Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 84840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
It’s not time yet.
I need . . . just a little longer. One more door. Two. Maybe a few. Time runs differently here, I just need a few more minutes . . .
Ignoring the shakes, I dash through a series of rune doors.
Thinker’s Hall and Quin’s gold-threaded underwear; Pavilion Library as he holds his breath and lets Chaos read his pulse for the first time; the dance academy where Chaos unashamedly pretends to be Calix Solin—oh, how Quin laughs!
“Cael? You have to eat breakfast.”
I’ll skip it for more time here.
I dive behind the rune door where Quin drapes his cloak over Chaos when they’re trapped underwater. I see him at an antique jewellery stall at the market after the amorous spore incident, requesting the owner track down a rare clasp. I see the moment on the rooftop during the lovelight festival, when Quin realises Chaos likes his brother. I see his crushing pain as he gallops to save Nicostratus from assassins. I see his resolve to never see Chaos again. I see him break it, entering the final exam as Chaos’s patient with a desperate plea for him not to enter the royal city.
“Cael?” the voice outside the dromveske calls. “I’m off to get a bucket of cold water . . .”
Fine. Until then . . .
I relive the disaster of the royal city—all of it, from the wyverns to sneaking out into the capital to poisoning the king to ‘dying’ and awaking in his arms.
I see all of it through the eyes of a man trying and failing to keep his distance.
I see—no, I feel—the tender moment Quin gives in; the moment he knows he’ll be forever imprisoned in these feelings, the moment his shell is pierced and that younger Quin can be glimpsed again: it’s the moment in Kastoria, when he wakes from his coma to Chaos sleeping at his bedside, holding his hand with ferocious desperation.
I feel it all. I’m a shivery, wretched mess by the time I stumble back to the violet oak.
I’m a shivery, wretched mess every morning.
I scan the glade. No shaking yet. No sign of the impending downpour.
I’ve time to try one more. The one I’ve still yet to open. It’s brighter than all the others, with a mesmerising river-pearl sheen to the door. Like there’s something magical that can barely be contained beyond it. I reach out and shiver at the ticklish thrum coming through the ancient wood. Please budge this time.
I push. And push. Every time, the same result.
Some doors are like this—hard to open. Some secrets need to be locked away.
I swallow, fingers trailing over the thrum. “What do you need to lock away?” I glance at the last rune door and back at the pearly one. This memory is surely the day we save Nicostratus from the crusaders, the day my meridians are destroyed, the day I believe my dream dies and I stare all my hurt into Quin’s soul and say I should never have saved him.
I stumble back on a sigh. Maybe this is why the memory is here, yet impossible to open. Those feelings are part of our journey, but too raw. Volatile. That thrumming that I can still feel vibrating through the ground could be the storm from the hurt I caused.
I yank my hand away from the door, my stomach sinking.
Perhaps it’s best I don’t relive this. And yet . . .
I walk away, but like always I glance back at the glowing wood, frowning.
Eventually. Eventually, I’ll—
The sky swooshes open with the deafening sound of water lurching out of a pail and dropping all at once. The air is suddenly cold and thick with the wave rushing towards me from above. At first the violet oak sags under the weight of the water; I gulp in the scent of wet earth and timber before the wave smashes over me.
I swim to the exit—
And lurch into a sitting position on my mattress, hauling in air.
Casimiria is holding the offending pail with a grin.
I squeeze water from my hair. “How many times have I said it’s enough to douse the dromveske. You don’t need to drench my body too.”
“Yes,” she says, a twinkle to her eye. “But it’s more fun this way.”
“Mother and son. Both merciless.”
Casimiria barks out a laugh. “Merciless, but with meaning.”
She sets down the pail, her expression sobering. I have a feeling I know what she’ll say. I hurriedly rise off the bed and lift the wet blankets. “I’ll hang these out.”
She bars my way.
I try to duck.
She catches me by the scruff. “You can’t only live in memories, Cael.”
I grip the blankets, suppressing the urge to retort, why not?
“They’re the past,” she continues gently. “Not what’s real now. Not what will be real in the future.”
The punch of those words knocks the air from my lungs. The dromveske is only a gift of stolen moments. Stolen moments are not forever.