Total pages in book: 210
Estimated words: 200096 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1000(@200wpm)___ 800(@250wpm)___ 667(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 200096 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1000(@200wpm)___ 800(@250wpm)___ 667(@300wpm)
“I second that.” Abarrane steps out from a tent, weaving her lengthy wheat-colored hair in a thick braid. “Your Highness. You look well rested.”
“And you look … clean.”
She grins. “You should have seen me an hour ago.”
“Where is Zander?” I search around us. These two are never far apart.
She nods toward the tent she just vacated. “He has finally drifted off after days without rest. I would give him an hour before you wake him. Anything beyond that and the fool will fill my ear with complaints for days.”
My shoulders sink. I’m desperate to feel his arms around me, but she’s right. He needs rest.
I take in the camp again from ground level. It buzzes with adrenaline—or perhaps it’s my own adrenaline that invigorates me. “How was last night?”
“Not as eventful as the first, though we fear the beasts have begun crawling up elsewhere.” Abarrane secures her hair with twine. “Only two wyverns emerged, but the great winged beast scared them off. Where they go to, I wish I knew.” She juts her chin at the orange dragon soaring in the sky. “He has a name, by the way.”
“Valk.”
She frowns. “How do you know this?”
“Lucretia. How do you know?”
Her lips purse with hesitation. “That is a story best shared by His Highness. Come, I have something of interest to show you.” She leads Jarek and I deep into camp.
I grimace at the desiccated corpses, stripped of their armor and weapons. “You thought piles of skeletons would interest me.”
“These are the bodies we could not explain before.” Abarrane stands between the two heaps. “Some of them have turned to dust.”
“Did you find the beast that does this?” The soldiers will need to avoid it as readily as they should avoid the vrog that poisoned Jarek.
“In a manner of speaking.” Her face turns grim. “Lord Rengard’s army was marching toward us at the height of Hudem’s moon when the change happened, as it did for us. They were far from any Nulling beasts when a dozen of their soldiers suddenly collapsed, dead. Same thing with the eastern army. And even within our camp, soldiers noticed those near them falling before the first attack.”
“So, it wasn’t a beast that did this?” I struggle to follow her thinking.
“We believe these soldiers were turned Islorian immortals. Not born by the nymphaeum’s blessing. When the nymphs reversed Malachi’s blood curse, all those who lived immortal lives because of the blood curse returned to their mortality.”
“Because they weren’t born this way.” And in mortal years, I’m sure many of them were several hundred years old.
“Exactly. We did not come to this conclusion until last night, after we received word from Lyndel that Lady Telor had succumbed to the same fate.”
I gasp. “Lord Telor’s wife is dead?”
“Yes. And His Highness knew intimate details of her … path to immortality, shall we say.” Abarrane gives me a knowing look. “After some pressing of those closest to the dead, we feel confident this is the answer.”
Gesine did warn me there might be unforeseen consequences to the end of the blood curse. I guess this is one. “But Elisaf is alive and we know he was turned.” By Zander himself—a secret kept to this day, though the law preventing it no longer matters now that the blood curse is gone.
“Aye, he was turned.” Abarrane nods. “That fact stumped His Highness for a time, too, until he started to ask what makes Elisaf different from the others and the answer is you.”
“Me?”
“He was healed by a key caster after a grif shredded him to pieces.”
“So you think I saved him from this?” I hear the doubt in my own voice.
“Lord Telor should have been dead before they reached him, and yet he is now resting in Gaellar’s tent. The elemental could sense traces of something powerful while she was healing him. She found the same thing in Elisaf. There is something special about your touch.” She shrugs. “Ask her yourself, but that is the only explanation we can find for any of it.”
I think back to all those I’ve healed. Elisaf, Lord Telor, Zander … Atticus. Will he benefit from this too?
“On second thought, I think I will accept that healing you suggested this morning.” Jarek holds his hands out to the sides, wearing a smug grin.
“As long as that is all that was suggested this morning while sharing a bed.” Abarrane narrows her gaze at her previous Second. “Speaking of those who should be dead …” She leads us to another tent, throwing the flap aside. “Look what we found wallowing in his own filth when we went to search for Atticus.”
A male lies on a cot, his olive complexion ashen, his lengthy brown hair in disarray. The skin around his shoulder is marred by angry red streaks.
My mouth gapes. “I know him.” Know is not the right word. “He was there the night Atticus took the arrow. He was the one who tried to stop us from leaving.”