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I expected my parents to overreact when we all returned much sooner than planned. I expected my mother to put me under extreme security, for her to fuss, for everything to be unbearable for days.
I expected all this, and yet, somehow, I was still surprised.
We arrived at the palace after sunset. Mother came running out to meet us, hair unbound and flying behind her and her shoes unlaced.
“Are you hurt? What happened?”
I dismounted and found her hands on my face, running through my hair.
The guys snickered.
“Mom, I’m fine. We’re all fine. No one is hurt.”
She let out a deep breath and pulled me into a tight hug. “You nearly gave me a heart attack. I thought something must have happened. What are you doing back so soon?”
My father hurried into the courtyard to meet us, looking much more put together than mother, but showing almost as much concern.
“Something did happen,” I started. As much as I didn’t want to tell her, there was no way she wouldn’t find out. Especially if magic was needed to fight off any more creatures. We were the only two magicians in the entire kingdom, and I certainly didn’t know what to do.
“But everyone is okay?” Dad squinted through the darkness to look for hidden injuries.
“We’re fine,” Adam groaned. “We found some...monster, thing, out there.”
My parents stared at us for a moment. Glanced at each other. “What?”
I explained as best I could. Servants came out to lead all of our horses to the stables. Some were already on their way to the Villa outside the palace to let the other boys’ parents know we were back already. Two came out with lanterns.
My mother shook her head. “I knew letting you go was a mistake. You never should have hunted that beast. You should have returned as soon as you heard it.” She looked at all the boys. “I’m very disappointed in all of you. This was a poor decision that you made.”
Adam stomped forward. “I don’t think we did anything wrong. We found a problem, and we handled it. That’s the purpose of these little hunts, isn’t it? To build teamwork between all of us?” He remembered who he was speaking to a moment later and stood up straighter, tacking on a curt “Your Majesties.”
My father stroked his beard, and Mother shot him a glare. He’d be getting an earful from her later, that was for sure.
“Your Majesties,” Lucas said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “With all due respect, the boys handled themselves well out there. Maybe it was foolhardy, but Lord Adam is right. They assessed the problem and calmly planned a course of action. Grown men could hardly have done better.”
That was high praise coming from my bodyguard who’d been begging me to turn around the whole time.
Not that my mother cared.
“Selena,” my father interjected, using his stern King voice. “You can berate them all you want; it doesn’t change what already happened. We have to decide what to do next.”
“We need to find out if there are more,” I said. “Make sure they’re not going after any towns.”
My father nodded. “I agree. Adam, perhaps you’d like to inform your father of what’s happened?”
Adam stood straighter and puffed his chest out. “Of course.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Tell him to start a thorough search of the woods immediately.”
“Right away!” He and his guard hurried away, which was the signal for the others to start heading home.
Soon it was only me, my parents, and our guards. Mother wrapped me in a hug again and started leading me inside. “I’m so glad you’re safe. I never liked this hunting trip anyway.”
“Your Majesties,” Lucas began, pitching his voice low. “I have a few more observations I want to share with you.”
Mother tensed. “I think we could all do with a nice cup of tea, hmm?”
“That sounds wonderful,” Dad said.
We relocated to one of the first floor sitting rooms, and servants set out a tea tray for us. My parents sat on a small couch together. I sat across from them on a twin couch, a dark mahogany coffee table between us. The blue wallpaper in here always reminded me of the river.
Lucas perched on the edge of a wing backed chair, a cup of tea in front of him going cold.
“It wasn’t just any creature that attacked us,” he said after the servants left us alone. “It was a demon.”
I froze, teacup halfway to my mouth. I’d had the passing thought out in the forest, but it couldn’t actually be a demon.
Mom spilled her tea over her skirts, but she didn’t even notice. Dad jumped to take the cup out of her hand and started sopping up the mess with a handkerchief.
I didn’t know much about demons, only that they were bad omens, usually preceding major wars and bloodshed.
“You’re certain?” Mom asked.
Lucas nodded. “Yellow blood, turned to black goop when we killed it.” He must be paying more attention to my magic lessons than I did to remember that. His chin jerked towards me. “I don’t know what he did, but I doubt any of those boys would be alive today if it weren’t for him.”
My ears burned. I hid behind my teacup as much as I could. “After it swallowed my gun, I just used magic to shoot it from inside.”
“That was smart thinking,” Dad praised.
Mother rigidly controlled her breathing. “You fought a demon.”
“We didn’t know it was a demon,” I countered. “And you can’t tell me it would have been better if we’d left it alone to wreak havoc out there.”
She stood up and started pacing.
“Selena.” Dad grabbed her hand. “We would have done the same thing if we’d been there. We can’t fault him for that.”
“But why was it there at all?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Perhaps you could explain more of what you know about demons? I don’t remember much about them.”
I nodded. Dad knew less about this than I did. He and Mother had studied all they could years ago, but Mother had kept up with it to train me while Dad had turned his attention to the rest of the Kingdom and more traditional lines of defense.
Mother took a deep breath and agreed. “Yes. That’s a good place to start.” She resumed her seat and refilled her teacup, adding in a sugar cube and stirring. “Demons are from the Underworld. They are beings of pure chaos.”
The Underworld? I’d never heard it described as an actual, physical place before, not the way mother described now.
“It’s normally impossible for them to cross into our world. But occasionally, cracks appear, and demons crawl through.”
“So, that one we saw today might have been the only one?” I asked.
“For now, possibly.”
Well, that wasn’t a strong vote of confidence.
“You must understand that cracks between the worlds aren’t because of time or some kind of erosion. They’re formed when very strong chaotic energy converges in a single location.”
“Where does that energy come from?” Dad asked.
Mother traced a finger around the edge of her cup. “People, usually. Their thoughts.”
“So, it builds over time until it creates a crack?” Lucas asked.
Mother shook her head. “No, all the sources I’ve read say they’re the result of a single person. They alone possess thoughts strong enough and chaotic enough to cause these cracks.”
“So, if we don’t want more demons, we have to find this one person?” I asked. Talk about a needle in a haystack. There were millions of people in this kingdom.
“Ideally, yes,” Mother said. “But obviously that’s difficult.”
“There have to be countermeasures we can take in the meantime,” Dad said. “Some way to notice when more demons appear.”
I glanced at Mom. She continued to trace the rim of her cup.
Tracking spells weren’t easy. The larger the scale, the less likely they’d work. It was why she hadn’t been able to track my twin brother when he was kidnapped. I’d only asked about them once. She’d shut down when she answered, becoming a shell of herself and losing all emotion for a few hours. I think she considered it her biggest failure. All this magic, and she still hadn’t been able to find her son.
Maybe it would be different with something like a demon. It wasn’t human, after all. And we wouldn’t be tracking, per se. We’d be setting an alarm, something that would ring a bell when it crossed into our world and at least let us know.
That would never work. The world was too big for any one of us to cast a spell that large. These demons could appear anywhere. Our magic only reached so far.
“I’ll have to think about it,” Mother answered.
It was one of her diplomatic answers. One of those, ‘We’ll consider it, but we can’t make any promises.’
Dad frowned. He’d noticed, too. “Selena, what aren’t you telling me?”
I looked between them. My parents never fought or kept secrets from each other. Or at least, that was what I’d always assumed. It seemed naïve to believe that now. They ran a kingdom together. They couldn’t possibly agree with each other a hundred percent of the time.
Mother took a deep breath. “Any spell that large would have consequences. People would notice something, not to mention the toll it would take on the caster.”
Dad ran his hand up and down her arm. “Okay. You take some time to think about how you want to handle it. But tell me what I can do to keep people safe in the meantime.”
“Can’t we warn people?” I asked. “Just tell them to be careful and not to go into the woods alone?”
“They’d wonder why and investigate anyway.” Dad shook his head. “We can warn them that there’s a dangerous animal, maybe. But then they’ll try and go after it, and we don’t want to cause more people to go into the woods.”
“Tell them the guardsmen are doing a training exercise,” Mom said. She laid a hand over Dad’s on her arm. “They’re training in the woods, and in order to avoid accidental injuries civilians are advised to keep out.”
“Wait, we’re going to blatantly lie?” I asked.
They both smiled at me, their eyes softening. I felt six years old again. I wanted to pout like one, too.
“It’s the hardest thing about being in charge of a kingdom, Jack,” Dad said. “You try to be as honest and just as you can, but sometimes lying is the best way to protect everyone.”
I understood that. It made sense not to tell the kingdom about demons crawling around. But telling them something else instead...it felt like an insult, almost. Like we couldn’t trust them with the truth.
Which, maybe we couldn’t.
The idea still didn’t sit right with me. It shouldn’t bother me so much, not when it was the most logical course of action, but it did. “I understand.”
“That’s enough for one night, I think.” Mom set down her teacup, still mostly full. “You’ve had an exciting day, Jack. You should get some rest.”
I nodded. There was no way I’d be able to sleep after all this, but being away from everyone was its own relief.
Dad stroked his beard. “We’ll have to figure out what you’ll be doing for the next few days. Your tutors took up some extra work in the Villa this week..”
Oh, that was right. I was supposed to be gone for the whole week, which meant now I had a free schedule for the first time in ages.
Maybe I could go back and look for that kid after all. Not that mom would let me out of the castle right now. I didn’t see how I could sneak out, either. Not without someone covering for me.
I eyed my dad. “Can I shadow you?” He had to have at least one day where his schedule didn’t mix with my mom’s.
His eyes brightened, and I immediately felt like the worst child in the world. Here I was complaining we were going to lie to the whole kingdom, only to turn around and plan to deceive my parents.
“That’s an excellent idea,” he said.
The guilt sank in a little deeper.