Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 67421 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67421 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
“My wife, Queen Elina of Aleron, has returned the Stars of Anhera to Galoth,” Warrick told him. When Bannin’s auburn brows shot skyward, his startled gaze moving from Elina’s face to the rings on her hand, Warrick shook his head to delay the questions he knew would come. “I will explain all later.”
“Good enough. Come!” Bannin spun his horse around. “Let us race to the temple. Not another moment will we suffer under this curse. I hope that giant shamble of a stallion can run?”
Fast enough that they beat Bannin to the city gates. Yet there they had to slow, for the streets were filled with people awaiting the stars’ return, many of them reaching out to touch Warrick’s and Elina’s legs as they rode past, then joining the crowd who followed behind.
Bannin escorted them through the city, until they arrived at the granite mount upon which Anhera’s temple stood. Though no tall mountain, the rise could only be scaled on foot. Steep, twisting stairs led from the base of the mount to the doors of the temple.
Elina was eyeing those stairs with trepidation.
Warrick recalled her determination to ride into Aleron on her own horse, so that none of her people would think her weak. No doubt she had no wish for the people of Galoth to think the same of Aleron’s queen. “I will carry you if you cannot reach the top,” he said to her quietly. “There will be no shame in it.”
She nodded as if in agreement, but by the lift of her chin, Warrick knew she would reach the temple on her own two feet.
Yet the decision was soon taken out of her hands. Though she climbed steadily, such a crush of people followed so closely behind—with those lower on the stairs pushing the ones ahead faster—that she was frequently jostled and nudged. They had not gone a hundred steps before Warrick knew he would either have to carry her to prevent a trampling or shove back at those climbing the stairs after her, though they in turn were being shoved by those behind.
“Elina,” he implored quietly.
She met his gaze, face flushed and chest heaving. Unable to speak a word past her labored breaths, she merely nodded.
Warrick swept her up—not against his chest, where he wished to hold her secure, but seating her upon his shoulder.
“I am no golden sedan chair, my queen,” he said to her, climbing again. “Yet I hope I am a fair substitute.”
He felt her laugh. Yet if she would have replied, she still had no breath for it. Nor did Bannin, puffing alongside them.
Warrick squeezed her thigh and tilted his head to indicate his friend. “Do you think that old shamble of a warrior can run?”
“Old!” Bannin huffed in outrage, his sweating face as red as his hair. “I’ll have…you…know, Troll…slayer—”
Whatever Bannin would have Warrick know, he’d have to catch up to say it. Warrick surged ahead of Bannin’s tortured groan, and was quickly followed by the sound of the other warrior’s thumping steps.
Yet this was no race. Warrick wanted to give Elina a few moments at the top before they were surrounded by the crowd coming in their wake. For if the statues along the road were difficult, they were nothing to what awaited her in Anhera’s courtyard—the sheer number of them who’d dragged their stone limbs up the stairs to beg the goddess for mercy in their final moments, their bodies still bowed in supplication. Or the ones who had been hauled up after the transformation was complete—many of them young, their statues daily tended to and dressed by their loved ones. All brought here in the hope that, with Anhera’s own statue looking upon them, she would relent and let no one else suffer from the curse.
Yet she had not relented.
That goddess’s tall granite figure stood in front of the enormous stone tree that served as her temple. With a feathered cowl draped over much of her face, little of Anhera’s features could be seen beyond a thin mouth and narrow chin. Behind her arched stone wings, caught in the moment before flight. Her figure was as emaciated as a corpse, her narrow chest and concave stomach bare. A skirt beaded with strings of fox skulls fell in a column from bony hips to her clawed toes.
Her right arm was outstretched, palm up and fingers open. Before the theft of the stars, that arm had hung at her side, as the left one still did.
Anhera’s priestess approached, near fully concealed by her raven-feathered cloak. Warrick felt Elina trembling as he set her down, though whether from the force of her emotions or fatigue from the steps she’d climbed, he didn’t know—and it mattered not at all. Her shoulders went back, her spine stiffened, and he saw her again as she’d been in the prison. Though not arrogant and haughty. Instead a woman who would muster every bit of her strength to do what must be done.