Anna uttered a final thought before Indrid excused himself from her company. “The strangest thing happened the other night on Rayne’s birthday.”
Indrid stopped. “Go,” he said to his men. “I’m right behind.”
“I went to visit his memorial near The Ponds, and I could have sworn I saw Montague step into the forest just as I was approaching. When I got close to the stone, there were flowers and a letter with strange writing stamped with a bloody fingerprint leaning next to it.”
“A bloody fingerprint?” Indrid asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, I highly doubt Montague would be venturing out by The Ponds at such a late hour. Does he even know we put a stone there for Rayne?” Indrid asked.
“Yes. I think I told him.” But Anna couldn’t be certain.
“Do you know how many languages that man understands and speaks fluently? He could have written a poem in some ancient tongue,” Indrid said.
Anna smiled, realizing how paranoid she sounded. “Yeah, I guess I was just surprised to see anybody out that far when a storm was coming through. It just looked so much like him.”
“If you ever go that far so late again, you better take an escort,” Indrid said. He walked off. “I’ll see you later.”
Anna strolled between the stones for just a little longer to feel the energy emanating from them. Who could have done this, she wondered?
On her way back home, Anna passed the street where the event had happened. Everything seemed to end that day; the day Rayne burned Fervan Mongs’s arm. The rear of the pub in the alleyway off the cross section had almost a dozen columns in front of it holding up the extended roof. Between the beams Anna noticed an apparition-like figure pacing in and out of the shadows. It scared her. With all of the attacks and disappearances that had been happening lately, she feared for her life. Then, suddenly, she heard a voice in her head. It sounded so familiar, but she couldn’t understand what it was saying.
She saw the figure again moving within the darkness as the rays of sunlight shone through the columns, and it looked at her with eyes glowing green, the same color as hers; the same color as Rayne’s. An overwhelming feeling of comfort swallowed her fear. She was now attracted to the phantom that lurked in the shadows.
Anna stepped behind the glimmering rays of light, but there was nothing but a few birds picking at pieces of bread discarded by the bakers. Just as Anna was about to debunk her sighting, a veil of darkness rose all around her, and a face that she never thought she would see again appeared before her. It was the true king, Rayne Volpi, now a mature and towering, handsome man.
Her heart pounded. She reached out to touch his face, assuring her that what was happening was real. And when the tip of her finger touched him, she knew that it wasn’t an illusion. Rayne, her long lost love, was again before her. They stared into each other’s eyes as a familiar melody started to play in Anna’s mind; a song that they used to sing as children at The Ponds. The silky pale gray skin of her stepbrother felt firm. But, without a reaction, Rayne just stared back at her curiously.
“You know me?” his angelic voice asked.
“Rayne! You’re alive! I mean…you’re here, right now!” Anna looked around at the fluttering air that flowed around her. His cloak hid them from the people passing by. Weightless, she knew that they were in another reality.
Anna held him tight and received a download of childhood emotions as soon as their heartbeats coalesced. They were two hearts with one sound. And he let her control the beating. All of their childhood sailed on the winds of memory. The experience was nothing she had ever felt before.
But Rayne cut the moment short and took Anna gently by the arms. “I cannot stay. You must tell your leaders and General Indrid Cole that Demitri Von Cobb is marching from the Eire Mountains to attack Ikarus at this very moment.”
“Because of the poison,” Anna said. Her heart sank at the thought of the innocent people and creatures of Mern that had died.
“Yes,” Rayne said, “Stay within the stones with your people. Keep them safe.”
“It was you who set them,” Anna said.
He smiled. “And tell the general, ‘she will protect him’.”
“Who?” Anna asked.
When she blinked, she found herself standing alone on the corner of the pub once again. The breakfast crowd from Jackson’s Bakery was making its way to the temple for morning prayer. The veil had lifted.
For Anna, it was an absolute miracle to know that Rayne Volpi was still alive and more mysterious than ever.
Without his officers, who had poisoned the Hart River after disobeying his command to stand down, General Indrid Cole finished scanning the perimeter of the kingdom. This time he’d ordered his men to secure the gates. And this time they complied.
In the late afternoon, Indrid visited Montague’s quarters, but Montague wasn’t home, so he made himself comfortable on the library’s sheepskin bench as he sifted through books. He was intrigued by the cloaked man’s form and his vision of Rayne. He suddenly wanted to know more about magic. Also, he wanted to look into the bloody fingerprints Anna had described.
Then he heard tapping on the door.
“A letter for Montague La’Rose, sir,” a young messenger said. “It came urgently.”
“Thank you. Leave it just there.” Indrid pointed.
The boy placed the letter on the desk and left.
A little blue seal of five intertwined circles at the bottom right of its face caught Indrid’s attention. The last time he saw that mark it was on Montague’s old letters from Burton Lang. On that very night, Rayne went missing.
Indrid took into account everything Anna
