Richelle Mead - Iron Crowned

Kiyo was already searching bodies and soon found a key. We opened the cell, but Jasmine didn’t move. She didn’t look too worse for the wear, but I knew some of the most terrible behaviors rarely left a mark. There was a small tear in her dress and a bruise on her arm that looked like the signs of a struggle, probably during her initial capture. I also noticed they’d left the fine iron chains on her that Girard had created to stunt her magic. My own safeguard had undoubtedly been useful for her captors.

I gestured to the door, uneasy about what Imanuelle had said about an alarm. “Jasmine, come on. It’s us. Me and Kiyo.”

“And by me,” said Kiyo, pointing in my direction, “she means Eugenie.”

Jasmine hesitated, looking between our faces. “How is that possible?”

Imanuelle, who’d been watching the hall’s entrance, turned hastily toward the cell. “How do you think? With magic. Look at yourself.” Jasmine’s features rippled, and soon, we were staring at another Rowan soldier. Jasmine studied her hands in astonishment. The illusion showed no chains, but she would still be able to feel them.

“Your iPod’s playlist sucks,” I said when she continued to hesitate. “Would a gentry guard say that?”

“Come on, ” urged Imanuelle. She’d been confident she could get herself out of any danger here, but those odds were better if she wasn’t in a hall that could easily be blocked off if a regiment came tearing toward the entrance.

Jasmine must have decided this new development could be no worse than her present fate. She jumped up and left the cell, following as the rest of us made for the stairs. We reached the main floor without opposition, but once there, all was chaos. Soldiers were running in the direction we’d come from, and I wondered how long it’d take them to realize we were the only ones not going toward the dungeons.

Except … it turned out that wasn’t the case. In the confusion, no one stopped us from exiting the front door, but the inner grounds were packed with soldiers. They were cramming terrified refugees into one well-guarded section, and the gates in the outer walls had been shut.

“Fuck,” I said again. It still seemed like the only adequate way to sum up this situation.

“We could jump to the human world,” said Kiyo. “Imanuelle can get out on her own.”

I considered this. It was true. Imanuelle could change into a peasant or whatever and escape detection until an opportunity for escape popped up. Kiyo’s abilities allowed him to transition with relative ease through the worlds without a gate. I could do it—but not without difficulty. And I needed to use an anchor to draw me back. I had a couple back in my home, but Jasmine had nothing like that. She probably couldn’t jump at random from the Otherworld. I wasn’t even sure if she could with an anchor—and the iron chains made it worse. We could both end up doing serious damage to ourselves.

“We can’t,” I said. “We’ve just got to hide out.” I turned to Imanuelle. “How are you doing? Can you turn us all to peasants again?”

She nodded. “We’ve got to get out of sight, though.”

Her confidence was a small blessing, at least. Imanuelle was keeping up four illusions now, and her strength had been a concern in all this, that and someone who would be able to see through—

“It’s her! It’s the Thorn Queen!”

The shrieking voice that suddenly drew all eyes to us didn’t come from the soldiers. It came from an old woman among the huddled refugees. She reminded me of Masthera, with white hair and wild eyes. She was pointing at us, and there was something in her gaze … some piercing quality that made me believe she could see straight through the illusions to us.

“Damn,” said Imanuelle. There was both fear and hurt pride in her voice. Although this had been a possibility, I knew she’d secretly felt her powers were too strong for detection. Maybe the four of us had stretched her magic thin.

Honestly, I wouldn’t have thought that one shout would be enough to pull attention to us, not in the chaos out there. Yet, the woman’s voice brought silence to those nearby. They turned to stare at us, and soon, others who hadn’t heard her noticed the reactions and fell quiet as well.

“Hush,” snapped a guard, finally breaking the confused silence. He was one of the ones keeping the civilians out of the way. “We have no time for this.”

The old woman shook her head adamantly. “Can’t you see? Can’t you see them? It’s the Thorn Queen and her sister! They’re right there!”

The guard’s face darkened. “I told you, we—”

His jaw dropped because that was when the guards who’d been on gate duty earlier approached. They came to a standstill, staring at us in complete shock. If we hadn’t panicked over the alarm, one of us probably would have thought to change the illusion so we looked like the unconscious soldiers, not the ones we would have to pass by again. It was a bad, bad oversight, and now everyone could see us and our mirror images.

The guard yelling at the old woman might not know what was going on, but he knew something was going on. “Seize them,” he said. He glanced uneasily at his true colleagues and decided to cover his bases. “Seize them too.”

Other soldiers moved toward us unquestioningly. I sized up the numbers. We were good, but I didn’t think Kiyo and I could take that many in melee. Jasmine came to that same conclusion.

“Blow them up,” she said. “We can blow our way out of here.”

By ‘we,’ she meant ‘me,’ and I knew she was talking about storms, not explosions. Some part of me had already known that was the answer. Barely even realizing it, I summoned all my magic, making the beautiful, sunny day in the Rowan Land quickly fade. Black and purple clouds tumbled across the sky at impossible speeds, lightning flashing so close to us that the ground trembled. Humidity and ozone filled the air, wind rising and falling.

It had come about in a matter of seconds, and the approaching soldiers halted. The old woman’s crazy claim was no longer so crazy in light of that magic. They were all realizing that no matter what their eyes said, the possibility was now very good that Eugenie Markham truly stood before them. And I might be a wartime enemy, one they needed to capture, but I was also Storm King’s daughter, and that was not a title taken lightly. They knew what I could do, and it was enough to freeze up years of training.

“Let us pass,” I said. I began slowly moving toward the gate, my three companions following a moment later. “Let us pass, or I’ll let this storm explode in here. It’s already on the edge. One breath, and I can let it go.” Thunder and lightning crackled above us, driving home my point. There were small screams from some of the crowd. “Do you know what that kind of storm will do in an area this small? To all of you?”

“It will kill them,” a voice suddenly said. “Horribly.”

I looked over toward the castle’s entrance and saw Katrice herself standing there. Guards hurried to flank her, but she held up a hand to halt them. It had been a long time since I’d seen her. All of our antagonistic contact had been through messenger and letter. She looked like she had at our last meeting, black hair laced with silver and dark eyes that scrutinized everything around her. She was in full regal mode too, in silver-gray satin and a small jeweled tiara. But no … as I studied her, I saw a slight difference. She looked older than the last time we’d been together. Leith’s death and this war had taken their toll.

I stared her straight in the eye, my adversary, the cause of so much recent grief in my life. I needed no storm around me because one was breaking out within, winds of fury and anger swirling around and around inside me.