“So would mine.”
Judah stopped us outside an enormous pair of double doors and two footmen rushed forward to open them. The room was the size of a gymnasium and opened to a large courtyard with a tall fountain. Heavily upholstered furniture set in conversation areas dotted the room. I saw at least five different colors of marble on the floors and walls. Mosaics of cosmic wonders colored the ceiling. Four footmen dressed in red tunics with black trousers stood against the wall as if their job was to hold it up.
“Please wait in here,” Judah said to Sean and me. “If you need anything, ask one of the footmen. I’ll have a tray of refreshments sent to you. Please excuse me while I change out of my armor. I’ll be back soon.”
“Wait,” I said. “You’re just going to leave us?”
“I will, but your ladyship and the Lord Sean will be fine here. No one will harm you, and you’ll have the footmen to bring you anything you require. I’ll be back shortly.”
“Are we under guard?”
Judah gave his head a small shake. “My lady, in the palace there’s really no need. This palace is completely secure.”
With a formal bow of his head, Judah left through the huge doors. The footmen quietly pulled them shut and returned to their places along the wall. I turned to Sean to see him pulling off his shirt as he walked toward a wall-mounted fountain. He stuck his entire head under the flow of water and let it wash the blood and mud from his skin. The clear water turned red and brown before swirling down the drain. He splashed the water up on his chest and over his back so the dried blood was rehydrated and ran off of him in rivers. A footman appeared at his side and held out a towel with both hands. Sean took the towel from him and rubbed it over his hair and face. I saw all his healed wounds had an orange glow over them, like a floating type of scar. Sean saw me staring at his naked chest.
I flushed. “Sorry, I noticed that your cuts have an orange light on them.”
“That’s because your energy is in that part of my aura now.” He pointed to my arm. “It’s the same way on yours and it will fade away. Now that we’re in Geminay, you can see auras much more easily.”
“I can.” I pulled his towel away from him so he would pay attention to only me. “When can we return to Earth?”
He took the towel from me and started on his back. “There’s no way to know. And we can stay as long as we want. Time moves differently here. On the surface only a minute or so has passed.”
Wanting his full attention, I grabbed his towel again. “So we’re just going to hang out here while they decide what direction our lives are going to take?”
He snatched the towel from me and started drying his chest. “This isn’t just about what we want, you know. These people need us. We’re part of their life cycle. The energy we bring keeps them alive.”
I tried to grab the towel again, but this time a footman suddenly appeared at my elbow holding out another towel with both hands. I sent him away with a cold look. I felt myself coming apart. In the quiet of this space my fears pressed down on me hard. The traumatic events of the morning and the fear and pain of the battle had rapidly worn away my self-control. My hands shook and my palms were getting hot. I curled my fingers into fists and crossed my arms over my chest.
“This isn’t exactly where I want to be or what I want to do,” I said, fighting to keep my voice from cracking. “We’ve been called creations rather than people and now we’re supposed to sit here while we wait for news about whether some king and queen are going to have us killed. Any minute now a new assassin could come through those doors. I’m sick of it all. If these people want the sun’s rays, they can put up a solar panel and run a really long extension cord.” My voice was rising and I couldn’t seem to stop it. “I hereby resign my position as Sworn Asset. I want to go home and just be my old me.”
Sean became solemn and very still. “There never was an old you. There never was an old me. We’ve always been a hybrid of human and Original People. We’ve always been nothing more than what they made us. You’ve known you were different for years and don’t try to deny it. Only now you have a name for what you are.”
My heart felt as if it had slowed down. “So now I know, but that doesn’t mean that any of this is working for me. I’m going to refuse. They can get themselves another Sworn Asset.”
“No, they can’t. We were raised up as embryos.”
My temper flared. “I want to be that ordinary girl I was this morning, the one being cyberbullied. I don’t want to be in a war. How can you be so calm?”
“Because I’ve been here before. And trust me, I wasn’t this calm when I first found out.”
“How did you find out?” I asked, thinking it couldn’t have been anywhere near as dramatic as my day.
“I was out riding my horse when these men on blumps showed up and started chasing me. The blumps were covered in black cloth from head to toe like something out of a nightmare. I tried to get away from them, going at a dead run uphill and down and jumping creeks and gullies, like in that scene with Jim in
The Man from Snowy River
. Nothing I tried worked. I couldn’t shake them. They captured me when a couple of the soldiers jumped from their blumps onto my horse and pulled me off. We fell through and they took me to the palace in the House of Picard. I ended up locked in an apartment for what felt like a month. I was ordered to change white crystals into different colors. No one would talk to me for a long time. The First Shaman finally did when I started throwing the crystals out the window and breaking them. When they finally let me go, only about half an hour had passed on the surface, but I was completely depleted. I had to lie in the sun with my shirt off for over an hour before I was strong enough to pull myself back into the saddle and ride to the barn.”
“The House of Picard should be ashamed for treating you that way.”
“They wouldn’t see it that way,” Sean said ruefully. “To them we’re tools, a means to an end.”
“We’re people with feelings and rights. They can’t just appropriate our lives like that. Lincoln freed the slaves.”
“They don’t understand freedom the way we do. You’ll see. And whatever else you think, we’re one of them.”
Sean finished drying his hands and threw the towel at the fountain. It fell to the floor and a footman sprang forward to retrieve it. Sean didn’t seem to notice. He put his hands first on my shoulders, then ran them down my arms before gently taking my hands.
“Though I wish the circumstances had been different, meeting you has been a miracle to me,” Sean said. “Now I’m not alone. Once my shaman, Whitlock, disappeared, I didn’t have anybody.”
“Well, I’m sorry about that,” I said, remembering my manners. I tingled at his touch because he was so insanely handsome and his bare chest was so close. “You being alone, I mean. But I’m not staying here to be their battery charger.” I started for the double doors. “This may be a pretty cage, but it’s still a cage.”
“You’re nothing like I expected.”
I’d heard those words before, and my rage at his statement burned like a coal in my stomach. I spun around. “What’s that supposed to mean? What did Martin tell you about me?”
Sean watched me, standing very still and tall. “I’m talking about Whitlock. He’d been observing you for years. He told me about your three beautiful friends, the tall blond, the nice brunette, the feisty French girl. He said that compared to the other three, you were a little mouse.”
“A mouse!”
“Yes, a mouse. He said that you were the quiet, bookish one and that you only showed any spirit or bravery when on a horse. Then this morning when you hugged Martin I thought that Whitlock might be right. I thought you were taking the easy path and letting Martin get away with slandering you. Right then you were what I expected.”
I quivered with insult and fury at this boy whose life I had repeatedly saved. I didn’t trust myself to speak, so I started toward the door. His next words stopped me.
“The only truthful thing Whitlock said about you was that you were beautiful. That part was dead right. But he didn’t mention your bravery. Your resourcefulness. Your loyalty. Your heart.”
I listened, but I didn’t turn around to face him.
“An ordinary girl would have lost her mind in the vice principal’s office this morning, but not you. An ordinary girl would have pulled herself inside like a turtle. Not you. At that moment you had no idea who you were or what you could do, but you saved my life. You fought off three assassins and without any training healed me. And then we fell into a battlefield, and you risked yourself to save me even though I was hardly any more than a stranger to you.”
When I turned around to face him, he was standing right behind me. Droplets of water sparkled in his hair and he was wearing his ripped tee shirt, stiffened with blood, a tangible reminder of all we had been through. I tipped my head back. He was so tall. The red light from the courtyard accentuated his cheekbones and darkened his long lashes.
“I’ve been waiting for a girl like you,” he said softly. “Of course I had hoped it would be without daggers and a battlefield or big, cold palaces. I had hoped it would be in a sunny meadow while you were on horseback. I know you’re a good rider. Martin told me that. What’s your horse’s name?”
“Poppy. She’s a chocolate palomino.”
My emotions were confused, stirred like a pot. Why did he have to say all that about horses? It was as if he had read from a script that my heart’s desire had written. I should hate this boy who had pulled me into this strange red world and wanted me to stay. I put my hands on his chest. It seemed too intimate and I pulled them off. My palms left white prints in his aura.
“My dear lady, we have news,” said Naomi from the doorway where she stood with an entourage.
Startled, I quickly stepped away from Sean, both resenting them for intruding on this moment and also being glad for stopping it before Sean and I said things that would become too awkward to take back. Naomi, Sylvan, and the others came into the room with not a hair out of place or a bit of mud on their splendid tunics and trousers. This time they didn’t have any soldiers with them, just lords, ladies, and footmen. Some of the lords and ladies held each other’s hands as they clumped together, clearly unnerved by our presence. They were tall and slender, not heavily muscled and stocky like the soldiers. Strangely, it seemed like I could feel their fear pressing against me with light fingers.
Sylvan let his eyes rest on me. “We have some news. The other Great Houses are supporting the Picards and us in our bid to have His and Her Majesty overlook your breach of the Treaty. We have verified that the two of you didn’t receive any direction in civilized behavior. That failure belongs to the shamans who abandoned you.”
“We are grateful, my lord,” Sean said. “And I suspect that the Great Houses and the court are worried that if they kill one of our generation, all the rest will die as happened with the other generations. That’s something all the Great Houses would wish to avoid.”
Sean’s grasp of the situation impressed me. I never would have thought of that.
“As we speak, His and Her Majesty are being advised by the Council of the First Shamans,” Naomi said in a tone that implied that it mattered little. “They’ll probably form some kind of ad hoc committee to find a way to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
“That’s generous of them,” I said, fighting to keep my tone courteous when they talked about my and Sean’s lives as if they mattered little more than a mosquito’s. “No one should blame us.”
“Oh, no, my dear lady,” Naomi said with something like delight. “Everyone is blaming you. But with some luck and tact, we may be able to settle this diplomatically.”
Ordinarily that was the sort of comment I would let ride, but not today, not now. “Putting that on us isn’t fair. Until this morning I didn’t know that Geminay existed. There must be something wrong with your Sworn Asset program if a simple touch causes almost all the other Sworn Assets to die.”
Sylvan turned to me. “Many shamans would agree with some of what you said, my lady. We hope that an agreement can be reached with Picards. If not, then His and Her Majesty may still order that your and Lord Sean’s life energies be harvested and used to create new Sworn Assets. That wouldn’t be ideal because rushing creations is always a risky affair. So many die.”
“Do they?” I said, thinking of how my mother had found me lifeless. She put her mouth on mine and pushed her breath into me. She said I gasped and came back to her. Then, she said, she had fainted dead away. Was that when I had taken this body? “Then let’s hope an accommodation can be reached.”
Naomi laid an appraising look on me. “When you came into some of your abilities last spring, this House rejoiced with a gala on the lawn at having a successful creation. We are delighted that the human part of you is strong enough to accept your role without going mad. Some do, and they must be extinguished. It’s a regrettable waste of time and energy.”
I thought of Jonathan, my friend and neighbor, who used to wave at me from his bedroom window. He was my first love, my first big crush, not a waste of time and energy. He was the only person besides Sean who could see the diamonds in my eyes.
“The fact that you were able to fall through with no instruction is impressive,” Naomi said. “We’ll assign you a new Earth-walking shaman, assuming that the House of Picard can be made to see reason. Then when your training is complete, you will marry Lord Judah and continue the line. All the rest will be forgotten.”
My jaw dropped. “Marry Lord Judah?”
Judah bowed in my direction, but he didn’t look at me. His eyes were on Sean.
“Who said anything about getting married? I don’t want a husband! I’m sixteen years old.”
Naomi raised her eyebrows at me. “You have a responsibility to the Original People who created you. Had it not been for us, you wouldn’t exist. Lord Judah was selected to be your husband last spring when it was determined that you were a successful creation. He has been accustoming himself to the smell of humans and their peculiar ways. He is everything a highborn young lady would want in a mate. And given what we’ve all just witnessed between you and the Sworn Enemy Lord Sean, sooner rather than later.”