“I can’t figure her out. I can’t see everything yet, but I can at least sense everyone has some kind of destiny, even if it’s not as big as saving the world. I don’t getanythingfrom Lola. Honestly, I think that’s why her team hurt her. It’s unsettling.”
That made sense. We were getting all these new powers, and it was almost like cheating. If I met another vampire, fairy, or wolf, I’d know what they were without asking. I was also getting different reads on people.
It was different from Sage, but I could sense things about people, too. Like, some kind of read. It was how I knew that even though Liam was raised by criminals, admitted to murdering a man and cutting off his cock, I knew he wasn’t really a bad person. Lucian was the reincarnation of Vlad the Impaler, but he abhorred violence. I didn’t know why he was back, but Lucian was going to be completely different.
“I sense things, too. It’s not the same thing you do and I don’t completely understand it. Lola is unreadable. The only reason I would know she was there would be that I could see or hear her. It’s unsettling, but I think you’re right. People do stupid things when they are scared. If her team were people who were prone to violence, they were already keyed up from everything that happened before we got dumped outside, they might have thought she was the enemy.”
“I’m betting that’s what I felt. They were trying to kill her, and they would have tried to kill anyone who caught them in the act. I can’t explain it, but I could sense there was a fight nearby and what would happen if we got involved without help. I don’t feel it anymore.”
“You feeling anything about these magical traps? The wolves aren’t going to help us. We might as well get the crystal since we’ve been stuck here for so long.”
“I think…the traps aren’t fatal, but the magic in them is going to make it hard to complete the trials. Think about it. They aren’t trying to kill us, just deter us. It’s not meant to be impossible, either, because all of us thought we were human. We can’t come at this with brute force. If we smash and grab, we’re going to get hexed. Look at them. They are puzzles and they can be solved by anyone.”
“Ha! That’s actually brilliant. Your first instinct is to get them down and destroy them. I thought getting them down and into a fire would work. Fire destroys everything, but I really don’t knowenough about magic to know if that’s true with magic. I may have gotten us all hexed.”
“I feel violated,” Lucian said, joining us. “I get that I’m supposed to be all about the blood now, but I don’t like letting strangers drink from my wrist, even if it’s for a good cause.”
“Mate, no one cares. I don’t even like you and you sank those chompers in my neck without even asking. I’m the one who should feel violated,” Liam said.
“Sorry. I couldn’t help it.”
“What are we doing?” Liam asked. “Radames is kind of a ponce and I’d like to hit him. He’s too clean. I’m pretty sure he’s up to something. Mazen is good people.”
Magic was weird. I knew our guts were important, but I felt the exact opposite about those two.
Lucian was both hard to read and easy to read. Sometimes, it was easy and sometimes, he had an impenetrable mask on. I wasn’t sure if he was feeling what I was feeling. Liam and Khalid knew how to navigate, set up our shelter, and feed us now that the food was gone. Lucian had a lot of cool magic show up that could help and so did I, but this was really our time to shine.
Puzzles were my thing. It was considered an unoffensive pastime, so no one had any problems with me doing them to pass the time. Lucian said he just liked figuring out how things worked and how they went together. That was probably the mosthe’d revealed about himself besides being a prince. Thankfully, Liam didn’t poke him about it.
Liam left after we set to working on the magic puzzles. He wanted to get more information from the animals about Lola’s team. We didn’t know if they tried to kill her because of how she felt or they were just violent people who were planning on taking us all out.
Khalid went with him to forage so we could eat and because it wasn’t really safe for any of us to be out there alone, Liam promised Lucian he knew how to make a shiv out of a stick and a banana and wood through the heart was supposed to kill a vampire, so I’d better not even get a splinter from these puzzles.
“Liam is a little irrational when it comes to me, but I don’t think he’d really stake you.”
“He’s a violent moron, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing when it comes to you. I’m also pretty sure that your original life was Celtic and connected with Liam’s. Either that, or your reincarnations have met several times and formed some kind of bond. You’re also somehow connected to the original vampire and an Egyptian death god. We’re connected. I don’t find you stupid or annoying.”
“Um, thanks?”
“That came out wrong. The circles I’m forced to be in are mostly sycophants who squandered an education plenty of people would kill for because they had inheritances and nepotism hires to fall back on. Their degree was just a piece of paper to hang on the wall. They don’t like me. They find me unpleasant because I’m not interested in those games and I’m vocal about it.
“They pretend, though. They kiss my ass and fawn over me because landing me as a husband comes with money, which they don’t need, and a title that they want. They don’t bother findingout what I’m actually interested in, so they do a brief web search for things I mention in passing and talk endlessly about it.
“There are different strains of bananas with slightly different tastes. I read about one that tastes like it has a hint of berries that I ordered because I wanted to try it. This girl thought I was a weirdo who was obsessed with bananas. She proceeded to spend the entire night listing random banana facts, and all I wanted to do was see if it would make my smoothie a little better. You don’t do that and I don’t think you really care about my title.”
“I’m not really all that interested in banana facts, but we also don’t have titles like that in America. Like, you say you’re a prince, but it doesn’t really process. And I don’t want to be a princess any more than I want to be a pastor’s wife. That might be a dream for some people, but it’s not for me. They tried to force that on me. I felt like a prisoner growing up. I don’t really know what I want, but I want the complete freedom to do it.”
“I figured out part of the puzzle. If you can get to the thread, it’s much easier to unravel it. And I respect that about you. I also understand it. The palace was also a prison. I went to the best university and earned my degree, but it was the one my parents chose. I was only ever allowed to be friends with approved people. Most of the women who kept throwing themselves at me were sent by my parents. I’m fairly certain the only reason they allowed me to be kidnapped and come here is because they were planning to use whatever magic I ended up with.”
I just chuckled. Lucian was right. If you could get to the thread, you could unravel the puzzle without getting hexed.
“I’m pretty sure we all ended up with awful parents except Khalid. Mine were bad, but I think Liam had it worse.”
Lucian just shrugged. I didn’t think Lucian and Liam would ever like each other, no matter how much I tried. That didn’t mean I was going to stop.
“We’re going to the last two traps. Unless there are more surprises, we’ve got our first crystal.”
Of course, there was another surprise.
