“Can barely tell,” I joke.
Blue eyes the color of hyacinths dart to my shoulder, where my dress’s collar doesn’t cover the marks. “It’s not too bad. The way he described it … it sounded much worse.”
I’m assuming he is Zander. They’ve been talking about me. I should expect as much. But what has been said? How much does he confide in his sister? “It was a lot worse.”
“Yes. I recall. The beast nearly tore you in two.” Her forehead furrows deeply as though plagued by a bad memory.
“You stayed?” I wondered if she had run when I told her to.
“I was halfway to the passage when I heard you scream. I looked back and …” She averts her gaze, but not before I catch the flinch. “But then it threw you across the dais as if you had burned it, and it let out that awful screech. I hear it sometimes, in the still of the night.” She shudders. “Then it burst into flames. The guards stormed into the sanctum as I reached you. I was certain you were dead. Your injuries were …” Her words fade. Quietly, she adds, “And yet, here you still are.”
Like a cockroach that won’t die, I hear in that tone.
I don’t expect a hug from Annika, but does she still despise me, after I saved her not once but twice in one night?
An awkwardly long moment hangs between us.
Annika takes a deep breath and pulls her shoulders back. “The king has deemed that I shall accompany you for a walk of the royal grounds, if you are so inclined.” Her words are formal, her voice flat, her reluctance painted across her face.
Normally, I wouldn’t jump at spending time with someone who looked like she’d rather eat broken glass than stand in the same room with me. Now, though, the chance to find this nymphaeum far outweighs my pride. “Yes!”
She sighs. “Corrin has a shawl for you.”
From my balcony, the royal grounds appeared immense.
As Annika and I walk side by side along the stone path and I revel in this false sense of freedom, they seem infinite. Everywhere I look are sculpted hedges and shrubs bursting with blooms and mammoth trees that cocoon seating areas in shade and privacy beneath their weeping branches. We’ve crossed three elaborate stone bridges and passed a network of streams and ponds, the carrot-orange scales of the koi gleaming in the afternoon sun.
“Has anyone ever gotten lost in here?”
“Not for more than a few hours.”
I peer over my shoulder. The colossal castle is entirely shielded from view within the dense depths of the foliage. I’m not surprised I didn’t see it that first night, despite the dazzling moon. That I ever found my way to the opening in the wall is no small miracle.
Elisaf trails close behind us. Another day shift to follow the one he spent patrolling my door, but he looks no worse for wear from the lack of sleep. I feel him watching my every move intently, but at least his hand isn’t resting on his hilt as if primed to cut me down.
Elven, surely.
My eyes widen at the couple sitting on a bench beneath a tree with pink floral blooms—the man’s face buried in the woman’s neck, his hand snaked under her skirt. They’re tucked away but not that hidden.
“You still wear his ring. Why?”
“Huh?” Annika’s question catches me off guard.
“The betrothal ring my brother gave you. You’re still wearing it.”
I peer down at my hands, as if there might be jewelry there that I hadn’t noticed before. But aside from the cuffs on my wrists, there is still only one ring—the one Sofie slipped on my finger and warned me never to take off.
And apparently, also my engagement ring from Zander.
Is this the same ring? It looks the same, but the design is basic, and easily mimicked. Just as Princess Romeria and I look the same. Though, I hazard, that design is more complicated.
Annika is waiting for my response. What do I tell her? “The king told you that I don’t remember anything before the night the captain shot me with the arrow, right?” There isn’t even the faintest mark across my chest to hint at the wound.
“He did.”
I hesitate. “Do you believe me?”
“It would certainly explain many peculiarities.”
That’s not an answer.
We cross paths with a group of three women who quickly shift out of the way, curtsying deeply, their murmurs of “Your Highness” like a song’s chorus. I don’t know if it’s on my account or Annika’s, or both. Whatever the pecking order in this family, I suspect the king’s sister ranks high.
As with every courtier we’ve met on our walk, I sense their wide-eyed gapes at my back after we pass, and I instinctively pull the knit shawl closer to my body.
“Wendeline believes you,” she says when they are out of earshot.
A hopeful flutter stirs in my chest. “She does?”
“She shared a theory with us that would make sense. If anything does.”
I wait a long moment before I push. “What’s the theory?”
Annika’s pouty lips twist with a smirk. “There’s only one way you could come back from the dead after taking a merth-forged arrow to the heart, and that is if a caster summoned the fates for you.”
I don’t understand what she just said, save for one thing. “Wendeline thinks a caster did this?” That has to be Sofie. Does she have ties to this world? Did she know Princess Romeria? She must have. Except … Sofie never said anything about taking over the throne of Islor. I have one task here—to get Malachi’s stone so Sofie can save her husband from wherever he’s trapped.
“Not just any caster. Margrethe.”
“The high priestess who was killed by the daaknar?” The woman who was supposed to grant me sanctuary.
“Yes.” She watches me a moment, as if searching for a reaction to that suggestion, beyond my shock.
“Why would she do that?”
“That is an entirely different question. But it is the only explanation for the daaknar in Cirilea that night. We haven’t seen one in these lands in almost two thousand years, and the night you come back from the dead, one of Malachi’s henchmen from Azo’dem appears. It is far too coincidental to mean anything other than that Margrethe summoned him.”
Malachi. The one with the twisty black horns. A god with demons at his disposal? “So, casters can bring people back from the dead?”
She studies me through shrewd eyes. “What do you remember about elemental power?”
What the hell is elemental power? I want to say. I’ll never figure out anything in this world if I hold all my cards too close to my chest. Wendeline has handed me a precious gift: a viable excuse for my lack of knowledge. I need to use it—and Annika—to my advantage. “All I know is Wendeline healed me, but I don’t understand how she did it. I don’t understand these fates. I don’t know why Ybaris and Islor have been at war. I don’t know who I am.”
“You really don’t remember anything.” Her plump lips are parted in thought, her bright eyes worlds away as she seems to process that.
“Nothing. And it’s infuriating.”
“Yes, I can see how that would be,” she says absently. “Where to even begin … my foolish brother. This is Wendeline’s area of expertise, not mine.” She sighs, as if preparing to settle into a long explanation. “All casters are born with an innate connection to one of the elements. Those are the forces that ensure our existence. Water, air, earth, fire. They draw their power from that element and can weave spells. The stronger they are, the more complex the spells they can weave. Some casters are weak, able to do little more than spark candles with a flame. Others can whip clouds into storms and control what you see and hear, or don’t see and hear. Though, those powers are far more effective on humans than on our kind. Their minds are simple, pliable.”