Traitor (26 page)

I only had seconds. I dragged her behind me and planted myself between her … and
him
.

I spotted his silver eyes gleaming through the darkness. He was coming toward us slowly. Each of his paws was big enough to crush my skull without even trying. He moved toward us like a phantom, a soundless vapor with dripping fangs and curled talons as long as my finger.

He emerged from the library where I could only assume he had first picked up our scent. When Araxie saw him, she sucked in a sharp breath and grasped onto my shoulder. The intensity of her grip betrayed her fear.

The beast before me was different, however. I could sense his curiosity even from a distance, but I detected no fear. He was a predator, one of many in Luntharda, but he was a very clever one—even for a feline. At roughly six feet to the head, he could have easily ripped us both apart while we floundered around in the dark, trying to get away from him.

It was my presence that stopped him.

He wasn’t possessed by Paligno’s curse. He recognized me for who I was. I, on the other hand, didn’t know what he was exactly. If anything, he favored some species of tiger. He was sleek and powerful, with a long body and small, rounded ears.

When he stepped into the soft green light of my seed-spell, I could better appreciate his size. Dense muscles rolled in his shoulders. His fur was an exotic shade of smoky blue and it was adorned with black stripes and swirling patterns. There was a ridge of longer, spiky black hair that ran from his neck all the way to the end of his tail. His snout was longer and more tapered than a normal cat’s and I could see his black nose twitching as he smelled us.

“No!” Araxie hissed in warning as I started to move away from her.

I handed her the glowing seed and tried my best to reassure her with a smile. “Don’t you trust the Lapiloque?”

She recoiled. But when I started to move away again, she didn’t stop me. Instead, she kept her eyes focused squarely on me.

The enormous cat was nearly able to look at me eye-to-eye as I approached him. I was only a few inches taller than he was, after all. I reached out with my thoughts, not with humility as I always had before. It wasn’t my place to be humble anymore. I knew what I was now. Predator or not, king or not—I had authority here.

Paligno had given me that authority.

I asked him to acknowledge me, to show his respect for Lapiloque, the one who spoke for Paligno’s spirit.

His rounded ears perked and his wild silver eyes searched mine. He opened his maw to gape at my scent when I extended my hand. I could sense his strength just as clearly as I could sense how intelligent he was. He was mulling it over, sizing me up and trying to decide what to make of me. Araxie had said that the curse took the minds of dumber creatures first, that must have been why he was able to resist it. He had a proud soul, but a good and wise one.

I heard Araxie gasp when he closed his eyes and bowed his head, pressing his cheek against my hand. It was a gesture of affection. I smiled and let my fingers roam over his silky blue fur. I even gave him a good scratch behind the ears, just for good measure. That had always worked with Mavrik.

He made a deep, purring sound.

“I’m going to have to ask that you don’t eat any my companions,” I told him.

The cat made an annoyed grumbling sound in his throat. His bright eyes drifted toward Araxie. He licked his lips.

“Especially not her.” I laughed and gave his neck another scratch before returning to where the princess of the gray elves was still paralyzed with fear.

“He’ll be nice,” I assured her.

“H-how …?” she started to ask, but she must have thought better of it. After all, she’d probably seen my mother do similar things years ago.

We started back into the library and slipped quietly through her secret passage into her private chambers. The cat followed us and stood watching curiously as we disappeared through the hidden door in the wall. Thankfully, Kiran and Jace were still sleeping soundly right where we’d left them.

I let out a sigh of relief and tossed a few more pieces of wood onto our small campfire. Then I went over to wake Jace up for his shift at keeping watch. I decided not to mention the enormous jungle cat that was still lurking just on the other side of the wall. I could sense him there. He was waiting for us to come back.

Jace didn’t need to know that. He didn’t strike me as a cat person, so it probably would have just freaked him out.

By the time the sun had risen, we were already packed up and ready to move again. There was no time to waste. The sooner we made it to the border of Luntharda and Maldobar, the better.

We pushed open the doors of Araxie’s private chambers. Suddenly, Kiran let out a snarling battle cry. In the blink of an eye, he leapt forward with his bow in hand, ready to fire. Jace acted quickly, too. He drew his blades and immediately stepped defensively in front of Araxie.

Our blue-toned cat friend just looked baffled at first. But the sight of weapons put him on edge. He snarled, bearing his impressive teeth and bristling the black mane of hair that ran down his back. He snapped at Jace, although it was basically just a warning.

If he’d wanted to hurt us, he certainly could have.

“All right, everyone just calm down. He’s not going to hurt us.”

“That is a tigrex!” Kiran protested.

“And he is Lapiloque,” Araxie retorted. “Or have you forgotten? All creatures of nature must bow to him.”

Kiran shot her an exasperated look, but managed to keep his mouth shut.

I approached the cat and pressed my hand against his side, urging him to be calm. He obeyed, although he was still growling and eyeing Jace hungrily. It took me a few minutes to finally talk him into trusting us.

I was worried it might take me longer to convince Jace of the same. And petting him probably wouldn’t help, either. But after a few minutes of sizing one another up from a distance as we walked out of the palace, Jace actually took to it better than I thought he would.

The giant striped cat followed us, sometimes falling behind to sniff the air and twitch the end of his tail. His eyes were always moving, always watching. He was on guard, and I was glad to see it. I wasn’t about to complain about having another set of keen senses patrolling our surroundings for potential threats.

“Still full of surprises, I see,” Jace muttered with a strange smirk on his lips. He reached over and ruffled my hair.

I smirked. “You have no idea.”

He really didn’t. None of them did. The whispers in my mind, rippling echoes of battles past, promised powers I’d never even toyed with before. I was eager to try them out, to test myself against those who had come before me. But it wasn’t quite time yet for anyone else to know what I was really capable of.

The ruins of the gray elf city weren’t quite so daunting in the daylight. I’d always assumed the gray elves to be barbaric. As I walked past the crumbling remnants of marketplaces, temples, and intricate archways, I could see how the way they were being forced to live now clearly didn’t reflect the grandeur of their former lives. I was blown away by just how beautiful it was.

All around us, hidden under the overgrowth of foliage or peeking out of the rubble, were hints of what had been. Majestic statues of past kings gilded in gold and silver stood watch over the streets. Beautiful fountains that had long gone dry boasted glittering tile mosaics in vibrant colors. A small river snaked through the middle of the city, and there were many gracefully carved bridges crossing it. Flowering water plants grew near its banks and stones engraved with the faces of deities stared up from where they rested in the river’s depths.

Seeing it all brought up a strange mixture of awe, delight, and sorrow within my heart. I’d never been here before, and yet it felt like this place was somehow a part of me.

Jace was walking close behind Araxie as we crossed one of the bridges to the far side of the river. He stopped at the center to look down at the shimmering pebbles under the water’s crystalline surface.

“I always envisioned your people living in stick huts. You know, sleeping on the dirt, eating your enemies, and painting your faces with blood,” he said quietly.

Araxie paused. Her color-changing eyes reflected the movement of the water.

“That was just what we were told,” he went on. “That you were nothing but soulless savages squatting in the mud. Now I’m wondering if anything they told us was true.”

I didn’t dare say a word as I saw Araxie’s expression soften. She took a few careful steps toward him. Then she caught me staring at her. She stopped, frowned, and turned away to keep walking.

I cursed myself for being so obvious. If they were going to make any progress at all, I was going to have to give them some space. I just hoped I hadn’t blown their only chance to finally clear the air.

Araxie put us back on a rigorous pace through the treetops. Once again, we found ourselves being swallowed by the immense jungle as we left the gray elf royal city behind. Jace was busy making friends with the tigrex as we traveled. He’d been sharing bites of his rations, so the cat had really warmed up to him.

The only person who seemed to mind our new companion was Kiran, who still acted tense around the beast. I didn’t necessarily blame him for that. He’d probably grown up being terrified of superior predators like the tigrex. It was hard to shake that kind of thing off. He made a point to keep a wide berth between himself and the cat, and usually made sure I was standing between them.

The landscape had begun to change when we stopped for a quick meal. The jungle wasn’t quite so thick around us, so the air felt a bit cooler and freer. The trees were larger than ever, and their canopy was so dense that it choked out all sunlight. Only a faint greenish glow lit our path. Far below, the jungle floor was barren of the dense plant life that seemed to grow everywhere else.

As we all sat together on a branch, surveying the path ahead and the ground below, we passed our water skins back and forth. I noticed that there were a few places scattered in the distance where the canopy had been broken just enough for beams of glittering sunlight to filter through. The heavy humidity sparkled when it passed through the light, and the effect was as mystical as it was pretty.

I was sitting between Kiran and the tigrex—which Jace had now officially named Blue. I guess creativity wasn’t his strong suit.

Without the dense layer of jungle foliage beneath us, things were much quieter here. There were no birds or small animals to make shrill noises. Only the sounds of our voices echoed off the tree trunks. It was strangely calming.

That is, until Blue started to perk up. He stood and sniffed the air, his long tail swishing and his ears swiveling back and forth as though he heard something.

Whatever he was responding to, I didn’t see it. I couldn’t sense it yet, either, which was much more troubling.

I glanced at Araxie, who had already put her food and water skin away. She didn’t look afraid, though. In fact, there was a curious, almost excited glint to her eyes as she stood.

“What is it?” I whispered.

“The curse?” Jace echoed my concern. He already had his hand resting on the pommel of one of his blades.

She grasped his arm to stop him, but her eyes never left the forest floor. She was acting weird. The rest of us were watching her as she stood up on her tiptoes, leaning this way and that as though she were looking for something.

Kiran suddenly pointed to something in the distance. “Look there!”

“Sshh!” She squatted down. Her eyes were as big as moons and brimming with excitement as she whispered, “Not a sound. Do not move. They are coming closer.”

I still couldn’t tell what
they
were. It was as though my eyes were playing tricks on me. Now and again, I’d see what appeared to be movement, or something shimmering in the light, but I could never tell what it was.

And then all at once, I did see.

If they were some sort of animal, I had no name for them and nothing at all to compare them to. They were tall and lean, their bodies as transparent and fragile as wisps of smoke. They walked upright on two legs, with long narrow arms and hunched backs. They were enormous, so tall they could barely pass under the limbs of the giant trees without stooping, and yet they didn’t make a single sound as they moved. No crunching of footsteps. No panting breaths. Nothing but calm, eerily perfect silence.

It was completely surreal. There must have been a dozen of them slowly lumbering toward us through the tree trunks. They left trails of glittering white mist in their wake as their bodies rippled and wavered. Whenever one of them passed through a beam of sunlight, their form would glisten and sparkle like a riot of floating diamonds. It would seem to disappear completely, only to rematerialize once it was back under the cover of the canopy again.

“Mistherders.” Kiran breathed the word as though it were something sacred. “I thought they were just a myth.”

Araxie looked like she might cry. There was a childish, dreamlike sense of wonder on her face. “So did I.”

One of the beings was passing particularly close, and I had to resist the urge to reach out to touch it. I got no feeling from them, no sense of their presence beyond a strange chilling tickle in the back of my mind. Whatever these creatures were, they weren’t your usual jungle animals.

They were something more.