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)
The priest made his assessments and started with the least likely couple first.
Drawing it in, focusing on it, he felt the sensation grow in his lower stomach, and then he utilized it, honing on Mars and Silence, and using his magic, his ears took in their words at a distance he would not normally hear them.
“What was it?” Mars asked low.
“I don’t know.” Silence sounded disturbed.
“A tremor?” Mars queried.
“No.”
“A draught?” he went on.
“No. Yes. What I mean to say is, it was a tremor, but not a tremor,” Silence explained. “A…a throb. And it was not a draught. More like a wind. Not a breeze, a wind. Didn’t you feel it?”
She was talking about the strengthening of the veil.
Though she couldn’t identify what it was.
A boon.
“I felt nothing, mia piccolina.”
My little one.
Yes, they were the least likely couple. They were already much drawn to each other.
And Mars had paraded his new bride in front of his people like she was a precious, priceless ruby extracted from deep in a Firenz mine and hewn to lustrous perfection.
The priest sensed, already, if she were to be harmed, Mars would turn every stone in five realms to find the culprit and exact his vengeance.
And if Mars were to be harmed, the waif had much magic. She might not yet know how to use it, but he did not like to think if she harnessed it through emotion, but without the knowledge of how to control it, what she would do.
And obviously the priest had to survive. Not only to bring forward the Beast, but to master him. He couldn’t be hunted down by a barbarian or magicked to another realm (or the like).
No, that wouldn’t do.
“Nandra, as you know, is here tonight,” Mars shared. “After dinner, I will have her brought to me and I will ask about this.”
“I’m not certain it was a bad thing, my king.”
“We will make certain, my bride.”
Yes, the least likely couple.
“Think no more of it. I will find answers,” Mars stated and changed their subject. “Now tell me, do you worry about the ceremony tomorrow?”
The eavesdropper tensed.
What ceremony?
“I don’t know, does it hurt?” Silence asked.
“It is a piercing of the flesh, Silence,” Mars said gently.
Well then.
As they would do, they were preparing her for her Firenz wedding which was to take place three nights from that one.
She’d endure their odious piercing ceremony.
But of course.
“So it hurts,” Silence murmured.
“Ice is used to numb the flesh. It’s mostly painless at the time,” Mars assured. “Though there can be some discomfort after.”
“Well, everyone is pierced here, so it can’t be all that bad,” Silence stated gamely.
Mars’s slow grin did not hide his approval.
The priest tired of their discourse, studied the couples, and turned his attention to what he perceived was the next least-likely pair, especially considering the pirate king’s current demeanor.
That being, he was resting back in his chair, his large bulk shifted toward his wife, his long arm along the back of her chair.
“Of course you would think that,” Queen Ha-Lah was saying, but she sounded amused. “You’re a man.”
“I am that.” King Aramus also sounded amused.
“Though I cannot agree,” she said.
“That I am a man?” he teased, raising his brows.
His queen gave him a small smile and an exaggerated roll of her eyes, answering his tease without words.
“They returned to the room with her on his arm, close to his side,” Aramus observed, returning to their discourse.
They were discussing Prince Cassius and Princess Elena and the earlier shenanigans.
Really.
These Airenzian men.
Would they never learn?
That would not go well for Cassius.
But it might go well for the priest.
“They did, though he looked furious and she looked like she wished to whirl her Nadirii staff straight into his head,” Ha-Lah retorted.
Aramus chuckled before he repeated, “Yes, wife, but he brought her into the room on his arm and close to his side.”
“I see this says something to you about Cassius,” she noted, watching her husband closely.
Aramus’s expression grew serious. “I worried about him most of all with these allegiances. He much loved his wife.”
“And?” Ha-Lah prompted when he did not go on.
“Cassius is a man of honor. His father, and the brother he lost, were, and in his father’s case, still is fond of war, whether it spills blood, or the wounds inflicted are unseen. Power. Control. Demonstrations of might. Conflicts to determine supremacy. It is, for them, an addiction. Cass is a man of peace. He is good at making war, even if he doesn’t have the heart for it. But he still has Laird blood.”
“And that means?” Ha-Lah asked.
“That means he might have found the kind of clash he cannot only stomach, but that he will enjoy.”
“Ah,” she murmured, grinning at the plate of food set in front of her.
Aramus captured a curl of her hair and wound it around his finger.