Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 123190 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 616(@200wpm)___ 493(@250wpm)___ 411(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123190 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 616(@200wpm)___ 493(@250wpm)___ 411(@300wpm)
“What?”
His grin is so deliciously cocky I’m not sure how he’s not constantly being chased by females who want to kiss it off his face. “Training. You know, with swords and bows. I’ll see you at sunrise.”
I could’ve said yes to dinner. Maybe that would’ve been the wise thing to do, but my days at Castle Craige must be a careful balancing act. On the one hand, if I’m to somehow convince Misha to reveal the location of his sacred Hall of Doors, I need to get close to him. On the other hand, I can’t be too available. Jas has spent the last three years hiding in her room and pushing away everyone who tries to get close to her. If I suddenly seem eager to make friends, Misha will be suspicious.
Hale’s plan is the most obvious. Legend says, after all, that the queen learns the location of the Hall of Doors upon her coronation, and perhaps he’d be willing to share with a trusted lover if she had a compelling reason to need the information. However, I suspect it would take many months if not years to earn that level of trust. Since every day that I spend in this form is a day I could be exposed, I’ll have to find another way to get Hale the information he needs.
I know what I need to do.
I run my fingertips over the threads of my goblin bracelet. It’s not quite like the one I saw on Jasalyn’s wrist, but it’s similar enough in function. Like mine, hers is invisible to the naked eye. Only the owner of a goblin bracelet can see its delicate strands. With two exceptions: goblins and Echoes.
Long ago, Echoes came through the portal to save goblinkind. If it hadn’t been for my ancestors, goblins would’ve been lost as a casualty of one of the most brutal battles of the Great Fae War, but my kind did theirs a favor the goblins still believe is unpaid. To this day, each Echo is gifted with a goblin guardian at birth and a goblin bracelet on her seventh birthday, as well as the rare ability to see what only goblins could see before. Unlike others, we know if someone we meet has a goblin working with them, and we get to use our bracelets without any expectation of payment.
I pluck a thread and Nigel appears in my chambers, grinning at the sight of me. His yellow, pointy teeth are covered with a greenish slime from a dinner of which I’d rather not know the details. “Felicity,” he says. “Beautiful girl. It’s been so long. What brings you to the Wild Fae territory?”
“One of your kin brought me—the shadow queen’s goblin. He saw me for who I was, and I don’t think he was pleased.”
Nigel sniffs. “Of course he did. My kind do not have the easily fooled eyes of humans and fae.”
I hold up my arms. “I am an Echo. I shouldn’t have to worry that a goblin will betray me.”
“Bakken is partial to his queen, but he won’t betray your identity.” He scans the room. “I see you’ve begun a new adventure.”
“So it seems,” I say with a sigh. “And if all goes well, I go home at the end of it all.”
He cocks his head at me. “The child speaks of home as if she is grown and has built one of her own.”
I glare at him. “I miss my mother.”
“You miss your ignorance. You want to be fifteen again and believe you are just another adopted child taken in by a loving family. You don’t want to face the truth.”
I do miss those days—before Erith’s men came for me and my adoptive father was killed trying to protect me, before my mother confessed the truth of my birth, before I went to the oracle and discovered the horrible choice I was faced with. “I saw my brother today.” I sit on the floor, folding my legs under me.
“Your brother lives in the Eloran Palace and has servants hunting you in every realm.”
I scowl. “Sharing a womb with someone does not make them your brother.”
“You saw Kendrick the Chosen,” he corrects me. “And now you feel happy and sad and guilty all over again?”
“Pretty much.” Leave it to Nigel to summarize my emotions so succinctly. “I can’t help but feel like everything is my fault.”
“Fault is so sticky—” he says.
“When no action lives in isolation,” I finish. He’s been saying these words to me since I was a little girl trying to shirk responsibility for breaking my mother’s favorite garden ornament during a fight with Hale. “I know. I know.”
“Do you?” He picks something from his teeth.
I cringe and change the subject. “When Jasalyn was Mordeus’s captive, Crissa was there.”
“You knew he had captured her.”
“Yes, but isn’t it interesting that he had them put in the same cell?” I’ve been thinking about this since last night’s dream, and I’m not sure what to make of it. “Mordeus had to have done that for a reason.”