Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 127722 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127722 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
“Sure.” He looked at me again, his eyes tired. “But instead of wine, make it scotch.”
42
HUNTLEY
The last time I’d walked through this castle, I was Mastodon, a Blade Scion who only showed my eyes through my helmet. The mask was enough to disguise my fury, because no one seemed to notice my need for bloodshed.
But the castle was mine now—and it still didn’t feel like home.
Nothing had changed. The rugs were the same. The paintings on the walls were too. It even smelled the same, as if I’d just returned home after a very long trip. I eyed the chandelier hanging from the ceiling, knowing one of the crystals was missing because we’d been playing in the house and chipped one of them. Our parents never discovered the transgression.
A guard passed me.
“Where’s Queen Rolfe?”
“I haven’t seen her, sir.” He continued on his way.
Once we’d infiltrated the castle, my men threw Faron in his cell, and I hadn’t seen her since. The takeover was a smooth transition, because most of the guards had no interest in resisting. They returned to their posts as if they served the same master. Maybe it was the dragons outside that made everyone obedient. This conquest definitely wouldn’t have been possible without them.
I searched the castle but didn’t call her by name. The study where my father used to occupy his time was empty. The royal bedchambers were empty too. I checked the kitchens, the grand dining room, everywhere.
She was nowhere to be found.
Where would she go?
Once I began to worry, I checked every door I came across. “Mother?” I did a quick scan then moved to the next door and then the next. I descended the stairs, moving toward the basement underneath the castle.
That was when I realized where she was.
In the dungeon.
Slitting his throat.
I took the stairs two at a time and reached the basement. All the lights were on, but it was still dark without the windows letting in the light. I was just about to turn right and head toward the dungeons when I heard it.
A woman crying.
I stilled as I listened, not recognizing it.
I turned the other way and followed the sound, moved down the hallways until I came to a large room with portraits stacked against the walls, crates on the floor, dusty paperwork on the counters.
On her knees in the middle of the floor, she held a portrait in her hands.
A portrait of my father.
Her sobs were so strong that her body shook. Tears streaked down her face like rivers and splashed into her lap, leaving stains so large I could see them from where I stood by the door. Her cries had the same ferocity of a child, of a little girl screaming because she was scared, screaming because her world had come down around her.
Other pictures were on the floor around her—portraits of us.
She brought her forehead down on the edge of the frame and continued her sobs, let her tears hit the canvas and streak down. It didn’t seem like she had any idea I was there, because if she did, she would swallow her emotions and pretend she was perfectly fine, hide all her pain from me.
I hadn’t really understood the depth of her suffering—until now.
I couldn’t bear the sight any longer, so I left the room, evaded the sound of her cries, but no amount of distance could ever silence their memory. The moment would haunt me as long as I lived, the strongest person I’d ever known defeated by her grief.
The memories washed over me.
He held her down by the back of the neck and forced himself inside her, and not once did she cry, not once did she drop her strength. She gave him no satisfaction, and she maintained her strength to make it easier on me.
But now I saw what it had done to her.
Had truly done.
All these years later.
The stairs were beside me, but I kept my eyes down the hallway, the hallway that led to the cells. My sword felt heavy on my hip. My heart was too strained to pump. A flush of heat ran through me, heat that burned with white-hot fire. My jaw clenched so hard that my lips started to quiver, screams of blood lust wanting to escape my lungs.
I moved past the stairs and deep into the hallway. The glow of the fire became brighter and brighter as I approached. Soon, the shadows were visible, his silhouette cast across the wall. He sat in the armchair, his eyes down on the fireplace.
He didn’t look at me, as if he expected me, or expected someone.
I unlocked the door and swung it open.
That was when he regarded me, and one look at me told him my purpose. He didn’t rise to his feet to face me like a man. He just sat there, his shoulders defeated. “I knew you would come.”