Time's Prison

By J.M.D. Reid

“I let him die for duty.”

Mokom and Alila are trapped in a prison of love and duty.

Alila, the first female Knight Defendant in centuries, stands at a cliff, despair filling in her heart. She is haunted by the strain of battle and the guilt of letting Mokom die.

Doomed to repeat her mistakes, Alila jumps to her death as she remembers her past and the young man that changed her life.

How will Mokom and Alila escape the chains of Love and Duty? You will have to read this exciting and diverse fantasy short story!

• Language: English
• Publisher: J.M.D. Reid
• Release date: Apr 19, 2018

Book preview

Time's Prison

by

J.M.D. Reid

Copyright © 2015, 2018 by J.M.D. Reid

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the expressed written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Published in the United States of America, 2015, 2018.

Edited by Poppy Reid

Cover Photo © nejron | Depositphotos.com

Cover art by silverheart

Reid Publishing

www.JMD-Reid.com

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ONE

Alila stood at the cliff, staring at the sun setting into the ocean, the Star clutched in her hand.

She was dead inside. The fires that had once burned hot inside her were snuffed out when the Ssyth blade cut him down. She had felt this despair once before and had been swallowed by this darkness. He had rekindled her fires and saved her.

Who’ll rekindle them now?

She gazed down the cliff at the frothy, pounding surf into the rocks warn into jagged teeth. Strands of her fiery hair had escaped her braid and were whipped into her face by the wind. She pushed them back and was surprised to find a flower tucked behind her ear.

The flower was blue, the small, drop-like petals blushing to orange at their tip. Was it only this morning he gave this to me? Alila remembered the first bluedrop he had given her nineteen years ago. She had dropped it on the training sands, but he had kept it. She loved him for that.

She dropped the flower, watching it float free down the cliffs into the dark waters below. Just one step, and I can be as free as that flower. I can escape his death. Akimika’s death.

The Star was warm in her hand.

Alila looked at it, a small sphere of gray metal as light as a feather. Alila knew her duty—she had to return the Star to the Queendom. She had sworn oaths. I let him die for duty. I could have used this to save him. The tears came, falling on the metal’s surface. Why didn’t I use the Star to save him and let Duty be unbalanced?

She hated the Star, hated her duty. Hated herself.

Ever since the arrow, I’ve hated myself. Only I loved him more.

I wish I’d never picked you up, she shouted at the Star before she threw herself off the cliff.

The Star glowed pure white.

* * *

Nineteen years ago . . .

Mokom sat on a bench facing the training grounds—a sea of white sand surrounded by gray paving stones—ostensibly reading a treatise on fencing, but actually marveling at a blushing bluedrop that had poked through the gap between two paving stones. The flower’s teardrop petals were a deep-blue blushing to orange at the tips. The flower sprouting there ruined the symmetry of the training yard, and the unbalance it caused kept drawing his attention away from his reading.

Should I pluck it? Mokom knew he should, returning balance to the yard, but his mother had loved the blushing flowers. Whenever he thought of her—she’d died five years ago—it was always in her garden tending these flowers.

A shadow fell across the flower. Mokom looked up to see a girl’s form standing a dozen paces away, almost a silhouette framed by the setting sun.

He sucked in a breath as he witnessed the most radiant creature he’d ever seen in all his fifteen years of life. She possessed skin as black as Mokom’s, hair as orange as fire, gathered in a thick braid. He sucked in his breath; the treaty slipped unnoticed from his lap. He had only ever seen fiery hair on one of the Peachmen.

But she was no pale-skinned Theronese; her skin was the rich ebony of a fellow Miruaurim—a daughter of Symmetry and Balance. Her flaming hair made her seem so exotic. Every girl Mokom knew had the same boring, black hair.

Then he noticed that she wore the training leathers of a Knight-Apprentice. Like him.

Discordance, he thought. How long has it been since a woman was accepted to the Knights Defendant? Centuries?

There was an unsure look on her face, and Mokom remembered that same feeling when he had arrived last week—everything had been new and unfamiliar. Older boys had moved with deliberation, sparring and yelling, a tight camaraderie that had excluded the newcomers. It had been intimidating to a lowborn healer’s son.

On impulse, which was decidedly unlike the thoughtful youth, Mokom snatched the blushing bluedrop and hurried over to her, his heart hammering. I’m going to make an unbalanced fool of myself. A curious looked played across her face, and a smile touched her full lips as she noticed the flower in his hand.

Hi. Mokom didn’t know what to say. He was always terrible at talking to lowborn girls, let alone one that—despite her foreign hair—had the regal bearing ingrained in those nobly born. Of course, custom said all trainees were equal. Here. He thrust out his hand.

The girl took the flower and brought it to her nose. Thank you, she answered; her voice was refined, a beautiful song compared to the gravel of his own voice. I’m Alila.

I’m Mok—

So it’s true, a cold, regal voice rang out. They let a woman join our ranks.

Mokom’s blood chilled. Discordance! On his first day arriving to train as a Knight Defendant—only one of sixty-four were given such an honor every year—he had quickly been set straight by Kronork on where he stood—beneath his betters.

Kronork strode across the sands, flanked by his two friends: the huge Yuluy and the toady Maninam. With handsome features