Discovery: Altera Realm Trilogy (23 page)

"No way," Syney said.

Brian looked over to her quickly. He looked confused at first, but then a flash of something crossed his handsome features. He had been caught doing something no one ever had caught him doing before.

"You're..." Syney looked around to make sure no one was in earshot and leaned closer to whisper, "gay."

"What is that?" he asked, looking a bit angry.

"You... like boys."

"No. What are you talking about?"

"I just...I saw that."

Brian sighed angrily and looked away from her.

"Listen—it's totally OK. I get it."

"What exactly do you get?"

"I know what it's like to want to be with someone that you can't." Syney looked over and found Hunter's gaze but quickly looked away. "So it's OK."

They looked at each other, and Brian's features softened. "It's hard. This isn't something that is accepted here."

"So there's never been anyone?"

"Oh, there's been some but no royals and...they quietly disappeared."

"That's pretty bad."

Brian sighed. "Spending time with you has helped. Made a certain someone pretty jealous."

Syney laughed. "On my end as well."

Brian's eyes sparkled as his cocky grin reappeared on his face. "Well, then, maybe we should step it up a bit." He leaned forward and kissed her.

Syney wasn't sure how she felt about that moment. Kissing Brian felt really good. It was actually her first real kiss, but that was the problem. Was it so real? His lips were real, and so was his probing tongue, but there was nothing behind them. She kissed him back for a few moments before they split apart and smiled to each other. He dared a look over to his friend, and Syney shot Hunter a glance. He wasn't looking. He was talking to another Lycin, but Syney knew he had seen the kiss. He was always there—he had said so himself—and of course his clenched fists gave a little bit away. "Mission Jealousy" was a success.

Even though they spent so much time together, Syney had never had dinner with Brian and his friends. The thought had never even occurred to her. But Brian had insisted that night that she eat dinner with him and his friends; he even held her hand the whole way to the dining hall. She wasn't entirely comfortable as she grabbed some food and joined Brian and his friends at their table. But after a few minutes, conversation flowed just as it always did among the group, and Syney's comfort level rose. The table was pretty close to the center of the room, so Syney had a good view down at her usual table. Guilt jumped into her throat when she saw Noelle sitting alone. None of the handmaidens who had been with her that first night were anywhere to be seen. Syney mentally kicked herself. She liked this new group of friends, but it shouldn't be at the expense of her first friend. She almost excused herself to go join Noelle when she saw Hunter and Leaf walk up and after a short bow take seats across from Noelle. She smiled. Now those were good guys. A few moments later, Gabe appeared and sat down next to Noelle, throwing his arm around her. Noelle stiffened. This was the first time Syney had noticed how uncomfortable Gabe made Noelle feel. She would have to work on those two. Gabe asked where Syney was; Syney could tell by Noelle's unspoken answer of looking up at her. Gabe followed her look and shook a finger up to her. Syney rolled her eyes and returned her attention to her new friends in front of her. After dinner Brian walked Syney back to her room, with Hunter and Salmon (Brian's Protector) following at a distance. He kissed her again at her door and walked away with smile. Syney touched her lips and watched him go. Hunter met her look, and she sent him a big smile before retreating to her room.

The next day she met Helen in the library for their daily lessons, her mood the best it had been since she had arrived in the Village. She was even humming as she sat down at one of the large tables that occupied the library's center. All around the room there were large wooden stacks filled with different leather-and cloth-bound books. There was also an upstairs room, lined with glass windows, but Helen already had warned Syney to stay away from it. That was the secured section. One could only get into the room with a certain spell, and then there were hundreds of spells securing all of the books in the room. It was "Look, but don't touch" with those volumes.

Her lessons with Helen had been incredibly informative. There was so much that Syney didn't know. They started out with the history of the Magic Users. They were able to trace their lineage back to the first Magic User families—the Grendalin, Blocadrian, Vilori, and Crystallianna families. There was a mention of the first Magic User, but no one knew for sure which house she started. Helen said that every house had claimed her at some point, and Syney didn't doubt it. Helen reviewed the basic powers of Magic Users. They all could control the elements: fire, air, water, and earth. Although how they could control them changed with every generation. The most recent generations could conjure the elements but had trouble maintaining and controlling them. "You should have seen Princess Cassandra last year when she tried to conjure wind and control it. We had hurricane winds for weeks," Helen said. Needless to say, no one was allowed to conjure the elements anymore.

Besides conjuring, all Magic Users were able to cast spells and curses. Spells used certain words, most of which Syney realized came from some sort of Latin. They were used to make things disappear or move things around. The spells also could conjure things that weren't elemental. Curses weren't used anymore. Helen explained that they were the sneakiest form of magic. You cursed a person, and there was no indication that they had been cursed at all. She said there was a spell that showed the curse, but it wasn't like you could go around checking for curses every day. That was why curses had been outlawed and placed in the secure section of the library. That had occurred around the time of the Great Divide.

Helen also explained about the Great Divide and War, even though she really didn't know much. It seemed that no one really knew much about it. The races had all lived in harmony for years, even going as far as some intermarriages between Magic Users and Vampires, but they weren't really spoken about and all occurred within the Blocadrian line. That was the reason the Blocadrian line had died out, Helen had said. They were all killed in one mass attack. That was one of the reasons for the Great War. The other was the end of the Vilori line. That line had been small. They tended not to have many children, usually only
one or two in each generation. So the line had come down to Queen Amelia, who had been killed by the Daemon king, Hadrian. No one knew who Syney's mother or father were, only that she was a lost Vilori. The last Vilori to live, Queen Amelia, had never been Joined while she was queen even though there were so many rules about who could take the throne and their marital status while they were on the throne. All the rules made Syney's head hurt. There was the queen, but there could also be a seated queen, which was the person next in line for full queenship. And then there were seated princesses or princes who were the children of current queens or kings. But all royals were referred to as "Prince" and "Princess," and the matriarchal head of the line was the Queen or Head of House. There were just way too many titles and royals, in Syney's opinion. But the worst part was the whole pairing thing. Royals were only ever paired with royals. With that logic and the fact that there were only two royal bloodlines still living—not counting Syney of course—that meant the Grendalin and Crystallianna lines were almost fully intermarried. They claimed a house through the wife's line. So if a Crystallianna prince married a Grendalin princess, they and their children were considered Grendalin. So no matter who Syney was paired with, she would always remain Vilori. You also could always tell which house someone came from from by the color of their eyes; they matched the house's color. Helen seemed reluctant to talk about the fact that soon all of the royals would be related and pairing would start amongst cousins, distant and not so distant.

"You seem chipper this morning," Helen said with a knowing smile.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Syney said.

"Well, I guess our rumor mill is right for once. Good for you. He's...a good guy," Helen said, opening the large leather-bound volume that contained the histories of each royal line.

"You needed the rumor mill to see that I had a good time eating dinner? I even saw you during it." Syney laughed and opened the notebook she was using to take notes. She wasn't going to get literally tested on all of this stuff, but she never would get it straight if she didn't keep her own records.

"Oh, you're just happy about dinner? I guess....I must have heard wrong." She busied herself by flipping through the history book.

"Why? What did you hear?" Syney asked, suddenly getting an uneasy feeling in her chest.

"Oh, nothing," she said, looking everywhere but to Syney.

"Helen." Syney grabbed her hand and forced Helen to look at her. "Just tell me."

Helen swallowed and deflated a little. "It's just a rumor, I'm sure. I heard it from Cass who heard it from someone in the garden."

Syney sighed at Helen's stalling. "Just spill it."

"Brian is telling everyone that you're sleeping together. And that you're going to the monthly service together this weekend," she said in a rush.

Syney's mind went blank. She never had been the subject of the rumor mill in her high school, mainly because she was the neutral girl. She had no enemies, and people generally liked her. But she had seen the effects of vicious rumors when Jess had been the target. Jess had gone out with Jake Owens, a relatively popular guy in their grade. When she refused to go any farther than kissing (it was their first date, and she wasn't that type of girl), he told everyone that she was a prude and a tease. Whoever he didn't tell had found out by lunch, and Jess had to endure sneers and snickers for weeks before an even bigger rumor (Celeste Johnson doing her history teacher, which happened to be real) trumped her humiliation. Jess cried every day because of that incident. This wasn't something Syney wanted to deal with, especially not here of all places.

"He said what?" she yelled, finding her voice.

"So it's not true. I didn't think so. You didn't seem like that kind of girl, but others will be quick to believe."

"I can't believe that." Syney gripped her pencil, almost snapping it in two. "And what the hell is a monthly service, and why would he think I would go?"

"It's our religious obligation every month. We go to the chapel and have a full day of prayer and offerings, but it's not always treated that way. It's the only time everyone, all Magic Users, royal or not, are required to be together, so it's used as a social event. If you go to a service with someone—specifically if a boy and girl go together—it's a sign to Venus, almost like requesting a pairing."

"So Brian wants to marry me? But he's telling people that we're sleeping together? He really doesn't get women, does he?"

"Or common decency," Helen said harshly. "A rumor about a handmaiden is bad, but for him to do this to you is detestable. I'm going to speak to Mother about this."

"Oh, god. Don't do that. Listen—I've seen this kind of thing before. If I just ignore it, it'll go away. And he can shove any idea of taking me to this service up his butt. I'll make sure he knows it."

They dropped the topic after that and concentrated, or at least as much as Syney could, on visions, which was a Vilori trademark but hadn't been accomplished in many generations.

Syney headed straight for the dining hall after the lesson and was greeted by even more talking and pointing at her. They were still whispering, but it was more pointed, and there was no doubt it was directed toward Syney and had to do with Brian. She took a deep breath and headed straight over to Brian's table,
smiling sweetly. "Hello, might I have a word?" she said as innocently as she could to Brian, who looked like a deer in headlights in return.

"Sure." He threw a smile to everyone at the table and followed Syney into a corner. "Listen," he said. "I think I know what this is about, and it's not really my fault. I just told a few people and it spread."

"Yeah, that's what rumors do, idiot," Syney said, giving him her death stare. She knew he wasn't that dumb. "You did it for him, didn't you?"

A smirk slowly inched onto his lips, and he looked away.

"Of course you did. Did you even think about what this does to me?"

"I did." He looked back at her. "It gets you a good pairing and a partner who will look the other way while you screw your Protector."

Syney's heart skipped a beat. How the hell did he know about her feelings for Hunter? "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Brian gave a bitter laugh. "Right. I'm not blind, and you're not as covert as you think. Every time you touch my arm, you shoot a look over to him. It's OK. Don't worry. I've even thought about it at times. There are some fine-looking wolves around here that I could do all sorts of—"

Syney groaned and put her hands to her ears. "I
so
don't want to hear this!"

"Hey, listen." He pulled her hands down and put his face only inches from her ear. "This is a win-win situation. You can't be queen without being married, and we're good together. We both want what we can't have. But I also want to be king, and you're the only way, babe. We spend time together, check. People think we have an intimate relationship, check. We attend the monthly service together, and the deal is done."

Syney narrowed her eyes at him. Everything had been a plan for him. He couldn't care less about her. She fought back tears. "You're disgusting. I'm never going to marry you."

Brian took a step back. "I know your secret."

"And I know yours. I've never played chicken. I wonder if I'll win," Syney said, and walked away from him. She headed right for the stairs, all of the whispering picking up as she passed. She felt Brian's eyes on her, but he didn't try to stop her. When she got to the lower dining room, she stopped and looked around. No one she knew was there. Tears were still threatening to pour out of her eyes, and the snickers and headshakes from the Lycins and other Magic Users were too much for her. She took off toward the door, literally running into Noelle, who had just walked in.