CHAPTER THIRTEEN: KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE

Kye was sitting in front of her, cross legged, on the bed. The quilt was bunching up under him, and he was saying something, but she wasn’t paying attention. She could hear his voice, and he sounded like he was far away.

“Aria,” Kye said, his tone sounding different, slightly more urgent than before.

She picked up her head to look at him. “What?” she asked.

“I was asking if you were okay.”

“I’m okay,” she replied, biting down on her lower lip.

“You don’t look like you are,” he said. “If you don’t mind me saying so.”

“I do mind you saying so,” she replied, staring right into his eyes. “I know I look like shit, but I have no idea what to do about it. I mean, the way I see it, I’m trapped here, and there is no way out. What can we do? What can I do, Kye?”

“I wouldn’t presume to know,” he said quietly.

She raised her eyebrows and chuckled dryly. “Great,” she said. “Thanks for coming through.”

“What did you expect me to say? If I had a magic solution for any of what is happening, don’t you think I would’ve already deployed that?” he asked, and he sounded far more annoyed than amused. “Things are not that simple here, Aria. I don’t know how they are where you are from…”

She took a deep breath, her entire body trembling when she did so. “Well, we don’t have magic,” she said. “To start with.”

“What do you have, then?” he said, sounding so sincere she almost felt bad at how irritated she was with him. Almost.

She took a deep breath before she spoke. “We have science,” she said.

“We have science here too,” he said, eyeing the door. “But I don’t know how that is going to save us.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “What are you even doing here, anyway?” she asked. “I’m not naïve enough to think that you decided to join us simply because you recognized what the prince looked like on the way.”

He looked away from her for a second, then furrowed his brow. “I don’t see how that makes that big a difference.”

“I see how it makes a difference,” she said. “How do you think it makes me feel, to know that you are the one who has decided he’s my ally, but won’t even tell me what his actual intentions are?”

“What do you care about my intentions?” he asked, baring his teeth at her. “I am trying to help you.”

“Just like Zain was trying to help me.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No, because I am not a prince, nor am I a backstabbing bastard.”

She stood up, walked over to where he was and leaned forward, her face practically against his. “Tell me,” she said. “Tell me what is in this for you. What is in helping me for you.”

He swallowed. She wanted to peel her gaze away from his face and to unclench her fists, but she needed to know, it was more important than anything else, and she had been in that world long enough to know that she needed an associate, with similar interests, if the word ally was too strong.

“I like you,” he said, furrowing his brow.

“You like me?” she echoed, moving back from him, shaking her head in disbelief. “You like me.”

“I do,” he said, standing up and walking toward her. The fact that he was standing and approaching her, practically cornering her against the wall, made her a little uneasy. “I like you, because you don’t seem to believe their bullshit, and everyone else does. They take it all, believe it all, think that the royal family is the best thing to have happened to this world. People might be losing fate in them, but many believe that the Sakar empire will be what saves us, when they don’t realize that the Sakar empire is what has done this.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, her eyes wide.

“The darkness was not brought upon by nothing,” he said, then sighed, tilting his head back and closing his eyes. “You might not know this world, and I do not know what your world is like, but here, kings and powerful men do whatever they want at our expense.”

She didn’t say anything.

“And the darkness…”

She waited as he took a deep breath.

“It’s his doing,” he said, stretching his arm out. “It’s their doing. Don’t you see? If they precipitate it, then they can bring about its end, and it secures their standing on the throne, for generations to come. It doesn’t matter how many people they’ve screwed over.”

She cocked her head. “This is personal for you.”

He sighed, taking a deep breath. “No,” he said. “Not for me, it’s my sister. But it’s more than just about my sister. How many girls do you think that they’ve used? How many girls do you think they’ve promised the world to and then discarded as if they were nothing?”

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Aria looked him up and down before she took a trembling breath. “Which one was it?”

“Zain,” he said after a bit. “Promised my sister he would make her a queen. We are not lowborn, but my sister isn’t the sharpest person. She’s sweet, and kind, and she doesn’t understand that people have intentions which do not match up to what they say.”

“So you like me because I piss them off,” she said, furrowing her brow.

“That’s part of it, certainly,” he said. “A big part of it. But not the only reason I like you.”

She cocked her head.

“You are also not bad to look at,” he said. “And I expect it’ll be nice for you to have a friend before you are brutally murdered, or tossed aside.”

“They said they’d help me get home,” she said.

“But you can’t believe them… surely you can’t believe them,” he said, his voice quiet.

She shook her head, trying her best not to look at him. He didn’t look like he was lying, and her heart dropped to her stomach. She didn’t want to believe him. It was better, easier for her if she didn’t. “They didn’t know we were spying on them,” she said. “Zain seemed serious about what he said to Seti.”

“Yes,” he said. “And I’m sure those are his intentions, until something supersedes them. You are a tool to them. Don’t forget that, Aria. Don’t forget your place.”

She scoffed, ready to rebuff him, when the door swung open. They both turned their heads to look, just in time to find both Seti and Zain standing there, staring at them.

“How did you get in here?” Seti asked, looking right at Kye.

“Doesn’t matter,” Zain said. “We don’t have time for this. Come, now.”

“I’ll only go if he goes with me,” she replied, tilting her head toward Kye. “Otherwise, you’ll have to drag me out of here kicking and screaming.”

“I can knock her out,” Seti said to Zain.

“Nah,” Zain said, shrugging his shoulders. “Let him come if she wants him to. It’s their own demise on the line, not ours.”

They turned around and Aria walked behind them, craning her neck back to look at Kye, who was staring daggers at her.

“Seriously?” he mouthed at her.

“You like me, don’t you?” Aria said, resisting the urge to flash him a smile, and listening as he started to take long strides toward her, his brow furrowed.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: THE ORACLE

“I’m sorry we had to lock you up,” Zain said.

Seti looked over his shoulder and rolled his eyes, but he continued walking ahead, not once slowing down.

“We didn’t know if you were going to try to escape,” Zain continued.

She stared at him, her eyes wide. “Where would I go?” she asked, letting the accusation in the question hang in the air. “I would love to go home, but…”

“I will take you home,” Zain said. “I promise.”

She noticed that Seti stopped for a second, then looked right at Aria, just for a second too long. Aria swallowed. She didn’t want to show how afraid she was, because it seemed important that she remained strong, but she felt like she was to throw up. As they continued moving down the interminable circular stairs, the wall made up of tall, heavy slabs of rock all around them, she could feel the nausea building. The steps never seemed to end and she couldn’t see a landing.

“I’m sorry,” Zain said quietly. He was on the step right in front of her, walking down slowly. He was speaking just to her, though she noticed that Kye subtly craned his ear to hear Zain. “It was not my intention to frighten you.”

“What makes you think I’m frightened?”

He glanced at her hands, which were clenched in tight fists. She breathed out through her mouth, closing her eyes.

“Can you at least tell me where you are taking me?”

Seti turned around. “He does not have to,” he said. The steps swirled around them, as if they were an expanding ladder that was closing in on itself, becoming one large circular floor around them. The image was just enough to make Aria feel extremely dizzy. She thought she was going to fall back, but she was being held by sturdy arms, fingertips digging into her skin. She turned to look at Zain and bit down the fear. She wanted reassurance from him, but it would have meant nothing. He was a stranger, she reminded herself.

She shouldn’t trust him.

“The Oracle,” Seti said, taking a step back on the now flat ground.

The three men around her held their breaths, their heads vowed. Aria looked up. She couldn’t stop herself, but it was more than that. She didn’t want to. She needed to see this person—this thing—that they all seemed so afraid of. The one causing all this trouble.

Her brow knitted as soon as she saw the person in front of her. A woman with perfectly arched eyebrows and soft brown hair that went down to her shoulders stared back at her. She wore a long navy blue robe that went down to her ankles, dark brown boots, and shiny silk gloves. She had a round face, was on the heavier side, and overall, looked soft. She was wearing no make-up, her eyes were large and brown, and her face remained expressionless.

Her gaze darted between the princes, then back to her. “Come closer,” she said, her voice so soft Aria had to strain to hear her. Still, there was something about her. Instinctively, the woman’s voice made her sick to her stomach, and she knew she had to do as she was told.

She took a shaky step forward and was released from Zain’s grip. She heard a whimper, though she wasn’t sure who it was that was whimpering.

She craned her head to look back, her eyes wide, but only for a second. She could feel The Oracle’s gaze on her, burning into her skin.

The Oracle reached out and grabbed her chin, her fingers short and stubby, the skin on them piercingly cold. She moved her head back and forth as a sneer began to form on her face. “So it’s you,” she said.

Aria swallowed. “I just wanna go home,” she said. She sounded like a child, and she hated it. She hated the quiver in her voice, the urge to bite down on her lower lip. The woman moved her hand away from Aria’s face and narrowed her eyes.

“Our savior,” she said under her breath. “Hard to imagine it would be someone like you.”

Aria had the good sense to be offended, but she said nothing.

“Which one of them found you?” The Oracle said.

Aria craned her neck to look at them. Zain looked like he was going to throw up, his complexion paler than ever, and Seti stared at them, his arms crossed over his shoulders.

Aria closed her eyes. Zain had said something about how The Oracle was going to kill him if he was wrong, and he had been nice to her. Seti had been nothing but a jerk ever since he had first popped into the scene, and Kye was right. There was no way for Aria to know if she could trust him.

Don’t forget what you are to them.

“Him,” she finally said, pointing at Seti. “He was the one who found me.”

The Oracle’s eyes widened for a split second. Perhaps it was her imagination, it happened so quickly. She could tell that The Oracle’s reaction was measured, but the temperature in the room seemed to have dropped, and everyone was frozen in place. She couldn’t even hear the men behind her breath.

“She’s sharp,” The Oracle said, walking around her in a circle. “She will have to undergo a trial…”

“A trial?” Aria echoed. The Oracle ignored her.

“You have seven days,” she said, looking up at Zain. “Seven days to prepare her. If she is not ready, then you both die.”

Then the world around her went back, and Aria felt herself sinking into the space that had just opened under her feet. She tried to look down, but all she could see was darkness.