Page 43 of The Princess of Portals

“She sold it to me.”

He grunted in amusement. “And you wouldn’t have been at all suspicious if she’d given it to you for free.”

He had a point. At the time, I’d thought she’d sold the book to us for almost nothing because she was desperate to get rid of it. The Chameleon had been after the book and could track it. By passing the book on to me, she’d changed the Chameleon’s target from her to me.

But that had all been just part of the game, layers upon layers of intrigue piled on to set this trap. And I’d walked right into it.

“Why did you want me to have the spellbook?” I asked.

“The book contains the teleportation spell,” he said.

It was all clicking into place. The teleportation spell was the first spell Mistress Meeta had given me.

“You needed me to teleport us away from Gaia.”

“Inter-realm teleportation is a difficult spell, one that requires someone with uncommonly powerful magic. You have uncommonly powerful magic.”

He’d tricked me into capturing myself. When I’d cast the spell to send him away, he’d grabbed me and… No, just grabbing me wouldn’t have been enough to change my spell to include me too. He’d bound himself to me somehow.

I looked down at the bracelet on my wrist, then at the identical one on his arm. That’s how he’d done it. The two bracelets were linked. What happened to one, happened to the other. And so as long as we each wore one of the bracelets, the spell that affected him also affected me.

My bracelet hissed, expelling magic sparks. I shook it off. It fell to the ground, and the light show sizzled out.

“You’ve figured it out.” He nodded. “Good. It’s so very tedious to explain things to stupid people. You aren’t stupid, Savannah Winters. You’re just not as smart as I am.”

Well, he certainly thought very highly of himself, didn’t he?

“Ok, you planted the Paragons’ spellbook, so I’d learn the teleportation spell, so I could teleport us here,” I said. “But why? Who are you?”

“My name is Zenik, and, as I told you before, I’m a mercenary.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I don’t want anything from you. I’m a mercenary, remember?” he said impatiently. “It’s my employer who wants you.”

“And who is your employer?”

A familiar, slimy voice echoed through the room, like he was everywhere at once. “Hello, Savannah Winters. So nice of you to join us.”

My ears didn’t believe it, but when I turned to face him, my eyes told me the very same thing.

“No, it can’t be,” I gasped, stumbling back. “You’re dead.”

Fenris’s laugh was as smooth and silky as freshly-whipped cream. “I’m disappointed in you. Have you learned so little about the Many Realms? Not everything is as it appears.”

I gaped at the vampire prince, even as his warriors closed in on me. Fenris. It had always been Fenris. He was the one behind the Apprentice kidnappings.

EPISODE 3

THE CHAINS OF POWER

CHAPTER 1

SECRETS

Fenris isn’t dead. Fenris kidnapped the Apprentices. Fenris belongs to the Order of Kings.

Those three sentences looped inside of my head, over and over again, as I blinked back into consciousness. I couldn’t recall anything after Fenris’s big, dramatic reveal. He must have knocked me out somehow, and now I was here, wherever here was.