Still, Katrinka slept soundly to my right. She’d sprawled across the bench in her seat, so I sat huddled against the window. If we were more familiar as sisters, I would have laid her feet across my lap and moved toward the center of the bench so I could escape the damp seeping in through the carriage window and door. But we did not have that sort of relationship yet, so I tried to avoid touching her when I could.
I wasn’t sure if it was the chill outside of the carriage or within, but it made me angry. I had lost my parents and brothers nine years ago, but as Brahm reminded me, my sister had also been taken from me. Physically. Emotionally.Would we ever recover from the separation that neither of us chose? Would she ever cease to hate me for the trauma we’d both faced?
“This is one of my least favorite kingdoms,” Ravanna Presydia declared from across the cabin.
I had not known she was awake, so her stark declaration startled me. “Barstus?” I managed to squeak.
“I have never known constant rain like this damned country. All day and all night, it is nothing but rain and chill. We’ll be lucky to leave without fevers and chest rattles.”
Her complaint surprised me. I knew nothing about her, but she seemed like the kind of person to enjoy gloom and gray. “I have never been.”
Her head dropped back on the black velvet seat, and she closed her eyes but not out of exhaustion. There was an irritation to her that seemed to smother all the air in the carriage. “You will not be sorry you waited so long.”
I licked suddenly dry lips and asked a bold, albeit childish, question. “What is your favorite kingdom in the realm?”
Her eyes snapped open, and she leveled me with a harsh glare. “My own.”
“I’ve never been to Blackthorne either,” I told her, sounding more foolish than ever.
She closed her eyes again and settled heavily against the seat. “Yes, you have. You might not remember, but your family visited mine more than once when you were a child before... well, before.”
My heart jumped in my chest. This was the opportunity I had been looking for. “Did you know my parents then? When they were alive?”
“You cannot rule a kingdom in this realm and not know the king of it,” was her terse reply.
“Oh, yes, of course. I just meant...”
“You meant to ask if I was friends with your parents. If I knew them intimately.” She had not moved from her relaxed position, not one muscle. But despite her easy façade, she did not sound calm. Instinct told me she was coiled like a striking viper. When I remained quiet, unable to respond properly, she let out a short sigh and said, “Not friends. With either your mother or your father. Your father was not the type to keep female friends. He hardly tolerated me from a distance, so no, when we found ourselves in close quarters, we were not friendly. Although there were a few times I considered us civil.”
Well, not a glowing recommendation for their relationship. But it was more than nothing. Still, I had to ask, “And my mother? I know you said you weren’t friends, but did you know her?”
Her eyes opened again. Slowly, as if fluttering awake or slipping into a dream. Only she did not look at me, she gazed out the darkened carriage window at the rivers of raindrops and blurring scenery. “Sometimes, I think she was the only person I have ever really known. The only person who’s ever known me.” Her voice was quiet, reverent. I wondered if she even remembered that I was still here, still listening. “We weren’t friends. What a foolish word for what we shared.”
My frantic heart stuttered. I knew what that was... to be more than friends, to share something that transcended a colloquial definition. I had it with Oliver. And this distance between us, distance we had not suffered since the day we met, had been punishing and cruel. And it had been less than a week.
But my mother’s voice echoed in my head. “The Cold Queen.” I had never heard her speak of Ravanna with anything but disdain and irritation.
Ravanna seemed to read my thoughts. “At least when we were children. After she became queen, we were... less so. I suppose she had your father then and didn’t need me. But I never forgot the girl she used to be. The power she used to wield.”
My eyebrows furrowed together as I played that over in my mind. “The power she used to wield.” As queen? When she married my father? Or before?
I knew she had been a foreigner to Elysia. That had never been kept a secret from us children. But now, I couldn’t seem to remember where she was from. I was only half Elysian. There was something else in my blood, some other kingdom. But where?
I wanted to ask Ravanna and press her with questions until she ordered me to stop. But the carriage came to an abrupt halt, and voices started shouting back and forth across a distance.
We’d reached Castle Bale’s outer ramparts. Soon enough, the loud whining of wheels and clicking of spindles drowned out whatever conversation we could have had as the drawbridge was let down for us to pass into the renowned seat of Barstus.
I had never been, not even as a child, I knew that. My mother had been reluctant to bring us to the dreary kingdom, but I could not remember why. My governess had once told me it was because of the gargoyles. And now, as we moved slowly toward the castle proper and lightning flashed in the sky, I could see why she thought that. Statues of the gruesome goblins sat on nearly every structure. Hanging from the drawbridge portcullis to the pillars that lined the drive toward the castle.
They were nestled in hedges and lined along the outer-edged battlements. Guarding the steep, pointed roofs of the towers. And all around the borders of the bailey once we were inside. Some were short and fat. Others were as large as a grown man. They sat in the windows of the parapet. And I had no doubt they would even live in the castle’s Temple.
Although they were made from stone, so I’m not sure what my mother’s prejudice would be against them. An eyesore for sure, but hardly dangerous.
Katrinka stirred next to me, finally waking once we’d come to another stop. She stretched in a delicate yawn. “Oh, we’re home.”
We were not home. That was certain. But instead of arguing, I asked, “Did you really live among the hobgoblins, sister? They are quite fearsome.”
She laughed easily. “Oh, yes. But they are hardly frightening when there is no lightning streaking the sky. We’re old friends. I’ll introduce you in the morning.”
