“Did you cry when I left?” I asked, desperate to know the truth. “Did you love me, did anyone love me?”
“Guardians save the queen!” Mother chanted as swells of tears streamed out of her eyes, down her cheeks. Filling the room with an ocean of her tears. She didn’t answer me, only repeated, “Guardians save the queen!”
“Did you love me, mother?” I begged. “Did you cry when I left?”
She shut her eyes, stopping the flood of her tears.
“Queen Elowyn Blackthorn, the first of her name!”
I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want those words. I wanted only her love. Someone’s love.
She opened her eyes again, but this time, they were the same as they had been long before all my pain and agony started. At least before I knew it. Before they were red from crying often. But were they not always red? Were they not always sad?
She stepped forward in her cerulean evening dress, her long, sleek black hair braided over her shoulder. Not a day touching her perfect young skin. No longer pregnant, with a thin, tapered waist that I knew from before she was with child. Before I left. Before my world flipped upside down.
Then a loudthwackshattered the room, resounding through my body.
To my horror, her head was severed from her shoulders and rolled onto the bed, sopping with her tears, into my lap. Frozen, I could notmove, not even to flinch. Her eyes looked up at me, two clear blue sapphires of pure honesty.
Burning, sacred truth.
“Did you ever love me?” I asked. I needed to know the truth.
“Love dies,” she answered. “Glory lives forever.”
Daylight pierced the sea and dispelled my night of torments, as if none of it happened at all.
The room was empty, my body aching. Anxiety seized me, relentless. I reached under my pillow and felt the hard cover of the journal. Thank the Guardians, it was still there, just where I’d left it.
I was alone, but the presence of Nixie, Lumina, my mother, and my demons lingered. When had they left me?
I sat up in bed.
You know who did this.Lumina’s words still burned in my mind, as they had in the depths of my agony.
Calypstra.
But why? On Hylos’s orders? But he had prevented me from divulging my secrets right at his feet, before all.
If he didn’t order it, then who did?
Everything felt strange, as if hallucinations and truths still lurked in the shadows, even in broad daylight. I needed to leave, to let the past dissipate and haunt someone else for a change.
Surging from bed, I changed into the silken emerald training outfit I’d worn the day before and rushed out the door of the empty room that was overcrowded with my past.
I knocked on Nixie’s door across the way from mine.
“You’re awake,” she said as she rubbed at the dark-crimson circles under her eyes. It had been a long night for us both, then.
“I’m ready for training,” I said curtly.
“But last night, you hardly slept—”
“Nixie. I need to.”
And with a nod, she agreed.
A bead of sweat traced a path down my spine as Nixie guided me through the stances of my next lesson in the armory. The scent of salt from the sea and my sweat melded. She explained how to plant my feet and hold positions steadfastly. But I was weak and shook under the weight of my body.
