Free Descend (Awakened Fate Book 2) by Skye Malone Page A

about Zeke that way. And not because he wasn’t attractive – God knew Zeke was attractive – but because he was part of this world, a world I’d never planned on joining and that I fully intended to leave as soon as possible. And because there was Noah to consider, even if I wasn’t really confident about in what terms. He’d kissed me, yes. I liked him a lot. But I wasn’t sure I could claim we were dating. I mean, I’d like to. I wanted to. In my book, a kiss like that pretty much put you in the category of dating a guy. But I also wasn’t certain what Noah thought and I didn’t want to get ahead of myself. After all, that kiss could have meant less to him than it had to me. He could have just been caught up in the moment or whatever. But regardless, I wasn’t going to just forget him and go checking out some other guy now that I was down here. It’d only been a day , for pity’s sake. That was ridiculous.
    And Zeke had never given a single sign he thought of me as anything other than some girl he was helping. At best, he was my friend and nothing more.
    Not that it even mattered anyway.
    Feeling like my mind was steadily becoming a pretzel, I kept myself from looking at any more courtiers as I followed Ina back to her room.
     

Chapter Seven
     
    Zeke
     
    It took me a moment after Chloe and Ina disappeared through the door to want to move.
    And a few moments beyond that to gather my thoughts enough to swim up toward the royal suite.
    I wished I could claim seeing Jirral had been a waste of time. It would’ve been easier. And while, yes, most of it had been useless, that part about the Sylphaen…
    Shaking my head, I continued upward along the face of the mountain toward the entrances to the top floors. The cult couldn’t reach us here. All the psychotic beliefs and purifying crusades in the world wouldn’t get them past the soldiers surrounding Nyciena.
    Though adding a few more guards couldn’t hurt.
    Not that I was about to tell Jirral that.
    Servants bowed and leaves of fejeria swayed as I passed. The veil around the palace deadened any sense of the surrounding water and cast a silvery sheen on the mountainside. Up above, I spotted Dad’s guards near the opening to his floors – a good sign that he was there and not off holding another audience with whichever nobles had come to town today.
    “Prince Zekerian!”
    I slowed and glanced back at the shout from below.
    Kyne hovered by one of the windows. When he saw me stop, he pushed away from the opening and swam after me.
    “We have preliminary results of the tests, highness,” he said. “Do you have a moment?”
    I nodded. “What’d you find out?”
    “The mixture is strange. Mostly neiphiandine, but with supplementary agents that appear designed to make it stronger, longer-lasting, and even less likely to be affected or overcome by stresses to the system.”
    I grimaced. Those Sylphaen bastards wanted to sacrifice her. I’d call that a stress to her system. Why they needed to make sure she stayed in dehaian form while that happened, though…
    “How long-lasting?” I asked, pushing the thought aside.
    “It’s difficult to say. It would depend upon the young lady’s metabolism, her body chemistry, factors of that sort. But that brings up something else strange. In addition to this, there are other components to the drug. We haven’t yet determined their purpose, but in our tests, they seem to act as suppressants of some kind. It may be that they were intended to keep her body from flushing out the drug, or there may have been another intent behind their inclusion. We will need to run additional tests to be–”
    “Yeah,” I interrupted. “Just… whatever you need to do to help her.”
    Kyne bowed. “Thank you, highness.”
    I nodded. Taking the motion as a dismissal, he turned and disappeared behind the fejeria of another window.
    Drawing a deep breath, I kept going toward the soldiers above me. We needed more guards. More