodded, slowly. ‘My father considered the door a test of sorts. He believed, strongly, that the walls trusted him, and with that belief was born a theory of his. That only those who loved my father—the true king of Marin—would be allowed the secret entry. That's why my mother and I could do it. We loved my father most. Damir and Sylvia always favoured our grandfather.'

I shuddered, thinking about Marko's creepy, mermaid-obsessed grandfather's study and the book I'd found which had demonstrated, in drawings, the metamorphosis of a woman into a mermaid.

‘So, now that your father is gone and you're the king, do you think only those who love you are able to open it?'

Marko stared at me a long moment. ‘I don't know. I haven't let anyone try.'

‘It would be a good way to find out who you can trust.'

Marko's eyes turned pensive and he looked away, shaking his head. ‘If I did that then I'd be tempted to test the love of somebody in particular, to see if they love me as I do them. I'm not sure I could handle it if they didn't return my love.' He turned to face me, his eyes deeper than any ocean.

A warm, tingly sensation spread through my chest. Was he implying me? Or maybe Sylvia?

The door behind us slid shut, soundlessly, sealing us in the secret corridor. I reached out and groped for his hand and when I found it, held on tightly.

‘This door totally supports the alien spacecraft theory you mentioned once,' I said.

Marko's eyes widened like that of an excited child and shone brightly in the dimness. ‘Exactly. Now you can see how I came to think it.'

He tugged my hand and led me along the corridor, stopping at what appeared to be a blank wall with a small window.

‘You have to see this. It's a small room, an important room—a room with no opening. No matter how many times I've touched the walls I've failed to find a door. There is no way inside and yet you can see, by the intricate drawings on the walls, that somebody spent a lot of time in there.'

I stood on my tiptoes and peered in.

The room was faintly lit by light crystals dangling from the ceiling, allowing me to partially see a hand-drawn city of Marin, scrawled against the smooth stone wall in black ink. Whoever had drawn it had loved their city and its
people. So much care had gone into the drawings. If only I could get in there and see it up close.

A large black spider dropped and dangled right in front of my face. I shrieked and fell back, tripping over Marko's foot and landing on my bottom. After a few seconds of silence we both laughed. But Marko was quick to help me to my feet.

‘I can't believe there are underwater-world spiders! What next?'

He grimaced. ‘Rats.'

I froze and he laughed. ‘No more or less than in your world, Miranda.' He took my hand again and tugged me along. ‘Come. If we exit the corridor at the other end we can head directly down the main passageway and out to the gardens.'

We passed a narrow passage to my right, which led to a dead end.

‘That passage leads to the dungeons. I suggest you never roam there.'

‘But there are no doors so how would—' I stopped short. It was one of those secret openings.

Marko frowned and shook his head. ‘Don't ever use it.'

‘I won't,' I said, but secretly I was thrilled that he assumed I would have the ability to open it with my hands. That he believed that Marin, the city, trusted me.

After two more spider attacks, which gave me a good excuse to throw myself at Marko, we came to an abrupt halt at another wall. He pressed his hands against it and the wall warmed and lit up beneath his touch before sliding open. We stepped into a small room and crossed to an unlocked wooden door.

The corridor we stepped into was wide with high ceilings. Marko took two turns, a left and then a right,
and we were suddenly at the castle's grand double doors, held open by twin blond guards. Chirping birds called to us from outside and excitement stirred in my belly.

‘It's autumn, isn't it?' I asked, as a cool, gentle breeze tickled my hair.

The light crystals did a great job at resembling morning light, even making Marko's dark hair shine. We paused at the top of the stairs to drink in the view of the city through squinted eyes as we adjusted to the light. It was just as stunning as I'd remembered it. The concentric circles of land, the moats and the little gondolas, the beautiful white buildings and sparkling lights stretching out as far as the eye could see.

‘Yes, it's the beginning of autumn. Let's take a gondola ride to the countryside. We can visit the vineyards and watch the leaves fall.'

‘Great.' I smiled and pushed Sylvia to the back of my mind. I'd allow myself one good day with Marko before I got down to business and started sniffing out the castle for treasonous goings-on.

As we descended the never-ending steps the prickly feeling at the back of my neck told me that perhaps Marko had arranged for some guards to follow us incognito. I was glad—more for Marko than for me. At least it meant he was still being cautious. Perhaps this was why he was here, alive and safe, a year since I'd first suspected Sylvia and Damir's alliance.

The people bustling through the streets looked at me openly again, but this time they didn't gawk as much, rather smiling and turning back to what they were doing pretty quickly. Some of the men and women occasionally stopped us for small-talk as we made our way, chatting about the ‘weather' as though the darkness above us was indeed the sky and not the Pacific Ocean.

Most of them seemed happy to see me, but one bearded man, dressed in a dark suit and a fancy black hat, who looked to be in his thirties, gave me a hard glare that pierced right through my eyes to the back of my skull, rattling my brain.

Involuntarily I squeezed Marko's hand.

What was this guy's problem? What reason did he have to hate me?

When I dared to look again, the man softened his face into a smile, which quickly transformed into a throw-your-head-back belly laugh, before he disappeared in the crowd.

I froze, recognising the laughter. But then I shook my head and told myself that it couldn't be him. That he didn't have blond hair and a ginger beard like this man. That he was locked away in the dungeons and would never hurt me again.

T
HE STRANGER AND
his weird, unsettling laugh was hard to shake, even though, at my insistence, Marko had immediately sent one of his guards to make certain Damir hadn't escaped the dungeons—he hadn't.

But once we were aboard the gondola, gliding along the smooth, silvery water, which reflected the tiny light crystals that glittered along the banks, my shoulders began to relax a little. Lost deep inside the beauty and marvel of the underwater city, I could easily forget the hidden menace behind it in the form of Marko's siblings; or that, some eleven thousand metres above me, there were people who loved and missed me.

As we drifted past the gleaming, white-walled city, past dwellings and restaurants and past other small boats and their passengers, Marko seemed increasingly nervous, and filled the awkward air between us with talk of architecture and vegetation. It was strange. If I was just a ‘friend' then shouldn't he be relaxed around me? Did this mean there was a possibility that he still harboured feelings for me? And that he wasn't acting on those feelings purely out of respect for my freedom to choose, as his letter inviting
me back to Marin had implied? Or was it because those feelings were gone and he was too polite to say so?

It was all too confusing. I was even starting to question my own feelings. Every time he came near me I felt my insides go up in flames, but I wanted to be sure those feelings weren't purely of the physical kind. It was all well and good to be attracted to somebody, but it was the Marko inside I wanted to get to know all over again—the passionate, interesting, fiery-yet-caring guy who'd put my needs before his own twelve months ago.