Armannii leaned back in his chair, wiping his mouth with a handkerchief. “We should be leaving soon. We need to get back to Phildeterre.”
“What’s the rush, Ovair?” Otto asked, putting his fork on his plate.
With the introduction of food to his system, Diomedes’s eyelids struggled to stay open, and his limbs felt impossible to move. He wondered how long it had been since they had slept at the tavern. Had it already been a full day, or had the interaction with Raylee simply drained him of all his energy? Exhaustion had come and gone multiple times since then.
“Besides, take a look at your comrades.” Otto gestured to Blanndynne, who rested her head in her hand. “Clearly, they need rest. You must remember that not everyone can run on as little sleep as you.”
Blanndynne tried to hide a yawn, and it reminded Diomedes of what she had said when they’d first met; how she wouldn’t tire as easily as he would. He wondered at first what was causing her to fatigue as he did, and decided that it was probably a mixture of flying for the first time in a while and still being relatively drained from being in her vessel for such an extended amount of time.
Armannii rubbed his hand across his chin, making a scratching noise. “I can see that.”
Diomedes was about to refuse when Armannii’s movements caught his eye. Armannii was not looking at him. Instead, he continued to flick his gaze toward the exit. Every once in a while, he would tilt his head, listening. But for what? Armannii bounced his knee, only stopping when he noticed Diomedes staring.
“Well, if you’re so determined to leave, I suppose I can’t stop you. I need to use the washroom, but then I’ll see you out.” Otto stood up from the table, carrying his plate over to the small kitchen counter.
Armannii waited until Otto had left the room before talking. “I know you would rather rest here for a while, but I don’t think—”
“We’ll leave,” Diomedes said, his face contorting as he tried to hold back a yawn. Blanndynne raised her eyebrows when she looked at him, clearly surprised that he had not protested. “The sooner we get out of here, the sooner we can figure out what I’m going to say to the council. I just have to grab my bag. I left it in the back bedroom while I was changing.” Diomedes stood up, stretching until his side throbbed from how he’d twisted his torso. “I’ll be back in a second.”
Diomedes followed the hall and grabbed his bag from where he’d left it on the floor after cleaning up. But at the sound of Otto whispering in the washroom, he paused, gripping the strap to his bag.
“. . . trying to leave. Mm-hmm. Yes, trying to stall. Yes. I think Ovair is suspicious of me but . . . no.” Otto’s voice carried as Diomedes stepped closer at the sound of his friend’s last name. “No, I’m fairly certain I can control the genie. Yes, we’ll write up the ransom to Phildeterre as soon as Ovair is taken to the Dark King. Quite a hefty amount of money from what I hear. No, from the prince. Right, I’ll just—”
Instead of waiting to hear what Otto’s next plan of action was, Diomedes tiptoed back down the hallway and pointed toward the door.
“We’re leaving. Now.” Diomedes kept his voice quiet in case Otto was already on his way back.
Blanndynne frowned at him, but Armannii nodded. It was almost as if he knew what was happening, and Diomedes wondered if he had overheard Otto’s secret conversation. It was certainly possible.
Armannii slung his bow over his shoulder and pulled out his rune pen, tracing the open rune on the door. Diomedes’s heart pounded in his chest as he watched the hallway, waiting for Otto to walk in and stop them with a flick of his wrist.
The door swung open, and Armannii waited until Blanndynne and Diomedes had gone up the winding staircase before closing the door. However, when Diomedes reached the top behind Blanndynne, it took Armannii another several seconds before he joined them.
“What happened? Why did you take so long to get up here?” Diomedes asked as Armannii pushed past him to open the outer door to the Dark. Diomedes fished around in his bag until he found the glasses.
“I was locking the door from the outside. He’ll be able to get out eventually, but it should stall him.”
“So you heard?”
Blanndynne cleared her throat. “Heard what? What’s going on?”
“I heard,” Armannii said, nodding. “Didn’t know he had plans for all three of us though.” The passage opened, and the moisture from the forest filled Diomedes’s lungs like a breath of relatively fresh air.
Before Blanndynne could ask again, he answered her question. “Otto was contacting someone in the washroom, and—”
“How?” Blanndynne asked as she tried to keep pace with Armannii, who was speedwalking around the trees.
“Does it matter?” Diomedes asked, ducking when a branch swung low at his head out of the darkness. “Point is, he had some sort of plan for each of us: sending Armannii to the Dark King, using me for ransom, and subduing you himself, whatever that means.”
“But why?”
Armannii paused, turning around fast enough that Blanndynne almost ran into him. “It’s trick or be tricked here. And if we hadn’t left when we did, we would’ve been the latter.” Armannii kept his voice softer than normal. “We need to keep moving. He probably already sent for the Dark Soldiers.”
Diomedes weighed the threat level of the Dark Soldiers with the fragments of knowledge he had on them. He’d seen a few of them from time to time when they’d bring correspondence to his father from the Dark King. With Phildeterre at war with magic and the Dark harboring many such people, the relationship between the two kings was civil at best. There was a treaty between the two worlds, but Diomedes had been in enough council meetings to know that his father had tried to make changes to it in the past only to be rejected by the Dark King.
He did not, however, understand their connection to Armannii, nor why Otto had been trying to lead the Dark Soldiers to the elf. But as tired as he was, Diomedes didn’t ask.
When Armannii continued, it was even faster than he’d been moving before. Diomedes tried to keep up, but the combination of his injuries, both to his side and on his feet, along with his struggle to see, kept him slower than the other two.
“Can you go any faster?” Armannii asked, having paused to let Diomedes catch up before he and Blanndynne left him too far behind.
“I can’t. I’m sorry.”
Armannii squinted at Diomedes for a second before he tilted his head to the side. His eyes glazed over, and he stared absently at a place between Blanndynne and Diomedes. His eyes widened.
“Run.” Armannii bolted, disappearing into the trees.
It was only in the second before Diomedes followed after Armannii that he heard it. Footsteps. Many footsteps getting louder.
Adrenaline spilled into his veins, and despite the throbbing beneath every bandage on his body, Diomedes ran. He ran until his lungs burned. He ran until his feet screamed at him to stop. But he could not outrun the footsteps nor the sense of dread that the sound of them created in his chest. Fear traveled up and down his body, making every hair stand on end.
Diomedes clutched the strap of his bag with one hand while he moved branches with the other. If walking in the Dark had been hard, running was near impossible. Roots leapt out to trip him. Even with the glasses, he could not see the trees he was about to collide with until a second or two before they reached his face. He only hoped that whatever, or whoever, was chasing them was struggling just as much. But he doubted that.
With his chest heaving, Diomedes lost sight of Blanndynne. She must’ve been able to see more easily, which meant she could keep up with Armannii. But that left Diomedes alone. He had a feeling that if he kept running, he would end up separated from his friends, possibly running in a different direction.
Diomedes clenched his jaw as he pulled out his sword. The hilt felt familiar in his hands, and despite the adrenaline coursing through him, he grinned. Sprinting through a forest blindly posed a challenge. But fighting? He could do that with his eyes closed, and hopefully with his several injuries. He turned on his heels, gripping his sword as he faced his opponents.
Six men dressed head to toe in black metallic armor stood in a semicircle around him.
“Lower your weapon,” the nearest man ordered, aiming his own sword at Diomedes’s face.
Holding his ground, Diomedes glared. “Why were you pursuing me?” He recognized the armor. They were Dark Soldiers, servants to the monarch of the Dark. He had never seen the Dark King, and he assumed his father hadn’t either. In fact, Diomedes couldn’t remember the last time either of the reigning monarchs had stepped foot in the opposite world.
“Where is the traitor, Armannii Ovair?” a Dark Soldier asked.
Armannii’s anxious behavior in Otto’s house was beginning to make more sense now that Diomedes was face-to-face with the people clearly hunting his friend down. Armannii’s paranoia in the Dark. His anxiety in Bayan. The panic in his silver eyes when he’d heard the footsteps. Even what he’d said at the beginning of the maze came back to Diomedes. It wasn’t creatures of the Dark Armannii feared—it was the people. Armannii had known he was being hunted, yet he had still entered the Dark to help Diomedes.
His friend had stood by him despite the threat to his own life. Diomedes set his jaw. He had no intention of turning Armannii over to the Dark Soldiers.
“Who?” Diomedes asked, frowning. He kept his sword raised but lowered his shoulders and cocked his head.
“Armannii Ovair. Elf and traitor to the Dark King. We received a report he had returned to the Dark.”
“Never heard the name.” Diomedes eyed one of the Dark Soldiers, who was trying to sneak around behind him. “And I can assure you I only ran because I heard you charging like a pack of rabid animals. You know as well as I do how dangerous this place can be. I apologize that I can’t be of more help.”
“You were with someone else. We heard more than one voice.”
“You must’ve heard my—” Diomedes choked, knowing he could only mention Blanndynne. “My sister. She ran as soon as she heard you. I really should find her,” Diomedes said, stowing his sword in his sheath, hoping the Dark Soldiers would follow suit.
The Dark Soldiers began to lower their weapons one by one, which helped Diomedes to breathe easier.
“You are required to report any sightings of the criminal to the Dark King. Is that understood?”
“Of course.” Diomedes nodded. “It would be my pleasure to help the Dark King seek justice for whatever this traitor has done.”
After a pause, the soldier who had done all of the talking clicked his heels together, and the other Dark Soldiers trailed behind him. “Good day then.”
Diomedes bit his lip until they had all disappeared into the darkness surrounding him. Wiping his hand across the back of his neck, Diomedes narrowed his eyes in the direction he thought he’d last seen Blanndynne, though he couldn’t be sure.
The threat of the soldiers may have been dealt with, but he was still alone in the Dark.
“Sister, huh?”
Or so he’d thought.
Blanndynne floated down from a tree in the distance, a smirk on her face that made Diomedes’s stomach turn. To make matters worse, Armannii leapt from branch to branch until he landed on the forest floor in front of Diomedes.
“If I had known you were just going to talk your way out of that, I would’ve left you two to play brother and sister.” His eyes glittered.
“We should keep going,” Diomedes said, glancing over his shoulder. “We’ll talk at Zephrium’s.” He directed the last comment at Armannii, fully intending to find out why the Dark Soldiers had referred to him as a traitor to the Dark King.