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“I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say, what I could say about my mother or my brother that wouldn’t lead to more questions. Questions I couldn’t answer.
It was enough. Aeinya said nothing, her tears fading away as she drifted to sleep, me following right after her, both of us wrapped up in the warmth of my cloak.
The next morning, before the sun had fully risen and the servants had begun making their rounds, I was awoken by a hand on my shoulder, the Boy pulling me from sleep before anyone saw me there, before anyone saw the future Queen beside the sickly princess.
“You said you would fight,” I whispered as I settled back into the soft padded seat of the carriage opposite the Boy. He visibly stiffened, his shroud twisted toward me. “What would you fight for?”
“For Okivo,” he whispered, “For how it was before Dalyah. Before the Goddess–”
I heard nothing more before the door swung open and a servant peered in, his eyes not looking at either of us.
“Princess Elara has been summoned.”
“Summoned?” I parroted, my voice catching a sudden knot in my throat.
“Yes,” he whispered in a growl, lifting his chin to look right at me with eyes so dark they might not as well have been there. I knew those eyes, I knew that snarling face.
He was dressed in the indigo and gold uniform of the King's Guard, but that wasn’t what I had seen him wearing the last time. Last time he had worn all black, the slithering white of a snake on his chest as he stood between me and my door, trapping me in my room.
As he had hit the Boy.
Silas.
I stiffened as Silas shifted forward to look at me over that hooked nose, the greasy man smiling so broadly that I knew he saw my recognition flare.
“Queen Dalyah has requested your presence.”
Again.
I wished she would stop requesting anything from me, it never ended well and I had a feeling this would be no different.
Not with the way her guard was smiling.
Chapter 39
Elara
An icy chill was still biting the air as we were led through the camp, fog twisting through dark tents and oozing through the trees we camped by in graceful swirls. The sounds of people waking up hissed through heavy canvas tents, blending calmly with the birds singing on some distant branch. It all mixed with the yellow and pink glow of the sun peaking over the now distant Luftivo mountains in some calm picture. It should have been calm, but my heart was beating out of my chest, the daggered peaks of the Luftivo mountains looming even from this distance. It was as though those mountains were the only things that knew what we were being led to. Somewhere in that range the Runturin was nestled, the massive castle an ominous blotch that I was sure if I looked hard enough I could see even from this distance.
With each step, the camp woke up, the hushed whispers turning to men calling for servants and women bemoaning the lack of a bathing chamber in loud howls that I was sure was loud enough to wake the Goddess. I chanced a look behind me, not to the Boy who followed close and stiff, but to Aeinya. She was still asleep, curled up underneath the golden carriage, shivering against the still biting cold.
These women complained they only had a porcelain chamber pot for their glossed bottoms, Aeinya didn’t even have a blanket.
“This way,” Silas barked, pulling my attention forward as we darted around yet another tent and toward the massive golden canvas house in the middle of the camp.
Picking up the hem of my fancy skirts I quick-stepped after him, darting underneath the canvas opening as one of the other servants lifted it for us.
“Princess Elara, your Majesty.” It felt odd to be addressed as the princess, especially to my mother who couldn’t be so much as bothered by me. I hadn’t been addressed as ‘Princess’ in ages. This Silas clearly shared her thoughts as he said the title with a disdain that he didn’t even try to conceal. He bowed before exiting, leaving me facing the icy stare of Mother.
The Boy moved into his usual place beside the door, but the other side was empty. The red robed figure of my mother’s Catalyst, of the Boy’s mother, wasn’t where she usually was. She wasn’t anywhere. No one else was in this tent but the three of us.
I had not been alone with my mother in years. Nothing about this felt safe. All of that heat turned dangerous as it ran through my skin, feeling like it would explode out of me again.
I don’t know why, but that felt even more dangerous than simply being alone with her.
Chancing a glance at my hands, I stepped further into the tent, some of that tension loosening to see that I wasn’t glowing, or worse.
Her eyes bore into me as she tapped her long pale fingers on a large wooden desk that had no business being in a tent in the middle of nowhere, the surface piled with parchments and a huge leather bound tome that she had clearly been reading.
