Alexander pulled her into a hug, then kissed her on the cheek. “I love you, Mama, but I would fall backward off the tallest ship into a sea of sharks if my teacher told me to. I trust him with my life, heart, and soul. You should not have done this thing. You shouldn’t have told her where we live.”
“You trust him more than me?” she replied, her expression showing pure heartbreak.
“It’s not the Olympiad. It’s not a race. I trust you both.”
Besides the sweet glorious glee of hearing Alexander actually mention the Olympics — which originated in his country long before they renewed it in the modern day — Dak felt unsettled. Things just didn’t seem to be going well, or the way he expected. Tilda was too smart.
He noticed Aristotle was looking at him.
“Any suggestions?” the man asked him.
Dak wished he had that moment on video. Aristotle asking him for advice.
“I say we lock Alexander in a closet and have his guards and dogs right outside the door for a week.” It’d never happen, but Dak didn’t know how else to make sure — absolutely sure — that Tilda couldn’t get to him.
Alex pulled out his sword and pointed it at Dak. “Remember the lesson you were supposed to learn on that statue? Do I look like the kind of person who’d allow someone to lock me in a closet?”
Dak shook his head, liking this guy more by the minute.
“That’s a good student.” He sheathed his sword. “Now, come. We’re going to the market to hunt down this woman that everyone seems to think wants me dead. She has her own lesson to learn.”
Without waiting for a response — as if he expected any human who ever crossed his path in life to obey his commands without question — Alexander walked out of the room. Dak followed happily at his heels.
RIQ FELL in line with everyone else as they marched through the grand halls of the palace and out the front door, finally walking down huge marble steps onto a wide lawn. It spread out like a green sea before them, and Alexander didn’t hesitate a second as he stomped onto it and kept moving, his muscles clenched as if he wanted to run instead.
The two guards who’d accompanied him earlier had appeared, hurrying to get right behind him. Then came Aristotle, walking with confident strides. Next was Olympias, having lost every ounce of the stately, towering demeanor she’d shown earlier.
After them, Riq, Sera, and Dak tried to keep up, side by side, Sera in the middle.
Riq leaned in toward her. “You think she’ll be there?”
“I don’t know,” Sera said with a shrug. “But since we’ve probably already altered what she originally intended to do, we need to stay close to Alexander.”
Dak made a scoffing sound. “Like we can do anything to protect him. Look at that dude. He could take down three bears with his pinkie.”
“Did you lose your brain somewhere?” Sera responded. “We just found out that Tilda killed him.”
“Yeah, but she probably sneaked up on him or something. Now that we warned him, I bet he’ll be fine. Man, for all we know, we’ve already fixed the Prime Break. Holy cow. What if that’s true?”
Riq had only been half listening, seeing movement up ahead, beyond where the huge lawn met a road. A group of people, maybe. But what Dak said really struck him. The kid could be right. Totally right. His heart lifted a little.
Then he got a better glimpse of what lay ahead. “Who are those guys up there?” he asked. There seemed to be twenty or thirty people, and they’d just left the road and walked onto the vast lawn surrounding Olympias’s palace.
“I don’t know,” Sera responded, “but they don’t . . .” Her voice trailed off and she stopped walking.
So did Riq. “What?” he asked. But the word had barely left his mouth when he saw exactly what. Behind the others coming toward them — at a brisk pace, body language screaming that they weren’t on a nice, casual stroll — a woman strode along, mostly hidden from view because she was shorter than the others. But every once in a while Riq caught a glimpse of flaming red hair.
“Wait!” Dak called out to Alexander and the guards. Aristotle and Olympias had already stopped. “Tilda’s up there!”
Alex turned around, not a trace of sweat or deep breathing to show that he’d practically been running down the lawn. He looked at his teacher. “That’s the woman you came to warn me about?” Then his eyes moved to his mom. “That’s your new friend from the market?”
Both of them simply nodded.
Alexander pulled the sword from its sheath and his two guards followed his lead; the scrape of metal sliding against hard leather rang through the air like birdsong.
“And your friend needed an escort of twenty soldiers to come say hello?” Alex asked.
Riq was watching the oncoming crowd, and the heir to the hegemon was right. Those marching toward them, protecting Tilda in a semicircle as they walked, were dressed and armed just like Alex and his guards. The glint of breastplates and helms and drawn daggers, swords, and spears sparkled in the sunlight, some of the flashes almost blinding.
Olympias had gone totally pale, every bit of her seeming like she’d aged ten years in a minute, her eyes hard with worry. “I don’t understand. I . . . things have gotten so complicated.”
It doesn’t matter, Riq thought. They were here, and Riq and his friends were ridiculously outnumbered. The front line of soldiers stopped about thirty feet from where Alexander stood, but Tilda kept walking until she slipped past the armed men and finally stood where Riq could see her head to toe.
Below that fiery hair, her black lips made the rest of her skin look ghostly white. She wore tight-fitting clothes, bloodred and charcoal gray, that looked totally out of place compared to everyone else. Her face bore no expression whatsoever. In her right hand, she gripped an infinity-shaped device made out of gleaming metal.
The Eternity Ring.
“Hello, Olympias,” Tilda said, her voice so soft and smooth that it almost convinced Riq she was genuine. For a split second, he felt the outrageous urge to hear her out. There was something magnetic about her, like the woman had evil spells to hypnotize and manipulate whomever she wanted. “It’s good to see you again so soon. Thanks again for the invitation to visit your beautiful home. I can tell it’s quite the keeper.”