Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 120974 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 605(@200wpm)___ 484(@250wpm)___ 403(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120974 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 605(@200wpm)___ 484(@250wpm)___ 403(@300wpm)
For weeks the Head Healer has been putting me off, telling me not to worry. He said that my mother would, of course, recover and live to rule for many more years upon the Silver Throne.
But that was all a lie—I know that now. He tells the truth to my brother, Prince Kellis, without reservation. Perhaps because, with my brother, he doesn’t have to worry about “delicate female sensibilities” making him faint. Which is what he is clearly certain would happen to me, should he be truthful.
This is the same man who prescribed me a sleeping draught so that I might sleep through my monthly courses instead of giving me the simple pain medication I requested. He also recommended against allowing me to learn and getting me a tutor. For, as he said, “too much knowledge may overwhelm the Princess’s delicate female brain and drive her to madness.”
I am lucky my parents didn’t listen to this nitwitted advice—I would have grown up a complete ignoramus if they had. However, many of the parents of the Noble ladies in Court did listen and now some of them can barely read or write their own names. They often made fun of me when we were all children because I liked to read. I was called “boring” and “stuffy” and “fat”—which has nothing to do with my love of reading and much more to do with the fact that my mother refused to let the kitchen staff starve me.
Most of the other women of Noble birth in our Kingdom grew up on a diet of clear broth and stewed vegetables—again upon the recommendation of the Head Healer.
“For it is bad for a delicate lady to have too strong of a constitution,” I have heard him saying often. “Being too sturdy will make a female rebellious and strong-willed and we can’t have that now, can we?”
I suppose that I am one of those “rebellious females” the Court has such a horror of. The Head Healer certainly seemed to think so when I cornered him and demanded to know the truth about my mother. He put me off, claiming she would be “right as rain, any day now, Princess. Now, don’t worry your pretty little head.”
His condescension rankled me like an under-slip made of stinging nettles and I believed him not at all. Which is why I am hiding behind the statue of the angel to hear what he truly thinks of the Queen’s condition.
“But is there truly nothing we can do—no cure, either physical or magical—which can reverse the wasting?” my brother asks earnestly.
“None, I fear. It would take a Healing Draught brewed by the Sorceress of Thornmere Forest herself to cure your mother now,” the Healer says.
At this, my brother sighs deeply for the Healer might as well have told him it was completely impossible. Thornmere Forest is known to be impassable, with huge old trees growing so close together that inside it’s said to be black as night, even at noon. And the Sorceress he speaks of lives right in the center of that magical tangle.
But even if one were able to find their way through the forest, they would have to get to it first—which is utterly impossible. Between our kingdom and Thornmere, lies the Poison Desert—so named because the fumes that rise from it will choke and strangle even the strongest man. Also, the touch of its burning sands is like acid—scarring and eating flesh down to the bone in a matter of moments.
Some say the Sorceress put the desert there herself—to keep anyone from bothering her. And some say it’s an evil curse from a magician who was angered by one of my long-forgotten Royal ancestors. But however it was made, it remains an uncrossable barrier between our kingdom and the forest where the Sorceress lives.
“Ahh, if only one could fly across the desert and straight over the walls of the Sorceress’s stronghold,” my brother says sadly. “If only I could, I would go at once and pay any price to get my dear mother a cure.”
“We all feel that way, Your Majesty,” the Head Healer says comfortingly. “Alas, even with the magic in your Royal blood, such things are impossible.”
“Indeed they are,” my brother says.
But are they?
As the two of them wander down the hallway, speaking of other things, my brother’s words ignite an idea in my brain—yes, my delicate feminine brain that’s supposed to be too weak to hold any knowledge. And maybe what I’m thinking is crazy, but it seems to me that there may be a way to get the Draught of Healing for my mother.
My brother said, “if only one could fly over the dessert,” which is, of course, impossible—for a regular person.
But not for a dragon.
And that is what makes me think of the beast chained in our basement.