Total pages in book: 204
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
My face turns hot, but it’s not from shame. I wonder what would have happened if I’d taken his copper and done what he’d ordered me to—and can’t believe where my mind goes. I should be wary of him, and I am. There’s something else for me, though.
Shifting my eyes to the little hearth, I stare into the flames, watching the undulation of the light, the way the flares of heat entwine and arch into each other—
Jumping back to attention, I look over at my dear old friend. She’s lying back against her pillows, the empty cup lolling in her hand, her attention seemingly on something in the middle distance between us.
“Mare?” I take the cup from her and tap on her shoulder. “Mare. Look at me. Mare.”
Just as I’m worried that I’ve given her too much, she turns her head in my direction like she’s coming back from some place in her mind.
“I want you to do something for me, Sorrel.”
Even though I try not to touch people, I take her palm in my own. “Of course. Anything.”
When she goes silent again, I fuss with the blankets with my free hand, as if that will reanimate her—
“Go to those shelves.” Her crooked finger points across the shallow room, steady as a knurled twig on a branch. “The third one from the top.”
Her voice is not the imperious one she uses when she orders me about. I’m not sure what her tone is.
I set the cup down and go over to where she instructs. “Mare?”
“The panel, it is loose. Push where it meets the molding.”
I find the fissure, and the wood yields under pressure to reveal a dark crevice. I look over my shoulder and await instruction.
“Go on,” she says softly. “Take it out.”
“What is ‘it’?”
“Your future.”
Extending my hand into the hole, I think of rats finding shelter from the cold and wet in the leaky walls of the shop. But instead of rabid little teeth, I feel something like velvet. When I go to pull whatever it is out, I’m astonished at how heavy—
The red velvet bag is tied at the top with a golden tassel that captures the firelight. “What’s this?” I repeat.
“Open it.”
With fumbling hands, I do as instructed—
Royal coins spill out into my palm and fall onto the floor, landing in a gleaming, tinkling chorus at my feet.
“Mare…” I breathe.
My elderly companion sits up in a way she hasn’t been able to for a month. “When I was banished, I snuck them out in the skirt of my gown. As I was still legally the wife of a nobleman, they did not search me.”
Turning a coin over in my palm, I am awed. “I’ve never seen even one of these before.”
How beautiful they are. Each royal dnaka is marked with the proud profile of the bearded King on one side and the fierce head of a grylon on the other, and oh, the weight of them. They are dense with value.
“I want you to take it all and leave today.”
When her arching order registers, I jerk my head around. “What? I’m not going anywhere—”
“We are not safe here for much longer. If you sensed something last night—”
“It was only my fear.”
“I do not believe that.” Mare eases back down with a groan. “My time is coming to an end, and I find that the only thing on my mind is you—”
When I go to interrupt, she shuts me up with that imperious raised hand. “My children were stripped of me when I was banished from the court, and none of them have bothered to try to find me or offer alms for my care and feeding. Therefore, you are the only daughter I have and you are due what worldly possessions I own.”
I blink back tears, for no one has ever claimed me.
As if she senses my emotion, she says more gently, “When I die peacefully in this bed—and we have both agreed you will not intervene—you will have no more ties that bind here in this village. You must go, and go now, so that I do not spend my last days with all this worry.”
I funnel what has stayed in my hand back into the velvet pouch. Then I crouch and pick up the other coins one by one. I inspect them all, turning them over, though they are exactly the same, the grylon and the King. The grylon and the King. The grylon and the—
No, there’s one that’s different. It’s stamped with a younger version of our ruler, and the back side is marked with the image of a crown. No doubt it’s an older one, from when King Rehm first ascended to his throne.
“Sorrel.”
“You can’t call me daughter and expect I’m going to leave you.”
Also, the birthing women like Elly need me. And the bairns. But I don’t speak that out loud even though Mare knows what I do.