Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 64872 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 324(@200wpm)___ 259(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64872 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 324(@200wpm)___ 259(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Lykos stops her. “What are you going to do?”
I glance over as she smiles, bats her lashes, and flicks her hair.
She’s ambivalent about our king, and yet she’s gliding down the staircase to possibly have this man put his paws on her. For . . . me?
Swallowing, I glance at Lykos. Stop her, please.
I don’t have to tell him, but he’s almost at the storyteller’s stage when he finally catches her by the arm. He pulls her around and she twirls with it, possibly about to say a sharp word or two, when she sees it’s Lykos.
She pauses, and he uses the pause, declaring before curious onlookers. “Wife. Our table is upstairs.”
Megaera stares at him, her cheeks slowly reddening.
Lykos smirks, his eye glinting. He leans in and murmurs, “I’ll lead the way.”
He hooks her arm in his; Megaera finally sucks in a sharp breath and mutters low into Lykos’s ear. “Wife?”
“You poison me every other day, you may as well be.”
They move away, and I look over at Gudmund who’s admiring himself in a brass plate. I hold out my hand again. “The braids.”
Gudmund tightens the strings of his pouch and puts a few coins on the table instead. “You said it wasn’t difficult. This is a fair.” He burps and calls for the waiter to bring him a bottle of wine for the road.
I grit my teeth and head outside for fresh air. Somehow, I need to get those braids. I’ll make a poison. He’ll think his skin disease has returned. He’ll come to me to cure him again. And this time I’ll only give him the antidote when—
“There you are,” Zenon says, spilling out of the restaurant.
Megaera and Lykos, lagging behind, frown back towards the restaurant.
Megaera, still slightly flushed, grabs Zenon’s sleeve and starts hauling him in the direction of our abode.
“Coming?” I ask Lykos, but he waves me off.
He probably needs a moment of air after his little show with Megaera. Or he’s giving her space.
Indeed, she quickly retreats to her room.
Zenon yawns and says he thought what I did was amazing. “I’d like to learn to do that.”
“Finish your reading and writing lessons with Megaera, and I’ll teach you,” I say. Anyone who wants to learn, I’ll always be willing to teach.
He goes off to bed with purpose, and so do I. I lie staring up at the shadowy ceiling. Those braids are an intimate part of him. They are not to be spat on, cast away, burned . . . undone.
I clench my blankets in my fist.
I wake, bolting upright in my bed to the distant clang of bells echoing through the city. Make the poison, find Gudmund, reclaim the king’s braids.
My blanket becomes a shrivelled puddle on the floor in my haste. I suck in a hiss at the cold tiles and yank on my shirt, leggings, socks, boots, robe. My fingers fumble at the metal clasp and I fleetingly wish it was a different one. The one that I keep in a box beside my bed; that I can’t wear or I might be recognised by the Skeldars I sailed with. The one I absolutely can’t wear in front of Quin.
I glance over towards the dark box and spy a pouch plonked atop it.
I snag it and yank open the ties and . . .
I press the open bag to my nose and breathe in deeply. They’re here.
Scurrying out into the kitchen, I find Lykos stoking the hearth. He looks over his shoulder, at the pouch I’m gripping, and returns to prodding the flames.
“You got this?” I ask quietly.
A nonchalant shrug. “Sometimes a good ol’ snatch-and-grab comes in handy. I followed him home. I was careful.”
“You did this for—”
“He cheated you.” He stuffs another piece of wood into the fire. “I don’t like cheaters.”
Silence descends between us and in it, I hear things he doesn’t admit. I murmur, “Thank you for”—he tenses—“not liking cheaters.”
His shoulders drop with relief.
It takes me an hour to inspect each of Quin’s braids. The scent of them is faint but unmistakably Quin—earthy with a hint of pine, like the winds he magics around him. My fingers brush the bejewelled fastenings, each one a marker of a year survived. And against his uncle, each one must have been a battle. I redo all loosened braids carefully and open the fastenings to lock in both ends. I don’t like them being in the pouch, or anywhere I can’t protect them, so I loop them and slide them onto my wrists, up to the middle of my forearm. They’re beautiful; like strange vambraces.
My sleeves hide them, and like this, I spend the day with my aunt carefully learning and experimenting.
“You still haven’t changed your voice back,” she says over our alchemy table. “What do your companions think?”
“I told them it was an experiment. Lykos and Zenon believe it. Megaera’s too smart, but she doesn’t say anything.”