I nearly hyperventilate.
Nearly. I don’t, of course, because I am still a queen.
“There,” Dommik says with a grin. “How do you feel?”
“Like I want to stab you,” I grind out, scared stiff.
Instead of teasing me, he shakes his head calmly. “No, Queenie. Look. Take it in.”
He points ahead at the nothing. The vaporous ether of fog in front of us that seems to never end. Then at the dark void below us that holds our world cradled in its bottomless grasp.
I breathe in a shuddering breath and stare at it, doing as he said and trying to simply take it in.
After a few minutes, the fear of falling actually loosens its hold around me. Then, I realize that sitting here and facing the edge of the world is actually quite…liberating.
“That’s it…” Dommik encourages as he takes my hand. “How do you feel now?”
“I feel…small,” I admit. “Only, in a good way.”
Because this makes our problems feel smaller too.
We are only two specks sitting at the fringe of a world. A world that has seen so many other people. And something about that makes me feel like this threat we face is small enough that perhaps we just might overcome it.
So I let out a breath, and I smile out at the void, because now, it doesn’t seem so dismal after all.
Perhaps it just takes sitting at the edge of your world to find a little bit of hope.
CHAPTER 43
QUEEN MALINA
We sit here at Orea’sedge for a while. Watching the fog and feeling the biting air while we savor the silence together.
Then, Dommik gets up and carefully helps me back to my feet. When we start walking again, he continues on instead of heading back the way we came toward the ruins.
I dart a questioning look his way, but he says nothing.
After a couple more minutes, just as it begins to start snowing, I spot something in the distance. I squint, trying to figure out what it could be. “What is that?”
“Well, I’m not positive, since I’m not as versed in history as you, but I believe…this used to be Seventh Kingdom’s capital city. Or what’s left of it.”
My eyes widen as I take in the sight. Dommik is right. There’s a road. Or I think it may have been a road a very long time ago. Now, it’s only patches of flat stone upon the snow, still bricked together in some places. The only reason we can evensee it is because the wind seems to have dislodged a snow drift, leaving the patchwork of the ancient street exposed.
Judging by the distance from the castle, I’d say this could be considered the outskirts of Cauval City. And there, just beside the remnants of the quilted bricks, is a single building, that somehow managed to keep existing after all this time.
“I didn’t think anything was still standing.”
“Me either,” Dommik replies.
Together, we make our way toward it. There isn’t any roof, but three walls stand, one of them arced with the space where a window used to be. We skirt around to the inside of the walls and see the snow gathered in tall piles at each corner.
“There must have been a lot of it that collapsed,” I murmur as I trail my hand down the rough stone.
“I don’t think so,” Dommik tells me as he looks it over. “I think this was it.”
Surprised, I glance around the space. “It’s so small.”
“I grew up in a house about this size.”
