CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
~ Kimber ~
The mountain aroundus shook before I could get another word out about the library.
“Are youkiddingme!” I yelled. “They’re attacking here again?”
“No!” Lord Cato yelled. “The patrols were clear! There’s no military around for a hundred miles!” He pulled out his cellphone and yelled into it. “What is that?”
“Sir, we don’t know! There’s nothing on our scans anywhere. But the shock registered high.”
“Earthquake?” Gwen gasped.
“No, Majesty. Not an earthquake,” the control room answered. “Far too localized to be that. It was just our mountain and the natural echo through the others.”
“Was there an epicenter?” King Belshazzar asked.
“Yes, level fourteen, south wing near the gym.”
“There’s a gym?” Aiko asked.
“Oh, don’t get me started,” I hissed.
We all ran out of the room. We couldn’t be bothered with the elevator, so we darted down the stairs, leaping steps at a time to clear the ten floors. Everyone except Lord Xenon chose the same route.
I tore out of the stairway, and Bel overtook me in the next moment. I followed him since I had no idea where I was going.
“Why don’t you know where the gym is?” Dorian asked.
“Stop asking stupid questions,” I snapped.
“Seriously?”
“They had me locked in my room! Of course, I didn’t go down to the gym! I was lucky to get to the stupid library!”
Bel slammed through the door of the corridor just outside the gym—an actual gymnasium, and not just exercise equipment—and hooked a right, only to pull up short.
“What the hell?” Lord Cato gasped.
We all pulled up short, slamming into one another.
There was a patch of…nothing…hovering in the middle of the hall. It wasn’t there. There was nothing there.
“Holy mind fuck.” Gwen stepped to the side and started to circle it. “I can see it, and I can’t.”
“What is that?” Aiko whispered.
“Nothing,” Lord Cato said.
I nodded. “I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought that. This is what caused the shaking? It would make sense if it were. I mean…”
“Missing reality,” Gwen said.
Aiko leaned over to me and kept his voice low. “It smells like the magic by the rockslide.”
He was right. It did smell like the magic by the rockslide.
“I don’t like this,” Bel said, pulling Gwen back a few steps from the weirdness.
