“Celia, are you okay?” Baker stopped in her tracks, her eyes a bit wide.
“Fine,” I gasped. “Let’s just get away from the art gallery, okay?”
“Right.” She moved forward again, picking up the pace. The pain didn’t abate until the hallway finally opened up into an expansive chamber where a huge, curving staircase climbed three stories. The room was lit by three crystal chandeliers, each bigger than my car. Light sparkled from dangling crystal teardrops the size of my head, shooting rainbows over polished marble floors, walls covered in pale blue-green watered silk, and the thick Oriental rug that covered the center portion of the staircase.
I stopped in my tracks and stared like I’d just fallen off a turnip truck. “Oh, wow.”
Baker grinned. “I know. Wait till you see your suite. You’re a decorated hero now. The king wanted to make sure you were ‘comfortable’ and to make sure everyone knows how grateful he is for everything you’ve done for him and for the kingdom.”
Oh, my.
We climbed the stairs to the third floor, where Baker led us to my suite. Some suite—if the three floors of my dearly departed office building had been laid out on a single level, they still would have been smaller than this place. The rooms were everything out of my wildest childhood Cinderella fantasies, including, in one bathroom, a walk-in tub that would pass for a swimming pool in some neighborhoods and had all sorts of whirlpool jets. It was so incredibly inviting that I turned to Bruno immediately and said, “Out. Now.”
“Excuse me?”
“There’s a bubble bath calling my name. Scoot.”
“I could join you. The tub’s big enough.” He grinned, dark eyes sparkling, flashing the dimples I’ve always found so irresistible. But there was a shadow of unease beneath the seemingly confident expression. I could sense it. I didn’t like that unease. I’d had enough of it in my own life.
I made sure he knew I was teasing as I pretended to hesitate. “Well … I suppose I could use someone to scrub my back.”
He laughed, and for the first time all day, the haunted look left his face.
Later, clean and sated, we slid between the sheets of my almost criminally comfortable bed, and slept.
We woke to furious pounding on the door and Griffiths bellowing, “Princess Celia, you and the mage DeLuca are needed in Princess Adriana’s suite at once!”
“Hang on a sec!” I shouted back as I climbed out of bed and scrambled around looking for something to wear. As Bruno slid into yesterday’s jeans, I frantically opened drawers and doors until I found my underwear, jeans, blouses, and jackets.
We were dressed and out the door in a flash, following Griffiths at run down the short hall between my suite and the royal compartments.
The corridor was crowded with people, most of whom I recognized as Secret Service from one country or another. Thorsen towered above the rest, his long hair loose, expression thunderous. Even dressed only in drawstring pajama bottoms, he was imposing as hell. As we neared Adriana’s rooms, I noticed that everyone left just a bit of distance between themselves and Igor, who was standing near the door. It was probably completely unconscious, but telling. It reminded me of how everyone acted around Bruno’s Uncle Sal.
“Princess, Mage DeLuca.” At Igor’s gesture everyone stepped aside, allowing us to enter the royal chambers. Igor led us through a beautiful living area crowded with people. Queen Lopaka, dressed in an elegant peignoir, sat on a couch, her arms around her daughter, who was shaking and looking like she was about to vomit. King Dahlmar paced, his expression thunderous. His brother was at his side, quietly speaking in rapid Ruslandic, presumably in an effort to calm him down.
Igor murmured something to the man guarding the bedroom door, who stepped aside and gave me my first glimpse of what lay on the bed.
It took a minute for my mind to wrap itself around what I was seeing. It was just so unexpected and so incredibly gross.… I was looking at the severed arm of a young woman that appeared to have been torn from her body at the shoulder. The end had been cauterized, and even from where I stood, I could smell the overpowering sulfur scent of demon. Carved into the arm, around an elaborate curse mark that matched those of the other Guardians of the Faith we’d found, was a message, in English.
Prepare to die.
31
It was Okalani’s arm. Oh, they’d run magic and DNA testing to confirm it, but I knew. There was this little mole near the wrist that I recognized.
Shit.
I managed not to throw up, but only barely. The poor kid. Someone had ripped off her arm and then forced her to teleport her own flesh through shields, all to send us a message. I wasn’t the only one sickened by the thought.
Since the arm had been part of Okalani, it should have been possible to use it to track back to her. But I watched helplessly as multiple efforts by some of the best mages in the world failed. Bruno, Creede, and the best mages of Rusland and Serenity all tried, with a similar lack of results.
“Is it because she is dead?” Adriana asked in a whisper. She looked at Thorsen, but it was Creede who answered.
“No. She’s not dead. The binding oath mark would have disappeared if she were.”
Adriana swallowed hard, trying not to be sick again. I couldn’t say I blamed her. My stomach was roiling.
“My question is, how did they manage to teleport this atrocity into the princess’s very bedroom? Don’t we have shields? Who is responsible for security here?” Prince Arkady was glaring at Igor.
“Okalani had learned how to teleport through shields. She was … is, the most powerful telepath I’ve ever even heard of.” My voice was strained. I knew I had to hold it together and not think too hard about what Okalani was going through. If I did, I’d remember my own past, all of it, completely unfiltered. I couldn’t let that happen. Not here, and not now. It would make me useless to Adriana, to anyone, probably for days.
I forced myself to think about the words my therapist had said to me again and again. The past was over. I had survived it. The only way it could harm me now was if I let it. I would not do that. I needed to think about the present and the future. I went over to the door, as far away from the arm as I could get and still be in the room. Leaning against the doorjamb, I took deep, steadying breaths. It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t pretty, but I brought myself under control.
“If that is true,” Arkady growled at me, “why was no one advised? This ‘message’ could have been a bomb instead, and have killed us all.”
“I was advised,” Igor said calmly, “as was the king. The palace shields have been modulated. Nothing that can do us physical harm could make it through. We decided that leaving them open for something nonlethal might lure our enemies into giving us something that could be tracked backward. As it has. My people will use this”—he gestured to the severed limb—“to perform magic to find the people behind these attacks. We took a calculated risk, and it has paid off.”
“A calculated risk?” Arkady packed a lot of outrage into those three small words. He turned to his brother. There was a long, silent, staring contest between the two.
I was the one who finally broke the tense silence that had enveloped the room. “Someone told me about a vision a paid psychic had.” I didn’t give names, but I was fairly sure Queen Lopaka, at least, suspected who I was referring to. “In the vision I had been captured and Okalani was being tortured by a demon. The men holding her were going to feed me to the demon and livestream the whole thing over the Internet.”
There were lots of loud reactions to that.