“Oh, she looksterrible,” Miriam eyed Amanda’s unconscious form with a disgusted look. “Is she dying?”
I answered the first three questions with, “I hope so,” and “We’re trying to get her help before she wakes up, so she won’t have time to eat. Thanks for offering.”
But my reply to Miriam’s question about her imminent death faded in my throat when the portion of the dome glass that I’d seen slide away when the Kidnapping Wolves ran away from Amanda’s heat did so again.
The Sea King entered the habitat for the first time since I shrieked at him to get out, looking more royal than I remembered.
Instead of a leather vest and a sash of knives, he wore a tunic today, finely embroidered around the deep V of its neck, whichdipped unnecessarily low. All the way to below the midpoint of his chest, which bore a diamond-shaped tattoo with a vertical line bisecting it.
Over the thin tunic, he sported a deep blue fur-lined cape fastened at his shoulders with ornate metal brooches, each shaped like wolves made with the same patterned knot formations that I’d seen on many of the dishes in the cave kitchen. His braids were gone, replaced by unbound, gleaming waves of rust-colored hair that flowed beneath a dark metal crown adorned with intricate wolf designs and studded with purple gemstones.
The Sea King looked ridiculous in his royal attire.
I mean, heshould havelooked ridiculous to me.But my wolf went strangely quiet at the sight of him, and a new noise appeared inside my ears. It almost sounded like panting.
The rest of the room had gone silent, and the she-wolves who’d been so eager to pelt me with questions fell away as he walked straight toward me.
“Hello, there…” He stopped in front of me and regarded me with a look that made me feel like I was sitting in a summer meadow filled with flowers and breeze.
Still, I refused to return the greeting.
Instead, I shifted my gaze toward the door and led the way, walking forward as if he was a king-shaped obstacle I had to get around.
“Here, Astrid,” he said, moving out of my line of sight. “You can join Frey in the back.”
I refused to look over at him, but the sudden lightening of my weight load let me know he’d taken Astrid’s corner of the blanket.
“Are you not talking to me, then?” His voice was a resonant purr, rippling with amusement.
I let my silence answer that question as we walked out of the open portion of the glass. He left Sadie with strangers, and he was the reason Amanda was in this state.
I didn’t even believe in hell, but it would be a cold day there before I ever spoke to him aga…
That thought, and all others, vanished when I saw what lay beyond the dome of glass. My mouth fell open, and I instantly broke my vow to never speak to him again.
“What is this?!" I demanded on a gasp.
“It’s where we Sea Wolves live, Mairinua,” the Sea King answered in a tone laced with pride. “Welcome to our Secret Kingdom.”
Naomi
Welcome to our Secret Kingdom.
I had never in my life seen anything like what lay beyond the archway located just beyond the sightlines of the habitat — which turned out to be exactly what I’d suspected. A five-story slope of glass curved into a wall that stretched at least five hundred feet above us.
That, I had been expecting.
The rock wall disappearing into what appeared to be a horizon of clouds, I had not.
I say "appeared to be" because I knew what I saw couldn’t be right.
If my eyes were to be believed, then our half-dome habitat sat nestled inside a kingdom of rolling hills as far as I could see. There were pastures that looked like something dreamed up by a Photoshop whiz who wanted to depict where the Elves and Hobbits might have lived in Tolkien’s tales.
There was even a castle, sitting in the distance, just beyond a small village of thatched houses overlooking a turquoise bay. If thewooden boats bobbing against the bay's white sand shores were any indication, it could be reached by foot or water.
There waswaterin this place. And even more oddly, despite the fact that it was November, I felt completely comfortable in nothing but a t-shirt. The air had the same climate-controlled feel as inside the habitat, set to an ideal, temperate level.
But how?
