Page 81 of The Heir

But that is impossible.All my focus is you, forever,he said, and I could tell the face he was making on the other side of the door was a smirking one.

I touched my warm cheeks.

The only bad thing about our connection is that I cannot see you blush right now.

Ha-ha. I am not blushing–

You can not lie to me, Emma. Hurry up. Time is running out.

I heard his melody float down the stairs and into the living room and then end up in the kitchen. Mary came in then and started putting toiletries into the bag that she was packing for me.

“Change, Emma, as quickly as you can. I have packed you all the necessities for now.”

I shuffled to my closet and opened a drawer that had workout clothes that I rarely used. I pulled out a pair of running pants and a workout shirt. I washed my face in the bathroom and pulled my hair up into a ponytail.

“Do you have hiking boots?” Mary asked, sticking a small folded towel in my bag.

“I have my gym shoes,” I replied

“That will have to work. Hand me some socks.”

I walked to my sock drawer and handed her some socks, and she shoved them into the bag. I put on my shoes. It was cold out that time of the year, so I walked back into my closet and pulled out a warm sweatshirt with a hood. As I tugged it on over my head, I heard Shad speaking to me:

We have to go—now!It was almost a shout into my soul.

I turned to Mary, who zipped up my bag and laid it on my bed. “Mary, Shad says we need to gonow; I think someone is almost here.”

She froze and listened as if trying to hear something. She shoved the bag at me.

“Grab this; head to the car. It’s in the driveway. Keil is driving. Get into the backseat with Shad. I will be there in a second.” She ran from my room and into hers. There was one more thing I wanted to bring with me.

I went to my closet, bending down to the ground where I last placed my mother’s storybook–history book–full of truths, not fiction. I tucked it into my bag and jogged to the driveway and slid into a car that I had never seen before, right beside Shad, in the back seat. Mary followed soon after with a bag in one hand and the black-silver wooden box from her dresser drawer in the other. She locked the door, and Keil started the engine. Mary slipped in, and before we could even buckle, we had spedoff down the street, and I said a quick goodbye to my childhood home, hoping I would see it again—but not sure if I ever would.

Chapter Twenty-Two

It was wise of Mary to make sure Ryker gave her updates on his locations and plans. The last update she had received was when he was off the Oregon coast, near a cave of ice or something. I couldn’t hear all the things they were saying but Keil and Mary kept mentioning the name Arnold as we drove. I didn’t know what that was: a person or a place? I didn’t get all the details because Keil and Mary were talking so fast. Then they plugged coordinates into their phones, and the monotone GPS voice said it was a seven hour drive. Shad nudged my shoulder.

“You okay?”

“I think so. I’m still alive, right?”

He smiled at me, “Yes, you are. Ryker will be okay. He is very capable of handling himself.” He took my hand and squeezed it.

“How do you know him?” I asked, figuring that our seven hour drive was as good a time as any to get answers to all the questions I had been searching for—for months.

“Ryker is the guardian knight for the prince and heir of the kingdom of Haleston. Unfortunately, Haleston suffered from corruption. Ryker suggested to the Prince that he should go intohiding, but Prince Lamont did not want to hide; he thought it cowardly. During that time of unrest and confusion, Prince Tarick, Prince Lamont’s younger brother, murdered his own father and tricked his brother, so Prince Lamont ended up in the Dungeons of the Mist. That is a terrible place—filthy, black, rocky caves, which are vast, dark, deep, and smell of rot. There was once an old, wicked king who was imprisoned within that very rock, but he somehow escaped, andthatwas the beginning of the end. The Dungeons of the Mist with its hundreds of tunnels that lead tonowhere, rumored to have been dug by the Traitor King in order to drive the Terrans placed down there mad. However, Lamont’s brother, Tarick, saw the dungeons as the perfect opportunity to hide the Prince away until he died a slow and miserable death—or went insane.”

“That—that is, or I mean—Lamont was—my father, Shad.”

Shad turned quickly, looking at me with shock in his eyes.

“What? He never had any children; he never married,” Shad said quickly.

“He married my mother, here.”

“You are the daughter of Prince Lamont?” Shad asked again, a look of shock in his eyes.

“Mary said I was,” I nodded in her direction.

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