Total pages in book: 204
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
When there’s no reply, I put my hands up, as if I can stop her from disappearing. “I need to talk to you! I come with an urgent appeal! Please, hear me, I have your crown—”
The shape turns as if to depart, their profile striking a bold carve-out behind the mesh.
“Wait!” I yell desperately. “Wait…”
I look at the throne. Then the mural.
“I know what you’re missing,” I hear myself holler.
Pointing to the empty setting among all the gems, I cast my eyes back up at the Queen and talk fast. “I know where your ruby is! And I can return it to you!”
Seventy-Seven
A Declaration.
The shape resumes the position it was in behind the mesh.
“Please,” I shout. “I … if I bring the stone back to you, will you hear me out and spare my husband? It’s in the mural … I’m supposed to be here. That’s why you had me brought to you—”
A hidden door off to the side opens and the white-haired woman in the black robing steps out. “Enough.”
I wheel on her. “No, it’s not enough. It’s there, on the wall.” I jab my forefinger at the pictures. “That’s me. I’m supposed to bring the stone back. But I’m not going to unless she agrees to speak to me and spares my husband’s life—”
The woman calmly walks over.
And slaps me across the face.
“I am the grande vizare of this court, and you will arrest your tone when you speak to me.” She tugs her long sleeve back into place. “And may I remind you that you are under criminal charges for trespass—”
“Your guards opened that gate,” I grit out as half my teeth hum. “We didn’t even ask for the invitation.”
“—and that I will add to those offenses impertinence to the Queen.”
Marching up onto the dais, I point to the empty socket at the top of the ornate back. “If you want that stone back, I’ll get it for you. Unless you like things the way they are now.”
She is so shocked at where I’m standing, she needs a moment to recover. But she doesn’t call for the guards, which I think is interesting.
“We are doing quite well,” she snaps.
“Not according to this mural, you aren’t.”
The woman’s regal bearing goes downright imperial. “I’ve had quite enough of you—”
“You’re not in charge.” I look up to the oculus, where the shape is still in place. “She is.”
Stepping back, I make sure that the Queen can have proper sight of me. “I need my horse and my pack. You already hold my husband here. There’s no chance I will not come back as long as I know he’s alive—”
“Your husband,” the woman in black cuts in, “is a dead man. Whether you are here or gone will not change his fate—”
“He’s no spy for another court and neither am I!” As I ignore the vizare, it hardly seems helpful to mention that Merc kills people for money. “He came with me to protect me on my travels to see you, Your Highness.”
“And you hail from where,” the advisor says in a bored tone.
Ignoring her, I focus only on the oculus. “I am from a small village outside of Prosperitus. I come bearing news that the Fulcrum is failing and demons are afoot. Anathos needs you and your army to save us from the Dark King—”
The woman in black barks out a command, and a flank of guards stream in from the hidden door.
“I beg of you!” I shout. “We need you to fight the evil before he grows too powerful to defeat! We are on the verge of a war that Anathos has no defenses to, and you are the only one who can save us! I have the crown of war and shadow you will wear—”
I am grabbed on all sides and pulled back.
“Please!” I yell up. “You know this is what has been foretold! It’s on the very wall behind your throne—”
At once, I’m dragged through the hidden door, the panel closing with a finality I cannot live with. “Let me go! I have to talk to the Queen—”
The advisor steps in front of me, but talks to the men who hold me in place—in my language, no doubt so I can understand my reward for offending her: “Take her back where she was. And let the lieutenant know that she is available for his pleasure.”
As she waves her hand in dismissal, the guards follow her order, picking me up by the armpits and carrying me over the marble floor of the antechamber.
“Wait.”
The vizare’s voice stops them and they wheel me back around to her, my feet dangling.
“He is not to kill her,” the Queen’s advisor says sternly. “She is to be beheaded in the square with that spy husband of hers first thing in the morning.”
The woman turns away, her plaited hair swinging like rope down her back as she glides away through yet another seamless panel.