Haelo Rising, page 10
The music changed again and Griffin led me off the dance floor. Dreamily, I focused my attention back to my husband.
Husband.
I had a husband! A husband who just brought up the idea of us having kids! I took a slow breath to keep from grimacing. He really was a good man. Maybe someday the thought wouldn’t be so—
“Dad?” I let go of Griffin’s hand as I watched my father—in dusty, tactical khakis—arguing across the room with First Team Lieutenant Wingo in the far corner. Wingo held my father by the arm to keep him from coming toward me. Two other palace kryptes came to help Wingo keep Jade from coming onto the dance floor.
“Your Highness,” a voice said from beside me. I turned to see a palace maid holding a silver tray with a parchment envelope. “For you. They said it was urgent.”
I looked back to my father, who was now physically cooperating, though the way he spoke to Wingo had me on alert. I took the urgent envelope from the tray and nodded. The maid smiled, bowed, and left. Griffin moved closer to my side as I opened it.
But it wasn’t a letter. It was a photo of Griffin and me outside the Cathedral. I looked weary in the photo—I remembered being faint with the assault of so many excited auras.
“What an odd thing to deem urgent,” Griffin remarked, staring at the photo I held openly out in front of me. “Why would someone send you that?”
Massáude.
With a split second’s notice, Dagger’s adrenaline-spiked aura rushed us from behind. My heart leapt in fear.
Dagger grabbed us both and pushed back the couple dancing next to us.
“Dagger?” I gasped.
“They’re coming,” he ground out as he pulled us through the crowd toward the waterfalled corner of the room. He called out orders into his earpiece to the rest of the Krypteia in the room, and almost all at once the feeling in the air changed from celebration to confusion.
Hank was by our side in an instant. Then Vernado. We passed by Neo, then President Specter; both noticed something was happening. “Neo!” I called back. “Find Grandpa! And Lauryn!” He nodded once and took off in the opposite direction. Vernado grabbed President Specter by the elbow and pulled him along with us. Where had my father gone?
Chaos was just breaking when I noticed Basileus Alcaeus and the young Princess Penelope being escorted into a hidden door in the opposite corner of the room. Alcaeus looked panicked as he glanced around the room, calling out Cora’s name. His bodyguard, Captain Stephens, pulled him and Penelope inside, and then Wingo quickly shut the door before heading back into the crowd.
I looked back for signs of Cora or her bodyguard just as Hank guided me behind the misting waterfall to a dark opening and shut the door behind us. “Dagger!” I yelled as we raced single-file through a dark, narrow hallway between the walls. “What’s happening?” These inner walls were rough; the raw materials snagged on the lace of my dress.
“They’re here,” he called back from his point position. “Massáude and his Forçadores. They’ll be in the ballroom any second now.”
“What about everyone else?”
He held open another door while Griffin and I, President Specter, Vernado, and then Hank stepped through. He never answered my question.
Massáude had come. And curse my treacherous heart for thinking he’d come a few hours too late.
8
Dressed to Kill
We filed inside a small, dark room. Nothing about the space indicated we were in a palace. Three walls were bare wood, the fourth wall cut from the natural stone of the cave, and not a stitch of furniture was to be had except a dusty pedestal against the far wall supporting a large brass bowl: a pola basin.
“What about everyone else? We can’t leave them all back there!”
Dagger discarded his tuxedo coat. “There are other kryptes to help them. Our responsibility is to you and Prince Griffin. And President Specter,” he acknowledged after the fact.
Hank and Vernado nodded their agreement. I couldn’t help but wonder why Dagger thought to include himself in that responsibility. He wasn’t my bodyguard anymore. He’d left.
President Specter didn’t seem to mind being an afterthought. “You worry about them,” he said, pointing to Griffin and me. “I’ll go back and distract them from—”
“No,” all three bodyguards snapped in unison.
“You are the President of the Global Council,” Dagger said, his voice a warning. “You will stay with us.”
Specter nodded once, outnumbered.
As he stalked to the pola basin, Dagger rolled up his right shirt sleeve. Without pretense, he dropped his clenched fist into the saltwater-filled basin, the veins and muscles in his forearm straining. The new gold ring on his right ring finger, thick and etched with his mosaic design, glowed. When did Dagger get a new ring? We could all see the orange light emanating from the water in the bowl. Dagger’s hard expression looked frightful in the glow.
He closed his eyes, letting his message build. Suddenly, the entire room lit with the blast of fire that launched from Dagger’s ring into the water. The light lasted only a fraction of a second. In a blink, the room was doused in darkness once again as the fireball message disappeared in the bottom of the basin, presumably through a channel in the pedestal and into a network of pipes to the sea below.
I rubbed the spot on my right hand where my own pola ring used to be. I’d lost it months ago. It was now resting somewhere at the bottom of the deepest part of the ocean—beneath the brittle, cockroachy sea stars that had scared the bejeezus out of me.
Truth be told, I didn’t miss the pola ring. Yes, I missed being able to send Dagger or Griffin secure messages through the sea from across the world. But I didn’t want a new one—the ring had also meant Massáude could send me messages. He had invaded my thoughts for weeks after he’d broken into the palace Fire Room and earned his own ring at the lava pool. Good riddance.
“Who was that for?” I asked.
“Alcaeus,” he said as he shut his eyes and built up another message. With a whoosh, another fireball shot into the bottom of the basin. “That was for the general.” After the third message lit the room, he added, “And that was for Zeta. Let’s go.”
“Where?” I asked. There was only one door, the one we’d come through.
A muffled crash sounded somewhere in the rooms behind us. I jumped. It sounded as if someone was trying to break through the walls. Soon, the sounds of terrified screaming erupted in the ballroom far behind us.
“Dagger, we need to go back—”
“Not until the future of the Candeon Empire is safe. You and Griffin are leaving. Now.”
Hank and Vernado took their positions in front of the door while Dagger studied the floor and then pulled up a trap door to the side of the pola basin. “The stairs go to the basement.” He looked to me, telling me with his eyes that I was the first up. I rushed to the square hole in the floor and lifted my dress. With a clanking thud, my crown fell to the floor. President Specter picked it up and tried to hand it to me, but we just didn’t have time. What was I to do, carry it out as I fled the palace? Griffin no longer wore his crown—it must have fallen in the passageway—so I took mine from the President, set it down in the pola basin, and rushed back to the top of the narrow stairway.
A split second after Dagger had offered his arm to help me descend, Griffin offered a hand as well. I took Griffin’s hand and stepped down onto the steep wooden stairs. Griffin let go and followed right behind me.
I rushed forward through the darkness, holding the train of my dress away from Griffin’s steps. We heard and sensed Hank then Vernado enter the stairs. President Specter after that.
A terrible thud sounded above us.
Gunfire.
Another thud.
“Hurry, Your Highnesses!” Vernado called forward.
I took the steps as quickly as I could. These heels! Finally, my feet hit stone. I leaned up against the wall in the tight space as Griffin, Hank, Vernado, and President Specter assembled beside me. “Where’s Dagger?” I asked. My heart raced almost as much as my brain. I couldn’t concentrate enough to try to sense his aura above us.
A crack of light illuminated Vernado’s face as he peered past the door he’d opened at the base of the stairs. “Dagger is coming. But we have to get going.” He muttered something in Greek to Hank before he thrust the door open and left. Hank held the door and urged Griffin, me, and Specter out. With Griffin behind me, I entered a flame-lit arched hallway I recognized from months ago. We were in the Krypteia’s quarters.
Hank joined us and let the door shut with a solid thud. “Hurry. The Forçadores could be here in minutes.”
“What about Dagger?” I asked again.
“He’ll come when he can. He’s keeping us from being followed.” Hank held his hand out, desperate for me to get moving.
After grabbing the shoes from my feet, I followed Griffin’s bodyguard down the hallway. What about the partygoers above us? My throat constricted. Why was I always leaving people behind? This has to stop.
Vernado led us past the concrete door to the renovated palace dungeons where I knew the traitor Theo Vargas was being held. Every time I’d been down here, a kryptes stood watch at that door. Not tonight.
Tonight, the solid door stood ajar.
Concerned, Vernado peeked in the doorway then hustled inside. Following, we found a series of empty prison cells lining the long concrete room. Each cell was separate from the next by a concrete half-wall a meter high, with thick iron bars from the short walls to the ceiling. The barred iron doors of the cells hung ajar. Two kryptes lay unconscious on the floor.
Vernado cursed. “The prisoners escaped.” He rushed to the aid of the unconscious men, checking their pulses. “This one’s alive,” he said, nodding to the second man. I blinked at the first man, whose chest wasn’t rising with breath.
“Etulo! Wake up, Etulo!” Vernado barked at the one still breathing. He slapped him softly, then not-so-softly on the cheek. The name sounded so familiar.
Etulo groaned.
“What happened?” Vernado asked harshly as Etulo struggled to open his eyes.
“É . . . éxi ándres. Krypteia stolés.”
Six men in Krypteia uniforms had broken the prisoners out. The Forçadores mercenaries we’d captured were now back with Massáude.
It was Hank’s turn to swear. “He could have the entire palace Krypteia outnumbered. There were fifty-six prisoners down here. And who knows how many Massáude brought with him.”
Vernado dragged Etulo a distance away and leaned him against the wall. President Specter moved to quickly search the back cells in the corridor. Hank squatted to search the dead guard. For clues? Identification? A radio? I wasn’t sure.
“They left the traitor,” President Specter called from the back where he stood in front of the only cell still locked. So Theo was still here, tucked behind the cell’s half-wall. Griffin jolted with the news.
Suddenly, a violent aura came upon Griffin and me from behind. I whirled around, crouched to the floor, and with a whip of my dress’s skirt, unsheathed the knife from my ankle harness. I’d done it automatically. And fast.
The man before us snarled, his aura fueled with fear and hatred. I didn’t hesitate, snapping my knife milliseconds before the attacker’s gun—pointed right at Griffin—fired. The Forçadoro dropped to the floor, writhing with a knife in his gut.
Instantly, Vernado was by our side. In one swift movement, Hank finished off the inevitable death of the attacker while Vernado rushed Griffin and me into the safety of a cell, ordering President Specter to take cover as well.
“Griffin! Are you okay?” I moved my hands across his chest, checking for blood.
“Yes, yes, I am okay. He didn’t hit me.”
“What?” I was shocked. The attacker’s aim had looked so sure. My hand found a hole in the side of Griffin’s fitted tuxedo shirt. I stared at it, putting the tip of my finger against the singed fabric on Griffin’s side and then through the hole the bullet had made in the side of his suit jacket.
“It barely missed me,” he panted, relieved.
I hugged him. Griffin hugged me back. And then it hit me. I’d killed a man. Again.
But this time, I wasn’t shaking.
“He’s fine,” I said to Hank and Vernado, stepping out of the cell. “We’re fine.” The second time I said it was more for myself.
Griffin’s chest expanded in and out roughly. “You. . . .”
I held his forearms in my hands and looked in his eyes until he fully processed what had happened.
“You saved my life.”
I shook my head. “I think Fate saved your life.”
Vernado moved back to Etulo, now sitting up against the wall. In Greek, Vernado warned him, “You didn’t see us down here. No one but the general can know where we went. Got it?”
Etulo nodded his head. Just as Vernado man-patted him on the chest and stepped over his legs, Etulo gave me a look. I recognized him from my childhood; he’d been my secret bodyguard before Dagger. Now his aura clenched with a kind of shame. This isn’t your fault, Etulo! My heart hurt.
“Come, my dear,” Griffin said at my side. “We must move.”
“Wait.” I ran back to Theo’s cell. I clutched the iron bars and pulled my face in to better see Griffin’s former bodyguard curled up in the dark. “Theo.” He wouldn’t look at me. “Theo!” I rattled the barred door.
I had so many questions. Most of them had been answered by the countless hours of questioning that General Stratos had subjected Theo to. I’d seen the footage, read the reports. I knew that he hadn’t known Massáude wanted to kill the royal family until he was in too deep, and that the traitorous maid who’d let Massáude into the palace had tried unsuccessfully to poison all of us beforehand. Thank you, Fate.
I also knew that it was Theo who had convinced Alcaeus to put a tracker on my pack the first time we left Pankyra; he’d told Alcaeus that the royal family needed to know where I was. Period. And that Dagger might fail. And if Alcaeus told Dagger about the tracker, Dagger would remove it and think that the Basileus didn’t trust him. Which . . . was probably true.
But what I didn’t know was why he hadn’t given me up years ago. He’d known where I was. I was living with Grandpa Aaram in San Diego under the protection of one solitary bodyguard that I hadn’t even known was there, and as amazing as Dagger was, Massáude could have taken me if he’d known where to find me. But Theo hadn’t told. Massáude didn’t know where to find me until Kingston’s betrayal.
“Why?” I asked him, knowing that if I didn’t get an answer now, I’d never get one.
He tipped his head slightly. Fresh, ugly bruises covered his face. His far eye was swollen shut and blood dripped from the corner of his mouth. Even the cast on his hand—the hand that had been nearly shot off by the Krypteia when he was discovered—looked as if it had been ravaged in a severe beating.
Massáude’s men had found him, and both sides now saw him as a traitor.
“Why didn’t you tell Massáude I was in San Diego? He could have come for me years ago. Why didn’t you tell him?”
I winced at the pain evident on his face when he tried to swallow. His voice rasped and gurgled. “He. . . .” He coughed weakly. “Was enigma.” Theo’s twisted smile creeped me out. “I fell for his story.” In a flash of mad energy, he lifted a hand like he was setting up a news headline. “Underdog pulls people out of poverty despite ruthless monarchy.” He flopped back into the corner. “I sympathized. Admired.” He coughed again, flinching in pain. “But I didn’t know his endgame. Couldn’t . . . trust him.” He turned his head like he was already checking out of the conversation. His words were quiet, eyes dull. “He believed me when I said I didn’t know where you were.”
“What changed your mind?” I asked, desperate for him to stay conscious long enough to answer the question.
Hank clasped my elbow. “Galana Miriam, we have to go! We don’t have time for this.”
I shook the bars again and the busted latch came loose. The cage door swung wide open. “What changed your mind, Theo!”
“He’s good, Miriam,” Theo cooed. “Sympathy. Hate. Fear. It’s all the same thing. All the same thing. All the same. All the same.” He wasn’t talking to me anymore; his mad mumblings only stirred the demons in his head. He giggled. “I couldn’t have stopped it if I’d tried.”
Griffin lunged forward through the cell door, and with all his might punched Theo in the face. “You were by my side for years. You could have trusted me.” He leaned back. “Haelo, we’re leaving. Now.”
Griffin stepped out of the cell and tugged lightly on my elbow, flexing his other hand in and out of a fist. Theo lay limp and unconscious.
Hank ushered us from the cell block corridor—my bloody knife in his hand—and out into the Krypteia’s main bricked hallway. We ran beneath low vaulted arches until the five of us came to a dark pool at the end of a side tunnel. The floor was soaked, trailing off in a wide path of wet footprints back the way we’d come. The water of the pool lapped at the cobblestone edges. Was this how the mercenaries had gotten into the palace?
“Let me go first,” Hank said, wiping my blade on his suit pant leg and handing it back to me. For a few moments, my hand wouldn’t reach out and grasp it, despite my brain telling it to. Finally, I took it and slid it back into my ankle harness.
In Greek, Hank spoke to Vernado. “I’ll head to the kryptes’ gate. You enter a minute behind me and wait for my signal. If all is clear, we’ll move to the Lóchos training fields. The Basileus is probably alerting those troops now.”
