I don’t know how long we stayed on the ground, squeezing each other as hard as we could. I’m sure we would have stayed there all day if our respective guards hadn’t pulled us up. I grabbed her face, trying to wipe her tears away, but they just kept coming. Mine were probably worse.
How did you get here? The question was stuck in my throat as I stared. I had dreamed of being reunited with her for so long and now she was here, and I couldn’t manage a single word.
Someone was talking, but I didn’t hear the words. Sayla was crying, and I knew it was because she was happy, but I wanted so badly for it to stop. I could never handle seeing her cry.
“Kaiya!” A heavy hand landed on my shoulder, jolting me. Corek. Corek was shaking me. “Kaiya, what is going on?”
“I could ask the same thing.” The person still had their hand settled on the sword, the edge in their voice lessened with concern.
“My sister…” Sayla said. She started to cry harder and pulled me back in. “My sister!”
“Sister?” Eumen said. “But I thought her sister was still on Earth.”
“That’s what she told us,” Corek said. “From her reaction, I’m sure Kaiya believed that until now. Kaiya?” Her voice was gentler than I ever knew it could be. “We need to move.”
“Where?” My thoughts had all scrambled when I saw Sayla, but they were clearing again. Zann likely didn’t know that Fera had someone here that could rival me, and I was his trump card. He’d try something if he knew about Sayla. That was probably why Forana never mentioned having someone like me around. I couldn’t risk her going to the palace.
“We have a place,” Sayla said. “I’m not allowed on the palace grounds for a while, so I’m staying somewhere else.”
“Sayla!” A new voice spoke up. “Don’t tell them everything without thinking it through.”
Sayla pulled back, whipping around with a ferocity she normally saved for Dad. “Kaiya is my sister. If I can’t trust her, I can’t trust anyone. Let’s go.” She led me by the hand out of the shopping district and further away from the rush of people. We walked for what felt like an hour, our friends trailing behind us. I could hear them talking quietly, but I couldn’t make out anything.
The house we stopped in front of was large compared to the surrounding ones. A two-story house with a dormer roof, the first time I’d seen a roof like that, and a paint job similar to Yvanta. It must have meant something, but I hadn’t asked and now I didn’t really care.
Sayla opened the door to a large living room and a door to the closet under the stairs. It was kind of bland, but I could see that one wall was in the middle of being painted. A mural of Sayla and some of her friends from high school. I couldn’t recall their names, but I recognized them from all the pictures Sayla had of them in her room at home.
“Welcome to my humble abode,” Sayla said. “I don’t have enough chairs for everyone, but I do have pillows out the ass.”
I laughed. “Is that because you need three hundred of them to get to sleep?”
“I didn’t cry for you just so you could bully me the second you get your wits together.”
“I can’t help it,” I said. “You make it so easy.”
“Whatever, whatever.” She took a step toward the bedroom, then stopped, staring at our interlocked fingers. With a slowness unbefitting, she let go and went to her room, returning with an armful of pillows. She tossed them to the ground. “Grab a pillow, everyone. We got some explaining to do.”
“That would be super great,” Clecia signed. “I’ve never seen Kaiya cry before. It scared me.”
“As Vanli once said, crying is a waste of time,” I said. “What she failed to mention is that crying has a time and place like everything else. I’m assuming it’s because happiness isn’t an emotion she experiences. But introductions are in order. I’m Kaiya and these are my friends-slash-guards-slash-bullies. Corek of Matven, Eumen of Khant, and Clecia of Shelrit. She’s mute and uses OSL as her primary way of communicating.”
My sister gave us a deep bow, and I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. “I’m Sayla. Believe it or not, I’m younger than she is.” Her people looked shocked but said nothing. Damn those three inches she had on me. “And these paranoid twins are Tivna of Francca—” the woman who threatened me gave a nod, “—and Morli of Francca.” Her brother looked aggravated, but also nodded to us. The two of them looked like someone hit copy and paste, wide shoulders with thick, muscular frames behind dark, almost black, eyes and curly brown hair.
“They’re here to guard and protect me. Oh, and we all know OSL. Well, I’m still picking it up.”
“We’re here to protect on the queen’s order,” Morli said. As if that meant anything to me. Maybe it would to the others.
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“Must be weak sauce then, huh?” I teased. “These three are here just because they like me.”
“You already know Madam Enri would pitch a fit if we weren’t here right now,” Eumen said. “Don’t be a menace.”
“That’s not the point. And you’re making me look bad in front of my sister’s friends!” I didn’t need any help to look bad in front of my sister. She already knew I was a dork.
“Enri?” Tivna asked. “Princess Enri?”
“We don’t have any princesses,” Eumen said. “Enri is His Majesty’s Head Mage.”
Morli smacked the back of Tivna’s head. “Don’t ask stupid questions. Princess Enri has been imprisoned for the past decade and a half.”
“There are bigger things to talk about,” I said, plopped down on a pillow. “How did you get here, Sayla?”
Sayla raised her brows in question but started to explain. “After you went to the bathroom, I went right after you because I also started crying and the napkins at the table were running out. But when I opened the door, something… happened. I don’t know how to describe it, but it felt like I was being dragged atom by atom, stretched into nothing and then put back together. I blacked out from the pain, but when I woke up, I was in Forana’s bedroom. Not the throne room. That would have been too convenient. I was still trying to get myself together when Forana walked in.” Sayla looked in awe at the thought of Forana and I couldn’t blame her. “She’s something else, Kaiya. If you meet her, you’ll know.”
“I had breakfast with her this morning, and I totally get it. She’s got a strong presence.”
“Yeah, and it’s not harsh, but it’s not soft either. Anyway, when she saw me, in pain and confused, she helped me out. She said I got caught on the tail end of a summoning, which is why it hurt so much, and I got plopped here because the summoner lost focus. They wanted to be here, and I got shoved here instead. After that, she helped me out with adjusting and since I got caught up on the tail end of someone else’s summon, I couldn’t leave until that one was complete. I wanted so badly for you to have been the summon, Kaiya. I wanted to see you so much. Those first days… I would have had an easier time if I had you with me.” She grabbed my hand, squeezing hard. “But we had no way of finding out who it was. Until we could figure something out, I just did what I could to help her. And what I could do was fight. So, I did.”
I nodded, shifting on the pillow. “I was that summon, Sayla. They summoned me to become a Suriqi mage for King Zann.” Sayla recoiled, though her hand never left mine. I couldn’t imagine all of the unfiltered history she had access to. If I couldn’t stand him with everything I knew, I was sure she hated him more. “I know he sucks, but at the time I couldn’t do anything. I could stay and train or I could leave and let him summon some other hapless schmuck. I had nothing, and would likely have nothing if I said no. It’s been rough, I’m not gonna lie, but some friends have made it easier.”
Sayla smiled. “I’m glad you haven’t been alone. Sure would be nice if I had some friends, but some people don’t want to ‘cross a line’, whatever that means.” She gave Morli and Tivna a pointed stare and Tivna threw her hands up.
“We have a duty to protect and serve the queendom. If we were to overreach and become friends, our loyalties might change. Look at those three. It’s clear they have more loyalty to Kaiya than their king. She insulted him and they have nothing to say about it.”
Corek looked like she was torn between starting a fight and shutting down. I knew Corek was a soldier to her core, but she also had ironclad morals to stick to, and since her time on the front lines, they were clashing more and more.
Eumen shrugged and Clecia said, “It’s not that we don’t have loyalty to our kingdom anymore. It’s that we’re realizing that having loyalty to the kingdom is different from having loyalty to the king. Kaiya holds our opinions close and cares so much about everyone around her, even people she’s never met. It’d be hard not to have faith in someone like that. Also, Kaiya has said much worse about him. This is nothing.”
“That’s so sweet. I’ll start crying again,” I said.
“I would say you care too much, sometimes,” Corek said.
I let the insult roll off of me as I said, “We all have our strengths and weaknesses. Like these two.” The twins looked annoyed I was addressing them. “They’ve got their noses up the queen’s ass and sticks up their own.”
Corek laughed and Sayla tried to smother her laughter with a loud, hacking cough.
“What is your problem?” Morli said, resting his hand on something in his jacket. Something sharp, I could only assume. “People like you give mages a bad name.”
“Oh, there’s nobody else quite like me,” I said. “My mommy told me so.”
At this, Sayla couldn’t hold in her laughter. Whatever tension was building broke as she leaned on me, trying to get her breath back. She shook her head as she said, “I can’t remember the last time Mom ever said something like that.”
Tivna looked less hostile as she leaned against the wall, arms crossed, as she said, “Sayla may be younger, but I find her much easier to respect,” Tivna said. “I’m sure it was like that where you’re from.”
Sayla barked in laughter, almost falling into another breathless cycle of gasping, and I smiled. Tivna couldn’t have been farther from the truth. “When I tell you people couldn’t stand me back home, it’s not even scratching the surface. Remember Mr. Renfield?”
I snorted. “He hated you so much. Not for no reason, but it was still really funny.”
Sayla sat up; storyteller mode was fully engaged. “Let me tell you a few things about the way it was back home.”
I could have listened to her tell her stories until the sunset and rose again, but as it was, we only had a few hours until curfew. There weren’t any set rules, but if we missed dinner, I was sure Zann would bitch until his hair fell out.
It was Corek who extricated us, her sympathy for me and Sayla waning. “We can come back another day,” she said. “This won’t be the end.”
I pulled Sayla into a hug, squeezing her with everything I had. “I’ll come back for you.”
“You better,” she said. “I need someone who knows what google is to talk to.”
I laughed. “I have to train, but I’ll see as soon as I have time.”
“I love you, Kaiya.”
“I love you, too, Sayla.”