Unfolding it, I study the script.
I’m disconcerted to see that the handwriting appears identical to the note I received at dawn, telling me where to find the female Oracle.
This means the carpenter’s death must be connected to her, a murder the writer of the note wanted to happen on the same day they lured me—and Antony and Maxim—here to find her.
A growl rises to my lips as I ask myself again: What game is this, and who is directing it?
“Give me the coin.”
The lowborn is far more reluctant to obey me this time, pulling the pouch from his pocket and gripping it hard for a few rebellious seconds before he hands it to me.
I slip a single coin from the sack, my lips thinning at the distinct pattern on it. I don’t have to turn it over to know my own countenance is imprinted on the other side.
It’s a Frost coin. Silver, no less. Our most valuable currency. It must have come from my kingdom, although that doesn’t mean the note-writer is from Frost, only that they sourced the coin from there. Someone is trying to implicate my kingdom in a murder that makes no sense to me.
“Where’s the body?” I snap, my sense of calm gone.
The man points northward. “The boatyard.”
I should be searching for the Oracle, but if this murder isconnected to her, then I assure myself I’ll uncover her along the way.
Handing the child to her father, I allow her to scramble into his arms, but I can’t stop my command to him. “If you don’t wish your child to become an orphan, you will forget the promised coin.”
I should cut his throat with ice right now. It would be the smart thing to do. Knowledge is power, and I need to suppress information about these events, at least until I can make sense of them.
Yet, I’m already five paces away from him, and I’ve left him alive.
I tell myself it isn’t mercy.
It has nothing to do with the little girl whose future rests in my hands. Nor with the betrayal that took everything from me many years ago.
No more.
I reach the burning trees in seconds, determined to find the boatyard as quickly as I can, but I don’t make it another step.
Without warning, golden light explodes across my vision. I don’t know where it came from or what it means, but for an unexplainable moment, the sun might have burst in the sky, and its rays swept me into blissful oblivion.
A split-second later, agony strikes through my heart, more physical pain than I’ve ever experienced.
Suddenly, I’m sightless, my vision consumed by the light, but my heart…
It fuckinghurts.
Oh, glory.
Fucking magnificentpain.
Feeling.
I crash to my knees, more power than I’ve ever feltbefore, driving me to the sand, its force crushing my chest until I can’t breathe, but I don’t care.
I haven’t felt anything for such a long time, for years and years, and now I feeleverything.
Love and hate and grief and happiness and warmth and hope and loss and terrifying need.
A roar builds within my chest as I welcome every feeling, every emotion I’ve been incapable of experiencing, quenching my thirst in this light, filling my body and my mind. Dragging it in, wanting more, wanting…
Her.
