“No,” my sister whimpers.
I cover her mouth, even as the three men in our line of sight look in our direction.
And that’s when I first see Fleurie.
71
FLEURIE
Mount Ulra
Grove of the Gods
* * *
I glance toward the darkness of the grove and fix my gaze there.
My pulse beats a steady rhythm, even though I know at some point tonight, Raina Bloodgood’s rage is coming.
The deep of night reveals nothing yet, but I know she’s here. Alexi, too. How I ache to see his handsome face, to hold him in my arms, to hear his voice.
Colden eyes me as the prince returns to his prayers. It’s an eerie experience, listening to him have a whispered conversation, knowing that he’s speaking to my father whose bones lie somewhere beneath my feet. I can feel his presence, goosebumps on my skin regardless of the desert cold, like a wraith has been lurking in the night, sniffing the back of my neck.
I study this man with the prince, General Vexx, and his prize head. He finds himself terrifying carrying a symbol of his barbaric brutality around like a trophy. A part of me thrills when he gives me a smug look.
Your time is coming, I think to myself. Your time is coming.
Suddenly, the prince presses his hands to the roots before him, as though he nearly collapsed. “No,” he groans, his voice a low and miserable sound. “No, my lord. You cannot ask such a thing.”
My heart begins its breaking. Perhaps it’s been breaking for three hundred years. Perhaps it’s broken anew these last weeks, seeing my old friend made into a monster. I remember the beautiful boy he was. His pure heart. His soulful eyes. His tender laughter. How did he become this? How could my father reach up from the grave and still destroy someone so good?
I wipe my tears from my face, my breaths trembling. I wish I could grab him. Shake him. Make him hear the words Thamaos has locked inside me for so long. It would stop this if he could truly hear me. I know it would. And yet I’m trapped as I’ve ever been.
Blinking back more tears, I study the tree that represents my father’s life, the growth of his spirit. It makes me want to vomit that he’s been granted such a beautiful memoriam when his soul is as dark as the deepest pits of the earth. If he lives again, I will kill him again. And I’ll do it over and over if I must. His poison must be blotted out. It must be.
The prince leans back on his heels, his shoulders slumped, his demeanor that of a defeated lover. I know what’s been asked of him. The thing he cannot bring himself to do.
I revel in that, at least. That a glimmer of his old self lives, enough to say no to the god who rules him.
Even if only for a moment.
72
THE PRINCE WITH NO NAME
“There is a way to replenish my bones faster,” Thamaos says.
“How, my lord?”
“A sacrifice. The remnant and the ritual can resurrect me, but with the added blood of vital life, I can be restored in days rather than months.”
“I have no offering, my lord,” I whisper. “Save for myself.”
I do not mention Vexx. I do not mention Fleurie. I certainly do not mention Colden. And yet my lord laughs.
“You do, though,” he says. “You have a useless king in your midst. One who accepted help from Neri to harm you. One you had to bind with iron to prevent his icy betrayal. One you chose not to use against Fia Drumera. Time to give him a purpose.”
This command is too much. I fall forward with the weight of a sinking heart. “No, my lord. You cannot ask such a thing.”
