Page 56 of The Princess of Portals

“Where are you now, Miss Winters?”

There was a threat baked into that question. I could feel it. Something along the lines of: ‘Tell me where you are, so I can send people to drag you back to the Castle, where we will finish this conversation’. Oh, goody.

“I’m in the Sydney ruins,” I said. “Near the Harbour Bridge.”

Silence fell over the phone line.

“Hello?” I asked.

“I got a fix on the line,” he said. “Stay where you are. Someone will come get you.”

Then he hung up, and I was almost, well, sad that he was gone. As unpleasant as the Senator was, he was from the Castle. I’d talked to someone from the Castle. Now the Knights knew where I was. They’d come for me and bring me home. I wasn’t alone anymore. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized just how important not being alone was to my mental state.

I left the phone booth, then plodded over to a small bus shelter. I needed a place to sit and something to shade me from the relentless sun. The air was getting hotter by the minute.

A slamming car door drew my attention back toward the road. Two Cursed Ones were rummaging through the vehicle. They took one look at me, then scurried off.

Not so long ago, the Cursed Ones had been the biggest threat I could possibly imagine. My, how things had changed.

CHAPTER 7

THE TRAITOR

Iwaited in the shade of the bus shelter until I heard the hum of an approaching SUV. I watched it come to a smooth stop on the broken highway. But it wasn’t a Knight who stepped out of the vehicle. It was Senator Gaines himself.

“Are you all right?” he asked, wiping the sweat from his brow. He looked genuinely worried about me, which was…weird. He hadn’t sounded very sympathetic on the phone.

“I’m fine,” I told him. “Where are the Knights?”

“They couldn’t come.”

“But…that doesn’t make any…”

The heat was making me dizzy. The Senator’s hands caught me as I stumbled to the side.

“Everything will be all right,” he said.

My hand flashed out and caught his. A syringe slipped from his fingers and clinked against the asphalt ground. I’d moved so fast. It seemed I still had a little magic left in my system after all.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

“I’m trying to help you, Savannah. I’m on your side.”

“No.” I shoved him away from me. “You’re not on my side. You tried to sedate me.”

“For your own protection.”

“Get away from me!”

Senator Gaines took a step toward me.

“You heard her. Get away from her,” Kato said in a low, menacing growl.

He and Conner were running toward us. Relief rushed through me. They’d come. I’d called them, and they’d come.

The Senator’s eyes panned from Kato to Conner. “That is a Rebel.”

“I sure am.” Conner’s grin was light and easy, but his eyes told a darker tale; he looked angrier than I’d ever seen him.