Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 137958 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 690(@200wpm)___ 552(@250wpm)___ 460(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137958 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 690(@200wpm)___ 552(@250wpm)___ 460(@300wpm)
And as far as I knew, no state visit or Nadirii celebration was forthcoming, and even if there were, it might be fifty, one hundred warriors.
Not five hundred.
And the only time the sisters were asked to conserve magic was prior to battle or going on patrol.
Not that magic was used in battle. In an accord arranged by the Go’Doan, signed by our queen and the kings of Airen, Firenze and Wodell of three generations ago, no magic could be used in battle on any side—our warriors, their sorcerers and witches.
This was a good thing, considering battle magic was extremely fatiguing, and although could be useful, also left you vulnerable.
However, it made you stronger if you’d conserved it prior to going into battle, which obviously helped enormously.
So I did not understand the conservation of magic.
Making matters worse, I, personally, at my mother’s decree, had been forbidden to use magic at all.
Not only conserve but meditate often and complete daily rituals that would build my craft inside me.
This wasn’t concerning.
It was alarming.
Even so, at that moment, at the sun’s rise, as I did every day after my meditation, I reached to my side and took up my cards.
My mind restless, not the best conditions to shuffle and move the cards in my hands, it took some time before I eventually felt it.
When it let itself be known, I pulled it from the deck facedown.
I set the deck aside.
And before me on my rug over the decking of my balcony, I turned it face up.
That was when I stared.
The Unicorn.
A high card.
One of the highest.
In all my days, since I could remember, I started my day meditating and then pulled my card, in the beginning, doing this with my mother at my side.
I had never turned the Unicorn.
If I was fully doing the cards, sometimes my own, normally reading for others, the Unicorn could make its presence known in the spread.
But not to start my day and share what I would face that day, or a forewarning of what I would face in future and must be prepared for, or ease away from.
In other words, a representation of where my life was…or where it was heading.
I stared at the white steed with its white mane, tail and coat, gold horn, proud head bowed, intelligent eyes serene, resting amongst the vines of wisteria, a night forest in the background, pixie dust glittering in the air as if those creatures had just flown through.
Magic.
Joy.
Serenity.
Fulfillment.
Change.
It was one of the only cards in the deck of any of the levels—high, middling, hushed—that was purely positive. No negative connotations, no warnings, no cautions, no calls to action, no suggestions of course alterations.
Just joy.
Peace.
Bliss.
“This…cannot be,” I whispered to the card.
And it couldn’t.
Those tremors.
Drills.
Magic conservation.
My sister constantly picking fights.
And my mother was dying.
“Elena!”
Quickly returning the card to the deck, I rose from my position and moved to the railing, looking down.
My lieutenant Jasmine was there.
I started to smile at my friend.
“The queen is calling you,” she said.
“Well, hello to you too,” I replied, now fully smiling.
“I’ve got to get to drills,” she retorted. “I don’t have time for drills and playing messenger girl.”
No, what she didn’t have time for was rising before dawn to be ready for drills when we were outside our patrol rotation.
Also, being ordered to stay inside our forest enchantments, rather than go to one of the villages outside and enjoy herself fully with one of her variety of admirers, drinking much wine, eating much food and enjoying much sex.
“I’m on my way,” I told her.
“My day is complete,” she returned, and I couldn’t help but laugh.
She trudged with bow and quiver at her back, staff in hand, toward the arena.
I moved through the low hanging branches into my house.
Going to the staircase at the trunk of the tree that grew up the middle, I wound my way from the first level to the second and moved to the lump under the light quilt on the fluffy pallet there.
I pulled the thick golden hair aside.
“Dora,” I called. “It’s time to get up. Bathe. Dress. Get to your studies.”
“Bluh,” Dora muttered.
I grinned and leaned closer. “Theodora, up. My mother wishes my presence. You’re going to have to do this on your own today without me winding up the stairs every five minutes to remind you to get out of bed.”
She rolled to her back, giving me warm, sleepy brown eyes.
Those were her mother’s.
My heart squeezed as it always squeezed when I wasn’t braced to look into those beloved eyes.
“Queen Ophelia wants you?” she asked.
“Indeed she does. So up. Bath. Boots, casings and body stocking. Let’s go.”
I then leaned deep, touched my lips to her smooth forehead, and moved away, going to the stairs that wound up and up and up, to the eyrie, my chamber.
I’d already donned my lavender body suit. Therefore, I quickly wound the soft suede casings around my foot arch, my ankle, criss-crossing them up my calf to my upper thighs. I pulled on a short tunic, my belt and my low moccasins, and drew my daily band around my head, not the ceremonial one, not the patrol one, not the battle one.