Total pages in book: 208
Estimated words: 209645 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1048(@200wpm)___ 839(@250wpm)___ 699(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 209645 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1048(@200wpm)___ 839(@250wpm)___ 699(@300wpm)
And Mars had adorned her dressings from neck to feet with long, delicate chains of gold sparkling with rubies and emeralds and onyx and amethyst.
And Elpis had carefully arranged the jeweled, intricate headdress over the wrappings on her face and head.
And last, True had surprised me after sending a bird and having a man on the fastest horse in Wodell race to Firenze so he could set the gold Dellish scepter on her chest with its large aquamarine jewel at the top. A scepter he shared any mother of a queen of Wodell would be buried with.
Then my mama had been set deep in her clan’s tomb for eternity.
After all of that, we had gone back to the palace with me feeling numb.
And there, in my bed (that had in the time that had passed become True’s and my bed), he’d held me close to him, silently, often rubbing my back, my arms, kneading my neck, doing this for what felt like hours.
Until him doing it made the life start to come back into me.
His patience was astounding.
And beautiful.
He was perfect.
Utterly.
But even in that perfection he was broken.
Completely.
And I had no idea what to do about it.
My mother would have known. Or at the very least, I could have talked to her about it and she would have helped me decide what to do.
But my mother was no longer here.
And it was times like these, and other times I knew would be varied and abundant in the years to come, where I missed her like it had been but moments since she had passed, not weeks.
I also wondered if this feeling would ever ease.
But I could not think of me.
I had to think of True.
I also thought about the conversation I’d had with Mars that day.
For, outside True, he was all I had left.
I knew Elpis wished to heal the breach between us. In fact, she had changed her mind and come on this trip so she could attend my wedding.
And with as little as I now had in my life, I knew it was foolish to resist her advances.
She had not been openly unkind to my mother.
But Elpis had blamed Mama for something she did not do, something Elpis knew she did not do, but she blamed her all the same.
I was having trouble coming to terms with that, and when I shared this with my intended, True advised me that I had enough to come to terms with—the loss of my mother, my impending wedding to him, the Beast rousing—Elpis could wait.
And he was right.
I would have liked to talk to True’s mother about what was troubling her son, but even if I knew True had had words with her about her coldness to me, that coldness had not changed.
Which was something else concerning me for the longer his mother kept her distance from her soon-to-be daughter-in-law, the angrier True became about it.
He tried to hide this from me, and he was good at it.
He did not hide this from his mother, and I could tell she was not fond of it.
And she felt I was the cause of it.
Therefore, I had the suspicion she blamed me.
And since Silence seemed to be avoiding me for whatever reason (perhaps she wasn’t good with grief, though she seemed wholly adept at handling just about everything else that came her way, and a great deal had come her way since this all began)…
And since True was in love with Elena, and he was the one I needed assistance with in the first place…
This left me with Mars.
Who, in the end, had turned out to be the perfect person, even if he did not have the answers I sought, for not only was he like an older brother to me, he was also a trained and tried soldier.
I’d broached it with him that very evening, on the rise of a moor in what I was discovering was the verdant green, gentle land that was Wodell.
After I shared my concerns, Mars was silent for a moment before he said, with no small amount of sadness, “This is common, I’m afraid, my little sister.”
Although it was sad, I had some relief, for if this night agitation was common, perhaps there were those who knew what to do about it.
“As that is so, how do I make this unrest in the nighttime cease for him?” I’d asked.
Mars had slid his arm around my waist and looked down at me, answering carefully, “Sometimes, it never goes away.”
That was not the answer I’d wished to hear.
Mars continued sharing.
“There are normally two kinds of generals, Farah. First are those who order their warriors to advance for the thrill of the battle, the desire to win at all costs. Men like this do not have trouble sleeping. They do not for they do not have the ability to count the true cost as they don’t understand the severity of it. Their warriors might as well be carved of wood and adjusted on a gaming board. They are not flesh and blood. Trajan, Cassius’s brother, was this kind of general.”