Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 104842 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 524(@200wpm)___ 419(@250wpm)___ 349(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104842 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 524(@200wpm)___ 419(@250wpm)___ 349(@300wpm)
Brenna shook her head. “Magnus, the king’s father, gave Decimus leave that his home is his sanctuary ages ago, and when Messina became king after his death, that pact was acknowledged and continued.”
“Why?”
“I have no insight into the mind of our king.”
I turned to Zev. “Do you know?”
“It’s not my place to know,” Zev said. “What is important is that when you travel there, it’s different from here. There’s a whole other system in place, separate from ours.”
“What do you mean, separate?”
“I mean different from the king’s law.”
“That can’t be right.” I thought a moment. “Isn’t the king’s law the law of Ascalon that everyone has to follow?”
“Everyone but Decimus, yes.”
Ascalon was the original ruler of the Noreia, of all vampyr kind. Before him, there had been different rulers. Warlords, everywhere in the world. He united and annexed and fought until everyone was under his banner, his house, the house of Maedoc.
Ascalon created laws that covered all areas of a vampyr’s birth, life, and death. His firstborn son, Magnus, ruled after him, and then Messina, and one day, Varic. Things had changed for each ruler; laws were amended, added, and others stricken as no longer necessary. But the one unchangeable law was that everyone followed the same rules. Except, apparently, Decimus.
“I don’t understand,” I told them all.
“What’s to understand?” Zev asked. “Decimus’s court runs as he alone sees fit.”
“How?”
Zev glanced at Eris and Brenna, then tipped his head at Dae-Jung.
“None of us grasp your question,” Dae-Jung said. “You keep asking how, but what do you mean by that?”
“I mean, did Varic agree to let this agreement between Magnus and Decimus, that his father also honored, continue when he becomes king?”
Zev shrugged. “I don’t know Varic’s mind on these matters. You would, not me.”
“Since I didn’t know about Decimus’s palace—”
“Castle,” Zev corrected. “It’s not like ours. It’s not a beautiful, ornate, freestanding building. The front looks like a medieval fortress carved into the side of the mountain. It’s situated near the end of the Qinngua Valley in southern Greenland, by Tasersuaq Lake, which in turn empties into the Tasermiut Fjord, which tells you everything you need to know about how cold it is there.”
The word fjord did bring to mind arctic temperatures.
Zev squinted at me. “You were in the army. You didn’t have to know geography?”
Whenever I didn’t agree with him right away about something, he assumed I was arguing. “Of course I—”
“The parts of Greenland not under ice would be considered tundra. The valley is not because it’s warmer. It’s a subarctic zone, so you get taiga—forest. Lots of pine, spruce, evergreens, larch. The trees are dense until you get out of the valley, and suddenly it’s all tundra, so vegetation is sparse, and then you hit the ice.”
“So what you’re telling me is that once you’re out of the castle, there’s nothing.”
“That’s right.”
“Which is probably why no one leaves.”
He nodded. “Even a vampyr will freeze to death.”
“What else?”
Everyone was listening, not just me.
“Before you reach the castle, there’s a long bridge over a river I don’t remember the name of, and as soon as you enter through the gate, there are steps you take down and follow deep inside the mountain.”
“And it’s in Greenland?”
“Yes. At the edge of the world, is what they used to say.”
Whatever that meant. “Okay.”
“It’s always cold there. Even for us it’s cold.”
And if it was cold for them, I’d freeze to death.
I had to make sense of everything I’d been told.
“I don’t think Varic would allow Decimus not to have to comply to the way he wants the Noreia to be as a whole once he’s king,” I told Zev.
“Then Varic will have to go there and see it all for himself.”
“When was the last time you visited?”
“I grew up there for a time,” he said darkly, his brows furrowing. “I only left when Varic’s mother came.”
I had seen Isabella interact with Zev, and it was different than she was with others. She didn’t treat him like a courtier, as she did Hadrian and Tiago. And it wasn’t that she treated them with coldness, but to her, they were servants. As kind as she was, as warm, they were still beneath her, and that distance in their station was clear.
With me, with Varic, even the king, she laughed and held our hands, hugged us whenever she felt like it, and kissed our cheeks. Even with her own courtiers, there was respect and care, but not closeness. She was the queen, after all.
But with Zev, it was like he was family. She called him her wolf, which was basically his name, and put her hand on his cheek when she spoke to him. He, in front of others, rolled his eyes at her, and people were stunned when she laughed. I’d been so busy, I hadn’t gotten to the bottom of small mysteries I wanted answers for. That one needed excavating.