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)
“Alive or dead?”
“My scout did not specify, other than to say they seemed very interested in that one in particular. I wonder why that is.” He watches me evenly as I process this bit of information.
Could Zander and Romeria be looking for me? In that case, who would they have taken? I know who I would collect—the male who knows me better than myself in some ways. Kazimir. But there would only be one reason to take him—if he was alive to give answers.
“I suppose it is a good thing they didn’t continue farther east. They would have happened upon your Kierish army. Imagine the destruction that beast could cause.”
“Yes, it is a blessing. I think that shall be all. Guards, please take our guest back to his accommodations.”
I set my mug on the table and stand. “No execution today, then?” Were the chains a ruse or did he change his mind when I got here?
“Not today. Perhaps tomorrow.” He studies his fingernails. “My wife claims I am too indecisive to be pragmatic. Satoria, that is. You recall her, do you not? She is the one you refused.” He pauses. “When she offered her vein.”
Right. “The wife outfitted as a servant.” Though she wasn’t dressed as such last night. She wasn’t dressed at all. I bite my tongue against that taunt, though something tells me it wouldn’t come as a surprise to him. “I know you have three others to console you, but I find it odd that you would present her so freely to a prisoner such as myself. Her vein, that is.”
The corners of his mouth curve upward, and then he flicks two fingers toward the door, dismissing me.
This is the game we shall play.
So be it.
31
Romeria
Dawn peeks past the sheer window dressings when I reach the last page of Neilina’s diary, my eyes bleary from lack of sleep. “Eight times,” I call out into the quiet room.
Zander looks up from the desk. A stack of sealed letters sits in a tidy pile, ready for Mordain’s messenger casters to deliver on swift wings. They’re not only to Ybaris’s ruling class, though. There are letters signed by Zander and addressed to Islorian lords and ladies, announcing our alliance and his intention to reclaim his throne.
“Neilina had her elementals summon the fates eight times.” Wendeline once told me that to summon a fate as an elemental, you were basically bound to them for life. But Neilina had access to hundreds of elementals over her years as queen. She could reach out to any of the fates with no limits. Except Malachi, of course, because those with an affinity to him were all killed at birth.
“They answered five of them.” Three summons were ignored, much to Neilina’s fury, based on her scathing entries. She blamed the elementals and had them poisoned in the night, with false claims they had succumbed to the change and died within hours of falling ill. “No wonder she insisted on keeping them here, on a leash.”
“It is not a surprise that a ruler with access to power would use it, despite laws and oaths against doing so. We should have assumed as much.” Zander stands and makes his way to the grand bed where I’ve settled, peeling layers of clothing and weapons off as he approaches. “Nor is it a surprise that the elementals would agree to save their own skin.” The featherbed sinks with his weight beside me.
“Two refused. She executed them for treason.”
“A subject who does not submit is of no use.” His eyelids are growing heavy, despite the topic. His kind can run on little sleep, but he looks tired. “So, what did she ask of the fates?”
“Once for Aminadav to heal the farmland damaged by the rift he made.”
“He certainly didn’t do that.”
“That’s the thing. Apparently, he did. For a hundred years, the land produced again.”
His eyes flash open. “An apology from a fate?”
“She doesn’t say anything about an apology. She asked and he answered, and they had crops again. People built homes and entire villages around the outskirts, trade picked up. And then suddenly, everything toppled again. At first, the farmers thought it was a strange blight, but the next year, nothing grew. So, Neilina made another elemental summon Aminadav again and asked him for more.” Demanded it is more like it, if the words in her journal are anything like what she said to him. “She insisted that the fates owed her after what they had done to her realm.”
“And?” Zander listens, intrigued.
“And they woke up overnight to all these fields bursting with new crops.”
His eyebrow arches. “Aminadav gave her what she wanted again?”
“She thought so. Neilina told the people it was her elemental casters who healed the land. The Ybarisans praised her and named a harvest festival in her honor. And then people started getting sick. Stomachaches and fevers, feeling like their insides were burning. Mordain’s healers kept healing people and then they’d get sick again. They couldn’t fix it. No one tied it to the crops until the dead middle of winter, when people stepped into their storerooms and found everything turned black with rot, overnight.”