Bastial Energy (25 page)

“Oh, be quiet.”

Effie’s laughter was interrupted by the sound of the door being unlatched. Cleve stomped in, stopping abruptly at the sight of them. “Hello,” he said with his usual feigned indifference.

“We weren’t talking about you,” Effie uttered.
I must be drunk
, she thought, realizing she didn’t even have to say something. Cleve wouldn’t have asked.

Confused, Cleve held out his palms and said, “Good?” His tone was as if he was just hoping to give them the answer they wanted so he could get out of there. Effie couldn’t think of what else to say, and soon he marched to his room.

“Why?”
Reela mouthed with a shrug.

“It just came out,” she whispered.

“Make sure that’s the last thing to
just come out
.” Reela placed a finger across Effie’s lips, which Effie playfully kissed. Reela smiled, and they stood to clear the table.

Effie hadn’t even seen Reela kiss a man, so the mention of these deep affections gave her an awkward feeling in her stomach, like she’d swallowed something still squirming. To make it even stranger, she couldn’t imagine Cleve with
any
woman. If he had any emotions for women at all, then he hid them well.

She tried thinking of the two housemates being intimate with each other. The first image that came was utterly ridiculous. It was of them standing, facing one another in Reela’s bedroom, Cleve gawking with an open mouth at Reela undressing herself. His messy dark hair was strewn across his forehead. His light-brown eyes were wide, pushed open from the spell cast upon him by Reela’s large breasts spilling out from her undergarment. She held a hand forward and demanded he disrobe. His tongue dropped from his mouth as he hurried to remove his pants. Effie nearly laughed aloud at the absurdity of it.

She tried to think of a more realistic setting, and to her surprise it came easily. She pictured Cleve and Reela sharing a sheet as they spooned after a fiercely passionate tumble of enjoying the pleasures of each other’s body. His arm encircled her like a child tightly holding his blanket in fear of it slipping away. They whispered secrets to each other with their bodies intertwined, and a layer keeping their heart protected was peeled away gently. More layers peeled away the more secrets they shared.

Soon there were no layers left—nothing to hide behind. As they clung tightly to each other, they shared their deepest secrets of all, as if it was the only chance they would ever have. When they finally left the bed to dress, all the layers returned, including a new one—containing the love they shared. It was stronger than all the other layers combined and squeezed so tightly around their hearts it would be impossible to remove without ripping it apart.

I’ve never been locked on to a man
, Effie realized then.

A knock at the door disrupted her image like a stone being dropped into a serene lake. She gave Reela a curious glance.

“Not someone I know well enough to recognize,” the psychic answered.

Effie went to the door as Cleve came out of his room and watched with folded arms from the hall.

A man dressed in dark gray with a low-slung hat was standing there patiently when she opened the door. “I’m Javy Rayvender of the King’s Council,” he said. Three guards stood behind him, each with steel battle armor and swords ready at the hip. Effie saw his eyes go over her shoulder and tighten. “Cleve, come with us please,” he said.

“Where are you taking him?” Reela put herself between Cleve and the door, folding her arms to match Cleve behind her.

“It’s best we discuss that with Cleve in private,” Javy answered with a look that showed he would say no more. His hands rested comfortably in the long pockets of his trench coat. If there was a hurry somewhere, it didn’t concern him.

Cleve put a hand on Reela’s back as he stepped around her. “It’s all right.” Reela’s arms sank back to her sides.

Effie noticed then that rain had started, bouncing melodically off the steel on the guards behind Javy. Cleve hunched into a long coat and walked outside. He closed the door behind him, but not before a last glance at Reela.

Chapter 29: Walls

CLEVE

Many times Cleve had imagined being caught. It would be someone passing through Raywhite Forest while he was training who saw him and then told a guard. He would hide the bow and deny the accusation until it went away. But when hiding the bow failed, he would imagine this moment—being escorted to the castle by armored guards.

In his mind, he would be chained like other prisoners he’d seen. The heavy metal connecting his ankles would clink shamefully with each step. But he was fortunate because Javy Rayvender decided the restraints wouldn’t be necessary.

“You should know why we’re here,” Javy had told him as they left the walls of the Academy. “This is because of your bow.”

At least I know who has it
, Cleve thought,
although I still don’t know why the King’s men waited so long to come and get me
.

Except for the sound of raindrops splattering against them and the wind whistling by, the walk from the Academy to Kyrro City was three long hours of silence. It gave Cleve time to ponder his options besides cooperating; there was only one really, and it was quite terrible—to run. The penalty for resisting detainment was death in most circumstances. With that settled, his thoughts went over a conversation with Alex and Reela earlier in the week. He wanted to see if he could remember anything Alex had said that might give him some sort of clue as what to expect when he reached the castle.

Reela had been at the kitchen table when Cleve had stepped inside with Alex. She was writing in the journal he’d seen in her room when he went snooping.

“Have a seat,” Cleve had told Alex as he stretched out his hand toward a chair. It felt a little forced, more so than he’d meant it to, anyway.

“You make it sound like I’m on trial,” Alex said and forced a smile, but there was some sincerity to his words.

Reela set down her pen. “Hi, Alex, Cleve. Need me to move?”

“No, stay,” Cleve replied quickly, again more forced than he intended. “Please,” he added. It was his missing bow making him tense, he knew. “You can help us.”
You can help me find the truth,
he really meant. He could see she understood by the nod she gave back.

Alex found Effie’s sakal as they were settling into their seats. Without asking, he took three glasses from the counter and carried them to the table. “I think some of us could use this,” he said, glancing at Cleve.

After each had a drink, Alex began without preamble. “My brother told me to keep an eye out for Dex Polken’s son, Cleve Polken.” There was a noticeable change as he spoke. His voice was low and serious. His warm friendliness dissolved. “He said they believe you have a bow in your possession.”

An uncomfortable silence followed.

“Did you know our house would be empty during your party?” Reela wisely asked. She stared closely at Alex whenever asking a question or listening to him speak, but in between she stole glances at Cleve. In the fleeting moments when their eyes locked, it gave his heart a squeeze.

“No. I didn’t even know Cleve lived with all of you when we met,” Alex replied. “If it was the King’s Guard that took it, they must’ve had eyes on the house to know it was empty.”

“Cleve, think about who could have known that you had it.” Reela spoke with such intent it seemed she cared about finding out who took the bow just as much as he did.

“Terren, you, Alex, Effie, and Steffen, that’s it.” As Cleve glanced at Alex, he let his judgment show.

“I had no idea you actually had one until you told me,” Alex replied with his hands up, as if to block Cleve’s stare.

“I believe him,” Reela said. Cleve knew that meant,
“I know he’s telling the truth.”
Even clearer than her words, he remembered the wry smiles she would show when telling him something. Sometimes, the faces she made were so cute it annoyed him to realize he was having trouble looking away.

“I swear on never taking another drink, it is the truth.” Alex said. He brought a fist down to the table that pulled Cleve’s focus back to the discussion.

They sipped on Effie’s sakal while speculating further. Alex drank three times what Cleve and Reela did. A sheen of sweat came over his flushed face the harder they tried to figure out who’d taken the bow and why. Their conversation concluded with no leads, but at least Cleve felt as if there were two more people he could trust. With Terren, that meant three now, triple what he had last week. Reela had tried to convince him that Effie and Steffen had nothing to do with the missing bow, but even she couldn’t persuade him to trust them yet. Not that he believed they would’ve taken it, just that they might be hiding something. Steffen especially had been acting rather devious when Effie was around.

Cleve wondered how little he would have believed of what Alex told him if it weren’t for Reela. He was beginning to appreciate the perks of knowing a psychic, even if being in the same room with her still sent terror through his bones.

Reela
—her name evoked so much emotion, even in his thoughts. He hated how years of training to focus were instantly undone the moment he thought of her. It was like building a wall brick by brick and watching it stand against all elements until she came along. Now, Reela’s path had taken her alongside his wall, her hand reaching out to run her fingers along it. Bricks came loose from her touch, so Cleve ran behind her, repairing the damage by picking up the fallen pieces and putting them back in their places. It was only a matter of time before she’d knock over bricks faster than he could return them and the wall would crumble completely.

By the time he entered Kyrro City, the rain was so loud Javy Rayvender needed to shout to be heard. “The King wishes to speak with you. Will we need to chain you now, or will you continue to cooperate?” The guards with Javy waited for Cleve’s answer with their hands on their hilts.

“Chains will not be necessary.” He might not have his bow, but at least he had some dignity.

He’d been to Kyrro City once before for his parents’ funeral. The King had required their bodies to be buried not in Cleve’s hometown of Trentyre, but in the graveyard of Kyrro City. The King even attended the ceremony and made a brief statement about Cleve’s father being a great warrior.

In retrospect, their bodies being buried in Kyrro City didn’t make sense. Usually, people would be buried in the town where they lived, and only a guard of the King would have a funeral service like that of his mother and father, yet they hadn’t worked for the King.

As he walked between Javy and the three guards, Cleve saw nothing familiar about the city. He might have recognized the graveyard, but luckily he never saw it. Even with the cold rain beating down, the path to the castle was filled with street merchants and a beggar farther down who waited for them to pass before reverting back to his pleas. They walked by bars, weapon shops, a brothel, and many homes standing only a foot taller than him. It was all similar to what he recalled of Trentyre, except the warriors walking about here in Kyrro City were all of the King’s Guard, usually wearing armor died the color of Kyrro—light blue, with a gold crown outlined in silver on their chests. At the sight of Javy, they skirted to the side of the road to let him pass, giving Cleve a hard look as he followed behind the King’s Council member.
I would have harsh judgments for a prisoner as well,
he realized.

The massive castle in the center of the city could be seen even from the Academy, so to say it dwarfed the houses around it was an understatement. A small army of guards stood at the entrance, which was a black, ironbark door that looked sturdy enough to deny admission without the men clad in steel in front of it.

How could such a fortress fall to an attack?
Cleve wondered. But it had, he knew, many times even. One wouldn’t know by looking at it, as each new king had rebuilt it stronger, replacing stone with ironbark in the areas the castle had suffered damage.

A boy servant ran from behind the leg of a guard at the door to deliver an envelope to Javy. Cleve noticed the King’s stamp on it as Javy thanked the boy and then ripped it open. He gave the note inside no more than a quick glance before he sighed and met Cleve’s eyes with a slow, upward swing of his head.

“This is where I hand you off,” Javy said. “Approach the castle guards and answer any questions they put to you.” He took a step closer to Cleve so that he could speak softly without the guards overhearing. “It’s been too long for many of them since they’ve seen a battle. Don’t give them any chance to use their weapons or they’ll take it.” With that, he lowered his hat and turned to walk back the way they’d come.

Cleve approached, only to be met with the points of several swords.

“State your name,” the lead guard ordered.

“Cleve Polken.”

The guard inspected him from head to toe. “We’ve been expecting you,” he said bitterly.

And if you hadn’t been, would I have one less arm?
Cleve kept his thoughts to himself and nodded.

“Wait here.” The guard sheathed his sword and walked to the door.