“If anyone had the hand of Erde on them, it was Rose.”
There was so much Nana hadn’t told me.
“Kaia?” I asked hesitantly as she started to turn away, nervous of overstepping in what was still the beginnings of what I hoped wouldturn into a friendship, but needing to ask someone. “The Veil—the last time it started fraying, so many of you were there. Why are there still so many questions and so few answers?”
She shrank into herself before steeling her spine. “Come with me.”
She led me to her office in the stone building that lined one side of the training yard, an austere place with just a desk and two chairs. Jerking her head at a chair, she rested against the edge of the desk. I sank down, my muscles grateful for the chance to sit, even if it was on a stiff and uncomfortable chair.
She rubbed a hand over her forehead, and was silent for several moments before speaking. “Zachariah always believed Violet was the Orlaith, something she never agreed with. But what she did believe was that she had a role to play in saving the kingdom. Her whole life, she was convinced she would die young. But in those last days, she had a sense of determination, as though she had set things in motion and had made her peace with what would happen. Zachariah saw none of that. He was blinded by his belief that his progeny was the chosen one. And so, he sent her to her death.” I wasn’t sure Kaia knew tears were filling her eyes. “Violet would never have made another choice, not when she had been told her whole life that this was what was expected of her.
“Those were dark times,” Kaia continued, her eyes unfocused, a tear rolling down her cheek. “Times that none of us truly want to remember. Never knowing if the next time you saw someone their eyes would be dark and they’d try to kill you. There’s not a soul who was living then that was unaffected. Everyone knew someone who left one day to arrive infected the next. Hufen were everywhere, a plague in the kingdom. It converged here—a final battle on these grounds, the battle for Valdris. And Violet had the power to stop it. And stop it she did. But at great cost.”
Kaia fell silent, lost in memories. Then she turned her sharp gaze on me. “I see a lot of her in you. And I’ll be damned if I see you go toyour death that way too. So we are going to practice. And you are going to hone all of your powers.”
“Sounds good to me. I have no deep-seated convictions that I’m going to die young. In fact, I’d very much like tonotdie young.” My comments worked to break the dark cloud that hung over the room while Kaia talked.
As we headed out of her office, I blurted out, “What do you think the obscured word in the prophecy is?”
I hadn’t forgotten about those strange, blurred words and blanks. As if something had been cut away from it.
“Obscured word?” Kaia gave me a quizzical look, just like everyone else I’d asked.
I gave up asking questions. Everything I had learned spun around and around in my head. And it all came back to Violet. She had been planning something, I was certain of it. Had she set her plan in motion?
While Finnand I always started our afternoon sessions by training my channels, inevitably when I needed a break, I’d end up asking him one of the myriad of questions I had about my new home. Finn had an easiness to him, a way that made me feel comfortable. Like I could ask him anything. That was rare here outside the training yard. With everyone else, I was on my guard, trying to be a princess. With him, I could just be… me.
“Here’s another thing I don’t understand.”
“Only one?”
I chucked a book at him, but he easily caught it mentally, and it settled softly back onto the table. “Zachariah was the king, yes?”
Finn nodded, clearly wondering where I was going with this.
“But now he’s the regent. Shouldn’t he still be the king?”
Understanding sharpened Finn’s features. “Part of it is birth, yes, but the crown also decides. Birth simply plays a part in making thepeople worthy of the crown, but it doesn’t automatically cause it to go to you. Zachariah and Rose ruled for many, many years.”
“How long is many?”
He pursed his lips. “I think it was close to a hundred.”
I blinked. Hadn’t been expecting that.
How old was Nana? The unanswered questions kept stacking up.
He continued with his story. “To the best of my understanding, one day, shortly after your parents’ wedding, it abandoned him and Rose and chose Thom and Mireya. Rose left Zachariah shortly after that. She had wanted to for years, but felt she had a duty to the kingdom. The crown abandoning them released her from that duty. Then he and Andrei finally went public.” He grinned, entertained by sharing gossip, even if it was decades-old gossip. “The scandal of the two of them was apparently of epic proportions. For one mate to leave another is almost unheard of. But then for one of the pair to announce a love match scant weeks later… it’s never happened before.”
“I thought Andrei and Zachariah were together before?”
“It was a badly kept secret, but was still a secret. My understanding is that Andrei left when they were married, out of respect for Rose.”
That was fitting with the little I knew of Andrei’s character. “But why would Zachariah marry Nana when he was in love with someone else?”
“Probably because of the mating bond.”
I stared at him. What the hell was he talking about? “I keep hearing the word mate, and now mating bond. Explain.” Surely it didn’t mean what I thought it meant which was… literal mating.
