Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 104842 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 524(@200wpm)___ 419(@250wpm)___ 349(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104842 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 524(@200wpm)___ 419(@250wpm)___ 349(@300wpm)
Of course she would insist on that. She’d learned her lesson with Leda.
And speaking of champions… I looked for Zev, saw him talking to Kaan and the king’s guards, pointing, directing, and realized that Varic probably had him giving orders because Zev used to have Kaan’s job. Alrek was with Varic, who’d added my guard to his, so I couldn’t call them away. Cirillo was with Carice. She had him wrapped up in blankets and was watching over him as though he were her child.
I felt like I was going to throw up. I was the only one guarding the queen, and more importantly, I didn’t feel like myself.
“Jason,” Isabella said gently, moving closer and taking my hand. “Darling, whatever is the matter?”
“Perhaps the prince’s consort is having a delayed reaction to the drugs we all inhaled in the room before we ran,” Keres suggested. “It was quite potent, and he is merely human, after all.”
Merely human. How many times had that been said to me? Living in a world of vampyrs, I was the weakest one, but somehow, I was the lone soul with the queen. Well, me and Keres.
“Also,” Keres added, “my consort may have been dosed twice, as he was the only one who drank water.”
It had never occurred to me that they might have drugged my water, but that made sense with how strange I felt.
“This is what he wanted,” I husked, feeling the panic rising. “He deliberately diseased his sons and all the nobles who followed him. He has them all rotting from the inside out, inflicting this terrible horror on them so Varic would have to come.”
“Jason?” Isabella said my name, reaching for me. “We need to get you to another room so you can lie––”
“No,” I gasped, not wanting her to go anywhere private. Alone, she was even more vulnerable than she was now. “Don’t you see? He kidnapped me so you’d come. He knew you wouldn’t be able to resist coming to get me and bringing me out of here, to safety, just like you did with Leda.”
“Dear heart,” she said, taking my face in her hands. “I think you’re overly tired, and you really need to bathe,” she said playfully but insistently, “and eat and sleep. Let me—”
“He let his own sons die slowly just so he could take his revenge.”
“Love, I promise you, I’m—”
We all heard it then, the roar, and suddenly the people gathered in the hall to see Varic all started running as Ødger appeared like the beast he was, enraged, looking like something straight out of a horror movie and barreling down on Varic.
I wasn’t afraid for him; he was stronger than Ødger. Instead, I was looking around for Decimus, knowing in my heart what was happening.
He hated her more than anything else.
All this, all his plotting, had been done to lure her back to Ophir. Everything he’d told me in the room before Balon tried to kill me, what he’d said about his sons, his reasons for keeping them here, the entirety of his confession, was a lie.
The men who came to the palace in the guise of assassins, Sorin’s sob story afterward, my decision to help, the ruse he played with the king that included me—everything, from the start, was all for Varic…and Isabella. Decimus had to get Varic to Ophir so he could watch me die, along with his mother.
He had manipulated the narrative to make Isabella feel like she had to come to the place she freed Leda from. And now here it was, the plan in motion, the culmination of all his machinations. He would kill Isabella and make Varic weak in front of all the Noreia, unable to save his mother, just as he’d been too late to save Cassius.
Balon led a charge into the room, followed by his loyal guards, and I had to wonder who was supposed to have secured Decimus’s second-born son and his men after they’d tried to kill me and the others in the stairwell. But as I knew firsthand, there were secret corridors in the walls of the castle, so it was no surprise they had escaped.
People ran into me, Isabella, and Keres, separating us all, most importantly creating a chasm between me and the queen, jostling us off in different directions.
There was fighting everywhere, and when I checked on Varic, I saw that he didn’t shift to fight Ødger, instead using only his sword, his razor-sharp, masterfully made katana, feinting left and right as he was charged and slashed at, none of the strikes reaching him.
Hadrian was cleaving through the men who’d come behind Balon, and it struck me as sad because they probably thought they were defending Ophir from insurrection, while Hadrian, of course, was there to protect the prince. If only Varic had been able to speak to everyone before the attack, how many lives might have been spared?