The Never King, page 19
part #1 of Lost Lands Series
“You’re lying.”
“Whatever you say.”
Paul squeezes his hands together tightly in frustration. It’s his only tell. Otherwise his face is perfectly calm, his body language lying as hard as I am.
“What were you hoping would happen?” I ask. “Did you expect me to gasp or cry or plead with you to listen to me?”
“Something like that.”
“I don’t do that. Any of it. And neither will he if you try this with him. In fact, if you make this accusation to him, you’re going to get hit.”
“That’s a very Bastian reaction.”
“How would you know?”
He licks his lips, buying time.
I lean forward on the counter, holding his eye without blinking. “The truth is, no one knows Gable but me. He was an outcast for years. I was the only one who even spoke to him. I saw what his father’s torture did to his heart. Everyone thinks of Gable as this thirteen-year-old angel who never aged, but he grew up. He became a man while no one was looking and the man he became is not perfect. He’s human. He’s flawed and angry and scared, so I’m sorry if he’s not the caricature that you imagined he’d be, but that doesn’t mean he’s a liar or an imposter.”
He considers me for a moment, his eyes searching mine.
For once, he is not smiling.
The door to the library swings open, banging hard against the wall. Another soldier is there, tall and urgent.
“Out front,” he barks at Paul. “Now.”
Paul studies me for a second longer before he goes. He rushes out the door behind the other man, leaving me alone with the books and the stacks and my thoughts that are whirling around in my head like a windstorm.
I can’t stay here. I have to find Bastian.
I run out the door not far behind Paul, darting to the far side of the building. I sprint up the stairs to the second floor, down the hall, and straight to Bastian’s door. I knock hard, my knuckles ringing.
He opens almost immediately. It’s his day off. He’s wearing jeans slung low on his narrow hips, a thin white shirt in his hands. He looks almost exactly the way he did the night we argued when he stormed out of the room and left me alone with a heart battered by fear and a gut full of regret.
“Hey,” he says guardedly.
I push past him into the room. “We need to talk.”
“About what?”
He’s standing at the door, still holding it open like one of us is leaving soon.
“Paul.”
Bastian considers for a moment before letting the door close behind him. He slips the shirt on over his head with a quick tug. “What about him?”
“He knows you’re not Gable.”
“How? Did you tell him?” he asks hotly.
“No! Why would I tell him?”
“How does he know?”
“He just does. He thinks he’s got it all figure out.”
“I told you to stay away from this guy.”
“I tried!” I cry, dropping down on the edge of his bed. “He shows up everywhere. Lunch, the kitchen, the library.”
“You never told me about the kitchen.”
“He brought me mail. It was the letter from my mother.”
“Was it opened?”
“No. It was sealed.”
Bastian frowns, unconvinced that Paul didn’t read it.
I’m right there with him.
“It never said anything about you,” I remind him.
He shakes his head in anger. “Still. He’s been following you. You should have been more careful.”
“He’s stalking me! How is this my fault?”
“Stop shouting at me.”
“I’m angry!” I sigh, willing my heart to slow. “I don’t know what to do. He’s after something, but I don’t know what.”
“Blackmail?”
“We don’t have anything.”
“Not right now, but back in Loire we’re each worth a fortune.”
“If we get back to Loire, how is a Brûlén soldier in Paris going to blackmail us?”
Bastian crosses his arms over his chest unhappily. “I don’t know, but he led us to the lineage. It might have something to do with Fillion.”
“If we’re even right about that.”
“If you’re right,” he corrects pointedly. “I’m not convinced it’s the same family.”
Of course not. It could be deeply inconvenient for you if it’s true.
“What are we going to do?” I ask.
“We have to kill him.”
I rub my hands over my face slowly. “I want to think you’re joking...”
“But you know me better than that.”
“I do,” I say seriously. “And I know you’re not doing that, so what are we actually going to do?”
Bastian is quiet for a moment. Finally, he shakes his head. “There’s not much we can do. Avoid him as much as you can. He might try to get near you to make you uncomfortable but don’t let him. Keep a good distance.”
“I’ve been trying.”
“Try harder.”
“He never comes around me when I’m with you,” I remind him, half-joking. Half-gutted. “If we were together more…”
Bastian doesn’t react. As the seconds tick by, I feel more and more vulnerable. Like each silent moment flays a layer of skin from my body until I’m fully exposed and smaller than I’ve ever been in my life.
I hate him so much for that. For being able to make me feel this way.
“Why are we fighting?” I demand angrily.
Bastian goes still, so still I wonder if he’s breathing. He doesn’t like the question because there’s so much inside it. It’s a little thing that’s really everything. That’s why we haven’t talked in a week. If we did, we’d have to unpack this and there’s just too much to deal with. But it’s never going to get smaller and I can’t just throw it away. I can’t let this, let us, go.
“I’m mad,” he answers gruffly.
“At me.”
“At a lot of things.”
I take a quick breath, hold it in tight. “Why me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Do you wish I was him?”
“What?” I gasp.
He runs his hand over his mouth, forcing his eyes to mine. They’re tight, guarded. “Gable,” he answers almost inaudibly. “Do you wish I was him?”
“Like, do I wish you had lost in The Strain and he had won?”
“I guess. I don’t know.”
“I don’t either.”
“Do you wish he was here with you and I was dead?”
“No,” I answer immediately. “Not at all.”
He nods like he knew that already.
That’s not what he’s really asking.
“I’m not good at relationships,” he tells me. “I’m never going to be.”
“I don’t need you to be.”
“Gable was good at it, wasn’t he?”
I shrug, uncertain. “I don’t know. It was too soon to tell. I don’t think it would have gotten to a place where I’d find out, even if he lived, because I didn’t love him. I tried, but I couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because he wasn’t you.”
Bastian flinches. He knew it but I’ve never said it. It’s bigger now. More important, more real. It hurts in a place he’s not used to using and if I was halfway decent, I would leave it at that.
But I’m not.
I can’t.
“I love you,” I admit softly. “You were right. I’ve been in love with you for years. It’s why I couldn’t be with Gable and why I couldn’t stand to be near you. And I don’t know how to be okay with what happened. Maybe I never will be, but I want to get past it. I will get past it. You just have to give me time.”
Bastian breathes out shakily. He lowers his eyes to the floor, his head bowed, his hands on his hips like he’s trying to catch his breath. A thousand thoughts flicker across his face. I watch them like a story in a flip book. The pages keep turning and flying too quick to comprehend until we get to the last one and everything is still.
The page is blank.
My heart aches.
“If you love me, you’ll give me time,” I whisper.
Bastian lifts his head. His eyes find mine – raw and searching.
There’s a knock on the door.
It’s demanding, but neither of us moves. They have to knock again before Bastian growls unhappily, rounding on the door like he’s gearing up for a fight. He swings it open impatiently.
A member of the Brûlé Armée is waiting outside. I recognize him from Bastian’s birthday. He’s one of the million friends he’s made since we got here.
“What?” Bastian asks brusquely.
The guy pauses, his eyes moving methodically between Bastian and me. He knows he’s interrupting something intense. He obviously wants nothing to do with it. His hand shoots out, giving Bastian two cream envelopes. “Fennel brought them. He’s downstairs.”
“Fennel is here?” I ask, my blood rushing.
“He’s waiting.”
“For us?”
“Yeah. You’re leaving immediately. Paul and I are escorting you.”
Bastian tenses. “Paul?”
“You haven’t met him yet, have you?”
“I’ve heard of him.”
“He’s a shit,” the guy says bluntly, “but Fennel likes him so he’s going.”
“Did he ask to go?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I don’t know.”
Bastian nods to him, muttering that we’ll be right down. He closes the door slowly. His eyes are on the envelopes in his hand.
“Do you think it’s true?” I ask, excitement swelling in my throat. “Are we really going home?”
He rips his letter open in reply.
I take mine from him, tearing off the end. I’m almost afraid of what’s inside. Of what my future holds. Everything feels so uncertain right now. I can hardly breathe as I read my mother’s neat, precise writing.
“He just rambles on,” Bastian mutters impatiently. “Pompous old son of—”
“Be nice. He’s my blood.”
“We’ll get you a transfusion. Clean that right up.”
“They’ve been rebuilding,” I mumble, reading quickly through the letter. “The army in the south is seeing attacks from marauders. Spain is rising.”
“Blah, blah, blah,” Bastian chants.
I scan the end of the letter, the last few sentences out of more than fifty. “The country needs stability. They’re ready for us.”
“We’re returning immediately,” he reads ahead of me.
I feel faint. I reread the words to make sure I understand.
“Ria.” His hand is on my arm.
“I don’t believe it.”
“They’ve passed a law legitimizing Gable.”
“You’re Dauphin again.”
I stare at him in amazement.
Shock.
Fear.
“Bastian,” I breathe, “you’re going to be King.”
TO BE CONTINUED
Thank you for reading THE NEVER KING!
The second and final book in the Lost Lands series
will be released in the Spring of 2020.
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Keep reading for a preview of THE SEVENTH HOUR.
Prologue
Change doesn’t happen overnight.
That’s what they used to say. I bet it used to be true.
Now it’s an idiom, a phrase we use out of six hundred year old habit that has no literal meaning anymore. Not since the world changed and everything was forced to change with it. The people, the animals. The weather and the landscape. The very nature of the Earth shifted, taking all of us with it.
And no, it didn’t happen overnight.
It was painfully slow. The rotation of the Earth took its time grinding to a halt. It spent over a hundred years losing momentum until finally it leveled off, but the damage was done. We revolved around the sun the same way we always had, but the Earth’s spin had all but stopped, and humanity’s concept of time stopped right along with it.
What used to take twenty-four hours now took a year to complete, the Earth’s revolution around the sun our only true movement. Dawn to dusk lasted six of those months. Over one hundred and eighty days of burning, unrelenting sunlight that scorched the earth and killed every living thing in its path. Rivers and lakes dried up, plants and crops burned alive, temperatures soared to sweltering heights.
Then the night would come. Dusk to dawn lasting another six months. The baked landscape cooled and froze over. What the sun didn’t kill the cold would finish off, and it did it in the dark. Thousands of hours of living nightmare, one you couldn’t wake up from.
It was even worse when the storms rolled in. When the animals woke up.
We adapted or we died, and if there was one good thing about the slowing of the Earth it was that it gave us time. Time to learn, time to prep, time to adjust. Time to save what technology we needed to survive and cast the rest aside. To build cities to withstand the bitter cold and the blistering heat.
Some people burrowed into the mountains, building their homes and cities under the ground. They hid from the elements and they waited out the summers. The winters. The hours.
Others refused to hide. As the oceans pooled to the north and south, burying the old world and raising a new supercontinent that circled the Earth like a ring, they took to the sea. They built boats, set sail, and left the frigid night and burning day behind. They stay in the hours in between, in the half-light. That perfect hour. The golden hour.
The Seventh hour.
Chapter One
Liv
I imagine swimming is a lot like flying. You’re weightless and diving, soaring. It’s exhilarating. Quiet. Just you and the elements, the water and the air, speaking to you in a language you can’t understand, urging you to fly higher, to dive deeper, and maybe they’re going to get you killed but for just a moment you’re more alive than you’ve ever been before. You’ve broken free of man’s middle plain, the space between, and you’ll never be the same again.
Yes, I imagine flying is a lot like swimming.
And I can do neither.
I look down to the frothing water below me, my bare feet dangling on either side of the thick bowsprit jutting out from the front of our ship. The skirts of my dress billow in the wind like thin red sails that have lost their lines. Like wings beating, trying desperately to fly, but they can’t. They never learned how. They buffet against my legs that are growing cold, and I wonder if it isn’t time to come in. It’s probably too late. I’m sure I’ve already been spotted and once word gets back to him, I’m sunk. As surely as if I slid off this mast and into the sea right now.
“Do I even want to know the logic behind this?”
I don’t turn. I’m not surprised to hear Gav’s voice behind me. I’m actually surprised it’s taken this long for him to show up.
“Behind what?” I call over my shoulder.
“Behind you hanging out on the front of the boat like a figurehead.”
“Do you know what the figurehead on this ship is?”
“An angst-ridden seventeen year old girl?”
I grin faintly. “Close. A blond mermaid with boobs bigger than my head.”
“Lucky girl.”
“On the other ships are a lion, an angel, and a unicorn.”
“That’s only four.”
“The fifth Dasher doesn’t have one.”
“Why do you know this? Have you sat on the front of all of the ships like this?”
“No. This is a first.”
“Do you want to tell me why you’re out there?” Metal jingles together lightly behind me, like discordant, dented bells. “Or why your shoes and necklace are in a pile on the ground?”
I shake my head without a word. My eyes brim with cold tears, the sting of the wind flooding them, sending salt down my cheeks in rolling tracks of ice. I don’t know where the emotion is coming from. It hits me hard out of nowhere the way the claustrophobic feeling hit me on the deck twenty minutes ago when I tore the heavy jeweled necklace from my throat and freed my feet from the painful confines of my shoes. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t see. Like I’d be sick there on the deck, and before I knew it I was climbing. I was on the bowsprit in the wind with the waves splashing underneath me. It felt a little bit like flying, or as close as I’ll ever come to it. I pushed farther and farther out on the beam until the ship was behind me. Forgotten. It felt like the entire ocean, the entire sky, was all that surrounded me. It was an incredible feeling.
And now it’s over.
“They’re too tight,” I tell Gav, carefully keeping my voice steady.
“Your shoes are too tight?”
“Yes.”
“So you kicked them off and climbed out onto the front of the ship?”
“Yes.”
“In your dinner dress?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” he agrees quietly. “Alright.”
“Don’t talk to me like that,” I scold sharply.
“Like what?”
“Like I’m crazy.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy, Liv.”
I laugh incredulously, the sound shaky even to my own ears. I quickly wipe away a tear trailing down my cheek.
“I don’t,” he insists. “But I am worried about you. You haven’t been yourself lately.”
“I don’t even know who ‘myself’ is.”
“I do. I know you, and this isn’t you. You’re stronger than this.”
“Stronger than what?”
“Than whatever it is that’s crushing you.”
I take a shallow breath. “Lemons.”
He chuckles, the sound deep and full. Rich in a way I can’t remember how to be. “Lemons are crushing you?”
I nod my head, my long brown hair rippling behind me.
“How?” Gav pushes gently.
I swallow, trying to steel myself, praying my voice is stronger than my spirit. “When I was eight Dad took me to the city for the first time. We took the headless Dasher to the big ship, just him and me.”
