Queen of Hearts

Chapter 32: flipping the finger | Kameron

Silence fell in the training room, broken when Penny accidentally tripped over a fallen spear on the ground to grip the Beast's hand. Jas was biting one of her fingers nervously - and to my surprise, Josie was mimicking her twin sister's action. She did not appear to be aware of it, however.

Gloria deemed the current issue with the locked down gates as minor at the present moment, with no intention to offend any of us. The main priority was to rescue the Dorlae. After that was completed, then they would deal with the gates.

"Don't forget, we had a deal," the witch, Rin, warned the half Dorlae girl with narrowed eyes. Gloria susceptibly nodded. According to the magenta haired girl, the witches were all held hostage in their own homes, with up to four dozen guards patrolling every inch of the village. That was about two legions, I estimated.

Later that night, those who were travelling to the castle the next day gathered around the wide table in the room where Hamish discussed battle plans. Liam and Lincoln decided that upon arriving, Liam would weave together a strong illusion so that the guards would not notice us passing into the castle. And if they did realise something was amiss, Sabkan and Gatlee would stay outside and conjure up a storm to divert their attention.

We would have to be quick when getting into the castle, for Liam was not sure how long his illusion would hold for, depending on his strength. Once we were inside, Lincoln and Sarah would stay behind near the entrance to ensure a safe way back out, while the rest of us continued further to rescue the Dorlae. Joey would stay outside with the redhaired twins to assist them if needed.

My dream had not yielded any information about where the Dorlae were kept when they were not required, so we would have to search the entire castle. It was decided that we would split off into groups. One group would consist of Josie, Evan and Cailyn, whileas the other would consist of myself, Justina and Rin. Together, between our two groups, we aimed to cover the entire castle in our search.

"The most important thing is," Liam said seriously, giving us all a pointed look in turn, "if you see the Queen of Diamonds, do not engage. Hide and wait until she's out of sight before moving on. Facing her will be a death sentence. Just don't do it."

"I don't think any of us plan to," Justina muttered, twirling a string of fire in her hand.

I was so nervous that I could barely sleep that night. I couldn't help but worry about everyone's safety, especially Evan's. He was barely trained. He had good aim, but his skills in avoiding or intercepting attacks needed to be improved. He had strong company, however. Josie was an incredible fighter, and even though Cailyn was also new, I'd noticed that she used large amounts of her magic without seeming to tire in her training sessions. She could still protect Evan if needed, with the amount of magical energy she had.

When morning arrived, I strapped a sword to my belt as I changed into appropriate clothing, although I suspected I wouldn't use it. Recently, Hamish had me practice deflecting bullets, so Penny had shot multiple rounds of bullets at me, and I'd diverted the path of every single one after three entire days of practice. Penny herself had been getting better with her gun too - she had quick reflexes that enabled her to become a worthy opponent of Eva's and Olivia's.

The gold eyed twins were revealed to be telepathic. They were able to read each other's minds, and could always tell where their twin was without having to look for themselves. They learnt to use the weapons in the training room twice as fast, for they had a skill where one twin would automatically know how to do something if the other twin had learnt it. It had come as a shock to Samidha to see Eva excelling at archery when she'd spent the past few hours teaching Olivia only (while Eva had been attempting to train with close combat weapons).