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Chapter Ten

Part Seven

“How’s Lorelei?” Valeria asked urgently as soon as Alban slipped into Dariad’s study. He gave her a wan smile.

“She’s still unconscious and looks terrible, but the healer says she’s stable and should heal well – physically, anyway. He says she’ll probably need a lot of help to overcome the mental trauma of what was done to her.” He sobbed and choked out what Lydia took to be swear words in the Haltian language.

“Alban! Language!” Valeria said. “You shouldn’t call Sirin that. Even if it is appropriate.”

“The healers think they were trying to break her so they could control her, mother. I think I’m being rather restrained.”

“That is very possible, my queen,” Xania began. “The first hint we had that something was wrong was when your first Imp arrived and was caught in a net ward which shouldn’t have been there. Lorelei was very quick to realise that this meant her sister was moving to free Maran. She began organising the guard to keep them apart while she worked on breaking the net and freeing the Imp. But when I got to the tower you were holding him in, he was already gone. I have no idea how Sirin tore through the wards like that.” She rubbed at her eyes tiredly. “So I rallied my troops and headed for the throne room, since they’d need to gain control of the throne to be able to fully pacify the palace.”

“They’ll be lucky to even then,” Valeria said. “I excluded Maran and Sirin from controlling it when I realised they were plotting against me, and no one else has the rank to use it, except Lorelei.”

“I think they’d discovered that, and that’s why they were torturing her. To get her to release the lock. They’d already captured her and reached the throne room when I got there and Sirin was in an utter rage. I honestly don’t think she realised you were on to her until she found herself locked out of the throne. I mean really, you’d think your leaving Lorelei in charge would have made her wonder.”

“Sirin is strong. That’s how she’s held her position so long,” Valeria said. “But she’s not the brightest fish in her school. She never sees what she doesn’t want to. What happened then?”

“This is where it gets confusing. We were fighting to gain control of the throne room from the traitors and rescue Lorelei when this weird screaming noise echoed through the palace and suddenly half my troops turned on the rest of us.” She scowled. “I don’t think it was entirely their idea. And it sounds almost exactly like what you just told me happened here.”

“It does,” Valeria agreed. “But I didn’t have any refugees from Elapyron City in the palace itself that I can name.” Her forehead creased as she thought. “And I have an awful feeling this started before the fall. Looking back, I suspect it started around the time anti-human sentiment rose sharply.” She winced visibly. “I think even I caught the edges of it because I started thinking more clearly almost as soon as I was clear of the palace.” She scowled some more. “I wonder how widespread this conspiracy really is.”

“That’s another thing to discuss at the War Council, I think,” Dariad said. “It’s something that we can at least deal with now we know it’s happening. And we need to keep these people off the warriors’ backs.”

“Yes, please do,” Karen said quietly. “It’s hard to fight when you have to keep looking over your shoulder. And there’s something very wrong about this situation. The atmosphere when things blew up here was… well, it made me shiver, and not because it was aiming to kill us. I think that whatever is behind it isn’t finished yet. That scream was no normal control power or signal.”

“I’d have to agree,” Xania said. “It was was like shards of glass on my skin.” She stopped and frowned. “But only people it couldn’t control seemed to hear it. Was that the case here?”

Dariad frowned thoughtfully. “I’m not sure. I was too busy quelling the riot to notice if they’d actually heard it. I assumed they had because they responded to it.”

“How did you rescue Lorelei?” Valeria asked.

“Oh, that was easy. Spatial affinity is rare enough that people never allow for it. I teleported and grabbed her. Then opened a portal to a defendable position… it might be easier to use the mirror for this, you know.” She looked over at Dariad.

“Once the throne room is free,” he agreed. “And once Lorelei is patched up. I want to get her take on events as well. Not that I imagine she wants to go into details, but we need to know.”

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