Endure - Sara B. Larson Page 0,19

to use their sorcery for good, that their power will be increased. The Unseen Power promised … it won’t let you all be destroyed, will it?”

Eljin shook his head. “I don’t know. No one knows for sure who or what the Unseen Power is; the voice has never revealed itself to anyone besides King Mokaro and his sons. For all we know, they might have made it all up.”

“If you truly believed that, why didn’t you just tell me and Damian all this before?”

Eljin didn’t respond. Instead, he lay back on his bed and rolled away from me. “You have the answers you wanted. Now go. I need to rest.”

I sat there for a moment, shocked by his sudden coldness, and then abruptly stood. “Of course, I’m sure you’re exhausted.”

He didn’t respond.

Chilled, I quietly left Eljin, shutting his door behind me. He was right; he’d given me the answers I’d asked for, but he’d broken an oath to do it. And I’d never seen him so defeated before.

“Alexa! There you are. I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

I whirled around to see one of the palace messenger boys hurrying down the hallway. He stopped in front of me and held out a sealed parchment.

“I have a message for you.”

Hesitantly, I reached out and took it from him.

“Who is it from?”

“I’m not sure. It was given to me by one of the perimeter guards with the instructions that it had to reach you tonight.”

I glanced down at the seal. It was an unfamiliar bird with a sharp beak in a nosedive. For some reason I had to quell a tremble in my hand as I tore it open and unfolded the note.

My dearest Alexa,

I am sad to report that your unfortunate decision to flee camp has had more dire consequences than you may have anticipated. Your fellow guard and friend is not healing well from the wounds you inflicted on him. I am regrettably unskilled in the art of healing, and my healer was one of the men you killed. Out of the graciousness of my heart, I am rushing him back to my king, where we will hopefully arrive in time to do something about this situation.

I am only doing this because I know you care for the young man. I am counting on you to use your head. If you wish to see him alive, you will come back for him — alone. If I discover that even the smallest force from Antion is following us, I will kill him myself. I’ve already envisioned just how I’d do it. You’d be proud of how creative I’ve become.

His fate is in your hands.

Yours,

Rafe

Trying to breathe past the sudden knot in my chest, I jerked my head up to question the boy who had brought this to me, only to see an empty hallway.

He was gone.

I paced in my room for an hour, trying to build the courage to go in to Damian. My stomach was a mess of acid and indecision. I’d promised him. I’d told him I’d stay — that I chose him.

But Rafe’s note changed everything.

How had the missive been brought to the palace? Had Rafe come here?

Unease clawed at my chest. The black sorcerers in Dansii were inexplicably untouched by the curse placed on Blevonese sorcerers. They had somehow created Rafe and Vera — twin monsters able to control others with their words and eye contact, and other sorcerers couldn’t sense them the way they normally could. The man calling himself Manu de Reich os Deos had used some sort of potion to induce hallucinations of our worst fears come to life. He’d made me hallucinate just by looking into his eyes.

What other heinous surprises did they have in store for us?

Steeling my will, I made my decision. I didn’t want to face the other members of the guard, or explain why I was going to see Damian in the middle of the night, even though we were engaged. Instead, I hurried over to the wall and searched along the wooden panels until I found the knot that opened the secret passage between our rooms. A gust of hot, dusty air hit me as I stepped through, into the darkness. Instead of turning back for a torch, I felt along the wall sightlessly until I reached the opening for Damian’s room.

When I stepped out of the passageway into the curtains, a sudden, unexpected surge of panic hit me. The last time I’d done this, I’d emerged to see