A Rip of Realms (A Shade of Vampire #39)(42)

After the bright light of the afternoon, the hallway of the palace was complete darkness. Unable to go any further, I dropped Yelena to the marble floor as gently as I could, then sank against the door, catching my breath—and wondering why the hell Ash and the rest of them continually thought it was a good idea to leave us alone in the palace.





Hazel





Tejus and I held back as we journeyed by road to the summer palace. The rest of the ministers, guards and Julian had traveled by vulture. Ash and Ruby rode ahead, choosing to return on bull-horse rather than travel by air. I heard a few mentions of GASP floating over to us, along with some raised voices and stilted replies. I didn’t think the conversation was going that well. No wonder. I didn’t understand why my friend had held the truth about herself back from Ash for so long. It seemed weird, but I knew Ruby well enough to know that she would have a logical reason for it…even if the reason made no sense to anyone else but her.

Night was falling, and the forests on either side of the road looked as creepy as they had in the morning light. I still had the feeling that I was being watched, and wondered if it was the power of the entity. If he was non-corporeal, then could he be everywhere at once, watching us? Waiting for us to fall into a trap? Waiting for the entity to make his next move was doing my head in—the suspense almost felt more torturous than the actual event might be. I nestled myself back into Tejus’s chest, feeling his arms tighten around me. The simple gesture was a reminder that I was safe, at least for now, and at least while he was near me.

“Tejus, did you see many you knew today – in the ruins?” I asked quietly. I couldn’t get the smell or the sight of crushed sentries out of my head. It had been complete carnage.

He was silent for a few moments, and then sighed heavily.

“I looked for Zerus, but I didn’t see him. Perhaps he escaped, I don’t know. He was always very solitary…I rarely saw him during the trials. He might have left Hellswan long before the earthquake. I hope so.”

I registered the name of Tejus’s brother with surprise. Since the night of the old Emperor’s trials, I hadn’t seen Zerus and Tejus had never brought him up. I knew that the brothers’ weren’t close – but I imagined that Zerus’s ‘missing’ status bothered Tejus more than he would like to admit.

“I’m so sorry, Tejus. I hope he got out. If you didn’t see him, maybe he did leave.”

“Maybe.”

“We’ll find him,” I whispered. “Don’t give up on him yet.”

We rode on in silence. I started to ignore my surroundings and my mind drifted to thoughts of the jinni who had locked up the entity in the first place. It was strange for them to be alone—like I’d explained to Ash, they were tribal creatures, and to just have one jinni mentioned struck me as weird. Also, if there were more, there was the possibility that there still might be jinn living in Nevertide somewhere all these centuries later.

“Do you think the jinni, or jinn, could still be in Nevertide?” I asked Tejus.

“If it or they were, someone would have seen it, surely. How long do they live for, anyway?” he asked.

“I don’t know, exactly, but a long time, far longer than humans. There’s a possibility that the jinni who locked up the entity in the first place could still be alive—if not here, then somewhere else.”

“Then we should start looking for it,” Tejus replied. “I’ll ask Ash to speak to the Impartial Ministers when we return to the castle. Perhaps they’ll know something.”

“Because they’ve been such fountains of wisdom so far?”

Tejus smirked darkly. “It baffles me why all this has been shrouded in such secrecy for so long…I can’t help but wonder if it was to avoid the discovery that sentries are descended from humans, a shameful secret they wanted to keep hidden.”

“I think you’re right, but honestly, I’ve never heard anything so stupid in all my life. This could have all been avoided if the Impartial Ministers had been a bit more open.”

“It seems like a lot of unpleasant things could have been avoided if some of us had been a bit more open,” he remarked, nodding his head in the direction of Ruby and Ash.

“Seriously?” I laughed. “And you don’t think that applies to you?”

“Good point,” he grunted.

I’d never known someone to struggle so much with honesty. It was almost like he thought the world would be turned upside down if he told the truth—that any kind of openness would make me turn away from him in disgust. I’d never known anyone like that before, and if it hadn’t been for Ash I would have wondered if it was a trait specific to sentries, but he had always seemed pretty upfront with Ruby. Which probably made her hiding GASP from him all the harder for him to take. As for the rest of them, the Impartial Ministers, Tejus, all the other ministers and Tejus’s father had pretty much operated in a shroud of secrecy that I doubted we’d ever be able to fully remove and get to the truth.

“Tejus,” I asked after a moment, “why do you think your father risked taking the stone? I mean, I know he wanted Jenus to win the trials…but if he’d read that book, he would have had to be insane to risk it.”

“I’ve been wondering the same thing, but I’m at a total loss.”