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 splutter a laugh. “Father is all rules and responsibilities. I’m questioning now if you’ve ever met him.”
“When your grandfather was still alive, your father was a man of great vision and determination. He travelled all of Lumin and Iskaldir in pursuit of knowledge and experience. Honestly, I admired him greatly when he first came to Ragn.” My aunt flushes and laughs it off. “Of course, I was barely ten. He only ever had eyes for my older sister.”
It’s the distraction I need from the worry curdling my gut.
“My sister was such a soft, loving girl. Her kindness was too easily taken advantage of, especially by greedy, wolfish men. Your father protected her from the shadows. It was all by chance and coincidence at first, until he realised she needed someone guarding her around the clock and made it his mission to make sure she always arrived home in one piece. He kept this up for months, the casual visitor by day, and the secret protector after dark. One day, she saw him duelling one of the wolfish men. The crowd whispered he did this often, always for the honour of a beautiful woman. My systra, silly thing, had no idea they meant her. She helped him bandage his wounds—which, par-linea as he was, he did not need at all—and told him he was a good man. And that was that. I believe he kissed her right then and there.”
My father always claimed she was the love of his life in a brutish, don’t-ask-me-again sort of way, but I’d never imagined him quite so dashing. Also . . . “Duelling?”
“He’s not so bad with a sword, you know. I was young at the time, but he protected me once or twice too.”
How little I know of my own father. I drop my head into the crook of my arm and laugh.
My family . . . my dearest Akilah . . .
I close my eyes, my aunt’s stories fading into the quiet hum of the night. My family is waiting for me, trusting me to survive, to return. But Quin’s face, battered and defiant, rises unbidden in my mind. My king. My responsibility. If I fail him, I fail them all.
Megaera frowns at our pinched faces. “It’s not my fault. It’s whoever wrote the recipe’s fault.”
I gulp back some water to lessen the spoiled tang. Zenon splutters and claws at his throat, asking for the antidote. Lykos turns purple as he chows it all down and tosses his spoon in the emptied bowl with relief.
Megaera brandishes the recipe, and I glance over it. 100 grammes of hogwart. “You weren’t suspicious at that much hogwart?”
“I always follow instructions precisely. Why else have them?”
Zenon finishes a second cup of water. “You even made me buy more hogwart when you were three grammes short.”
She smiles with scary calm. “Would you like to take over the kitchen responsibilities?”
Zenon scoots his chair closer to Lykos’s.
Lykos shoos him back. “You’re on your own, I ate mine.” He stands and collects the dishes. “I’ll clean up.” He’s halfway towards the kitchen when we hear him retching.
Megaera daintily dips a spoon into the dish and tries it. Her face remains perfectly unbothered. She smiles and looks at me. “Let’s eat out tonight?”
I return to my aunt’s for the second half of the day’s mentoring, but my mind is in knots and though I can convince myself to calm down about Akilah—she has Florentius for emotional and physical support—I can’t calm down about Quin. His wounds will be burning him with every slight movement, and he’s probably being annoyingly stubborn about using the flutette.
My aunt whacks my backside with a wooden spoon and sends me off, telling me to come with a clearer head tomorrow.
I rush through town, dashing into a few stores along the way, and hurry to the temple grounds.
The guards uncross their spears and I secure my veil, rap on the door, and enter. Quin doesn’t jerk his head at my rushed entrance. He sits cross-legged on the mat, his bandages stark against bruised skin. Afternoon light filters through the shutters, striping his muscled frame in gold and shadow. My gaze catches on his shortened hair and the scars marking his body—traces of pain that make my breath hitch.
“Has no one brought you clothes?” I say, sounding rather puffed, and then spy a pile of clean fabrics upon the table. “Why are you not in them!”
“I stripped,” he murmurs, “for you.”
I stare, my breathing so uneven I suck in a mouthful of veil.
I quickly cough it out and remind myself I’m only here to get him healthy and to free him.
I square my shoulders and give strict directions for him to perch on the bed. I tend to his welted back, redo the bandages—quick, professional—and toss him a shirt.