The exposure of sunlight to her skin over the last few days had given her a rosy complexion. Her cheeks were still high on her face, but the fullness of her lips was new, as well as the fullness of her bust. Her nose was still thin, and her green eyes sparkled. She was still Alara, but no longer the lanky nineteen-year-old she thought herself to be. If she were honest with herself, she would have said she was more self-conscious before the break of the curse that she was looking at her older self.
“How am I to explain this to my son?” she asked, just as Scarlett entered the room behind her.
“You’ll tell him the truth. You grew up, Majesty.”
Alara caught the wink in the mirror and turned. She thought about her next question before she voiced it. “What do you think of this thing with Cedric?” she asked, needing the opinion of somebody on the outside.
“I think what the king did was romantic, and it's admirable that Cedric went along with it. If you want a woman’s perspective…” She stopped to consider.
“Yes?”
“I think the feelings Cedric has for you has more to do with you and him than it does with what Tomas had done. But that’s just my two cents.” She stood and left the room again.
Alara lay in bed for most of the night thinking. Sure, Belinda was her oldest and dearest friend, before. Now, she felt like she had no one. Scarlett had proven to be a great confidante. She understood what the young wolf, as Iren called her, tried to say.
Maybe Cedric’s feelings had more to do with Cedric than with the late king’s intentions. Did it mean she had to concern herself with him and his feelings? Yes. The answer came quickly.
Alara thought of Tomas and his visits. He’d spoken to her and held her hand, but he’d not been himself when he was with her. He told Declan how to hold her hand and speak to her.
Her son did visit, and when he spoke with her, he held her hand, but he also kissed her cheek. Declan colored and hummed as his father once did. He told her stories so she wouldn’t be bored. He did all the things a child would do for a fully awake mother who gave him her full attention.
Tomas was just another voice in the dark.
Cedric built her fires and covered her when it was cold. He held her close and soothed her when she became scared. She didn’t know how Cedric knew, but he did. He kissed her to get a reaction from her and hummed to keep quiet from making her go mad when he had nothing to talk about. Cedric kept her safe and saw to her comfort.
Even though she never spoke back, he fell in love with her. That much she could see in his eyes. His feelings had nothing to do with what a desperate, dying man did and had everything to do with what Cedric had done for the last twenty years of his life. He’d taken care of her. He was still taking care of her.
With the last thought on her mind, Alara drifted to sleep, only to be woken by the jerking movements of the carriage underneath her. She sat up, alert and wide-eyed, and Cedric laid a hand on hers.
“It’s okay. You were exhausted and wouldn’t wake, so I carried you. We’ve been on the road for a few hours now.” He studied her, clearly worried.
“Oh. I couldn’t sleep last night.” Alara put her other hand over his in thanks. She turned to him, looking into his blue eyes. The eyes that reminded her of what Tomas had done to a young boy in the name of love, and she vowed to herself she’d finally come to terms with it. So, the next thing to do was to tell Cedric. “I ”
The carriage jumped over a rock in the road. Alara and Cedric reached for each other as they were thrown from the seat. The transport landed with a thud and tilted to the left, throwing Cedric into Alara. Her eyes stung as she took in how close they were.
“I’m sorry,” he said, grabbing the sill of the open window of the door, trying to pull himself from Alara. She put a hand up to his face and moved him back to her.
“So am I.” She was about to pull him closer, but the door flew open.
“Oh, my goodness! Are you two okay? We got a busted wheel.” Scarlett scoffed.
Cedric didn’t take his eyes off Alara. “I’m on it. I’ll have it fixed in a jiffy. Stay in the carriage. You’re still the most recognizable.” He risked getting slapped by moving quickly to tuck her hair under the hood of her new cloak, pulling it around her face before giving her a kiss on the cheek, then he jumped from the carriage.
Scarlett watched as he moved to the broken wheel. “What did I miss?”
LANDON tried to speak to his brother on several occasions after following him at Layana’s insistence. Eventually, he’d given up and left Declan to brood in his room.
It’d been days since he’d bothered Declan again, but he was at his door first thing in the morning with a new tactic. He’d brought Layana with him. The girl had stayed quiet most of the time, only speaking when spoken to, but Declan figured having her nearby while they talked was more for Landon’s benefit than for his.
“I get it. You’re pissed at me, but we have to work together.” Landon argued his point before his brother could slam the door on him again.
“On what, little brother? A way to get us back to Alara and away from Talia’s clutches? I’m working on it. I can’t very well run out the front door with a broken rib, though can I?”
He’d been tempted. That very same night he had arrived, he’d been tempted to walk right out the front gate and take his chances with whomever she sent after him. He talked himself out of it.
Not knowing where Alara went was one of the reasons why. They had discussed it before the ship collided with the cliff. Heading to Esix would have proved difficult for a various number of reasons. The Baron Geleon being one of them.
Knowing Alara, she would have been the one to insist on steering clear of them. They would have headed toward Grotia, keeping away from the hustle of the village and going through the woods. Where would they go from there?
“Tell me, Lady Razael ” he started to ask Layana a question before she cut him off.
“Layana, please.” She appeared flush.
“Fine, Layana. Why would you risk our mother’s vengeance to help us? I mean, I get why you're helping Landon. Why help me? Why help Alara?” he asked, dying to know what she gained from all of this.
“Oh, well that’s simple,” she said, rising from her seat to help herself to the brandy on the table in the middle of the room. “Because it’s the right thing to do. Besides, getting the two of you back with your mother is what my uncle would want me to do.”
Declan looked between Landon and Layana. “Uncle?” He’d heard about House Razael. The mountains of Omath was the northern tip of Anaphias. The Lord and Lady of Omath had been imprisoned by Talia when Declan was young. He remembered his father being enraged with her when he found out. They fought over it for hours, shouting throughout the palace. He’d never heard his father speak of Lord and Lady Razael as being family of any kind.
“Well, to me, he was Uncle Tom. King Tomas and my father were childhood friends. When they were both mere children. He joked when I was little when he came to visit, saying his son and I would marry one day.” She looked at Landon and then back to her lap.
Declan glanced at his brother as he spoke, wondering if he saw her glance in his direction, but he studied the portrait on Declan’s wall.
“So, you just called him uncle.” Landon seemed to tune back into the conversation.
Layana eyed him then. “Yes. Though he’d never brought Talia to visit with us, so no need to call her my aunt. I doubt I would have anyway,” she said in earnest.
The two of them showing up at his rooms would have been suspicious under any other circumstances. Each of their rooms was the only ones in the entire palace where guards were not posted inside the closed doors. They had to be careful to keep their voices down as they spoke, so the ones posted outside the wouldn’t overhear them. However, Layana talked with ire in front of Talia with no concern for her wellbeing. It didn’t surprise Declan when she spoke against the queen consort without caution.
�
��How can you be so blatantly disrespectful of the queen regent?” he asked her.
“He doesn’t know yet,” Landon replied, eyes meeting between them. Landon rose from his seat, pulling the short dagger from the scabbard he carried at his waist. “Watch this,” he said, moving to Layana’s side as she rose to greet him.
She held out her left arm so Declan could get a good view. Landon then placed the dagger on her bare flesh. Declan held out a hand and shouted. “No, don’t!”
“It’s okay, Declan. Just watch.” Layana put her free hand on his arm to hold him back.
The metal trailed against her arm, but nothing happened. Confusion settled into Declan’s face. “What did I just see?”
“The blade can’t break her skin,” Landon said.
“How is that even possible?” Declan moved forward as Landon lay the blade to her skin again.
“Just another of Talia’s curses. However, being one of the first ones she’d cast, it seemed to backfire on her. She can’t hurt me, though she can hurt my parents. She has them somewhere, and I firmly believe they would want me to help you, even if it means their death. For all I know, they could be dead already.” Tears welled in her eyes as she spoke.
“I don’t think they are. I don’t think any of the lords and ladies are hurt at all. As a matter of fact…” Declan moved to the desk across the room. He pulled out a leather-bound journal and flipped through its pages. “I think I know where they are.”
Landon moved to the other side of his brother’s desk. “How?”
“Father confided all sorts of things in me. He taught me to keep a daily journal and to document everything. I’m sure it’s written in here somewhere.” He kept flipping through until he found what he was looking for. “Ha!” He pointed to the black ink scribbled on the pages.
“Do you have it?” Layana moved in next to Landon.
“I do. It’s not going to be easy to get to them, but now that the barrier around Ikrith is gone, it shouldn’t be extremely hard,” Declan told them.
“Wait, around Ikrith? How?” Landon asked.
“Thea,” Declan stated, looking at his brother for any indication he’d run back to Talia with that information. When his brother seemed to be happy about it, he continued. “Father said they were all taken to a palace in the eastern region of Ennore.”
“Where is Ennore?” Landon asked.
“The southern half of the island of Ikrith,” Layana and Declan said in unison.
About the Author
S.L. Perrine is a wife to a mechanic and mother of four crazy teenagers (3 are boys) who eat her out of house and home. Among writing, reading is another passion of hers. She also enjoys camping, fishing, and anything that means family time.
During the summer she can be found at camp with her laptop by the pool. She and her family reside in Troy, NY.
"I write stories to fill the world with imagination for those who have a hard time finding their own."
- SL PERRINE, 2016
About the Publisher
B URNING WILLOW PRESS is an independent publisher of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, with genres blended into multiple formats. Located in South Carolina, in the US, BWP has published more than eighty dreams with the interests of the authors at heart since 2015 and that, gentle reader, will double by 2022.
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