Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 55602 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 278(@200wpm)___ 222(@250wpm)___ 185(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55602 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 278(@200wpm)___ 222(@250wpm)___ 185(@300wpm)
Heads swing my way, and someone calls. “What’s he done for you that you defend him?”
“He . . .” I glower at them. “You’re wrong.”
“The last earthshake released a poisonous miasma through the forest. That area was the livelihood of at least six towns from Kastoria to Hinsard. People are struggling, and the king did nothing.”
An older man thumps the table in vicious agreement.
“Even the caves we mine for fungi have been affected. Our most valuable herbs are found there, but—if we don’t die first—each step inside is like fireants tearing through your body. Death is better.”
“And death is what we’re getting.”
“The king didn’t help. We can only hope the regent will.”
I meet Quin’s dark eyes. He subtly shakes his head.
Frustration clenches my fists. I want to shout, to make them see—“The king wants the best for you.”
They laugh darkly.
The loud scholar speaks up again, “The regent has redcloaks travelling to all corners of the kingdom plastering the way with wanted posters. The first time his face is revealed to the public.” He shakes his head. “What a way to garner fame.”
“What do you mean, wanted posters?” I ask. The regent already has control over the throne.
“There’s a reward for finding him.”
“Ha! Both vespertines and crusaders will be after him. He won’t have long.”
My stomach twists sharply. “You—”
Quin picks up his cane and crosses between me and them. “Enough. Let’s go.”
He jostles me up to our room, and as soon as the door closes, I drag him to sit. “Didn’t it bother you, what they said?”
Quin pulls away from a brow-crunching thought. “You used to despise me like that.”
“I . . . but . . .” I throw my hands up. “I didn’t know better!”
Mild amusement sparkles in his eyes. “You were so fervent in your hatred. Passionate.”
I bury my face in my hands. “Anytime I think of what I said, what I did back then . . .” I drop my hands, meeting Quin’s gaze with a pained scowl. “If you’d told me who you were from the start, you wouldn’t have heard those things.”
“You’d have simply thought them instead.”
“Exactly.”
Quin flicks the side of my head and I rub it as if it hurts.
I sigh. “Listening to them made me feel frustrated. And ashamed. They are me, only half a year ago.”
“Three months ago.”
“You’re not helping.”
Quin tilts my chin and holds it as he observes me. “You asked me earlier why I didn’t want you to go to that island.” His expression is a mix of earnestness and bitterness. “Shame.”
I frown, and his fingers glide off my chin.
“I couldn’t save my mother. And the conditions there . . . It’s proof of all those things you said about me. I can’t take care of my people. Can’t take care of my family. I am useless.”
“But it’s because—”
“It doesn’t matter. The people on that island are suffering. Like the rest of this kingdom.”
I ball the edges of my cloak. “If they knew how much you’re doing to change that.”
“Sincerity doesn’t feed you.”
“That’s why you let them say those things?”
“Six months ago, I would have been irritated.”
“Three months ago.”
Quin looks at me, and I mouth we’re even. He continues, “Now I understand. If a mother doesn’t feed her children, the children will cry. If a king doesn’t feed his people . . .”
I stare glumly, stomach all kinds of tight. He’s right of course. Those people downstairs are suffering.
Only, Quin is suffering too.
I wish . . . ugh. I glare at him. “Why do you make me feel such strong, conflicting feelings? It literally makes me shake. Look.”
“You have a way of getting on my nerves as well.”
“Aren’t we a right pair?”
Quin is silent. He stares towards the windows, the open books on the table. At the sight of scrawled letters and diagrams, my mind jumps. Quin’s image, pasted on walls all over the kingdom.
I swallow. “It’s a trap, isn’t it? If you’re recognised, crusaders will slaughter you on sight.”
The lines of Quin’s face tighten; a nearly imperceptible twitch in his jaw.
“Or vespertines will capture you for the reward,” I murmur. “But it’s money that won’t come. You’ll be made to pay with your life.”
Quin’s mouth is one grim line.
Cold rushes over me. I’m numb as Quin shifts to his belongings at the end of the bed. “What will we do?”
He plucks something from beneath the folds of fabric. “This belongs to you.”
Wood framed with riverpearl.
Warmth pulses to my fingers when he presses it into my hands.
“I asked Florentius what he wanted as a reward, for helping us,” Quin says. “This is what he wanted.”
The soldad. I’d left it behind, on the island.
My dream, handed back to me. I turn it over. Stamped. I’m a complex-medius vitalian.
I grip the soldad hard. I suck in a nervous breath. “Why are you giving me this now?”