Chapter 2

Gathering the Will

This was my first time in a plane, so it was also my first time out of a plane, therefore it would have been the perfect opportunity to just kneel down and kiss the ground theatrically. Unfortunately, my level of freaking out outweighed my desire to entertain myself.

I wasn't going to lie here. I was freaking out. I probably looked like some kind of frightening wild animal as I made my way down out of the plane, whipping its head around, scared of everything around it. I was waiting for someone to attack. And that someone could totally be me.

My father and Hugo looked like they knew where they were going so I just followed them. The wind was chilly and my arms wrapped automatically around me, not just from the cold though.

I thought we'd be heading down to a port, but I quickly realized they were heading in the wrong direction and towards somewhere completely different.

"A bar? Are we really going to a bar?" I asked, as Hugo pushed the door to the small building with a sign in front that read Midnight Pub.

"The ship to Avalon doesn't run all the time. It'll only leave in about two hours. We have to wait for it," Matvei answered.

"And this place is the best place to get an idea of what's going on at court," Hugo added, holding the door open for us.

"People tend to open their traps when they're drinking," my father said.

"I'm not even legal," I reminded them.

"Legal age's eighteen in England," Hugo said.

It's like no one ever listened to me. "Yeah, and I haven't turned eighteen yet. Next month."

"Well, that just means you'll have to get shit faced another time," Hugo answered, and headed inside, clearly done with me.

"Oh the poetry you sing sweet Hugo," I mocked him from behind.

Unsurprisingly, he just ignored me.

Sighing, I followed the two men.

I didn't want to wait anymore to get to Avalon. I wanted this to be over with already. In the best scenario possible, we'd already be on our way to Avalon, and I'd talk with my mother the second we walked in and then we could just go back home before the sun set.

I didn't want to stick around.

This was all a bad idea. Why did I agree to this? Life was good enough back home, decapitation of my friend aside. I was finally beginning to have a good life. What was the point in stirring the shit pot?

Hugo and Matvei headed to a table and we all sat down. The lighting sucked, the chairs were mismatched, the table was still covered in little crumbs of food, and the whole place smelled like stalled beer and old men's sweat.

What a swell place.

The barmaid, a girl with a pixie cut that looked like she was in her mid twenties came our way and asked with a smile, "What can I get you guys?"

"Just give us each a pint of your sweetest, weakest cider," my father answered for us. She nodded and headed back to the bar.

When she was out of earshot I hissed a, "Underage? Remember?"

"Stop being a narc," Hugo mumbled.

I fake gapped at him. "Oh god, coming from you, that's just precious."

"Hey, aren't you the guy that killed a dragon in Crete a few years back?" one of the men that was sitting at the table beside us asked my father.

He had a grey beard and glassy eyes that mirrored the ones of the other guy sitting in front of him. They looked like your typical town drunkards.

"No, it was an Echidna," the other man answered for my father.

"Wait, no, you're Anton's brother," the first one said.

"Oh man that's right. You here to see your brother?"

"Don't you know, he doesn't speak to his family anymore, that whole sacrifice business," the first man answered again.

"I haven't been to a good sacrifice in decades," the other replied.

Where the hell did my father bring me?

Also, Anton? I remember seeing another member in some of the family pictures back home. They never talked about him though. I had assumed he'd been killed in action.

The men were already on to another subject though. "Did you see the Brahe prince plane landing earlier?" one asked the other.

"Do you think the prince is on his way here to cheer for the future Queen?" the other man asked, laughing and hiccupped.

"I doubt it. Didn't you hear?"

"Hear what?

"The Brahe prince? He got attacked. He was pretty rouged up. His parents left the Court and rushed to him. It was that bad."

My fists clenched on my thighs. I hadn't realized Kostya's parents had come to our town. Also, it felt so strange have people talk about something they had not witnessed like they knew what they were talking about. They had no idea what really happened. And they didn't know Kostyantyn. At least not the way I did.

I didn't understand why it anger me, so suddenly, that these men were talking about Kostya, almost like I was protective of him. It wasn't the first time though, that something about Kostyantyn confused me.

The men kept chatting, oblivious to us. "What did they say happened?"

"Some stupid Chort minion went after him to make Diana pay for kicking him out of his wood."

"Some people are still stupid enough to follow Chort?"

"Apparently. At least he's not stupid enough to try to get elected."

Chort. What a shitty name. Yoan had mentioned him when Kostya and I had been fighting him. Son of a Black God or something. That couldn't be good.

The old men kept chatting and the barmaid came back with our drinks.

"It'll calm you down," my father said, pushing the drink in my direction.

That was totally bad parenting, turning me into an alcoholic before I was even allowed to drink.

I cradled my drink in my hands, ignoring the people around and started going through every scenario possible of what was going to happen when I would meet Diana in my head.

Part of me wanted her to come up with some logical answer as to why she had abandoned me all alone and I would hug her and she would hug me back and all would be well, and all my problems would suddenly disappear. The realistic part of me knew it was most definitely going to end with a shitty explanation and me screaming and kicking.

No answer could be a good reason to abandon your kid. As much as I wanted to, there was no way I could ever truly forgive her.

All the horrible things that happened while I was growing up, all the abuse and the scars, they were all her fault. The fear, the starvation, the loneliness, the helplessness. All her fault. All her doing.

I hated her. I hated her. And even if I thought about a millions scenarios, there wasn't one that realistically could end up with me forgiving her, as much as I would want to.

I didn't think I still had completely forgiven my father and it hadn't really been his fault. How could I ever forgive her?

I was brought out of my dark thoughts by someone who'd just walked into the bar and exclaimed, "High heavens. Watch out everybody, the Nain Rouge is here. That's a catastrophe waiting to happen."

Well, look at that, Hugo made a friend.

People were silent in the bar and kinda gasping and the barmaid came back to our table and said, "Go back to wherever you came from. I don't want anything bad to happen here."

Everyone looked strung up and on high alert.

Interesting.

"We'll go, we don't want any troubles," my father answered, paid for the drinks and got up. I got up too.

Hugo wasn't moving. He was staring furiously at the table, his whole body clenched.

"Hugo," I nudged his arm, "let's go."

He blinked slowly, and finally looked up at me. I'd never seen distress in his eyes. It totally caught me off guard.

It was just for a second though, and he was up on his feet.

We left the bar.

Matvei was walking in front and I was matching my pace with Hugo.

Even if he was often a pain in my ass, he had a couple of nice moments, so I kind of felt bad for him.

"Does this happen often? People freaking out when they see you?" I asked quietly, trying to break the uncomfortable silence. Also, nosy bitch.

"Around supras?" he snorted and nodded. "Yeah, all the time."

"Fun life," I said.

I stayed quiet for the rest of our walk. This time we did head to the port.

We sat at one of the bench there, waiting for the boat to finally arrive.

We all looked stressed out.

Finally, a small boat stopped at the sock and six people came out of it. Two of the walked away, but the four others stuck around.

They were the people that would okay our journey.

We made our way to them. "We'd like passage to Avalon," my father told him and gave him a metal coin.

The man inspected it and then looked up at us.

"Leave all your weapons here."

I would have liked for my father and Hugo to do that whole caricature skit where they take out weapons from every orifice imaginable and it keeps pilling up ridiculously, but unfortunately for my amusement, they knew they would have to leave their weapons so they hadn't brought any.

"What's your purpose in going to Avalon?" the second man asked.

"I'm here to vote and they're accompanying me," Hugo answered.

"Yeah, because he's too dumb to do it on his own," I said under my breath.

"Oksana, shut up," my father mumbled beside me.

Oh the horror! Did Matvei just ask me to shut up?

They asked a couple more questions. Apparently the questions weren't that important though. The important thing was that the Seer with his bodyguard, stating a few feet from us, would give us the green light.

The Seer at the gate was their equivalent of a danger detector. It was a special kind of Seer that apparently could tell if you had bad intentions.

If the Seer didn't feel anything bad coming from you, you were okay. The questions were just a distraction.

I wondered if the Seer could see me beating up my mother.

It did seem like he was staring at me for a little too long.

Finally, we were given the okay and sat down in the boat.

It wasn't a huge commercial boat. It was a shitty wooden boat, without a motor. They would have to actually row this thing.

The two men that had asked the questions did the rowing as we just sat down and set sail.

I was clutching the fabric of my pants. This whole endeavour didn't feel or look safe. We weren't even wearing life jackets.

A couple with a kid were also in the boat with us. The kid was wearing a hood, and I tried smiling its way, but then it looked up from under the hood and smiled at me and all its teeth were like pointy and it was freaking scaaaaary.

I shuffled closer to Hugo.

Yeaaaah, no. I had no interest in sitting beside a feral kid. That looked like the beginning of a horror movie and everyone knew the poor shmucks at the beginning of a horror movie always died.

Avalon, or whatever, was nowhere in sight. Just fog. We were literally just being rowed towards nothing. This was going to take a while, surely, and I had no desire in spending anymore time beside the creepy kid.

"Can we turn around? I changed my mind," I whispered to my father.

He smiled sadly at me. "I'm afraid we can't. We're here."

And then suddenly the fog cleared, like magic and an island appeared, with a gigantic grey castle standing proud at the top. The whole scenery looked straight out of a fairytale's book,

I blinked slowly. "Woah..."

"Welcome to Avalon."