Heir to the Throne (The Wardbreaker Book 4) Read online

  I wasn’t even in Becket’s house.

  Despite the gloom, Ifrit’s light allowed me to see the ripped wallpaper, the cracks running along the ceiling, the coat-hook behind the front door where my father would set his jackets up after coming home. Home. My home, from more than ten years ago.

  My heart gave a powerful thump. I spun around, every inch of my body pleading with me that I turn around and come back the way I came, but the door was gone. There was only a wall, now; a wall covered in that same ripped, faded, cheap wallpaper that had come with the apartment when we had moved in.

  Flowers… so many flowers.

  “What’s happening?” I asked Ifrit.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t you know everything?”

  “Maybe I’m not really here.”

  I frowned at the little flame in the palm of my hand. “What?”

  I miss you… the voice floated through the apartment like an evening breeze. Cool and soft against my skin, but also strangely warm and inviting. Like a mother’s touch, I thought.

  Slowly, I turned around and looked deeper into the apartment. There was only one way to go, and that way was in. One step after the other, I pushed further into my childhood home, remembering details as I went.

  Everything was here.

  From the small stand by the door with the bowl where my parents would drop their keys and change, to the single, bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, all the way to the smell of the damp clothes hanging off the rack at the far end of the living room.

  I could almost hear my dad yelling at my mom when the clothes would hang a little too close to the radiator. It was easier for him to shout at her than to actually move them himself. He was always too busy to do it; always on a phone call, or expecting someone to arrive.

  The TV switched on. It was one of those old, tube televisions that would click on and then take a moment to warm up before finally displaying a picture. That didn’t make sense, though. We owned a flatscreen, back then. The light from the TV lit up the room, but there was nothing on it. Only static.

  I searched the room for signs of life.

  My father’s old, leather armchair which he kept in front of the TV was empty. Behind it was a circular table surrounded by three chairs. That was where he did business with his colleagues at all hours of the night. The kitchen was dark, and quiet. My mom and I spent a lot of time there, baking brownies and cakes to take with us into the bedroom at night.

  Another noise—this time, a thump. The sound turned my insides out. I spun on my heel, my hands stretched toward the source of the sound. From where I was, I could see down the other hall. The first door on the left was my room. The first door on the right was the bathroom. And at the very end of the hall, was my parents’ room.

  The door was open slightly, and the sound had come from in there. I was sure of it.

  Izzy… I’m here, my mother’s voice again, soft, but this time closer. Stronger. More urgent. A shadow moved through the gap in the door to my parent’s bedroom, and my heart surged into action. I stepped toward it, using Ifrit’s light to guide me down the darkened corridor.

  Behind me, voices were starting to materialize, whispers fluttering around like butterflies. I thought they may have been coming from the TV, but I could still the TV from where I was. It was static, pinpricks of black and white filling the screen.

  Ifrit’s light danced on the walls as I moved closer to the bedroom. My mother was in there. I could see her shadow crossing in front of the gap. I froze on the spot when I caught a glimpse of the white dress she was wearing.

  “Mom…” I said.

  My mother’s shadow stopped moving. “I’m here, Izzy,” she said.

  “But how? This has to be a dream.”

  “It isn’t. Come closer. I want to see you.”

  Pushing my nerves down into the pit of my stomach where they couldn’t reach me took everything I had, but I managed. I started moving again, with Ifrit as my light, pausing again when I reached the door. Carefully, I placed my fingertips against the door and pushed it open just enough to make it swing.

  It was my childhood bedroom.

  I hadn’t had much growing up, despite my father’s claims that he wanted us to live a good life. My bedroom was little more than a box with four walls. Three of those walls had been painted deep purple, the outer wall a light lilac, but the paint had chipped and faded over the years, and it had never been reapplied.

  A closet, painted the same color as the walls, sat on the right. The doors on it never quite closed properly; one of them had been installed badly and had come out a little lopsided. That didn’t bother me much. It gave the closet character, much like the legions of stickers I’d stuck to it over the years.

  At the far end of the room was a small desk. I remembered sitting at the desk, day in, day out, drawing and sketching and coloring. One of the legs was a little wobbly, and when my mom found out, she wedged one of my dad’s old baseball cards under it to make it stable again. He never found out.

  On the other side of the window, New York loomed, mighty and iconic. I could see the Empire State Building from here, the Hudson Bridge… the Statue of Liberty. Wait, that’s not right. I couldn’t see the Empire State Building from where we used to live, and I certainly couldn’t see the Statue of Liberty.

  The window fogged, as if someone had breathed on it, and my heart lurched into my throat. I watched, rooted to the spot, my head pounding. It happened again, only this time, more of the window fogged up. A moment later, a handprint appeared, fingertips dragging along the condensation as if someone were lightly caressing the window.

  But my room was empty. I was the only person in here, despite the voice I’d just heard.

  “Mom?” I asked.

  The air smelled like her. The whole room did. All these years, and I’d never forgotten the way she always smelled like coconut. It was her favorite, and mine too. The closet door swayed, and I rushed over to it and yanked it open.

  Empty.

  No clothes, no art supplies, and no mom.

  “Izzy,” my mom said.

  I turned to face the window again only to find two handprints resting against the condensation, but there was something else, too. On my desk, gleaming against the dim, ambient light like a priceless jewel, was the crown. I stared at it, my heart hammering now. What the hell was it doing here?

  “Take it,” my mom said. “Take the crown, Izzy.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t.”

  “You can. It’ll bring me back. You can bring me back.”

  “No… you’re lying.”

  “I wouldn’t lie to you… I love you. Please, Izzy. Take it, and we can change the world.”

  The voice wasn’t coming from the window anymore, but from the crown itself. I could tell. I could feel it, even if it was speaking directly into my mind. I had to fight it. I knew it wasn’t real, but at the same time, what did I really know about the crown? What if my mom was right? What if I really would have the power to bring her back?

  I took a step toward the crown, watching it like I expected it to jump up and start dancing. I reached for it, my fingertips slowly moving toward it. Ifrit wasn’t speaking, he wasn’t objecting to what I was about to do, so I couldn’t have been doing something wrong. He wouldn’t have let me, right?

  I drew my hand back, noticing that Ifrit wasn’t with me anymore. Shaking my head, I shut my eyes. “No,” I said, “This isn’t right.”

  Then another voice, this one distant, and difficult to hear at first. “Izzy, can you hear me?” it was Axel.

  “Barely…” I trailed off.

  “Open your eyes.”

  I opened my eyes, blinking the daze away. It was cold out here. Out here. I was outside, staring at Becket’s place. A cold gust pushed past me, the biting wind sobering me up and sharpening my senses. Axel was standing a few feet away from me, his hand outstretched.

  “Axel?” I asked, “What’s… going on?�
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  “You tell me.” He gestured with his head. “What are you doing with that?”

  I looked down. The crown was in my hand, and I was outside, my bare toes digging into the cold tarmac of the street. I turned my eyes up at him, fear pulsing through me like a second heart. “I… I don’t know,” I said, “I don’t know what just happened to me.”

  “Let’s get you back inside,” he said.

  I took his hand and let him guide me back into the house, where he wrapped me in every possible blanket he could find, and just held me for a while.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Axel decided to make me a cup of hot cocoa to help me get warmed up. I could’ve used magic to warm up with, but the last thing I wanted to do was reach for the Tempest, considering magic was the reason I found myself in this mess.

  I barely registered the passage of time as I waited for Axel. A minute, ten, an hour. I wouldn’t have been able to say with any real certainty. The dream I’d just had wouldn’t let me go, like a wolf with a piece of meat in its mouth. I couldn’t get the drowned Queen out of my head, no matter how hard I tried.

  I’ve come to take you home.

  The words reverberated through my skull like it was hollow, bouncing off the insides of my head time, after time, after time. Was it real? Had I been dreaming? Or had the drowned Queen somehow reached out to me? No, not somehow—through the crown. The crown was letting her reach me. But how?

  More importantly, how was she still… a thing? Was she alive in the Tempest? Was she a ghost? A figment of my imagination? Some kind of psychic projection? As a Mage, I understood all those things were possible; each of them offering a valid, rational explanation I could onto, for my sanity’s sake.

  And yet, here I was, slowly going insane.

  He walked over to me with the cup of steaming hot coco in his hand, not saying a word. I took the cup, the warmth of it radiating into my hands and up toward nose. Already I was feeling a little less like a dead person come back from the grave, and more like a regular human being.

  “Thank you,” I said, before taking my first sip. It was deliciously sweet, with a hint of cinnamon.

  Axel sat down on the bed next to me, careful not to rock it too much. “Are you alright?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure how to answer that,” I said.

  “Are you comfortable, at least?”

  I looked over at him. “I’m comfortable…”

  A smile worked across Axel’s lips. “That makes me happy to hear.” He paused. “Have you been able to make sense of what happened?”

  I shook my head. “Not at all. How did you know I was out there?”

  “I guess you could say I sensed you. I couldn’t sleep, so I was awake when you woke up.”

  “Is that something that happens often?”

  “Not really. But the house was quiet, my brain was quiet, and yours… wasn’t. I tried to ignore you for a little bit, though I did consider going over to your room.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I thought you wanted some space after today. Anyway, after a little while I thought I could hear you talking to yourself. Then you opened the bedroom door and started moving downstairs. That was when I opened my door and followed you. I caught sight of you leaving the house just as I reached the living room.”

  “Was I still talking to myself?”

  “No. You were sleepwalking, dragging that crown around like a kid dragging a teddy bear. I tried calling out, but you didn’t answer. That was when I came rushing after you.”

  A chill worked its way through me, despite the warmth radiating from my lap and hands. Was I just sleepwalking, or was I going somewhere with that crown? And if so, where the hell was I going? It wasn’t like me to sleepwalk. I’d never done it before. Then again, I’d never been in possession of an ancient crown summoned from out of the Tempest.

  “I don’t know what would’ve happened if you hadn’t had found me,” I said.

  “Good thing I was awake,” he said. “Another couple of minutes and you’d have slipped right by me.”

  I looked over at the crown sitting on my dresser. “What if this happens again?”

  “Do you think it will?”

  “I don’t know. I just… I feel like the crown is haunted. Haunted by her.”

  “The drowned Queen…”

  “No, the Ghost of Christmas Past,” I snapped. I shook my head, then exhaled. “Sorry. I know you’re only trying to help.”

  “That’s all I want to do. So, you think the crown is haunted. Maybe we can have Karim take a look at it in the morning? If there are any ghosts attached to that thing—”

  “—no, it’s more than that. I don’t think there’s a ghost attached to the crown; I think she is attached to it.”

  “Impossible. She died a long, long time ago.”

  I frowned at him. “Did she?” I asked, “Was there any proof of that? Was a body ever found, were any records written?”

  “There were records. I haven’t seen them, but I know they exist.” He paused. “Although, now I’m starting to question that myself… maybe we should ask a historian?”

  “We aren’t doing that. The fewer the people that know about this the better. My point is, the story goes that her shining city drowned, and she drowned with it. But if the shining city still exists inside of the Tempest, then couldn’t she, too?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “And is it also possible that I’ve… I don’t know, woken her up, or something? And now she’s using that thing to try and get to me?”

  Axel turned his eyes on the crown, now, too. He exhaled harshly through the mouth. “Yeah… it’s possible. But why?”

  “I don’t know. What would you want if you’d been trapped in the Tempest for a bajillion years?”

  He nodded slowly, not looking directly at me. “I’d want to get out.”

  Another chill pulsed through the room, like it was responding to our conversation. “If that’s true,” I said, “If she’s real, and she’s trying to get out, and she’s using the crown as some kind of bridge to get to me… what if she gets more desperate as time passes? Angrier, and more powerful. We have to destroy it.”

  Axel stood and walked over to the dresser, stopping just short of it. “You’re right,” he said. “We have to destroy it.”

  “Don’t touch it,” I warned, rising to my feet, “Leave it alone. You have no idea what’ll happen to you if you touch it.”

  “If we need to destroy it, we should do it now. There’s no time to waste.”

  “I know… I just don’t know how I’d even start.”

  His eyes darkened, and his voice became a low rumble in his throat. “Melt it down.”

  Taking a deep breath, I walked over to the dresser, set my cup down on it, and let my hand hover over the crown. Even though I wasn’t touching it, I could still feel the cold radiating off the metal, as if it were made of ice. I picked the crown up with my mind and held it, suspended in the air, creating a bubble of telekinetic energy around it that would contain the flames and the molten metal.

  “Ifrit,” I said, under my breath, and a moment later, the little fire Godling burst to life in the center of the crown.

  He looked up at me, his little eyes fixed on mine. “I’m here,” he said, perhaps a little distantly.

  “I’m going to destroy this crown.”

  Ifrit’s flame flickered wildly. “Is that wise?”

  “I didn’t summon you to argue. I summoned you so you’d protect me if something goes wrong.”

  He bowed. “As you wish.”

  I concentrated, reaching out into the Tempest with my mind and drawing its power to me. Thunder grumbled outside, but I felt it rumble through me as if the lightning had gone off inside of my body. My fingertips started to glow, blue sparks bursting to life between them and reflecting off the shiny metal surface of the crown.

  But just as I was about to channel the magic through me and into the crown, something strang
e happened. I heard whispers; distant, faint, and nonsensical, but enough to distract me from my goal. They were the same whispers I’d heard in my dream, only they were a lot closer now, and drawing nearer by the second.

  My heart started racing, beating hard against the sides of my head. The whispers came louder, and faster, enveloping me so they sounded like they were coming from all sides. And behind them, there she was, racing toward me like a meteor hurtling toward the planet from outer space.

  I tried to hold on, charging the magic I needed in the palm of my hand. I needed a lot of it if I wanted to smelt metal and turn it into a puddle, but the longer I held on, the closer she got. I could feel her, the anticipation, the hunger in her heart, the desire to reach me.

  I broke the connection instantly, sending what magic I’d charged into my hand back into the Tempest from where it had come. The crown fell to the floor with a loud thud, and I backed up, shaking the pins and needles out of my hand. Using magic was the most natural thing in the world to me; it felt good, and right. Sending it back into the Tempest, though, had me feeling all kinds of messed up and jittery.

  “What happened?” Axel asked.

  “I can’t,” I snapped, “I can’t do it. If I reach into the Tempest, she’s there, waiting for me.”

  Axel perked up and scanned the room. “I can’t feel anything. Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure!” I yelled. “She was there, Axel. I could hear her in my mind, her and probably the rest of the people that died when her city got swallowed up and into the Tempest for what she’d done. She doomed them all. She broke a rule of the universe she wasn’t supposed to break, and the universe punished her, and now I’ve opened the door for her to come back.” I jabbed a finger at Ifrit, “And you, why didn’t you stop her?”

  “Because I can’t,” Ifrit plainly said, “I can’t stop her. She’s like… a hurricane, and I’m just a candle. If I try to get in the way, you could lose me.”

  I shook my head. “Then I can’t use my magic. If she can sense me when I call to the Tempest, then I shouldn’t reach.”

  “I would advise against it. At least against prolonged use of magic.”