Claiming the Prince: Book One (6 page)

The shaking of the ground caused them both to lose their balance and stumble back from each other.

The iron burn on Lavana’s face looked even worse in the sun, swelling and raw black, oozing yellowish pus.

“That looks painful. I hope your Prince is a skilled healer,” Magda said, panting and attempting to keep her balance as the ogre took another step into this world.

An ogre. The only compensation an ogre took for use of its considerable brute strength was children, preferably babies. And this was when Magda knew that her younger cousin, daughter of her mother’s wheedling brother, truly was the terror that Damion made her out to be. In truth, she’d thought him simply angry because Lavana had killed Alanna. But now it was clear, whatever honor Lavana had was long gone.

“Perhaps I will not need my Prince to heal me,” Lavana said. “Perhaps yours will do so once I claim him instead.” Her knives slid back into their sheaths. Small cuts bled through her sleeves and pants.

“What’s wrong with your Prince?” Magda panted. “Doesn’t he want to be claimed by you?”

The ogre’s shadow fell over them then. Magda’s gaze rolled up and up and up.

A mouth full of sharp brown teeth smiled down at her. Cresting above the second story colonnade, his fat lump of a head, haloed by a wild tangle of orange hair, looked like a clod of wet clay. His soaked, rough spun clothes clung to the bulging misshapen bulk of his body. The gristly curls of nose-hairs protruding from his nostrils looked about as long as her legs.

Lavana folded her arms, smiling. “Let’s see what you make of an ogre.”

As if his size weren’t bad enough, the brute was fast too. One of his over-long arms flew out and slammed into her like a battering ram. She sailed across the patio and crashed into one of the columns of the east wing, her shoulder cracking. Yelping, she crumbled, pain sparking over her vision in white-and-black bursts, her left arm failing to respond when she told it to move.

“Far too easy.” Lavana’s voice echoed off the palazzo’s walls and through its arcades. “Kill her. But don’t eat her.”

The ogre grumbled in its thick, slurred language. The ground trembled again as it plodded towards her.

Vision doubled by pain and tears, she snapped off her necklace and smashed the ceramic ball against the stone. Amid the shards, little bigger than a pea, the tiny green seed was difficult to pick up as her entire body was shaking, both from the pain of her broken arm and from the ogre’s approach. Yet, somehow, she managed to get hold of it. If she ate the seed, she would escape, but then Damion and Riker would be left behind and surely killed.

And then she heard a soft sound, someone clearing his throat.

She looked up and found Kirk obscured in the shadows under the colonnade. He waved for her to come to him.

Clutching the seed in her hand, she fought through the nauseating crash and churn of agony and crawled on her knees into the shadows. The ogre’s fist rose.

She pitched herself away. The stone pavers cracked under the ogre’s blow.

Kirk tsked, though he was smiling. “Master Python will not be pleased.” He gave Magda a disapproving once over and then sighed. The ogre grumbled. Lavana was screeching from somewhere behind him, though her words were lost on Magda.

Kirk’s pointy little fingers pinched Magda’s ear. In a blur, she was suddenly in another room. A bedroom.

Python was just starting to peel off his shirt. He looked as surprised as she felt sprawled on the marshmallowy softness of his mattress.

“Kirk?” he said, scowling at the brownie, now standing by the double doors.

“I have disobeyed you, Master Python,” Kirk reported. “I await my punishment.”

“I see,” Python said, pulling off his shirt and allowing it to fall to the floor.

Though it was very tempting to remain on Python’s heavenly bed and fall into unconsciousness, Magda forced herself upright. She swayed.

“You have a portal here,” she said, sucking sharp breaths to stay focused through the rolling swells of agony. In spite of these efforts, she became lost to it for a moment, aware only of the spreading weakness within her, the throb of her arm and shoulder, the tacky sweat that seemed to be suffocating her pores.

“Why did you help her?” Python asked Kirk as if Magda hadn’t spoken.

Outside, a roar. The house shook. A deafening crack and pop of breaking stone echoed through the open doors.

Kirk muttered something unintelligible.

“Speak up, Kirk,” Python said, pulling on a fresh button-up shirt, this one gold.

“Did I need a reason, sir?” Kirk snapped.

“I should think you would,” Python said, buttoning his shirt. “Considering the trouble you knew it would bring you.”

The house rocked again and the mirror over his dresser tilted and then fell, crashing and causing Magda to flinch, inciting a fresh bout of crippling pain.

“The other one stinks of Elf,” Kirk said after another moment of grumbling. “I have no love of ogres either.”

Python finished buttoning his shirt and frowned towards the doors outside. More stone cracked. “It’s destroying my house.” He shook out his sleeves and looked back at Kirk. “Well, Kirk. You helped the Pixie Rae. Now she’s about to ask you to do so again. And apparently I am going to free you.”

“I am?” Magda asked.

“You are?” Kirk asked at the same moment.

“Evidently,” Python said as if surprised as well.

“No, please, Master Python.” Kirk came forward, his hands open, pleading. “Punish me as you will. Burn my feet with irons, starve me for a week, two even, but don’t free me!”

“I’m sorry, Kirk,” Python said, taking up his cane and then his keys from the catchall on his dresser. “You have served me well, but the time has come to part ways. My visions grow increasingly dark.”

“No, please!” Kirk covered his face with his hands, shaking his head.

“You can’t see the future? Why?” Magda asked.

“It means a time of great change is imminent.”

She glowered at him. “How imminent?”

Python smiled that snake smile of his and opened his bedroom door.

“I’m going for a long drive,” he said, limping out. “Give the Elf Prince my regards.” He shut the door with a soft click.

The house quaked again. One of the paintings fell from the wall as well, almost landing right on top of Kirk. The ogre’s hand curled around one of the balcony columns, his murky green eyes peering in. The foul garbage funk of the ogre’s breath blasted through the doors as he howled at them.

Magda used the last of her energy to push off the bed and down on her knees before Kirk.

“That’s the end of me,” Kirk was saying.

Like all brownies cut off from their natal homes, without someone to bind himself to, he would die.

“No, you can serve me, now,” Magda said.

Kirk took his hands away from his face, glaring. “I never should’ve helped you!”

“Please,” she said.

“You’re about to be dead,” he said. “There’s no point in serving you.”

“But this will take you back to the Lands,” she said, placing the green seed at the Kirk’s feet. Then she reached under her tank top and pulled out the Enneahedron. The loss of it against her chest left her doubled over, almost face down on the carpet. Creeping fingers of darkness clawed at her consciousness. “Take the Enneahedron back to the Lands,” she said, “to the Crown. Tell her that Lavana is serving the Elf King and that she cannot be allowed to become Radiant. Please.”

Kirk folded his arms stubbornly. “I told you, I cannot serve you. You will be dead soon. If I’m bound to you, then I will be weakened and eventually perish.”

“Listen, Kirk. Lavana is working for the Throne, the King, the descendent of the one who destroyed your home. If Lavana takes this now, then the Throne will be victorious. And if she becomes the Crown, then you can be sure there will be many more homes razed and burned as yours was. Please.”

Kirk swore under his breath as the ogre’s fist bashed into the balcony doors, but didn’t quite fit through. Magda toppled and slammed onto her face, screaming as her broken arm hit the ground. She rolled over onto her back and received a mouthful of dust as the ceiling cracked.

“Some mistress you are,” Kirk said near her ear. His tiny hand grazed her temple. She assumed the touch was binding him to her service, but she was so pain-addled she could not feel the power of the connection forming between them.

“I will take the Enneahedron, Mistress,” he said.

Then he turned and swept up the seed and the Enneahedron, even though it was as tall as he was and three times as wide.

She blinked through the dust-clouded tears pooling in her eyes. “Thank you, Kirk.”

“Where will this seed take me?” he asked.

“To an old friend, Tamia,” she said. “Tell her everything that’s happened. She will help you reach the Spire.”

“As you wish,” he said grimly, “Mistress.”

He popped the seed into his mouth and vanished.

And then, just as Python had said it would, everything went dark.

S
HE WOKE TO
Lavana screaming at her. “Where is it? What did you do with it?”

Stunned to be opening her eyes, Magda smiled and received a sharp slap across the face for it.

She was in a dark room somewhere. Pain began to filter back into her consciousness, but her arm seemed to be somewhat better than before. She could wiggle her fingers at least. Either someone had healed her or enough time had passed—days—that her body had been able to heal itself. Pixies could heal more quickly than many races, though that did not mean they couldn’t be killed by particularly egregious wounds.

“She’s still in the healing slumber,” a bored voice said from the darkness.

“I know that!” Lavana shouted.

She seized Magda’s arms, sending a searing wave up Magda’s shoulder and into her head, causing her consciousness to cut in and out like a faulty light bulb.

“I will find out what you did with it! And then I will kill you.” She released Magda again, who began to sink away from Lavana and the shadows around her. “Put her back in the irons.”

“That will only slow her healing and make this process go on longer,” the bored voice reported.

“Shut up,” she said. “I know what I’m doing.”

“I hope so,” the voice said in a vaguely threatening manner. And then Magda slipped back into darkness.

When she woke again, she was face down on a freezing, grimy surface. Her head ached and she was glad not to have anything in her stomach, since she was sure she would’ve lost it. Instead, bile burned the back of her throat.

Something furry brushed by her face—a rat. Before she could think to send it off, the creature squeaked and darted away. A pebble struck her cheek, stinging. She winced and groaned.

“Oh, sorry,” a voice said. “I was trying to hit the rat.”

She touched her cheek. It came away red.

Great, she had only been awake two seconds and was already bleeding again.

But then she realized it was her right hand she was looking at. She flexed her fingers. A general stiff ache pervaded her, but her arm was healed. Slowly, she peeled herself off the damp stone floor.

“I wouldn’t move too far,” the voice said again. “They put you in the middle of the cell. They probably didn’t realize that it’s the safest place.”

She squinted through the darkness, hissing as her vision first fixed on iron bars. Her headache redoubled. She put her hand flat on the floor and measured her breaths until the worst of it passed.

“I’m back in the Lands, aren’t I?” she said, lifting her head slowly again. “Where are you?”

“Here.” Through the gloom, she sighted movement. Her eyes adjusted and focused on the vague outline of a person sitting in a cell that shared a wall of bars with hers. His hand lowered once she had fixed on him, but his face remained lost in shadow.

“What did you mean?” he asked. “Back in the Lands?”

She ran her hands over her face, sighing. “I was exiled. Where are we? Who are you?”

“Who are you, exile?” he shot back.

“I’m the one you hit with a rock,” she said, wincing again at the bleeding spot on her cheek. She surveyed the cell. Near the door was a pitcher of water.