Authors: Sara V. Zook
Evadere (23 page)
“Stay away from us,” he warned.
“Or what? You’ll use your powers on me again?” She laughed hysterically. “I barely felt your weak attempt.”
The queen inched her way closer and closer to where Emry stood clinging onto me. My mouth felt arid. A headache was forming from whatever it was that had happened to me moments ago.
“You see, Emry, I don’t need to cling onto your power in order to carry out my intentions. I can kill that pathetic human while you’re holding onto her. Better say your goodbyes, my son. This is for your own good.” Atavia took one more step toward us.
Emry looked around in desperation for somewhere to run. There were contributors everywhere as they witnessed yet another show, only this one more shocking to them as their cheers were now silenced. It would be too difficult to outrun his mother’s powers. He looked at me, his expression pained.
“I’m so, so sorry,” he said, tears streaming down his cheeks. “I know now that there’s only two things that I want.”
“What’s that?” I whispered, my voice raspy and low.
“Either where you go, I go, or where I go, you go.” He made a sad attempt to give me a smile.
“Oh, so pathetic,” Atavia hissed, rolling her eyes. “A human with my son, the king? Completely out of the question.”
“This
human
is going to be my wife,” Emry told her. “She is going to be queen.”
Atavia’s eyes grew large at his words. Her mouth dropped open.
I felt my heart throb within me. He had just said he was going to marry me. He had told his mother that.
“You say your goodbyes, mother, to me. I’m leaving this place. I’m transporting Anna back to Earth.” Emry gave her a stern look.
Atavia attempted to gain her composure from his previous statement of queen and me being connected together. “It will only take a moment for me to finish killing your human.” She focused her eyes on me again and grew very still. Her body stiffened.
I closed my eyes, waiting for the pain to return, praying that instead I’d open them back up to Seneca, Ohio, back to the normalcy of Earth and its selfish human race where supernatural powers were merely a myth.
“What?” Atavia screamed out.
My eyes snapped open. Emry was still holding me. Atavia just stood there in disbelief.
“It can’t be!” the queen cried. She glared at her son.
“What’s happening?” I whispered.
Emry smirked. “It worked.”
“What did?” I asked.
“I used my powers on her.”
Atavia’s body stiffened once more as she tried again to use her powers on me. Nothing happened.
“I used my powers to take away yours,” Emry explained to her.
Atavia’s face went pale. She clutched herself as if naked. “What? This is … impossible.”
Emry’s smile widened. “You’re now powerless,” Emry told her.
“The queen’s powerless?” a contributor shouted out in alarm. “You mean, she’s now a Scave?”
Emry looked at me and nudged my nose with his nose. Then he looked back to Atavia. “That’s right, mother. Queen Atavia, the Scave.”
Atavia gasped.
A slight breeze tousled my hair as I stepped out of the car and stared up at the big, abandoned house. Cassie stood in the overgrown yard, her arms crossed in front of her. Emry walked up behind me and placed his hand on my back.
“Well, we did it,” I whispered. “Back home to Seneca as promised.”
Cassie frowned. Her eyes shifted to a broken window at the edge of the porch. “This isn’t how I remember it at all.”
My heart broke for poor Cassie. She didn’t have much to return to, but at least she had been fortunate enough to return. She was no longer under the dominion of Atavia and could make a new start on Earth, where she belonged.
My thoughts wandered to Atavia, Evadere’s now powerless queen. I could picture her scowling in the depths of the dungeon as the castle she once controlled now held her prisoner. The contributors had turned on her once they had learned she had been stripped of all power. They probably would’ve killed her if not for Emry who was able to calm the crowd. They chanted out, “King Emry!” as the guards carried Atavia off to the dungeon.
“I’m ready to go see my mother,” Cassie said, her eyes full of sadness as she turned away from the house.
“Right through this little patch of woods.” I motioned for her and Emry to follow as I led the way, remembering how I had followed Lucy, Cassie’s cousin’s little girl when I had been trying to dig up information about Mrs. Anderson’s past. I knew that Cassie’s mother had aged and was debilitated both mentally and physically as I remembered her wheelchair bound and asleep. More than likely, she’d no longer be able to recognize her beloved missing daughter after all these years. I didn’t know how to prep Cassie for it, or how to comfort her as she realized that time changes everything, and everyone.
Together, we walked to the front door of where Cassie’s mother lived. A soft glow came from one of the windows.
“Ready?” I asked her.
Cassie turned around to face me. She held both of my hands in her own. “Anna, thank you, for everything. Emry, you, too.” She smiled at him. “I wish the both of you luck in your life together.” She turned and looked at the door again. “This is something I need to do by myself.”
“There’s going to be a lot of questions. Are you sure you don’t want us there for support?” Emry asked.
She pressed her lips together. “No, really. I’m fine.”
Emry took my hand as I waved one last time to Cassie before heading back to the path through the woods.
“Don’t worry about her,” Emry said. “She’s tough. She survived all that time with my mother, didn’t she?”
I nodded as I looked up into his eyes. “So now what?”
Emry stopped walking and grinned. “Well, I was thinking …”
I raised my eyebrows. “Uh oh …”
He chuckled. “What do you say we go back to Evadere and work on making you queen?”
Queen Anna.
I liked the way it sounded. “And the contributors and Scaves?”
“We have a lot of work to do, don’t we?”
“That’s an understatement,” I said.
“Do you still want to be queen,
my
queen?” He sounded a little nervous about how I felt.
“Wherever you go, I go.”
He grinned and held out his hands. I placed mine in his and closed my eyes, knowing that when I opened them again, we’d be back in Evadere.
Acknowledgements
I am so grateful for the support of all of my family and friends who have encouraged me to hurry up and finish another book, especially to my dad, Dennis James Payne, always checking in to see my progress and when I’ll be finished with another one, and of course to my husband, Brad Zook, who continues to support my writing every day.
I can’t express enough gratitude to my editor, Jonas Saul, and his wife, Brenda Grate, for all they’ve done to help me create Book Two in the Strange in Skin Trilogy, for their continued support and always leading me in the right direction.
Also, to those who are reading my work and encouraging me to keep going, thank you so very much!
Good reviews are important to a novel’s success. If you enjoyed Evadere, please be kind and leave a review wherever you purchased the book.
Sincerely,
Sara V. Zook
About the Author:
Sara V. Zook graduated from the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown in 2004 with a creative writing degree. She works full-time from home and also takes care of her young children. Loving to read romance novels with a fantasy twist, she decided to write one of her own and will soon be working on Book Three of the Strange in Skin Trilogy.
She was born and raised in Pennsylvania where she resides still with her husband, Brad, and their three children, Coen, Avery and Lucas.
Contact Sara V. Zook
Website:
http://www.saravzook.com
Email:
[email protected]
