Claiming the Prince: Book One (19 page)

Magda chewed the rich meat of a nut slowly, ignoring Damion. “Ouda wasn’t like anything I’ve ever seen before.”

Poppy landed on the opposite side of the table, between Kaelan and Damion. “She was not Ouda.”

“What do you mean?” Magda asked.

“Ouda was the Elder Spirit of our forest,” Poppy said. “But hundreds of years ago, long before I was hatched, her tree began to die. Ouda appeared less and less. My grandmother told me that for most of her life, they had believed Ouda long dead. But then she started to reappear again. Yes, yes. There were stories that she had changed, that some who sought her out never returned. Yet, we all believed it to be Ouda, because . . . our forest was safe. But it is clear now, she was not Ouda. No, no.” Poppy shook her head, her floppy ears drooping.

Magda glanced over at Kaelan. She set down a half-eaten mushroom. “Where are my knives?”

“I have them,” Damion said. He reached into his vault and withdrew her sheaths, setting them before her.

She took them up and slid them on. Their weight was both comforting and, somehow, heavier than ever.

“My ghast blade?” she asked, holding up the sheath, which no longer held a knife.

“We were in a hurry. Sorry,” Damion said, scooping up a handful of berries the moment Poppy laid them before him. Red juice dribbled down his chin.

Magda pushed up from the table. “Then I’ll go back.”

They all stared up at her.

“Now?” Damion asked.

“Why not?” she said.

“Because you are weak,” Poppy said. “Rest, rest.”

“I just want to go back to look for my blade. That shouldn’t require very much energy.”

“Ouda’s lair is far, far from here,” Poppy said.

“Then Kaelan will have to take me,” she said, turning to him. “Can you?”

He frowned, sagging. “I’m tired.”

“Then we’ll leave now so you can get back and rest,” she said. “Do you want to put on a shirt?”

“You’re not going without me,” Damion said.

“I’m just going to look for my blade. You said Lavana is gone.”

“Yes, but . . .”

“What about Ouda?” Poppy asked, wringing her hands.

“She’s dead,” Magda said.

“You don’t know that,” Damion said with a deep scowl. “We don’t even know what manner of creature she was. She could have recovered. She could still be there. You’re not going—”

“Are you giving me an order?”

Damion lowered his head. “No, Mistress.”

She placed her hands on the table. “If there’s even the slightest hint of trouble, I will return at once.”

“It seems an unnecessary risk,” Kaelan said.

“That blade is one of a kind, made just for me at my birth and infused with the rarest of magic. Magic that saved us. It’s priceless and irreplaceable. I can’t just leave it. I don’t want to come face to face with another creature like that and have no defense against it.”

Kaelan rose to his feet. Poppy raced away. A few seconds later, she returned with Kaelan’s tunic. Hero, too, rejoined them, clamoring up to her shoulder.

Damion drummed his fingers against the rock. “At the first sign—”

“Yes, I swear.” She turned to Kaelan. “Ready?”

Finally, he pulled his gaze away from Honey. “I guess.” He held his hand out to her.

Over his shoulder, Magda watched Honey do a pretty pirouette with an attendant group of glowing fairies. Her laughter rang through the forest, but like her eyes, something about it was flat, transparent, brittle—not real.

Magda took Kaelan’s hand. She hoped Ouda was still alive, so that she could kill the leech-faced ghoul all over again.

When she and Kaelan had reappeared on the crest of the hill overlooking Ouda’s hollow, she withdrew her hand from his grasp. The tempest of his emotions was too much.

“How do you do that?” she asked. “Transport yourself from place to place in the blink of an eye?”

“I travel the Shadow Realms,” he answered flatly, eyes combing the hollow.

“I’ve never heard of—”

“Look.” He pointed to the dead tree. He tromped down the slope. She followed.

At the base of the tree, the ground had sunk in. The willowy impression was vaguely human-shaped and coated with a silvery substance. She crouched next to it, running her finger over the dust. It came away greasy on her skin.

“Gross,” she said, wiping her hand on her jeans.

“She is dead,” Kaelan said, in that same hard, flat voice.

She sighed and stood up. “I guess so.”

Kaelan looked at her fully. “I know what you were thinking,” he said.

“Do you?” she said, scanning the ground around the imprint and tree. No sign of her blade.

“You were hoping to find her alive. To find some way to help Honey,” he said.

“I came to look for my blade.” She turned away from him and skirted the tree. Signs of Lavana and her warriors were apparent—footprints, broken branches, some of Lavana’s blood still showed blackish on the ground where she’d been pinned to Ouda.

Magda came back around the tree, facing him again, across the deathly impression of Ouda. “Don’t you know anything, Prince? A Rae would never jeopardize her safety for a nymph.”

“I know,” he said, his eyes softened. “But I appreciate the thought.”

Her shoulders sagged. “It looks as though we’re SOL in either case,” she said, kicking a loose rock into the impression.

“SOL?”

“It’s a human expression. It means shit out of luck.”

His eyes narrowed as he seemed to try to wrap his mind around the phrase.

At that same moment, Hero leapt down from her shoulder and straight into the gaping blackness of the tree.

She hopped over Ouda’s death-mark and to the hollow. “Hero!”

Her voice echoed and echoed and echoed. Chilled damp air reached up to her from its depths.

Kaelan crouched next to her. “What—”

“Stay here.” Before she could let herself think about it, she ducked into the hollow and plunged down the hole.

The chill grew as she fell. Thanks to the relative darkness, she hadn’t been able to see just how far down it was or else she might not have jumped. A clawing moment of panic tore at her chest as her body awoke to the sensation of falling, but before it could overcome her, her feet hit the ground. She stumbled forward, over knots of roots and jutting rocks, hitting her head on the earthen ceiling of an adjoining passage.

She hissed, rubbing her aching scalp while crouching to peer into the tunnel. At the end of it, pale light shone. The air was chilled and thin, yet heavy with damp and humus.

A moment later, Kaelan came crashing down upon her. She slammed onto her stomach, cutting her chin on a rock, his weight crushing her legs.

She twisted, pushing him off and giving him a good kick in the chest. He grunted.

“I told you to wait,” she whispered. Her voice carried, as if the faint current of air curling through the tunnel had captured and amplified it.

“I don’t take orders from you,” he hissed, “Mistress.”

She rolled her eyes. “I know you have a chip on your shoulder about—”

He took her wrist and helped her back into the vertical tunnel. “I don’t have a chip on my shoulder.” He frowned. “What does that mean?”

“It means you need to get over it,” she said. “You’re a Prince, all right? There are plenty of worse things you could be.”

“Like what? An imp? A nymph?”

“There are no male nymphs.”

“You don’t understand what it’s like.” He took her wounded chin between his thumb and fingers, pressing hard against the stinging wound. She winced, but he held her tight. “Raes have all the power in this world, all the freedom.”

Soon, the sting of the cut subsided and then vanished. At the pain’s tail end, his emotions began to spiral into her awareness. So much anger . . .

She pulled away. “I didn’t know what freedom was until I was exiled.” Turning, she crouched before the adjoining tunnel again. “Being a Rae is as much a prison as Lavana’s dungeon.”

Kaelan peered over her shoulder into the narrow passage.

“But your very nature does not make you its slave,” he muttered. The force of his frustration battered against her back and left all the muscles in her neck tight.

“Doesn’t it?” she murmured, ducking into the tunnel.

On her hands and knees, she crawled in. “Hero?”

Midway, she was forced to drop to her belly and pull her body forward with her elbows. A strange tension built in her chest, as if she had suddenly become claustrophobic. It took her a moment to realize that, again, Kaelan’s emotions had worked into her, even though they weren’t touching.

Picking up the pace, she soon broke from the confines of the tunnel and stepped out into a cave.

Stalactites hung above like the jagged teeth of a subterranean monster. Some met with the stalagmites below, forming pillars. Wrapping around the mineral formations, clinging to the walls and the ceiling in curvilinear designs, luminescent fungi filled the cavern with soft, eerie light. A vast pool stretched away to the back of the cave, where low archways gave glimpses of more caverns beyond.

Kaelan hurried out behind her, sweat sheening his face, breath quick, almost panting.

Hero peeked out from behind one of the stalagmites, his nose and mouth glowing with fungal residue.

“Hero,” she said, stalking up to him. “You weren’t eating this stuff, were you?”

“Magda,” Kaelan whispered in a held-breath voice.

She turned. “What—?”

He stood near the edge of the water, staring down into the glowing depths as if mesmerized.

She approached him and the water’s edge cautiously. She’d assumed the glow on the water was reflected from the waves of fungi on the ceiling above, but in fact, below the surface of the water, something else was glowing.

At first glance, it appeared to be a strange formation of stone, covered completely in the soft fur of glowing fungi. But then, she spotted the hands, the feet, the shape of a face. She drew back and then, unable to help herself, looked again. The creature appeared to be three times as large as a Pixie, curled on its side at the bottom of the water. Sprouting from its back like bony quills were glowing stalagmite-type formations.

Hero clamored up her back. She flinched, kicking some loose dirt into the water.

“It is Ouda
,” Hero said. “
The true Ouda.”

“The true Ouda?” she repeated.

Kaelan shifted back. “Is she dead?”

A low, ghostly voice sounded from around them. “Yes . . . and no.”

Kaelan edged closer to Magda. “Let’s go,” he whispered.

In spite of the fear spilling off of Kaelan and her own pounding heart, she held her ground. “Ouda?”

“Yes,” the voice answered. Below the water, the creature did not move. But the fine hair of the fungi rippled slightly.

Magda squared her shoulders. “We’ve destroyed the creature that usurped your name.”

“Yes,” the voice was deep, yet vaguely feminine. “The empusa.”

“What’s an empusa?” Magda asked, speaking up and then down, not sure where she should be directing her voice since Ouda’s words seemed to come from everywhere.

“A soul-eater. It came from the south, fleeing the purges of the Elf King. It fastened itself to my tree. I was forced to retreat to the water. It could not tolerate fresh water.”

“That would’ve been nice to know,” Magda muttered.

Kaelan gave her an anxious look and then turned his gaze back to the motionless figure of the true Ouda. “Then it was you who hid me all those years ago?”

“No, it was the empusa who helped you. She hid you here with the imps and protected your secret.”

“But . . . Why would such foul creature help me?”

“The sylph who brought you compelled the empusa to do so. But I believe she would have helped you even without magical coercion. She hated the Elf King for driving her from her home.”

Kaelan’s face darkened, his eyes growing distant.

“Well, it’s gone now,” Magda said. “Is there some way we can help you?”

“It is too late,” Ouda said. “My physical form has mineralized. I only continue in this world thanks to the fols. They surrounded me and absorbed the last part of my soul.”

Magda frowned. “The fols? You mean . . . the fungi?”

“Through them, I have been able to continue to watch over my forest, though I am much diminished.”

“So there’s no way to bring you back to what you used to be?” Kaelan asked.

“No.” The word echoed around.

Kaelan’s face fell.

“What about someone else? Someone whose body is still alive?” Magda asked.

“You mean the nymph,” Ouda said.

“You know about her?”

“She is one of my children.”

“What did the empusa do to her?” Kaelan asked, his voice ringing harshly through the cavern.

“She consumed a part of Honeysuckle’s soul.”

Magda’s stomach turned. Kaelan’s ferocity, too, seemed to wilt.

“Is there anything we can do to help her regain it?” Magda asked.

A long silence greeted the question. Torpid sadness dripped off of Kaelan, sticking to Magda like toad ooze.

“It might be possible,” Ouda said finally.

“How?” Kaelan asked.

“She is like a tree splintered by lightning. One half is gone. She can never again bring it to life. But the other part of her remains rooted, alive. It is possible for her to continue to grow . . . new branches, new leaves. It will not be a resurrection of what she was, but in time, she might regain a sense of wholeness once more.”