Page 5 of Hearts Lost

ITHRONEL

A WAY OUT

Istand at the top of the staircase until I hear voices echoing my screams rising above the relentless clang of the little bronze bell as it calls for backup. My heart hammers inside my throat as I force myself to turn, my fingers wrapped around the hilt of the sword I’ve never once drawn inside the palace walls.

The thick, shimmering pool of magic in the center of the room dances like the air above a fire, hypnotic and strangely beautiful. My throat is dry, and my legs feel like they’re trapped in thick mud. I turn slowly to look at the bed where Princess Elanerill has slept for my entire life.

She’s not sleeping. She’s managed to shove off the yellow silk comforter, and she’s sitting up in the bed, panting and rubbing at her embroidered bodice. At her chest. At the place where her heart should be, although everyone knows her heart was stolen by the monsters in the Lands Below.

“Orryen,” she says again, repeating that strange, nonsense word.

Then she turns to me and smiles. There’s a lunatic gleam in her eyes that does nothing to make me feel better about the situation.

“He’s alive,” she says. “I can feel him. He’s alive.”

“Uh, great,” I reply. “Your Highness, we’re so glad—”

“I need to get back,” she says.

Her smile hardens into an expression that reminds me of King Grathgore, and a shiver traces a slow, serpentine path up the back of my neck. Princess Elanerill frowns in concentration, then moves very slowly toward the edge of the bed. Her bare feet hit the polished stone. Something deep inside me, some whisper of intuition, tells me this could be bad. This could be very bad.

I move closer to the princess as she sits on the edge of her bed, panting like she’s just climbed the entire staircase leading to her tower.

“Your Highness,” I begin again. “We’re so glad you’re alive. Uh, awake.”

I offer her a low curtsey and try to look reverent. The princess glances at me with irritation, and I almost smile in response, although that would be presumptuous. She’s royalty and therefore above familiar feelings, although for a moment I swear she looked just like I feel. Frustrated, confused, and wondering how much longer she’ll have to put up with this fresh pile of bullshit.

But that’s overstepping my bounds. I straighten my back as the princess presses her lips into a tight, thin line and then shoves herself off the bed. For a moment I think she’s going to make it, and then her hands flail upward and her mouth rounds into a little circle of shock.

I step forward and catch her arm before the long-enchanted heir to the throne of the Kingdom of the Summer can fall face-first on the polished stone floor. She braces herself against me, breathing hard, and I’m dimly aware of the sound of footsteps pounding up the staircase. The princess frowns in concentration. She’s staring at the swirling, sundered air before us as though it’s a riddle she’s trying to decipher.

“I feel weak,” she says, her gaze still fixed in the middle of the room. “How long has it been?”

Voices bounce up the staircase, moving closer.

“Decades,” I answer. “I came to the palace the year you were lost in the Lands Below.”

The princess tears her gaze away from the strange, shimmering air and stares at me. The blood drains from her face, leaving her skin the color of ash.

“Maybe you’d better sit down again,” I offer.

“Ithronel!” a voice calls from the staircase. “Ithronel, report!”

“No,” the princess whispers. It’s almost a cry of pain. “Oh, no. So many years?”

“Ithronel!” the man’s voice thunders.

It’s Myrill doing the shouting, the Captain of the Royal Guard and a real son of a bitch. He sounds like he’s ready to split me open and use my guts to fly the Royal Crest from the top of the tower.

“I need to get back,” the princess says.

Her voice is like steel, but her body leans against mine in a way that makes me think she can barely walk. And even though I can’t sense her the way I can sense the mice who are now two stories below us, cold fear pours off her like mist from a waterfall.

“Your Highness,” I say, trying to be gentle. “You’ve been asleep for a long time. Perhaps you should take some time to recover—”

“Ithronel, I swear to the stars, if this is some kind of a stunt—”

Myrill’s voice explodes inside the crystal chamber, and then falls suddenly, decidedly silent. I turn to see him standing frozen in the doorway, watching the portal and the risen princess with the first and only expression of surprise I’ve ever seen him wear. As our eyes meet, he seems to recover himself, or at least enough to draw his sword and move out of the doorway.