Shades of Doon Read Free

a sickly shade of yellowish-green that mirrored how I felt on the inside.
    Jamie, Duncan, Fergus, and Ewan exited at the opposite end of the arena. Guessing that we would not see them again untilthey’d cleaned up, I placed my hand under Vee’s elbow and lifted her to her feet as I stood. “The queen and I need to use the royal restroom.”
    Vee’s brow furrowed. “No, I don’t.”
    “Well, I do.” I tugged at her sleeve. “Are you sure you don’t need to tinkle?”
    Tinkle was the code word we’d used in junior high when we wanted to chat privately in the girl’s room. Vee’s eyes widened slightly as she nodded. “Actually, I do need to go.”
    As she stepped toward the back of the royal box, Emily Roosevelt and Gabriela Rosetti, who’d recently joined the royal entourage as Vee’s ladies-in-waiting, moved to follow. Vee stopped them with a wave of her hand. “Thanks, but I think Kenna and I can do this alone.”
    In tandem, we climbed down the stairs and walked a short distance away from the festivities to a short brick structure. There were several such bathrooms ringing the arena, but only one had a private guard and required a crown to enter. This particular building had two doors, one for the king and another for the queen.
    The guard stepped aside and we entered a private sitting room. Divans and oversized ottomans in plush cream fabrics dotted the area. Interspersed tables provided a variety of fruit, sweets, and drinks — all decidedly unappetizing after what I’d just witnessed.
    Vee headed straight to a set of sinks at the back of the room, where she turned on the taps and splashed water over her face. One of my first and most favorite discoveries about the kingdom of Doon had been its running water — a pleasant surprise given the medieval kingdom’s lack of other modern conveniences like electricity, refrigeration, and microwaves. Yay for modern plumbing!
    My bestie took her time patting her face dry before speaking. “What’s up, Ken?”
    She looked so composed that I instantly doubted what I thought I knew. “Uh,” I stammered, unsure how to begin. “That was a surprising turn of events out there.”
    Her brow pinched. “You mean with Jamie and Duncan? ’Cause they were the favorite to win, regardless of Fiona’s trash talk.”
    Though Vee and I shared a brain more often than not, this didn’t seem to be one of those times. Rather than fish for confirmation that my hunch about her was correct, I blurted out, “Cars. I saw cars. Actually — two cars and a truck, and they collided with a crunch and I’m pretty sure I’m Coco Puffs.”
    The corner of Vee’s lip twitched, and then her careful composure cracked with a gigantic sigh. “Oh, thank heavens.”
    “That I’m cuckoo?”
    She shook her head as she sank onto a plushy divan. “That you saw it too. I thought it was just me — that I was getting sick again or something.”
    I sat in the chair opposite her and searched her vibrant blue eyes. “So we’re both crazy?”
    “No. It means what we saw was real.”
    Her words were hardly reassuring. “So how come the villagers didn’t freak out?”
    “Kenna, you really have to stop referring to the other citizens as ‘the villagers.’ You’re one of them now. They’re not about to come after you with pitchforks.”
    No matter how many times Vee said that, I still felt like an outsider. Duncan said to give it time, so I was trying not to obsess about being the new kid on the block. But I was mentally digressing. Returning to the topic of tales from the weird side, I said pointedly, “No one else seemed to see the collision except us.”
    “I’m not sure why.” Vee bit at her lip, signifying she wasdeep in thought. “None of the other Destined seemed to see it either. Just us . . . Maybe it has something to do with our gifts, or our connection to the Rings of Aontacht or the modern world. Or maybe — ”
    “Or maybe it was PTDS. A post-traumatic Doon stress.”
    She