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Secret Kingdom

“The Scottish Wolves are here.”

I barely had time to fully comprehend Tadhg’s words before my wish to be free of the dining room was abruptly granted.

Instead of blocking me from leaving, Tadhg suddenly dragged me out of the space where I’d woken up, past the glass coffin, and across a sitting room, where a fire roared in the hearth.

“Wait! Just—wait a moment. Where are you taking me?” I yanked back, heels digging in with everything I had.

Another secret I’d been bade to keep by my mother.

“Never show the male wolves how strong you truly are again,” she’d chided after I bragged about bringing back the largest sheet of ice from the lake for the community ice house.

“Bad things will happen if they ever find out you’re stronger than them.”

But the Scottish Wolves were here.

To rescue me from my kidnappers.

It felt strange to finally go against my mother’s orders and employ my full strength to yank my arm from the Mountain King’s grip.

And even stranger when it didn’t work.

The Mountain King hauled me along like the rag dolls I used to make out of old dresses before I figured out how to carve.

With what appeared to be very little effort, Tadhg pulled me up to a set of ceiling-high double doors, similar to the ones that led into the hall where Tara and Magnus’s reception had been held.

But instead of wolves carved into the wood, these had large, gleaming knobs shaped like bears.

Knobs Tadhg didn’t even have to use.

The doors swung open for him on their own, as if his presence alone was command enough.

The sentry-less opening might have come off as dramatic, if not for what lay behind them.

Not a ballroom, but a circle of stones tall as buildings loomed over a dirt floor with tufts of grass scattered about.

Bright sunlight poured onto the structure, bathing the giant rocks in majestic light.

Had we gone outside?

No… I realized, looking up.

The entire ceiling was made of glass, which explained the copious amounts of sunlight in this room.

If nothing else.

My mind kept spinning, even after Tadhg stopped in front of a slot between two of the standing stones and pulled the chain with the bear medallion from beneath his T-shirt.

“I’ll handle drop off,” he told the Shadow King’s bear, who had followed us into the otherworldly standing stone room.

“You make sure the house is fully locked down. I doubt they can hack their way through god tech, but it’s been a while since we had to flip all the security buttons on this place. Could you make extra certain?”

The Shadow King answered with a nod of his large black head and lumbered back toward the still-open double doors.

Meanwhile, Tadhg pulled me through the stone’s opening with a grip stronger than any I’d ever known.

Bears. We were all bears.

And while a female bear could easily best a male wolf, there was no way I could take a male of my own species.

This latest confirmation of what I truly was tumbled inside my chest as Tadhg hauled me deeper into the standing granite structure and raised his medallion to one of the stones.

“Stop! Where are you taking me?” If I couldn’t use my no-longer-superior strength, I had nothing left but words.

“You said you wouldn’t do anything without my…”

I blinked, and the word consent fell like a pebble out of my mouth when I found myself standing in pitch black.

For a moment, I was as blinded as if I’d closed my eyes in my windowless room back in St. Ailbe.

Then my night vision kicked in, along with my sense of smell.

I was inside another room now.

Underground. Some kind of cellar.

Dirt. Moss. Stone. That was what the place smelled like.

“I said we would try not to do anything else without your consent,” Tadhg corrected.

He let go of my arm.

Apparently, he was no longer concerned with me running.

“As you’re seeing, there will be a few times when it can’t be helped.”

The room’s door slid open.

Before I could argue with his interpretation of his earlier promise.

And then all arguments fell away when I saw the scene laid out before me.

My mouth dropped open, and I found myself moving forward without need of a tug.

Emerging from the underground cellar into…

…a world. An entirely new world that looked like something out of a picture book.

Vibrant. Glowing under the light of a bright sun.

I stood in front of a glimmering lake with three castles lying to its east, north, and west.

At least, I could only assume those were the directions.

Even my wolf sense of—I mean, my bear sense of—orientation had become jumbled in this strange place that looked like a fairy tale but smelled like damp stone and cool earth.

To the maybe west, a jet-black castle stood in sharp contrast to the emerald-green grass.

Its walls were shiny.

Almost like onyx, though how could an entire castle be made of smooth, ebony jewel?

Either way, it sparkled like some kind of facet-less gemstone under the sun.

Weirdly, its spires and turrets gave it the look of an old-fashioned storybook castle.

But deep-red symbols, like the ones inked on the Shadow King’s human hands, covered every surface.

I couldn’t tell what the symbols were made of.

Not neon. Not mercury.

Something else that glowed and pulsed.

Like electric blood.

What was that word Naomi had once used to describe a forbidden book she'd read, set in outer space?

Sci-fi. Somehow, the black castle to the maybe west struck me as extremely sci-fi.

The castle to the possible north was a bit easier to make sense of.

It reminded me of the one in Faoiltiarn. If someone had embedded it into the side of a steep mountain and set it high above our heads, with only a single set of stone stairs leading up to it.

Another word I’d read but never seen in real life floated across my mind.

Fortress .

Yes. It looked like a fortress.

Barely any windows. Sharp, jagged edges. Towers that looked less like turrets and more like watchpoints. Built not to impress, but to keep people out.

And yet… somehow I knew it had to belong to the affable, bespectacled bear who came to stand beside me.

The Mountain King was literally the ruler of this intimidating mountain fortress.

The castle to the maybe east looked like it had gone out of its way not to match the others.

From what I could tell, it was only one floor. And castle didn’t feel like the right word for it.

If not for the sheer size, I might have called it a house. Or maybe a mansion. But even grander.

It didn’t have the height of the other two, but it possessed wings and courtyards that sprawled so far, I couldn’t even see where they ended from this angle.

The residence was shorter than the other two. But it took up a lot more space.

And instead of standing open to the lake, it was fronted by a tall hedge of trees. Like it wanted to keep its distance from the lake. And the rest of this strange world.

What was this place?

My nose told me we were inside granite. Encased in some sort of cellar or basement.

But when I looked over my shoulder, I saw we’d come out of a tall tower that stretched all the way up into a gorgeous blue sky with fat cotton clouds. And beyond the tower lay an entire village of thatched-roof houses.

Much like the ones in Faoiltiarn. Only this village was way bigger. What had to be hundreds of houses stretched all the way to a wide dirt road with no end I could see. And even though it felt quite pleasant—sixteen degrees, tops—every single thatched roof was covered in a light sprinkling of snow.

I didn’t... couldn’t get it.

It was like I was looking at— standing inside —a painting with more than two dimensions.

It smelled like a dry cave. Yet felt like a perfect early spring day. And looked like a town on the cusp of winter.

“Where... where are we?” I asked the Mountain King in charge of a fortress that didn’t match his affable demeanor.

“No time to explain.” Tadhg took me by the hand this time and started toward the residence to the maybe east.

All I could do was stumble along after him, toward the front of the sprawling estate, which hosted a row of high, arched windows embedded in its massive stone facade.

But we didn’t stop at the short set of steps leading up to a dark wood front door framed by columns. Instead, we kept going until we reached the side of the estate farthest from the tower.

That’s where Tadhg finally brought us to a stop. In front of another arched window, though this one sat on the ground and put me in mind of a glass door embedded into stone.

At least, I thought it was glass. The ground-level window’s smooth exterior was tinted black, so I couldn’t see anything on the other side of it.

“Welcome to the High King’s palace,” Tadhg boomed.

Okay. So it was a palace .

Lots and lots of follow-up questions swirled around my mind. But first, I had to put my hands on my knees and wheeze.

“Sorry, Strawberry.” I could feel Tadhg’s sympathetic gaze above me. “Didn’t mean for your first day with us to be filled with so much confusion and cardiovascular activity.”

Despite his giant size, Tadhg seemed to have had a much easier time with all the running than me. There was barely any breath in his voice as he said, “I’m just going to tuck you away here until we’ve sorted this early arrival from the Scottish Wolves out. Then we’ll have brunch and return to our explanatory conversation.”

Meanwhile, I could barely stand back up to pant out, “High... High King? Who’s that? How... how many kings do you... do you have, anyway?”

“There’s only the three of us, and trust, that’s enough for you,” Tadhg answered, his tone wryly amused. “But Declan’s a topic we’ll need to save for brunch. Let’s get you inside. Just tell it to open.”

“The door?” I asked him.

“ Your door,” he corrected. “It’s meant to be a safe haven for you until we come to an agreement. You’ll have to give it a command for it to grant you entry. A simple ‘open’ should do.”

“Open?” I repeated, not quite understanding.

But the door didn’t seem to need my full comprehension. It slid open with a quiet whisper, just like Tadhg said it would.

“Great, the Shadow King’s already got it set to your bio-coordinates.” Tadhg led the way into the newly opened space.

I had no idea what bio-coordinates meant. But that—and all the other questions crowding my brain—disappeared the second I saw the bedroom he’d guided me into.

More like a suite.

Or... what did my mom call the kind of place she used to live in back in Toronto, before she joined the Wolfennites? A studio apartment .

Yes. The space was so big and well-appointed, with gleaming and sleek everything, if they’d added a kitchen, it could have been one of those studios.

Though I had a feeling my mother never lived in a space with walls made of smudge-less white glass. And a gigantic bed big enough to fit me, her, and a couple of people more.

But the craziest thing was the wall behind the bed.

It was some kind of floor-to-ceiling screen with a view of the glimmering lake. The tower to the left. The black castle I assumed belonged to the Shadow King up ahead. And that uninviting mountain fortress on the right.

The picture was a level of resolution I’d never seen before. Not even on the one big screen in the Faoiltiarn pub where everyone gathered to watch rugby and soccer matches.

Technically, I knew it had to be some kind of video. But it featured birdsong. And what sounded like an actual breeze. If not for the framing of the room—and knowing the lake wasn’t really on the back wall—I would’ve thought I could walk right past the bed and onto its shore.

“These digs are just temporary for now, but make yourself comfortable,” Tadhg invited. “Maybe wash up. It’s been a journey for you, hasn’t it?”

Hold on, he was going? No!

“Tell me where am I first,” I spun around to demand. “Are we underneath the place where I woke up? Like, inside a cave or a cliff? But with some kind of overlay—like a magical sketch, but made of technology?”

“Ah, fair play to you for figuring that out,” Tadhg said with a conceding grin. “The whole Secret Kingdom business isn’t exactly something we’ve ever had to explain to an outsider before—never mind one raised away off in rural Ontario, Canada. I wasn’t sure you’d take to the idea of god tech at all, to be honest. Jaysus, I barely get it myself, which is why I stick to the logistics side of things down here and leave all the fancy overlays, as you called them, to Cian. Right. I can see I’ve lost you again.”

I didn’t realize I was wearing my confusion so plainly on my face until he started backing away with a, “I’ll explain everything later, but right now, I’ve truly got to go.”

“But wait, I have so many more questions. How do you know where I came from, and how was any of this even made?”

“We’ll get all of your questions answered at lunch, I promise, Strawberry.” Tadhg kept backing away—this time clasping his beefy hands with an apologetic wince. “Truly, make yourself comfortable, and we’ll be back as soon as we can manage it. Unfortunately, you can take the COO out of the human world, but my job is never done.”

I swear, my mind nearly collapsed under all my befuddlement. “What’s a COO?”

Tadhg just promised, “I’ll tell you all about my boring job once we’ve secured the kingdom. Rest for now.”

This time, I didn’t get the chance to argue. He stepped over the threshold, and the door slid closed behind him.

Leaving me alone in the luxurious studio apartment that apparently belonged to me.