Page 155 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

“Yeah, he doesn’t strike me as the type to write love letters either.”

A bit surprised to read what he couldn't tell in person, I unwrapped the paper fast.

I shouldn't have.

Flinching upwards, I caught the letter from falling from my shocked fingers and then hugged it to my chest. “G-give me a moment?”

Elias scoffed. “Didn’t think he made you that ecstatic with one sentence. Cause I’m fairly certain that is all he can write.”

Malik was a military strategist. A fool, but a smart fool. A smart fool who I very much adored with all I had. I glared at Elias until he rounded the corridor and then I unfolded the most scandalous piece of paper I’d ever laid my eyes on. On top of it, it wrote:

Next time I catch you, we won’t be this wasteful.

–Mal.

Then there I was. Drawn in charcoal, more naked than what the mirror showed me to be when I stood undressed before it. And like he’d told me last night—he’d drawn me just like that.

“He’s lost his damn mind,” I murmured to myself, securing the piece of paper inside my corset like I was some old cougar having received a message from a lover boy.

A portal cracked right before me, making me jump a few steps back. “Gods, no one knows how to knock in this gods damned castle.”

Visha came out, bowed her head and said, “There is something you need to see.”

No one knew to greet or exchange a polite word anymore either. “Where?”

She blinked a little more annoyed than before. “I cannot bring my work room to you.”

No. No. Not Olympia. Not yet. “Is it important?” I asked, trying not to let my voice tremble like the rest of me was.

“Do you wish to know what is wrong with you and your magic?”

“Wrong? There is something wrong with me?”

Stepping sideways, she pointed to the portal. “After you.”

Sweat crawled down my temple and I felt my dress suddenly sticking to my body. “V,” I pleaded.

The witch’s eyes somehow softened. Maybe not, maybe I imagined it because I needed that comfort. “There aren’t any more bad memories there as they are here, Thora. You just want some place to blame and are doing Olympia that injustice. It’s just somewhere something bad once happened. That is all. That beast will take shape only if you let it do so.”

“Easy for you to say, you feed from your fears while mine feed on me.” Swallowing the ball of dread down, I moved one shaky leg after the other and entered the portal to Olympia. The worst of it was, my mind had fogged over the reasons why I’d suddenly forbid myself from stepping in my sister’s home, along with all Neo had done, too, it was just a mess of fear, panic and a dull ache in my chest, like a part of it was missing—like it had been ripped out of me. It just felt wrong, that was it. Terror would climb all of me. Inhibit every good memory of that place. And the fear of heights I’d long overtaken had suddenly returned as if it had never left at all.

My surroundings spun when I stepped into Visha's work room. I could hear my unpaced breaths, the thud my heart made each time it beat. I could feel my mind fog up as it always did, attempting to prevent me from remembering or reliving that moment that caused my utter terror.

“Here,” Visha said, and I spun to her as if I’d just been struck.

Like a whip, the wind whipped against the open windows of her work room, as it had that day three years ago. It was just as sharp. Just as cutting.

A dull ache suddenly began deepening in my chest. One that beat at me to remember what I’d half forgotten. But that day was hazy. My mind had made it hazy. To protect me or deceive me, I didn’t know.

“Thora,” someone else called, putting a hand on my shoulder.

I flinched and backed away until my back met a wall.

Cai stood there, looking at me wide eyed and…guilty. “We shouldn't have done this!” he bellowed at Visha, looking at me with such repentance.

“Malik was right,” Visha replied. “If he thinks Iskyla has figured out what happened to her that day in the Islines, then it won’t be long until she uses it against Thora. Since she’s trying her best to kill him first, it means that day is approaching. She already knows of her connection to the land since Malik caught her burning her own forests and animals with black fire—craft fire. I hope you do know what that means to the land, the air, the life around them. It is not past one Krigborn to want to kill the land to weaken the throne. One did it before her. Almost succeeded had his own daughter not stopped him.”

“What?” I barely managed to murmur, my tongue feeling as heavy as the rest of my body. Iskyla—she’d done what? She knew I’d lost my magic? Tried to kill Malik?