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)
Even if there was someone willing, would they be willing to be pegged as a possible traitor to Lumin? Would they be willing to be sneered at by Skeldars?
“We are here to prove exceptional healing without magic.”
Skriniaris Evander accepts this, and Megaera and I are once more swept up by stormblades and brought to our temporary accommodations: Prince Nicostratus’s manor.
The grand façade and vibrant murals remain unchanged, but the life within has dimmed. Pinched-faced redcloaks haunt the halls, and the prince is conspicuously absent.
When Petros shows me to my room, he’s limping, and when I offer help, he looks around skittishly and declines as if he’s being watched.
As I set myself up in my allocated chambers—under the same murals of Lumin’s greatest vitalian, in the same chambers the prince had given me—I pick up worrying whispers from aklos and aklas. They don’t know where the prince is, or how he’s faring. After the showdown with Eparch Valerius at the drakopagon game, after the royal brothers left for the south, the regent’s men swept into the manor, dragged out anyone wearing the prince’s symbol and beat them into submission. Since then, this place has been theirs.
I’ll need a space free of eyes in which to study in the days before the contest begins.
Prins Lief agrees to this and Megaera and I move to my grandfather’s cabin in the forest to practice. Megaera proves herself a quick study, cooking my scriptions over and over until her hands are stained green, and when she asks for space without my constant critiques, I take my grandfather’s books and slink through the woods, to that tree.
The violet oak’s branches sway gently, waving like an old friend welcoming me home. I press my palm to its bark, cool and rough beneath my skin, and breathe deeply—crisp, earthy, familiar. The scent carries both comfort and the weight of everything that’s passed. Here—under its canopy, in the hollowed base of the trunk—is where my fate with him began. It’s also where we once parted. Now, I’m here again, carrying the deepest wish to free him.
The tree hums faintly under my fingertips—as if it understands. As if to offer me luck.
But I’ll need more than luck.
I’ll need skill, and the confidence not to falter.
“Iknow you’re hesitant,” Megaera says as we walk back through the forest and into Hinsard’s cobbled streets, “but if there is any way to find a third . . .”
I grimace, but I know she’s right. We have so much stacked against us already. But the risk . . .
I stop and face her. “Why are you helping me? You must know I’m doing all this for our king.”
She looks back at me, and I catch a flicker of regret in her gaze that says everything. “I know why I’m here.”
I don’t make her explain. I nod quietly. “Go ahead. I need some things from the apothecary.”
She continues on, and I pinch my nose under my feathered mask and traipse over the main square. When I exit the apothecary, I glimpse Florentius’s figure again, and again I chase after it only to lose him once more to the crowds heading into the afternoon service at the luminarium. Even if I did catch up to him, what then? I can’t risk revealing myself. Can’t ask how Akilah is doing or where she is. Can’t thank him for being by her side when I wasn’t.
An outraged shout has me snapping my attention to a skirmish in the square. A young man is shouting savagely at someone on the ground and between them is the vapour of smashed capsulised spells. Remaining intact ones roll in all directions. One spell bumpily skids my way and I pluck it up as I take in the sneering seller.
“This man—no, not even a man—this deceitful woman— Look.” He implores those who’ve stopped to watch to see the fumes of his lost revenue. “I came a long way with these, hoping to reach people in need of unparalleled magic. These rare spells can bring one back from the brink of death! They can be compared to the lovelight in their potency and potential! How do I know? They once revived me!”
The crowd gasps and murmurs.
“I apologise for the accident,” says the figure, rising from where they’ve been picking up the unbroken spells. I catch my breath as I see their profile. Her profile. Olyn, the non-linea apothecary from Kastoria, who hides her gender so she can help those in need. Of course. She’d have come to watch and take notes, perhaps to meet some of her vitalian idols.
“How much for your lost wares?”
I move towards her. She laughs suddenly, incredulous. “Twenty bricks of gold?”
My step stutters at this sum too.
“They are the last known spells from Sacran Kyrillos himself!” He finds an intact spell and holds it up. “It holds his signature, see for yourself.”