Authors: Amanda Hocking
So I walked out of the alley and straight to the car. Ridley might consider what I
was doing stupid, but it was my best option. Out of the past twelve changelings I’d
tracked, I’d brought twelve of them back home. I wasn’t about to let Linus be the
first one I lost.
I grabbed the handle of the back door, half expecting it to be locked, but it opened,
so I got in. Two men were sitting in front, and they both turned around to look at
me as I slid across the seat.
“What the hell?” the driver snarled.
When I saw who it was—his steel-gray eyes meeting mine—my heart clenched, and all
the air went out of my lungs. For that moment everything felt frozen as he glared
at me, then the rage and horror surged through me in a nauseating mixture.
I recovered as quickly as I could, holding back my anger, and smiled at him. Somehow
in an even voice, I said his name. “Konstantin Black.”
His eyes narrowed, and his lip twitched ever so slightly. “Do I know you?”
“Not exactly,” I admitted, not surprised that he didn’t remember me.
The only time I’d spoken to him had been one of the most important and traumatic nights
of my life, but that night he’d clearly had his mind on something else. Before that,
I had only been one adoring fan out of thousands that he’d met in his tenure at Doldastam.
Konstantin had changed some in the four years since I’d last seen him—four long years
since he’d attacked my father and disappeared into the night. His eyes seemed harder,
and there were lines etched in the once-smooth skin around them. He’d grown a beard,
and his hair was a bit longer and wilder than I remembered him wearing it.
But he was still unmistakably him. I’d spent years nursing a schoolgirl crush on him,
picturing that face in my daydreams, and then I’d spent years plotting my revenge
against him, picturing that face in my nightmares.
Now here it was, his eyes mere inches from my own, and he had no idea who I was.
“You’re a tracker,” Konstantin realized, and the corner of his mouth curved up into
a smirk. I remembered the way that smirk had once filled me with butterflies, but
now it only made me want to punch it off his face.
“So you do know her? Or not?” his companion asked.
“No, I don’t know her, Bent,” Konstantin told him, and I glanced over at his partner
in crime.
His friend—Bent, apparently—I didn’t recognize, but by his features I guessed he was
Omte. His skin was smooth, and he appeared to be tall, but he had the same lopsided
square head and beady eyes of a hobgoblin. Not to mention he didn’t seem that bright.
“You’re a wanted man, Konstantin. What are you doing here?” I asked, instead of hitting
him or spitting in his face. Despite my wish for vengeance, I needed to find out what
he wanted with Linus Berling and what he was doing here.
“Same thing as you, I would guess,” Konstantin admitted.
Pressing my hands on the black leather of the seat to keep from slapping him, I asked,
“What do you want with Linus? You don’t have a tribe to take him back to. What’s the
point of even tracking him?”
“We were just waiting for a chance to grab him, and then we’re—” Bent began, but then
Konstantin shot him a glare and he fell silent.
“Kidnapping? Really?” I shook my head. “Are you planning to hold him for ransom?”
Konstantin pressed a button in the center console, and the doors clicked as they locked.
“Things are far more complicated than they seem.”
I licked my lips, and, going against my better instincts, I offered him an olive branch.
“How about I make a deal with you? I won’t kill you if you let Linus leave with me.”
Then I paused, recalling the last thing Konstantin had ever said to me:
I am bound to something much higher than this kingdom, and I must complete my mission.
Konstantin tilted his head then, eyeing me as if he were seeing me for the first time.
“Do I know
you
?”
Bent had apparently grown tired of me, and he turned around in the seat with a dopey,
crooked smile plastered across his face. “Whatever. I’m taking care of her.”
“Bent, maybe—” Konstantin began, but Bent was already in motion.
He leaned over the front seat, reaching for me. His hands were disproportionally large,
like massive bear paws, but he was slow, and I easily ducked out of the way.
I grabbed a clump of his dark curly hair, and then I yanked his head to the side,
slamming it into the back passenger window. I let go of him and leaned back quickly,
then I kicked his head, crashing it into the window again. The glass was shatterproof,
and it instantly turned into a crackled sheet as blood streamed down the side of Bent’s
head.
Konstantin reached over the seat for me—going after me for the first time—but I slid
past him. Bent was now slumped unconscious on the backseat, and I climbed over him.
Konstantin grabbed my leg as I pushed through the crumbled glass of the window, but
thankfully I’d been wearing knee-high socks, so I wriggled out of his grasp. He was
left with a sock and a shoe in his hand as I dove out.
I fell onto the sidewalk, scraping my knee on the cement, but I was up in a flash.
Konstantin got out of the car, but I wanted to get to Linus before he went back to
the school, so that I could take him far away from Konstantin.
He grabbed my arm, and I whirled on him and punched him hard in the stomach. It felt
so good that I had to punch him again, harder this time. It wasn’t quite the same
as running him through with a sword, but it would do for now.
As he doubled over in pain, I said into his ear, “That was for my father. You should’ve
taken the deal.”
His grip tightened on my arm as realization dawned on him, and his eyes widened in
surprise. “You’re the Chancellor’s daughter.”
“Bryn Aven,” I told him, still whispering in his ear. “Remember my name. Because I’m
going to be the one that kills you.” Then I kneed him in the crotch. He let go, and
I stepped back.
“This man is a child molester!” I shouted, and pointed to Konstantin. “He tried to
touch me, and he’s staking out the school for more kids to molest!”
I was nineteen, but the uniform made me look younger. The sidewalks were crowded over
lunch hour, and people had stopped to watch since I’d broken out of the car window.
My knee was bleeding, and my clothes looked disheveled from fighting.
As people circled closer to Konstantin and several of them pulled out their cell phones
to call the police, I slid back in the crowd. For a moment I stayed around, protected
by a small sea of people, and I watched him.
He was looking right back at me, his eyes locked on mine. I’d expected to see anger
or arrogance, but he wore neither of those. Instead, he almost seemed to look at me
with remorse, and for a split second I felt my hatred of him softening, but I refused
to let it.
In the investigation following Konstantin’s attempt on my dad’s life, nobody had ever
been able to figure out his motive. By all accounts, Konstantin had been a good and
loyal servant of the kingdom since he’d become a tracker over a decade ago. He’d never
had any disagreements with my father, or the King or Queen.
But in the years following that, I’d decided that it didn’t matter what his motive
was. No reason would ever be good enough for what he had done, and even if he was
filled with regret and someday begged me to forgive him, I never would.
The crowd was overtaking him, so I turned and ran down the block. People called after
me, and I ran faster.
Since I was only wearing one shoe, it felt awkward, so when I reached the restaurant,
I stopped and pulled it and my remaining sock off. The cold cement felt better on
my feet than socks did anyway.
When I looked through the window, I saw that Linus was just finishing up, and I pushed
down all of the emotions that seeing Konstantin Black had brought up. I had a mission
at hand, and it required my full attention.
I didn’t know how things would go with Linus. I’d only been talking with him for three
days. In an ideal situation, I’d make a connection for two or three weeks, sometimes
even a month, before I took a changeling back to Doldastam.
“Linus!” I shouted as I opened the door. A waitress tried to stop me, but I pushed
past her and hurried over to his table.
“Bryn?” He stared up at me with confused brown eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“Do you trust me?” I asked, a little out of breath from running all the way here.
“What?” Linus looked over at his friend, who laughed nervously, and then back at me.
“You’re bleeding. Were you in an accident?”
“Okay, seriously. We don’t have time for this.” I glanced back at the door. Then I
looked down at him. “Come with me if you want to live.”
Both his friends burst out laughing at that, but Linus swallowed hard. The sleeves
of his blazer had been pushed to his elbows, and I saw the subtle shift of his skin
tone. It didn’t completely change, but the olive color began to take on a bluish hue.
That was good. It meant Linus was scared, which meant he believed me.
“Miss, I’m gonna have to ask you to leave,” a waitress was saying to me.
“Linus, we have to go.
Now
.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
One of his friends asked incredulously, “Linus, are you seriously going with this
crazy chick?”
He stood up, ignoring his friend, but he’d only taken a step away from the table when
he tripped over his shoelace. I caught his arm before he fell, and he offered me an
embarrassed grimace.
“You are so lucky I’m here,” I muttered as I took his arm and led him out of the restaurant.
“What’s going on?” Linus asked.
When we got outside, I looked back down the street. There was still a small crowd
of people milling around where I’d escaped from Konstantin and Bent, but the black
sedan was gone. They were on the move.
“I’ll explain later. But right now we just have to get out of Chicago as fast as we
can.”
The car I’d rented was in the school parking lot, but there was a chance that Konstantin
knew its make. And even if he didn’t, he could still be waiting in the parking lot.
“Where are we going?” Linus asked as I hailed a cab.
“To get a car, and then home.” I held the door to the orange cab open for him.
“But my home is here in Chicago.” He looked puzzled as he slid into the car.
I smiled at him. “No, your
real
home.”
“Doldastam,” Linus repeated, the same way he’d been repeating it over the past day
and a half. Every time he said it, he’d put the emphasis on a different syllable,
trying so hard to match my pronunciation.
I’d rented a new car, and the drive from Chicago to the train station in Canada was
over twenty hours, and we’d only stopped for gas and bathroom breaks.
Before we’d left Chicago, we’d swung by my hotel, and I’d changed into a much more
comfortable pair of jeans and a T-shirt. But I hadn’t had any clothes for him, and
I didn’t want to risk going back to his apartment. In Winnipeg, we’d stopped so I
could pick up an appropriate winter jacket and hat for Linus, and I’d finally gotten
him a change of clothes so he could get out of his uniform.
I didn’t know if Konstantin and Bent were working alone or with others, and I wouldn’t
feel safe until we were back behind the walls of Doldastam. Really, it didn’t matter
if they were working with others. Seeing Konstantin Black was enough to unnerve me.
As confident as I’d tried to sound with him and as well as I’d fought him, I’d thrown
up as soon as we got to my hotel. Coming face-to-face with the man from my nightmares
had that effect on me.
But when I was around Linus, I did my best to keep my feelings in check and seem as
normal as possible. I needed to be vigilant to keep him safe, which meant staying
calm. So I sat rigidly next to him, staring out the window, and not letting my panic
show on my face.
“Did I say it right?” Linus asked, and I could feel him looking at me, waiting for
an answer.
“Yep. You said it great,” I assured him with a forced smile.
“It’s pretty out here.” Linus motioned to the window, at the snow and tree-lined landscape
of Manitoba as we sped through it.
“Yeah, it is,” I agreed.
“This is where I was born?” Linus asked.
“Well, not out
here,
exactly. We’re still a ways away from Doldastam, but yeah, you were born out here.”
“I’m a changeling.” No matter how many times he said this, Linus still managed to
sound mystified every time. “I’m Kanin, and you’re Kanin.”
“Right,” I said, because that was easier than correcting him. I was Kanin—sort of.
He already had enough to digest without me breaking into my life story.
If he’d known more about what it meant to be Kanin, he’d be able to tell that I wasn’t
really one just by looking at me.
Linus had dark brown hair, cropped short and gelled smooth to tame the unruly curls,
and eyes that matched. I, on the other hand, had easily managed blond waves that landed
just below my shoulders, and my eyes were the color of the blue sky out the window.
Even his skin was several shades darker than mine.
On his cheeks he had a subtle spotting of freckles. They weren’t typical of the Kanin,
but they seemed to suit him. Linus had an openness to his face, an innocent inability
to hide any of his emotions, and his expression shifted from awe to pained confusion
every few minutes.
He furrowed his brow. “I’m a troll.”
The long drive up had given me plenty of time to explain all the big points to him,
but he still couldn’t completely process it. It usually took much longer, and that’s
why I often spent so long with the changelings before revealing the truth. It was
much easier to understand when you had time to digest it instead of your whole sense
of reality instantly being dashed away.