A Rip of Realms (A Shade of Vampire #39)(28)

“No!” the first minister cried. “Let them heal. We’ll tell you anything you want to know, but leave them to their peace. You are not the only ones who have suffered.”

“But we seem to be the only ones not taking a nap,” muttered Hazel. Tejus smirked.

“What do you know about the entity?” I asked. “We need to know more if we’re going to put a stop to it.” The accusation on my tongue, that they were clearly not going to do a thing, remained unspoken.

“We don’t know much,” one of them replied.

“Just tell us what you do know. I’m running out of patience.”

There was a long pause before one of them began in a shaking voice, “He has risen now. It was foretold…if one ever removed the stones that held him, he would rise—and he would end the reign of the sentries. He will awaken his army from the depths of the sea; they have lain there, waiting, for centuries—waiting for the day when they will be called on by their master to be reborn, and take back the land that was once theirs.”

“What do you mean?” Hazel asked quickly. “An army of what, exactly?”

The old minister turned his rheumy eyes toward her, surprised that a mere girl would demand answers from him so directly.

“We don’t know exactly,” he replied after a moment. “But the entity and his army are the pure forms of sentries. When the first settlers landed here, human settlers, Nevertide—or the ‘Lost Land’, as it was known then—was already inhabited by deadly, vicious and powerful creatures. In awe of these creatures, the humans begged for the powers of the ‘pure’ sentries—and their wishes were granted. Today, we are all the descendants of these human and sentry hybrids.”

“We’re really part human?” I asked in astonishment.

The minister nodded, looking shamefaced. Clearly it was something that brought them great distress, but it temporarily lifted my spirits. I glanced over at Ruby. Our eyes met and she gave me a small smile.

“When the hybrids grew in number and power, the ‘pure’ sentries were banished at the request of the emperor, locked into the stones for all eternity. They became known as the ‘forbidden’—the true nature of them being long ago forgotten, and their mention erased from our history books. Well, most of them.” He glared at Tejus and me, as if we were somehow at fault for knowing about the entity. Was their pride so great that it was more important to keep our enemy secret than to annihilate it? These ministers were insane if that was what they thought.

Still, the information was hard to digest. Tejus remained silent, evidently as stunned as I was. I couldn’t believe that the entity we so feared was essentially our creator—that the shameful secret the Impartial Ministers had tried to bury for so long was our own origin.

“Do you know how we defeat it?” Tejus asked after a few moments.

“We do not,” the minister replied. “The book of the emperor, however, is rumored to have the answer to that question. We must, must progress with the trials if we are to contain the situation.”

“Contain the situation?” Tejus repeated incredulously. “No. There will be no trial. We cannot risk Queen Trina being victorious. Ash is our only option; you will anoint him emperor today.”

“How dare you make such demands of us!” one of the ministers blustered. “Who are you to change the ancient traditions, the sacred acts that were created long before your birth? The trials are a Nevertidian institution—we must preserve them.”

“Even if it means the death of all Nevertide’s people?” Ruby exploded. “You people are crazy! What is wrong with you? Are you so blind that you don’t see what’s happening here? Everyone’s going to die!”

“You are hysterical,” the old man shot back. “We will contain the entity, and Nevertide will resume as normal.”

I wanted to laugh. I couldn’t believe their complete and utter ignorance. It blew my mind that Nevertide had survived this long with such foolish men at its helm. I looked over at Tejus, who hadn’t reacted to the latest insanity. We all fell silent, and I realized that we were waiting for him to speak.

We didn’t have long to wait.

He leaned down toward the minister who had just spoken, and smiled at him.

“Old man,” he said, his voice low and caressing, “please believe me when I say that I am perfectly willing to end your existence—all of you, in fact—to get this done. Know that your life hangs in the balance.”

“What of Memenion?” asked the minister. “Where is he? He should have a chance to compete.”

Tejus let out a low growl, grabbing the minister by the robe. “He is dead,” he snarled. “He lies at the bottom of the crevice that has torn its way across this land. Dig him up and see for yourself if you wish.”

“I did not know,” the old man whispered, clearly shaken by the news. “He was a good king.”

“Yes, he was,” Tejus bit back.

The ministers looked at one another, their glances frightened. We had won. In theory. I still had huge reservations about this plan… Everything that I had been shown since I became king—the danger of my homeland, the gray areas between right and wrong, the true nature of Tejus, the underbelly of evil in the best of us, and most of all Ruby and my love for her—made me want to turn my back on this responsibility. The boy who had dreamed naively of ruling Nevertide, of righting wrongs, had died the day of the disk trial, and I was left with nothing but uncertainty and fear—nothing but self-doubt, and the knowledge that Tejus was the right sentry for the job, not I.