Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 100363 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 401(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100363 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 401(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
“Because I cannot have you!” Luthian roars. I’ve never seen him so angry. “I cannot have you and my revenge, and I choose my revenge!”
If he thinks I can’t match that anger, he is woefully mistaken. “And what of my revenge? What do you have to offer me in this bargain now that it’s been stolen from me?”
“I didn’t take your precious revenge.” He throws a hand out as if pointing at Arcus, though he is, I hope, far from here. “Arcus did that. I’m sorry for you, I truly am. But I have waited centuries. I have planned for centuries. The things I’ve done—”
“Like giving a faery a human child you would later exploit?” I shout. “Creating me as a weapon with singular purpose? What is my existence for once you achieve this grand revenge?”
“What you do with your existence after I visit my vengeance upon Luthian is not my concern.” It’s a lie. Not even a master manipulator can hide it.
He cares for me. He simply cares for his revenge more.
“I cannot uphold my end of the bargain,” he says simply. “If you wish to be released from it, that is all you need to say.”
“I wish to be released from my bargain with you.” The moment the words leave my mouth, I know I have been tricked.
“Then you are released,” he snarls. “You have one wish left.”
My eyes brim with tears. “How can you be so cruel?”
“I have always been cruel to you.” There is nothing in his voice now but contempt. “It’s not my fault that you interpreted it as love. Now, leave my house, for I am finished with you.”
“No, please!” I cry, but he vanishes. The fire in the hearth goes out. The furnishings disappear, one by one, until all that is left is an empty room, and Parphia’s journal lying on the floor.
I collect it up, wipe the tears from my face, hold my chin high, and walk down the stairs. The great hall, too, is absent of its table and chairs. The curtains are drawn against the daylight.
The place that I thought of as home is gone now.
Clutching the queen’s journal, I step out of Luthian’s house for the last time, the door opening directly into my new, mirrored cell.
* * * *
I stroll through the gardens aimlessly, until my legs are as numb and aching as my heart.
It’s nearly nightfall when a scream of pure terror rings out over the burbling of fountains and the chirping of songbirds.
I follow other alarmed courtiers through an archway sculpted in a hedge; the faeries can locate the sound far better than I can. Some of them fly rather than use the paths the rest of us take.
We exit into a part of the gardens I’ve never seen before, decorated by statues quite like the ones in the library. The courtiers all recoiled though, from a central figure.
An alabaster minotaur, draped in a familiar piebald hide, still dripping blood.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The entire court goes into mourning.
The minotaur, whom I merely assumed was a good friend of Arcus, was one of the architects of the palace. He was responsible for the enchantment that has delivered me precisely where I need to go.
This makes me glad that he’s dead. Who knows if he was keeping tabs on me, spying through that same enchantment. Wasn’t he strolling through the garden with Firo, while Firo was spending so much time with Luthian? Did the architect tell Arcus about the mermaids? About my dalliance with Cassan?
One thing that I do know is that he didn’t get a chance to tell anyone about Kathras and I in the library. And I know exactly who doled out that silence.
Does any of it really matter, though? Now that my revenge has been lost to me, now that Luthian has severed our ties? Kathras’s suggestion that I flee the palace haunts me, especially as Arcus has closed me up in my hall of mirrors.
I lose myself in the words of his late queen and find myself greatly sympathizing with her. She endured centuries of captivity under his control. It’s only been a day and already I’m going mad.
But I’m more fortunate than she was; her diary details incident after incident of abuse and humiliation at Arcus’s foul hands. So far, he has not thought to alleviate his anger by attacking me, an indignity that she suffered throughout their union. I have no doubt that such a time will come, if Luthian doesn’t succeed in his assassination attempt.
My heart aches at the mere thought of him. I flip past endless pages about his great love with Parphia, the tender words he whispered to her in candlelit hallways, the danger of discovery heightening their passions.
No romance that begins in the perilous secrecy of the weight of a crown can meet any other end.