Thehuman.
The one he had healed.
The one he had poured his human essence into.
It was obvious that the Throne knew he had given something of himself away that day when Ryu had healed the human.
Well, he would get it back, and prove himself worthy.
Ryu turned away from the Twilight Throne, ready to face the challenges ahead.
If the Throne wanted him to prove his worth, he would.
He would show them all that he was the rightful heir to the Twilight Throne.
CHAPTER THREE
The scent of freshly baked bread wafted through the air as Ella Stewart helped her foster father, William, in his bakery.
Ella moved slowly, the effects of the wine they had overindulged in last night catching up to her. Last night had been a bad night for William, as memories of his husband had overwhelmed him. Poor Alexei was gone these six years, slain in the pirate attack on their little coastal village, but the love William had for his husband still burned fierce.
Ella had stayed up with her foster father through the night, both of them sharing a bottle of wine as they shared memories of their lost loved ones, and now, as Ella stood in the hot back room of the bakery, the effects of the wine from the night before made her stomach turn and her head feel like it was caught in a vice.
Ella swept the back of her arm over her forehead, pushing her sweaty hair out of her eyes, uncaring of the flour she was smearing over her face.
From her position in the back, with the window open, Ella could hear the customers talking as they waited for William to serve them.
“I don’t know why he keeps her around,” a voice floated in to the kitchen. Ella could tell she was an older woman, and she guessed that the speaker was Martha, one of the village gossips. With a sigh, she wondered who the women were slandering this time.
“She’s always been strange, that one. That white streak in her hair is the mark of evil, mark my words.”
Ella’s heart dropped. They were talking abouther. Again.
“How else could she have survived the pirate attack? It’s notnatural,” another villager added, her voice filled with suspicion. “We all saw the holes the arrows made in her blouse. The scars in her back.”
“And she’s the only one in the entire village who came through the plague last year without even afever,” a third voice added, hard with anger. “We nearly lost papa Abramov, and he’s as strong as a horse!”
Ella gritted her teeth, frustration simmering beneath her calm exterior. She knew the truth, or at least she believed she did.
It all traced back to the enigmatic Elf she had helped that day—the one who had saved her from the pirates, only to disappear without a trace.
She had never forgotten his piercing silver grey eyes and the sense of magic that had surrounded him.
He hadruinedher life, that damned Elf.
Ella frowned, poking holes in the dough, wishing it were that blasted Elf. Flour dusted her hands as she huffed in irritation, her movements rough.
“Careful with that dough, child,” William said as he glided into the kitchen and saw Ella pounding out her frustrations on the dough.
Then, he shook his head, his grizzled face breaking into a warm smile. “I don’t know why I bother. No matter what you do, your bread always tastes better than mine. You’ve got a touch for it, just like your mother.”
At the mention of her mother, Ella’s heart squeezed. Her parents had been William’s best friends, and he’d taken her in when they’d been killed in the pirate attack. Her older brother, Thomas was lost to her, and she wondered every day whether he was still alive, or whether he was with her parents.
After William had lost his husband in the attack, he and Ella had come together to form a little family of their own out of the scraps that were left behind.
William often said he owed it to her parents to look after her, for showing him friendship when he had first arrived in the village of Strayhaven in Drakazov, so far from his home in Merovia.
When he’d met Ella’s father, a Merovian himself, their friendship had been instant. Both men had eloped from their homeland because of their love for their spouses, who had come from over the border, in the Drakazov Kingdom. The two men had left their old world behind for love, and far from their home in a village of outcasts and rebels like them, they’d found a lifelong friendship in each other.
