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)
They stare at one another, and laugh. Valerian rubs over his heart. “So warm.”
Liandros tucks himself against the prince again. “Let’s never forget this feeling.”
I swallow at the soft scene and move out of it into the next one with apprehension. Again, it’s a memory I’ve seen before. The outdoor banquet. Valerian is seated next to his brother, and across from him is Prins Yngvarr, who he keeps narrowing his eyes on. Casimiria—her younger remembered self—sits among the marriage candidates, and it’s in this scene I learn that it’s Valerian who ordered his aklos to drug her wine. It’s Valerian who had Prins Yngvarr’s room trashed; Valerian who left the banquet right after the prins.
In the shadows, he meets two vitalians—one silver sashed, the other green and Florentius’s young father.
“Can you do it?” Valerian asks.
Chiron grimaces. “We shouldn’t.”
“This is for the prince. I can see the light in his eyes. He looks at her and . . . trust me, I know that look. If I do this, I can make sure he gets who he wants. He’ll experience this unimaginable warmth. He’ll finally see what I’m capable of.”
“The pain—” Chiron is cut off by Valerian’s glare.
“For her, it’ll be fleeting. She’ll become one of the most powerful women in our kingdom.”
The silver vitalian inclines his head and tugs Chiron’s sleeve. “His highness is commanding you. Know your place.”
“Here she is,” Valerian says, spying Casimiria stumbling away from the banquet with the aid of an akla.
I tense, sickened as I drag myself through the scene. Casimiria led to the bed, the vitalians ripping out her lovelight, Prince Anastasius bursting into the room at her cries, catching her as she falls into unconsciousness. Valerian in the shadows, shocked at the prince’s outrage.
“What have you done?” Prince Anastasius screams at them to leave, and Valerian sweeps out first. In confusion and anger, he tears the vines off the trellised wall and storms off.
I glance at the courtyard he’s left behind and know any second Prins Yngvarr will be here, will see the vitalians and assume Prince Anastasius viciously stole Casimiria’s lovelight.
As the scene starts to fade, I yank off nightshade leaves and cut a portion of vine, then race back through the rune door. I drop most of my collected plants onto the platform, calling for Lucius to prepare them.
“This should be enough.” The rest, I keep with me. I don’t know what kind of state I’ll find Quin’s mother and brother . . . A wave of desperation hits my gut and I scramble over to a red rune door. “Only two left.”
I charge through the door and into a familiar clearing in the woods. It’s covered in soulbloom and sunk into the ground at one end is a dilapidated cabin with a broken roof.
Valerian is pacing angrily in the treeline, as if he followed Prins Yngvarr here and perhaps witnessed the stolen moment between him and Casimiria. He’s motioning for his redcloaks, aklos and aklas, and vitalians to hurry along and break the two up. In his fiery mood, he casts out a flare of magic into the glade—the flare that in King Yngvarr’s memory separated my shivery moment with Quin . . .
When young Casimiria is escorted away, Valerian orders two soldiers and his vitalians to teach Prins Yngvarr a lesson. Chiron grits his teeth and refuses to move into the clearing, and Valerian gets into his face. “Even you don’t show me respect!” He jerks a finger towards Prins Yngvarr. “He hurt my man. He’s disrespecting my brother’s woman. You’ll make sure he regrets it, or I’ll hold it against you and your future family!”
One of the redcloaks shoves Chiron into the clearing and together they torture and heal and torture Prins Yngvarr until the Skeldar prins is screaming towards the skies a promise of revenge.
While my stomach twists at the tortured cries, I stumble through the surrounding woods searching for Casimiria, imagining her watching this, imagining her crumpling to her knees wishing for it to stop. An arrow suddenly shoots across the glade and embeds into a tree, an arrow that wasn’t in King Yngvarr’s memory. I tug it out, knowing instinctively this is not Valerian’s memory, but evidence of Casimiria’s grief. She must have taken one of the bows; she must be trying to kill the men hurting her friend.
I whirl in the direction the arrow came from, but I don’t see her. Another arrow, two, whistle towards the redcloaks, and they fall listlessly. There are no cries, no reactions. It doesn’t even stop Prins Yngvarr’s cries of pain. None are real after all; they’re just puppets acting out Valerian’s memory. And Casimiria has messed with it.
I run around the edge of the trees, snatching soulbloom and stuffing it into my belt, and skid to a stop where Casimiria should have been. I call out for her, but there’s no response. I search the area, but she’s nowhere to be found. Perhaps she already left, I just saw the remains of her visit, her . . . The damp trees and glistening glade begin to lose their texture, their scent, their colour, and I hurry out, catching my breath on the musty platform on the other side.