The bell chimed once as I entered.
The air smelled of crushed herbs and burnt honey. Shelves crowded every wall, stacked with vials of dust and bone, fragments of quartz still humming faintly with captured light. Above my head, candles floated midair, their flames flickering as I passed below.
Seated at a small table tucked against one wall was a woman with hair the color of clouded moonlight and weathered hands. Meerdra, I’d heard she was called. She didn’t look up from the rune stone she was carving.
“I wondered how long it would take you,” she said. Her voice was soft and sharp at once, like silk wrapped around glass.
“You knew I’d come?”
She glanced up then. Her face was lined with wrinkles, but her moss-colored eyes were all-seeing; the kind of ageless that spoke of magic alongside the many years. “Everyone comes eventually, Your Majesty.”
The title scraped, but I didn’t bother to deny it.
I pulled my hood back and met her gaze. “Then you know why I’m here.”
“Of course. The Harvest Throne has awakened, and you don’t want it to fall into the wrong hands.”
That startled me. “What do you know of my throne?”
“Maybe the question you should ask is why you, its king, did not know?”
I frowned.
“Then again, I learned of the history of the thrones before your bloodline became kings,” she said, returning her attention to the rune stone. “And I’ve watched those same kings starve their people on altars to gods they don’t understand. So, is it any wonder that I didn’t share what I knew with your kind?”
Her words stung. “My father?—”
“Was a fool,” she finished. “And you are trying very hard not to be. So, tell me, Callan of Grey Oak, do you want to preserve or simply to control?”
I hesitated. “I want to save my land. And its people.”
“We cannot always have both, as your father well knew.”
I exhaled slowly, refusing to acknowledge that or believe it. “You said the throne is awake. What does that mean?”
She finally set down the carving tool. Her cloak shifted as she moved, and faint runes glimmered along the hem—old, curved symbols that tugged at my memory. I’d seen them before. Or something like them.
“Verdant,” I murmured. “I’ve seen markings like those before… on Aurelia’s neck.”
Her gaze flicked to me, unreadable. “You notice more than most.”
“Then you are truly descended from the Verdant tribe?”
A small smile. “A line that yet lives even if a home for us does not.”
I blinked, stunned.
Aurelia had asked me to bring her to see the oracle. She’d suspected there would be clues to breaking Summer’s curse buried in the Verdant’s history. Its old magic. Its healing. And I’d ignored her. Assumed the Verdant had vanished long ago, along with the rest of the Calidium empire.
Aurelia had been right.
I’d been a fool.
“Wait. You’ve met Aurelia, then?”
The old woman’s eyes sparked. “More than most, indeed.”
“What did you tell her?” I asked.
