Two Thousand Years | The Empire Saga #1

Chapter Fifty-One

Alex awoke to Sarayna crying within her arms. They were sprawled on a hard floor with debris from the world they left behind surrounding them. Regaining her senses, she angled her head toward the fireplace, but it was empty and quiet.

The Key had closed behind them.

Alex sat up, comforting her daughter as she looked at her new surroundings. The dying sunlight created shadows across the floor, but she knew this place, and she knew it well.

She was back at her apartment in Boston.

She stood as best as she could as she balanced an infant in her arms, and walked to the nearby bay window while brushing the dust from her clothes. The once-familiar sun was setting over the city skyline she knew so well from so long ago.

So, this was their escape plan.

Her head snapped back to the fireplace, remembering Treyan was supposed to follow her. She rushed back to the fireplace to see if there was something—anything—left of the Key that would give her the sliver of hope that he would return to them.

She saw nothing. The fireplace was bare. She had to keep herself from scraping her nails against the masonry, as Treyan once warned her so long ago. But before she was consumed with grief, she heard a ringing in the distance.

Searching for the source, she found her purse on the floor exactly as she left it on the night she was taken to the Empire. Her phone, still holding a battery charge after all this time, rang from inside.

With one hand she picked up the purse and rifled through it to retrieve her phone as the ring tone carried on.

It was Crystal.

"Hello? Crystal?"

"Alex? Oh my god, are you okay?"

"I'm...I'm fine...what's going on?"

"You tell me! I've been trying to get in touch with you all day! After you called me when you got home from the bar last night, and haven't answered your phone since, I've been worried sick..."

"...the bar last night?" Alex blinked at the empty fireplace, trying to connect the dots.

"Umm, yeah? Remember? We went out for your birthday, and I found that guy with the ponytail, and you called me to tell me about your apartment..."

Alex had stopped listening and needed to sit down quickly. She found a chair in her kitchen, at her own breakfast table—everything as she remembered when she left it. She must have heard her friend incorrectly. After all that happened, and everything that transpired, it had only been a day's time?

"Alex? Hello? Is that a baby I hear?"

"I'm here...I'm here. Actually, Crystal, I need you to come over."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah," she confirmed, looking down at Sarayna. "There's something I need to talk to you about..."

"Good, I'm right down the street anyway. Not to mention, I love gossip. Is it—" But Crystal was cut off by the sound of something breaking in Alex's living room.

"Just come over here. Now."

She hung up the phone without waiting for a response, focused on the commotion in her apartment. Had Reylor followed her back? He had once said he had Keys in place...

She crept along the wall toward the living room entrance, keeping her ears open for the intruder. She had been in this position before, but this time she would not be taken unaware. Reaching across the kitchen counter top, she grabbed a knife from the butcher's block. Her only regret was having Sara in her arms, but she wasn't about to let her out of her sight, and there was nowhere she could put her that would be safe enough for a baby while Mommy fought off the bad guy.

Shifting her baby to her left side, she led with the knife in her right hand toward the living room, ready for anything that might jump out at her. Peering around the corner, she initially saw nothing out of place. Everything was as it should have been.

All seemed well until a figure wrapped in a black robe began crawling across the floor.

"Alex?" a low, harsh voice called out to her.

She screamed and ran from the room, back into the kitchen to protect her newborn from the prowler. She crouched by the apartment's door with her knife in hand, ready for a fight. Whoever—whatever—it was, she heard the figure begin to shuffle in her direction, and she raised the knife higher.

With a moan, the hooded figure shuffled toward her, and she used his own momentum against him as she lunged, elbowing the intruder in the temple, stunning him to the point where he let her go as he crumpled to the ground. Taking advantage of her freedom, she ran through the kitchen door back into the living room, the knife still in her hand while Sarayna was cradled in the other.

"Alex?"

This was a different voice coming from the kitchen—a familiar female voice that raised Alex's panic.

"Crystal, be careful," she warned, but her friend's screams had Alex running back into the kitchen.

Crystal's eyes were wide as she looked between the weapon and the baby. "Alex, what are you doing?"

"Crystal, it's not safe here anymore. We have to go."

Looking around her toward the figure on the floor, Crystal turned white. "Alex, what the hell is he doing here?"

"Who?"

Turning around, Alex followed Crystal's gaze.

On the kitchen floor between them, the robed figure's hood had fallen off in the shuffle, and Treyan, Crown Prince of the Empire, lay unconscious on the floor of Alex's apartment.