Roots of Insight (Dusk Gate Chronicles -- Book Two) Read online

  Roots of Insight

  Book Two

  of

  The Dusk Gate Chronicles

  by

  Breeana Puttroff

  Copyright © 2012 Breeana Puttroff

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

  transmitted, in any form or by any means,

  without the prior permission in writing of the publisher or the author,

  nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other

  than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this

  condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  8.7.13

  ISBN (e-book edition): 978-1-940481-02-9

  ISBN (paperback edition): 978-0-9839930-7-0

  For inquiries, please visit the author at www.breeanaputtroff.net

  Cover Design by Mallory Rock www.malloryrock.com

  Published by Thirteen Pages Press

  P.O. Box 350944

  Westminster, Colorado 80035

  Table of Contents

  ~ 1 ~ Zander

  ~ 2 ~ William

  ~ 3 ~ Adjusting

  ~ 4 ~ The Valentine Dance

  ~ 5 ~ Thomas

  ~ 6 ~ A Date

  ~ 7 ~ An Invitation

  ~ 8 ~ Sneaky

  ~ 9 ~ Return to the Castle

  ~ 10 ~ An Emergency

  ~ 11 ~ Frustrated

  ~ 12 ~ The Wedding

  ~ 13 ~ The Reception

  ~ 14 ~ An Argument

  ~ 15 ~ The Gate

  ~ 16 ~ Questions with No Answers

  ~ 17 ~ Missing

  ~18~ The Journey Begins

  ~ 19 ~ Safe Houses

  ~ 20 ~ Panicking

  ~ 21 ~ Shocking

  ~ 22 ~ Complications

  ~ 23 ~ Still Trapped

  ~ 24 ~ The Friends of Philip

  ~ 25 ~ Stephen and Charlotte

  ~ 26 ~ Astounding

  Preview of Thorns of Decision: Book Three of The Dusk Gate Chronicles

  ~ 1 ~ Angry

  ~ 1 ~

  Zander

  QUINN ROBBINS SIGHED AS she crossed out the third paragraph in her essay for the second time. Homework was the last thing she wanted to be spending this Sunday afternoon doing, but she had been falling behind on her homework during the last couple of weeks, and now she was attempting to tackle the massive pile. However hard she tried, though, she couldn’t concentrate. Her thoughts kept wandering to faraway places. She finally managed to complete the paragraph in a way she could live with just as the doorbell rang.

  Ugh. Who could that be? Her mom had gone to Denver for the weekend with Quinn’s little brother and sister. She wasn’t expecting them to be home for another couple of hours. She put down her pen and ran downstairs. When she looked through the peephole, her breath caught in her throat.

  It was Zander.

  Zander Cunningham was…well, she wasn’t sure exactly what he was right now, aside from being the seventeen-year-old son of her mother’s best friend, Maggie. She and Zander had been close friends since they both were in diapers. Lately, though, things had been changing.

  She took a deep breath and opened the door. “Hey, Zander.”

  “Hey,” he said, his smile reaching all the way to his light brown eyes. “Can I come in?”

  She stepped back into the entryway and pulled the front door wide. The blast of cold air made her shiver. The tiny, mountain town of Bristlecone, Colorado had finally gotten its first big snowstorm of the year during the night. Zander pounded snow from his boots and brushed more from the hood of his blue-and-white ski jacket as he stepped inside. He set a large shopping bag down just past the entryway.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, as she watched him take off his boots and line them up with the collection of others on the side of the tile floor.

  He grinned. “I told you I would help you with your trigonometry homework, didn’t I? Last night you said you’d been falling behind.”

  She blushed. The night before, Maggie had insisted on her going over to their house for dinner since her own mom was out of town. Quinn had been so exhausted and distracted, though, that she couldn’t remember what she might have said during the meal. She could vaguely remember mentioning something about trig as she tried desperately to maintain a normal conversation. “I didn’t know you were actually going to come over here,” she stammered.

  Worry flashed in Zander’s eyes. “It’s okay, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” She smiled in what she hoped was a reassuring way. “I’m glad you came. I haven’t even started on it.”

  “Want to go grab your stuff?” he asked, as he hung his coat on the rack behind the door. “We can work on it in the dining room. I brought a book that helped me.” He held up his backpack.

  “Sure,” she answered. Her mom would probably appreciate it if they stayed in the main part of the house. Her heart fluttered a little at the idea of her and Zander here alone. She swallowed. “What’s in the big bag?”

  “My mom sent over some of her beef and vegetable stew and a bunch of rolls so you guys wouldn’t have to cook tonight.”

  “That was nice of her,” she said, peeking in the bag. It smelled amazing.

  “You know my mom. She likes to feed people.”

  “True,” she agreed. Eating dinner with Zander and his family had been a big part of her childhood, and Maggie was forever sending side dishes and desserts home at the end of the day when Quinn picked up her little sister, Annie, from their house.

  “When will your mom and the little kids be home?”

  “Probably around five or six.” She carried the bag into the kitchen and put the enormous bowl of stew into the refrigerator.

  “Sweet. We have time to get you all caught up in trig.” He was already piling books onto the dining room table.

  She hurried back up the stairs to retrieve her trigonometry book, trying to get her thoughts in order at the same time. Her head was still spinning from the strange experience she had just come home from the night before, and she hadn’t really been able to process what had happened. She had appreciated being home alone today. Zander was almost an awkward interruption, though she wasn’t going to turn him away.

  She checked herself in the mirror, running a brush through her auburn hair. For a second, she considered changing into a nicer shirt, but then thought that might be too noticeable. Settling instead for a quick coat of clear lip-gloss , she headed back to the dining room. Zander smiled when she sat down in the chair he’d pulled out for her.

  As soon as she looked at the first problem, she frowned. She couldn’t remember this at all. Maybe being gone for ten days had somehow affected her memory.

  “Why does this look like it’s written in a foreign language?”

  Zander chuckled. “Have you been paying attention in class at all?” She shot him a dark look, and he held his hands in front of his face. “Sorry, sorry! I’ve just never seen you actually have trouble with something.”

  She sighed and buried her head in her arms as red colored her cheeks.

  “Hey, welcome to how I feel around you all the time,” he said, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear. The unexpected touch sent a shiver down her spine. “I can help you with this, no problem. I’m just glad I’m here to be your knight in shining armor.”

  If his words hadn’t been setting a blaze in her chest, she thought she might have needed to bite back hysterical laughter as she imagined what Zander w
ould think if he knew she’d spent the last ten days in an actual castle. She breathed deeply a few times to compose herself, and looked up. “I’m glad you’re here, too.”

  His answering smile melted everything else away.

  Even with Zander helping, the assignment took nearly two hours. Math had never been Quinn’s strongest subject, but this was bordering on ridiculous. How could she have forgotten so much? He never seemed to lose patience with her, though, and as they got closer to the last problems, she realized that it was the first time she had ever really understood a trigonometry assignment, rather than just struggling through.

  His smile grew wider as he watched her complete those last problems; she did the final one without any help.

  “You’re not bad at this teaching thing,” she said.

  Unless she was mistaken, his cheeks took on the tiniest hint of pink. He shrugged. “It’s easy to teach when there’s a cute girl involved.”

  Now it was her turn to blush. Her heart pounded as Zander, smiling shyly, reached over and ran a single finger down her cheek, all the way to her jawline, where he paused, turning her face up so she was looking into his eyes.

  At that moment, a loud sound made Quinn jump, and Zander dropped his hand. It was the garage door opening, and a car pulling into the driveway. Both of their faces were suddenly bright red, and they started giggling.

  I think my mom’s home,” she said, between gasps for air.

  By the time the door between the kitchen and the garage opened, they were both bent over papers on the table, pretending to write furiously, though uncontrolled snickers kept threatening to break through. Zander had scooted his chair conspicuously far from Quinn’s.

  “Hello Zander,” Quinn’s mother called from the kitchen, carrying her purse and suitcase in one arm, a sleeping Annie in the other. Owen appeared behind her, diligently toting his own bag.

  “Hi, Megan.” He stood and walked over to her, taking the suitcase. “Do you want me to take this upstairs for you?”

  “Sure. Can you come set it on my bed? I’ll carry Annie up to her room.”

  Quinn was left sitting alone at the dining room table, surrounded by books and papers.

  Owen took the seat that Zander had vacated, his eyes scanning over the work that she had finished. “Number six should be 47.2,” he told her quietly.

  She stared at him. “How do you even know that?”

  “I read your trigonometry book.” He shrugged.

  She sighed. “I should have been asking you for help with it, instead of Zander.”

  Owen shook his head. “Zander can explain things better than I can. Anyway, Zander helping you makes your eyes look all shiny, and your cheeks are pink.” He studied her face intently for several moments, his eyebrows furrowing. “Where did you go this weekend?”

  Her heart skipped a beat. “What do you mean? I stayed here.”

  “Your face and neck are tan.”

  Crap. She hadn’t even thought about that. “I, uh, tried some kind of new fake tanning stuff I read about in a magazine.”

  “Oh.” He was silent again. “Well, this one works better than the last kind.”

  Heat flooded her face. She had never tried any kind of fake tanning stuff, and she knew Owen knew that.

  “I’m going to go read until dinner,” he said, “but I’m always here if you need me.” He stood and walked up the stairs, leaving Quinn staring after him in disbelief. Owen’s mild autism often meant he had difficulty understanding things about people, but sometimes the things he did understand were shocking.

  ~ 2 ~

  William

  QUINN ARRIVED AT SCHOOL early on Monday morning. She hadn’t slept well the night before, which she hoped wasn’t going to turn into a habit again now that she was home. She had left the house earlier than usual, worried about the slick layer of snow on the road. Fortunately, the roads had been better than she’d expected, but now she was wandering the empty halls at school, feeling strangely out of place.

  It was like the feeling she sometimes had coming back to school after being out sick for a few days. Anxious, disconnected, wondering what things had changed in her absence. Except that nothing had. She hadn’t actually missed anything. She had been here on Friday; now it was Monday. Everything would be the same.

  Everything except her.

  A few people had started trickling into the halls when she spotted him. He was wearing the same long overcoat she had so often seen him in, a hint of purple wool showing at the collar. She now recognized his purple sweater for what it was: a reminder of his home. Knitted in purple for the royal color of his kingdom. The tiny, silver-embroidered design that she would be able to see on his chest once he removed his coat was a symbol that he was a prince.

  “William!” she called down the hall.

  She thought William Rose looked a bit startled when he first glanced up. Of course, it was possible that no one had ever called to him in the hallway at school before. He had always kept to himself at school, and he had never had any friends. The confused expression turned into a smile, though, when he saw her.

  “Hello, Quinn.” His gray eyes were friendly behind his wire-rimmed glasses, so different from the last time she’d seen him here at school, when his expression had always been distant or annoyed. “It’s good to see you.”

  “It’s good to see you, too.” She was surprised at how happy she was to see him, the one person who wouldn’t think her feelings about today were crazy, who knew the enormous secret she was keeping. She almost felt like hugging him.

  “I have something for you.”

  “What?” She couldn’t imagine William giving her something.

  “Hang on, it’s in my bag. How are you?” he asked, as she followed him to his locker.

  “Um, good, I suppose.” She looked around to make sure no one in the hallway could hear them. “It feels a little weird to be back.”

  His eyes were sympathetic as he dialed the combination. “I know the feeling. Did closing your eyes help?”

  “Yes…with the gate part. It’s everything since then that’s a bit overwhelming.”

  He nodded. “It can be.”

  “How are you? How is … everything?”

  The look in his eyes told her that he knew what she was asking. Although Quinn had come back from Eirentheos, the world that was his true home, on Saturday, William hadn’t come back until last night, which had given him another ten days there. “Things are better. We think that all of the contaminated books have been found, and all of the children who were exposed have been treated properly. We’ve identified the teacher who was responsible for distributing the books.”

  She wanted more details about that, but there were more pressing concerns on her mind at the moment. “And Thomas?”

  “Is fine, just as he promised he would be.” He smiled, unzipping his backpack. “In fact, he sent me a letter to give to you.”

  “He did?”

  “Yes. As did Linnea.” He withdrew two heavy envelopes from his bag, and handed them to her. “And I brought you these.”

  She gasped when she saw the three small, colorful stones in his hand. She had found them near the river on one of her first days in Eirentheos, the first time she had gone horseback riding with William and his brother and sister. She had put them in her pocket, intending to bring them home to give to Owen, who collected unusual rocks. But they had been forgotten when she’d packed to leave the castle in a rush.

  “Mia found them when she was cleaning your room. I thought you would probably still like to have them.”

  She nodded, a sudden lump in her throat as she thought about “her” room in the castle, and Mia, the kind servant who had taken such diligent care of her. Taking the stones into her hand, she rubbed her thumb against them. They were smooth, like marble, and the sensation flooded her mind with memories.

  “And this is from me,” he said, holding out another small object. “I figured you might like to have a little somethin
g to give to your sister, as well.”

  Quinn was stunned. The object was a small horse, expertly carved out of soft, Eirenthean wood. She examined the tiny details carefully. “It’s Dusk,” she said in surprise. Dusk was the horse that William’s mother, Queen Charlotte, had given to her to ride during her time in their world.

  “Yes, do you like it?”

  “You carved this?”

  “Yes. Nathaniel says carving is good practice for surgery and stitches.” His eyes followed hers down to the inside of her right leg, where he had stitched a cut after she had fallen on the night she had followed him through the gate.

  She swallowed hard. “It’s beautiful, thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” He looked up at something over her shoulder. She turned and followed his gaze.

  The hallway had filled with people during her conversation with William. Watching them, from a few feet away, was Zander. Though his eyebrows had been knitted together as he watched them, his eyes lit up when they met hers.

  “You’d better go,” William said quietly.

  She nodded. “Thank you so much.”

  “You’re very welcome.” His expression was soft as he closed his locker and headed down the hallway.

  “Hey, Quinn.” Zander’s smile was infectious.

  “Hi, Zander.”

  “Were the roads okay this morning?” He brushed snowflakes out of his damp hair. A big drop of water landed on her left wrist, and he reached to wipe it away.

  Heat washed over her at his touch. “Yeah, they were fine. I left early, just in case.”

  “Good.” He smiled. “What’s all this?”