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)
I was so confused. Sabira was older than Balon, so was Isabella, so was Messina, and yet he looked like a slowly decaying corpse, and they were all beautiful. I was at a complete loss for words…or would have been if he hadn’t smirked.
My first reaction, unlike Cirillo’s revulsion, had been concern.
But he was baiting me, thinking somehow that because I was in his holding, I had no power or that I was weak.
I took a breath. “I am His Royal Highness Prince Consort Jason Maedoc, fyrir-einn of Maedoc,” I replied loudly, drawing Varic’s seal from inside my T-shirt and opening the coat so he could see the seal in front of him. “Good afternoon, would you please tell me on whose order my companion and I were brought here, and who, precisely, will be answering to the draugr?”
I enjoyed watching his mouth fall open, watching him turn toward his entourage, only to realize that everyone standing within the sound of my voice was on their knees.
NINE
We were closer to the side entrance of the castle than I thought. Unlike the palace in Valletta, this castle had been built to house everyone. It had been built to be a fortress. Balon explained everything about the castle as we walked together.
“So originally, everyone lived there with you.”
“That is correct,” he replied woodenly.
“I know you’re speaking English for my benefit, and I appreciate it,” I told him. “You speak it well.”
He turned and smiled, or tried to, but with his face looking like it did, it came off creepy. “My gratitude, my consort.”
Cirillo kept a hand on my bicep. Interestingly, he’d cast himself as my protector. It wasn’t that he liked me, we weren’t friends, but he also didn’t want to be alone on this adventure, and I was guessing, he wanted to get in good with Varic. Protecting me was a smart move.
Also, from his sidelong glances at Balon, he was more than a bit alarmed over the man’s appearance, and though I was pretty sure that whatever was happening with the lord’s younger son wasn’t catching, Cirillo seemed concerned. But I could have been misreading him as well.
“What’re you doing?” I whispered to him as Balon moved ahead of us at the side entrance into the castle.
“If he reaches for you, I’m going to pull you out of his way. Between your station and his lies a great chasm. He can’t be allowed to touch you.”
I understood then that he wasn’t scared that whatever was wrong with Balon was contagious—he simply didn’t want the man’s hands on me.
Inside, the castle felt stuffy, had that mothball smell, and they did not have the same level of cleaning that happened in Messina’s home. There were cobwebs, and it was dusty, but the rooms we were walking through, I quickly realized, were unused. Once we reached the main atrium, when I looked left, then right, I saw the true scale.
The palace in Valletta, even with its many staircases and over two thousand windows, would have easily fit inside the castle in Ophir, which was massive. They had built into the mountain, and some of that rock was still visible overhead and in the walls, along with the enormous white veined marble columns in the Doric style.
It was a marvel. Really beautiful, and the area we were in, which had to be the main receiving area of the castle, stole my breath away. There was a pool in the middle of the floor, and when I walked to the edge, I saw that it was beginning to ice over.
“Do you skate on this?” I asked him.
“We do, yes,” he replied, giving me the skull-smile again.
“I wondered if there was glass here because in the home we were in, there wasn’t any,” I said, gesturing at the enormous window, set in the raw stone of the mountain, that had to be fifty feet high. It looked out on an interior of rock formations covered in ice now lit from the sun. Walking to the window, I stared out at the stunning natural beauty. “This is breathtaking. You must sit here and stare out at it all day.”
“I have seen this all for centuries, and so my interest in such has long ago waned,” Balon replied softly. “Though seeing it through your eyes once more makes it as beautiful as you say.”
I smiled, and he inhaled deeply.
“You have the most fascinating scent.”
“I hope that’s a compliment,” I teased him.
“Oh my, yes, yes of course.”
It made sense why Zev had lived in the castle, and not only because of Leda. Everyone had years ago. Balon explained that when they closed Ophir to outsiders, only then, without threat, were the iceni and the huskar class moved out of the castle to the areas Cirillo and I had seen.
“You didn’t answer about why I was brought here,” I said as we started walking again and I marveled over the carved archways we walked through.