Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 132138 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 661(@200wpm)___ 529(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132138 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 661(@200wpm)___ 529(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
“I know.” I answer Gillian, not wanting the older woman to understand my impatience to be abed.
Gillian places the quilt down and stares for a moment as though assessing the situation. “Do you want to run now?”
It’s a kindness to even offer. I force my attention to the here and now. I owe Gillian much more than my life. “We have to have coin. I know that. I can handle Micha. He’s a nasty old man, but I can manipulate him.”
Gillian sits on the edge of the bed, her hands in her lap. “I tried to turn his eye to me so you wouldn’t have to.”
I rush to her side. “Gilly, don’t. I can handle him.”
Gillian is so still, I’m almost certain she won’t say another word. “He didn’t even look at me. Not that I wanted him to, but still. I know I’m not a youngling anymore, but I thought I had some charm.”
Too, too often I sink into my own grief and forget how much Gillian gave up for me. Gillian lost her own kingdom. She was cut off from it as surely as if someone took it. All doors closed because Gillian didn’t leave me behind. She gave up her youth. What would have happened if she was safe on the Unseelie plane when Torin started his nasty game? Would she be married by now? Have a child?
I let my hand drift over Gillian’s, feeling the calluses and scars that didn’t exist before she saved a dead princess. My voice chokes with emotion. “I think you’re the most beautiful woman in all the planes.”
Unshed tears make Gillian’s dark eyes shine. “You haven’t seen much, little one.”
I shake my head. “I’ve seen enough to know I love you.”
Gillian hugs me, a tight embrace. “And I love you. You understand that whatever I did, whatever reason I did it, I have come to love you, Bronwyn. I would place you first now.”
“Why did you do it?”
Gillian sits back, taking a long breath. “I thought if I saved you, you could bring the kingdoms together. I intended to talk to my father and marry you off to my brothers.”
A part of me is offended, but it’s the childish bit that clings to shadowy vestiges of my former life. I’m more practical now. “I was only fourteen at the time. I’m not sure I would have made a decent wife.”
“Had I gotten you off the plane, you would have been brought up to be an Unseelie princess. I would have seen to it, and your brothers would have been welcomed. They would have had a place until such time as an army was ready. We weren’t always two tribes, you know.”
It’s radical what Gillian is proposing. “That was thousands of years ago.”
“I know. I wasn’t trying to unite the crowns, merely to have a closer relationship. We fight far too often. In the end, it will make us vulnerable. I’ve studied this plane called Earth. They are much like the vampires, though they’ve been closed off for so long, they don’t understand the way the planes work anymore. I don’t know they ever did. They do understand what it means to conquer. When the humans discover the secrets of the planes, I doubt they’ll be content to leave us be. We will need each other. Whether it’s tomorrow or a thousand years from now, we will need to stand together if we’re to survive.”
Gillian always thinks ahead. It is, she claims, the mark of a true leader.
“The humans could certainly take us now,” I acknowledge with a sigh. “Is that why you were here in the first place? To negotiate a marriage?”
“I tried to negotiate a marriage between myself and your brothers,” Gillian admits. “I am capable of bonding, just as you are. I could have bridged the kings. But your father had already selected a bondmate.”
My nose wrinkles at the thought. “I think if Cian had known you were trying to push Maris out, he would have sent her over the edge of the moat. He couldn’t stand her, and she hated him. I always wondered what Father was thinking selecting a mate who hated one of her proposed husbands. You would have been a better choice. Do you think they bonded?”
Gillian’s mouth turns down. “I’ve heard rumors.”
I lean forward, a bit surprised. “And you didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t want to get your hopes up, and it could all be peasant rabble-rousing. We have no way of knowing. They say the kings have bonded and formed a true triad.”
I sit back, my head spinning with the thought. A true triad. It’s a legend. The story goes that when a pair of symbiotic twins find their perfect mate, they come into godlike powers. In the past, some could call water to their aid, walking on it and forming huge waves to crush their enemies, while others claimed the power to talk to all manner of beast, building an army of predators. But it’s merely a legend. If it happened before, it was so long ago no one on either of the planes can remember it. Surely it’s merely a rumor. Symbiotic twins are rare and powerful, but they can’t control the elements.