Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 99201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
That’s probably it.
But this? No. This is something else. And everyone in this bar realizes it at the same time. The wood nymph who was sneering at me has gone utterly pale. She swallows hard. Like she’s gathering her nerve.
She doesn’t call me queen, but she doesn’t manage the courage to say anything else, either. And no one is snorting or chortling now.
I have worn out my welcome, but that’s just fine with me. It’s time to go, anyway.
When I get outside it’s too bright and my head is pounding. So I walk down the street where I know the town limits are. And then, when I get there, I slip into the fog.
It’s thin at first. But it thickens only a few yards in and becomes swirly around my feet. I stop here, afraid that if I go much further, I might get lost and never find my way back.
Then I slump to the ground, lie back, and stare up at nothing as I play those few words back on repeat.
Maybe even having kids by now.
Maybe even having kids by now.
Maybe even having kids by now.
It echoes in my head over, and over, and over.
I had children. Many of them. It’s possible to do that in Vinca because of the alchemists. Lyrica didn’t put them inside me, she harvested them and grew them in the lab. Many, many times. And Tarq too. He was the other half of my equation, after all.
The babies were grown in glass tubes. First very small tubes, thin as claws. If they made it past the first stage and everything checked out, they would be flushed into bigger tubes about the size of drinking glasses. If they made it past stage two, they were in the final tubes, which were the size of a baby chimera.
There were hundreds of such tubes.
And they all died just a few weeks into stage three.
Of course, I never felt like a mother. How could I? There was never any baby inside me. So the pain, while there—manifesting as disappointment, naturally—wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been.
That’s what Lyrica, the Royal Alchemist, used to tell me. “We always knew it was risky, my queen.” That’s what she used to say. “I’m so glad you never got your hopes up.”
It was common knowledge that chimera, while not sterile, cannot just mix with anyone and expect good results.
Most of them have better luck than I did, though. Tarq was a breeder, but I was never meant to reproduce. That was Pie’s job.
So I just wasn’t good enough.
Maybe even having kids by now.
But if Pie and Pell are having babies, I’m certain they will be born and they will be born healthy. Because Pie was made to breed and has genetics from all the gods. Pell has the blood of two gods in him, as well. He’s been mixed with animals—obviously, since he’s a satyr—but he was meant to breed just like Pie.
Not me, though. I was meant to study alchemy, not be a royal beast and rule the land of Vinca as queen.
Eros derailed my whole life with his stunt. And now look at him. No remorse. No regrets. He certainly doesn’t think about me and how he ruined everything. My whole future, stolen in a matter of moments. Selfish moments.
And now I’m stuck here, in some in-between curse world, as a human of all things.
A vapid, magicless creature with no skills, no plans, and no future.
I might as well be back in the Bottoms.
Because despite Lyrica’s warning about hope, I had it. I hoped. And when she figured this out—well, I was deep into my mean queen years by this time. Bitter, and angry, and petty. So when she figured out it was due to all the failures, she made me a promise.
“We will find Pianna, my queen,” she said. This was what we called Pie before, because we didn’t know she was Pie, and Pianna was her given name in the House of Fire. “And we will pair her up with Tarq, just as it was meant to be, and that little godling will be born. And it will be yours.”
Mine.
I had hoped.
But it was stupid.
Because nothing good ever comes from hope.
I blow out a long breath and let the fog cover me, letting the nothingness make me disappear.
Maybe I should just stay here?
Maybe I should get up and walk further into it?
Maybe I should get myself lost and never come back?
Why not? Why not at least try? It’s not like this life I’m living has any kind of future.
So I close my eyes, and relax my whole body, and let the cool fog take me away…
The next thing I know I’m standing on the Riverwalk in Vinca and people are bustling all around me. An immediate sense of relief floods through my body as I take in the city that has been my only home for the last two decades.