Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 64872 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 324(@200wpm)___ 259(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64872 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 324(@200wpm)___ 259(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
“I poisoned her.”
Both he and Quin suck in air.
“Only I know the antidote,” I continue. “She must receive it within three days.”
King Yngvarr roars, “How dare—”
“Fulfil your promise! Free him. When he’s safe, I’ll save her.”
He lunges forward and grips my throat, his thumb and fingers squeezing hard. “If I didn’t need your skills, I’d have your head!” He throws me away and I cough and claw in breath. Chains rattle and, in an instant, Quin is at my side, setting me upright, cuffed hands lifting to softly check my neck. I don’t meet his eyes.
He should hate me. He should want to finish the job.
But of course, not yet. The antidote.
“It wasn’t he who poisoned me,” Casimiria says and steps towards King Yngvarr. “Nor he who pushed me into this corner.”
King Yngvarr trembles. His lips are pressed into a hard thin line. He can’t hold her gaze either.
“If you still hold me in your thoughts even a little, please. Free my son.”
King Yngvarr jerks his finger towards Quin. “He is half that vile man! He is half the man I hate!”
Casimiria speaks again, quietly, and her words have the king stumbling back into his throne. “He is also half this woman. Half this woman that you once loved.”
My hand is on Quin’s wrist, squeezing it so hard I’m leaving nail marks. Still, I can’t loosen my grip. Can’t let go.
King Yngvarr finally speaks. “He has one night to leave.”
An hour later, at the king’s command, I’m escorted by Prins Lief’s men—led by an impatient Prins Lief himself—to my Ragn abode. I’m to pack my things and return immediately to the castle.
My aunt greets us at the gates, hauling me into a fierce herb-scented hug as she murmurs to Prins Lief over my shoulder. “Thank you. Thank you.”
Prins Lief tells his men not to enter, to guard from the main gate, and shuts it on them. He comes over, murmuring under his tongue, “He’s not safe yet. He’s under my father’s eye.”
I temporarily push away those anxieties and shuffle out of the hug, leaving them a moment to talk, to . . . be. I sink onto my bed with a long sigh and hold my clasp in my hands. The setting sun leaks stripes through the shuttered balcony doors, the light falling like the bars of a cage. Like it knows I’m the one now imprisoned. The clasp glitters between my fingers. But at least . . . “You’re free.”
I blow on the silver and polish it with fresh garments, garments I change into after a good, long soak. I’m tying up the small bag of my belongings—my grandfather’s books, my journal of scriptions, the box holding my soldad—when tumbling colour has me startling to my feet. My balcony doors fling open and Quin breezes in on a graceful wind.
His meridians have been unlocked. He’s met with his mother.
My stomach knots as he lands quietly. His gaze locks on mine with a dark, shivery intensity that promises confrontation. “Come.”
“I have to go back—”
In a hair-prickling breeze, he crosses the room, hauls me to his hip with an arm belted around my back, and kicks off the ground with his good leg. We move so fast, I drop my belongings, but Quin reacts swiftly and a surging gust lifts my bag within reach. As we pass over the courtyard, I glimpse Prins Lief cradling my aunt close. They break apart as they look up and Prins Lief shouts a furious, “Seriously!”
Before I can beg him to save me from the stomach-dropping fear of Quin’s impending wrath, Quin calls, “One hour. Collect him from the temple.”
We touch ground in the grove close to the meditation cottage, now eerily barren without the lines of stormblades. From somewhere nearby comes the crackling of an outdoor fire and the delicious scent of roasted meat, but I’m not to think of such trivial things. The way Quin has deposited me, the way he’s whipped up that old broom cane, the way he thunks it on the ground as he paces . . . the confrontation is about to begin.
Deserved. Still, I back up slowly in shivery anticipation, as if that extra distance might lessen the blow—
The trunk of a walnut tree halts me with a push of resistance at my back, bark snagging my hair. My bag does fall this time.
Quin stops pacing and faces me. His lips are curled in thought, brow slightly pinched. He cocks his head and ponders. Steps closer, and ponders some more. Closer and closer. Sets his cane against the trunk and comes closer still. My breath catches, and his gaze strokes over my face. It’s almost too much, but I can’t look away. Between us, the air thickens and warms, and something delicate throbs through me. He closes a hand around my sleeve and loosely pins my wrist to the tree above my head. His other hand slides around my hips, jostling me an inch closer as his head bows over mine, our noses grazing. He slides his along the side of mine, ghosts it over my jawbone, his soft breath colliding with my shuddering one. His eyes shut briefly as his nose drags to my throat. His sigh runs down my neck, and his next inhale sucks at the very edge of my ear.