Allies (Warriors of Karal Book 5) Read Free

protecting the new President’s daughter. How does she know she can trust you?” Petra walked across the close-cropped grass, weaving in and out of other headstones placed there by the loved ones of people long gone. She knew them so well. It was too dark to read their inscriptions, but she didn’t need to see, she knew them all by heart.
    “This isn’t a new job.” He continued to look around, as he spoke, making Petra very nervous, but he also gave her a sense of security. He was big and solid; someone would have to try very hard to get through him.
    “What does that mean?” she asked.
    She neared the one headstone she knew better than any other in the cemetery. Her fingers itched to touch the cold stone, to trace each letter, each word, that told strangers who her father was. But the words were so few, and so pathetic, they did him no justice. To think that words cut into stone could explain exactly what this man meant to her, and her mother. As if they could tell how this man, now a pile of bones in a wooden casket, was the catalyst that had changed the world.
    “I worked for the old President.” His voice was level, showing no emotion, giving nothing. And she wondered if she should be scared of him, that perhaps he had followed her out here to kill her in revenge for the fate of his old boss. Would it be so bad to die here? Never having left Earth. This was the spot that she always thought she would rest in, when breath ceased to fill her lungs and her brain no longer functioned.
    She tore her eyes away from the headstone and looked at this man beside her in his dark suit. It was the first time she had looked at him as a person. She didn’t even know his name, hadn’t wanted to know, because he was part of a world that wasn’t hers. “Should I be scared?”
    He smiled so very faintly that it was just a slight curl of his mouth. “No. I support your mother. It was time for a change. As the personal bodyguard of the old President, I saw what he was. How corrupt he had become. I knew that to survive, we needed somebody who understood the people.”
    “You betrayed him?” Her voice was a whisper, soft on the breeze.
    “Yes.” One word and then his lips were pressed tight, and she knew that he didn’t want to speak of it. It was a same expression she had seen on her mother’s face so often in the weeks leading up to the events that changed all their lives. The secret she had inside her, which she couldn’t even share with her daughter, had been like a parasite, sucking her dry.
    “Will you look after my mother now?” It seemed important, somehow, to get this assurance from him. She had often thought that her father watched over them, from somewhere. However, she didn’t know where because she didn’t believe in heaven, not anymore. Although she wanted to. After his death she had often lain awake hoping that one day they would all be together again, in a different place.
    “Yes,” he said firmly. His eyes grazed their surroundings again, and then for the first time he looked directly at Petra. “I know you and your mother have argued. I know you don’t want to go to Karal. I just want you to know that she tried to persuade them not to take you as part of the deal.”
    “I understand, but it’s hard for me right now to just accept it. I can’t help being upset that my mother would sacrifice me. To anyone else, looking in, it might seem different. One person against the fate of the rest of the human race. But she’s my mother, and since I don’t have a father anymore, she was the one person I thought I could count on to always look out for me.”
    She turned and looked at her father’s headstone, reaching out and touching it as she had so many times. Her fingers threaded their way along the letters, and then she knelt down and brushed the dirt off the base of the stone. Petra wondered if her mother would ever come here, whether she would ever have the time to visit this grave, to think of the