Maeve
I like to try to learn something new every day. Today, in the dead hours of the night, I learn that ten dollars does, in fact, cover the cost of a hotel room in the shittiest little hotel in all of Eastonia… which includes a twin bed with what I believe might be a rather large blood stain, a blanket that has seen better days, and a single pillow that should probably be thrown into a fire.
Soren chews his lip as he leans on the door to close it, sighing deeply as he scans our new surroundings. I refuse to look at him when his eyes graze my profile, however, and keep my focus on the disgusting, yellow-stained pillow and bed likely crawling with little bugs.
“I can go ask if they have extra satin sheets,” he says sarcastically, which earns him an absolutely scalding glare.
“I’m not sleeping on that bed.”
“Yeah, you’re not. I bought the room, so the bed is mine anyway.” He strides past me, opening the only other door in the room, which leads to a bathroom I’m not sure he can even fit inside. He shuts the door, tucking his hands in his pockets. “I’m going to go find us both new clothes while you sleep. The floor looks cleanest over there.” He points to the far corner of the room, winks, and brushes past me toward the main door.
I’m fuming but bite my tongue to stop from mouthing off. I decide in the moment that I have nothing else I could possibly say to the man, the monster, aside from what I’ve already said.
But his absence in the room weighs on me in a way I hadn’t expected.
I sit on the edge of the bed and busy myself by picking rogue thorns and splinters from my jeans. An hour passes, and when he doesn’t return, I take a cold shower because there’s no hot water to be had, but at least there was a small bar of soap to help wash the remaining twigs from my hair.
Wrapped in a towel that barely fits my body, I lay on the mattress, cringing as I cover myself with the measly blanket, and fall into the deepest sleep of my life.
I’ve gone through a total power depletion before, but only once. It had been after I summoned my powers and said the spell to open a portal, taking Logan and Brie to Emberfyll. The pain of it… Goddess, it’s hard to describe. It’s like being frozen solid and thawing slowly, like I have shards of razor-sharp ice beneath my skin.
This time feels different, however. I just feel… numb and empty.
I’ve been storing my powers in that moonstone amulet since I was six years old. It was a solution to the dangerous powers a child my age had no way of ever being able to handle. Up until that point, I’d been catching things on fire, spiriting away from home on accident, and being an overwhelming liability to my powerful family members. I couldn't be around my cousins unsupervised. My maids and tutors were terrified of me.
I thrived in Moonrise, however. Something about that place just calls to me, calls me home.
When Arthur, the historian in Veiled Valley, presented the necklace to my grandma and my mother as a possible solution to my overwhelming gifts, it worked.
All I needed to do was wear it. It held my powers warm against my skin, safe and secure. I’ve worn it every day, every moment, since then.
Until Soren took it, and broke it, releasing those powers back into the world… and now it could take… days, maybe even weeks, to build those powers back up again. I’ve never just… let my powers materialize to their full strength before without a buffer.
What if I can’t handle it?
I wake hours later to warm morning sunlight creeping through a single, circular window and fanning over the bed. I roll into the sun, letting the light heat my skin, but my legs brush against something stacked near my toes.
I sit up as a shadow passes over me carrying the scent of soap. Shielding my eyes from the spray of the sun, I watch Soren walk wearing nothing but a towel tied around his waist, his heavily muscled back and arms on full display as he runs his fingers through his wet hair. He grabs what looks like a pair of worn-in jeans and shirt from the clothing pile at my feet and watches me draw up my legs, his eyes drifting over the blanket clutched to what I realize with a start is my naked chest.
I fell asleep in nothing but a towel. I can feel it gathered around my waist now.
“Morning,” he says, narrowing his eyes as he scans my face for threats, I think, like I have my powers back and can now blast him into fiery oblivion if I wished for it.
“Did you steal those clothes, too?”
He frowns, unamused, and turns from me, dropping his towel.
I blink, startled by the very naked view of his back and… rather sculpted ass, then look away, my cheeks burning crimson.
“You’ll be surprised to know that I don’t just steal my way through life like you assume,” he mutters, slipping into the jeans and pulling them up to his waist. I don’t dare look at him, but out of the corner of my eye, I see him turning back in my direction before shrugging into a simple, gray T-shirt, smoothing the fabric over his chest.
“How did you get them, then?”
“I noticed a guy with a crooked chimney and offered to fix it for him. He paid me well for it, and I bought some clothes. For you, as well. You owe me forty bucks.”
He sits on the edge of the bed only inches away from my legs to put on a pair of socks, then his boots.
“Did you… did you sleep?”
He glances at me, shaking his head. “There wasn’t room for the two of us, and I couldn’t wake you up. I felt bad about dumping you, naked, on the ground and taking the bed.”
“Well, thanks–”
“There’s some clothes for you and a couple dollars to buy breakfast downstairs if you need it.” He rises with a grimace like his back is sore, then reaches for a ball cap and fits it on his head. “We’re about twenty miles from the nearest train depot, but I’d avoid it if I were you. You should do your little disappearing and reappearing in a new place trick instead.” He scoops a thin piece of navy blue fabric off the corner of the bed and ties it around the top of his face, shielding his eyes from view.
“Jumping.”
“What?” he asks, smoothing the fabric.
“We call it jumping, or spiriting.”
“Kay’.” He gives me an odd, disinterested look before tossing some money on the bed near the stack of clothing he mentioned. “Take care of yourself, Princess.”
He moves toward the door, and my chest convulses with sudden panic. I can feel a flicker of power in my chest, but that’s it. Just a flicker. It could be enough to get me by… but what if it’s not enough? Hell, I can’t even mind-link as it stands.
He hesitates for a split second, his fingers curled around the doorknob, before he pulls it open and slips away, shutting the door with a soft click behind him.
Leaving.
Just like that.
* * *
Soren
I pace at the end of the dirt road, grumbling and snarling under my breath while every fiber of my being begs me to turn around, to go back to the hotel where I just left the royal princess of Eastonia–the queen in a little over a month–alone, unarmed, and naked in a filthy bed.
In my defense, I didn’t touch her. I just sat on the ground with my back to the wall and watched the door all night, acutely aware of every creaking floorboard and wondering footstep, a knife I swiped from a man at a nearby bar resting in my lap.
And, I had, in fact, fixed a man’s chimney. He’d overpaid me, but he’d also been so drunk I couldn’t understand a damn word he said. I’m not that bad of a guy, just an enterprising one.
So, I bought the princess a little sundress with blue flowers on it and a cardigan at the only store in the whole Goddess-forsaken village and planned to go on my merry way until this moment, when walking away from her feels like something I’m going to regret for the rest of my miserable life.
I rub the scar on my forearm where a tingling sensation began to erupt last night. I’m not sure if I’ll ever get my shifting powers back after years bound in silver, but this feeling is new, and maybe that's why I’m on edge, not because I feel… guilty or anything.
I should have chosen a different royal. I should have chosen a different royal apartment. Had I known what door I was opening by stealing from Maeve, I would have… still done it, honestly, just to bear witness to her fury because that was….
She’s….
“Fuck, man,” I hiss at myself, rolling my shoulders and groaning as I turn toward the narrow, dirt road leading out of town and start walking.
Morning turns to midday, and midday bleeds into the afternoon as the sun beats down on my back. I don’t stop walking for what feels like dozens of miles, but eventually, I come to a fork in the road, still trapped in the dense forest. I sit on a rock to rest, rolling out my aching muscles. I’m still heavily bruised from when I let the princess rough me up. Keyword–let. But the sharp pain of fresh wounds has turned into a dull, ever present ache.
Engine noise rattles toward me. I turn my head to an old, beat up truck bumping in my direction, its bed full of small bales of hay. The man driving the truck slows down, looking out his window at me, then waves me over.
“Need a ride, kid? It’s hotter than hell out here and you’re miles from the nearest village.”
“Yeah, actually,” I tell him, flashing him a smile. “My car broke down a few miles back. I’m trying to get to–” I cut myself off, shrugging to make it look I’m just uncomfortable and hot in my sweaty shirt instead of trying to come up with a rapid plan. “I was headed to my cousin's place near Emerald Creek.”
“Yeah, I know where Emerald Creek is. I can take you as far as Lonesome Gorge, though. I’m headed south to the Deadlands myself.”
I nod, clapping the hood of his truck in thanks, then walk to the bed of the truck and pull myself up. He starts driving again, and the miles speed by, but the forest only grows thicker.
I try not to think of Maeve, but it’s impossible. All I could think about last night was taking her by the shoulders and knocking some sense into her. She has… she has all of this power–Goddess-like power–and kept it locked away in a fucking necklace? Why?
The truck turns off the main road onto a smaller, terribly maintained road that travels directly through the forest, which is odd. I stand as the truck slows to a crawl, the road cast in the shadow of the trees, and comes to an abrupt, jerking stop.
“Hey, you good?” I shout toward the driver, but he’s silent.
Confusion washes through me as I leap out of the bed of the truck and walk up to his window. I’m just about to knock when I notice him staring forward, his mouth slightly ajar, his eyes unblinking… and hazy.
I slowly follow his gaze to the masked man dressed in black Ghost armor blocking the road several yards away, standing calmly, patiently, his masked face turned to mine.
My chest tightens as I walk toward the man, flexing my hands. I glance back at the driver before closing in on him, growling under my breath, “You told me we were done with this. That was two years ago, man.”
He says nothing but slips me an envelope–a thick one.
I look into his mask, trying to catch a glimpse of a face I should know well by now, but I’ve never seen it.
With a heavy sigh, I look inside the envelope, arching a brow. “This is more than you’ve ever paid me.”
I pull out the handwritten note stuck between several tens-of-thousands of dollars’ worth of bills, and realize why. It’s a single name written in the neatest handwriting I’ve ever seen.
“This one dies,” the stranger says, then disappears in a burst of star flaked mist.