AllFreeNovel
Share Us
For a moment, I thought I got through to him, his face turning oddly blank. He nodded slowly.
“Good thinking,” he agreed, turning toward one of the faeries in the hallway. “Lysandra, enlist a shroud of invisibility on the house immediately,” he ordered her, and I smothered a sob, dropping my chin to my chest. One of the younger, blonde faeries ran off to do his bidding as I fell back on my haunches, trembling.
“Oh, stop being so dramatic, Grendel,” Agnan grunted. “He’s not dead. I was going to kill him, but I actually think we can use him to lure out the other three kings and kill them all at once. It’s a lot less work that way. Then the world will be just as it was before—except without the monarchy nonsense.”
My head jerked up, and I gaped at him in disbelief.
“He’s not dead?” I echoed, barely hearing the rest of how he also hoped to take out the kings of Ironhelm, Goldhaven, and Steelshire. His quest to rid Mystara and the world of royalty was secondary to me at the moment.
“Are you blind? Look at his chest. He’s breathing, isn’t he?” Agnan scoffed.
Was he toying with me?
I looked at Zen’s naked chest, staring hard for any discernable signs of breathing. Then, as my tears finally cleared enough, I saw what I had missed before: the slight rise and fall of his ribcage. I fell fully forward, head swimming through the emotional turmoil I’d just endured.
“He’s okay…” I sighed, mostly to myself, the relief insurmountable. “He’s going to be okay.”
“Well, that depends on your version of ‘okay,’” Agnan chuckled, striding forward to grab Zen from under his arms. “Help me get him up.”
“Where are you taking him?” I demanded, refusing to partake.
“Gina, will you please help me, since Grendel has gotten too uppity over these past few weeks to do any manual labor herself? This is what happens when you let the royals infect you with their treachery. Do you see now?” Agnan barked, shaking his head.
Gina shuffled forward and gave me a dirty look, shoving me aside to grab Zen’s bare feet. I resisted the urge to attack her, knowing that I would quickly be taken down if I dared.
“What are you doing with him?” I insisted, following them into the hallway. “Agnan, tell me what’s happening!”
“I told you; he’s going to help us bring all the kings together, and we’ll knock them all out. Four birds with one stone, so to speak. Soon, the continent will be cleansed—and then the world will be as it was before it was divided.”
I stared at him, knowing this sermon well. It was one he had given us before, talking about returning the world to the “old way.”
“He’s going to wake up and kill you,” I said bluntly. “You have to know that.”
“No, he won’t,” Agnan replied with a chuckle, heading down the rickety stairs backward. “Because when he wakes up, he’ll be locked up.”
I rolled my eyes. “You don’t know how powerful he is,” I insisted, realizing now that Agnan intended on taking Zen into the cellar. “That won’t stop him from getting out.”
“Sure it will,” Agnan snapped, clearly tired of my arguing. “Because I’ve removed his ability to shift. Your lover boy is just a boring old king now, Mousie, and how is that going to serve him without his money and guards?”
He grinned cruelly at me as shock radiated through my entire body. “How do you like him now?”
Gina and Agnan disappeared around the corner of the second landing, leaving me alone with the rest of my counterparts, each one of them casting me scathing looks that screamed,TRAITOR!
“You’re already bringing trouble back with you, Grendel,” one of them muttered, stomping back toward her bedroom. “It was better when you were gone. It’s always so hectic when you’re here.”
I agree,I wanted to yell back. I didn’t want to be here, either. I just wanted to take Zen and leave.
Chapter3
Zen
Shivers spliced down my spine, followed by a racking of nausea even before my eyes opened.
Mustiness filled my nostrils, my eyelids heavy, like they were weighed down by lead, the struggle to keep my eyes parted a chore. Finally, I managed to fully open them, my senses entirely assaulted by my surroundings.
What the hell is this now?
In a torrent, the moments that had led me here hit me like a punch, and I bolted upright. It was the wrong thing to do. Dizziness forced me back to the flat, solid surface on which I lay, blinking rapidly.
