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)
“Jason?”
“Sorry, sorry.”
“It’s all right, I like it when you drift off thinking of other things when we talk. I like to watch the faraway look in your eyes when you’re ruminating on something.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yes. Your eyes become very dark.”
“I think you just like my eyes,” I teased him, thinking of his beautiful green ones. “I’m a big fan of yours as well.”
He made a rumbling noise of happiness that made me sigh.
“You missed me.”
“Well, yes, clearly.”
We were both quiet a moment.
“Anyway, that’s good,” I said. “Now I understand how Decimus, who apparently never tells his people anything about anything, had to tell them about me. He didn’t have a choice. Indira made sure of that when she got everyone together and read your intention to marry me and that you’d already given me your seal.”
“As it was a royal proclamation, if he had turned down my dreki, that would have brought me to his door.”
“Why did you send your dreki and not Tiago?”
“Honestly, I have not spoken with Decimus in so long, I wasn’t sure of the greeting to expect, and though my father said to send Tiago, I wasn’t comfortable with that.”
“Your guard was better.”
“If there was trouble, they would have been safe. And that’s not to say that Tiago is defenseless, but he was captured by the Rothschilds when you first encountered him.”
I smiled because Varic was chuckling softly.
“Is he pissed that you brought that up again?”
“You can’t hear the hissing?”
Everyone enjoyed pushing Tiago’s buttons.
“Tell me about Decimus’s sons, because Sorin has a brand on him that they put there when Sorin was a child.”
“Both sons are younger than my father, but older than me.”
“Ødger and Balon, Zev said.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t know anything else about them?”
“Zev probably told you they’ve never left that holding.”
“Couldn’t your father have ordered them to court?”
“I don’t know. From what you’ve said about this pact between my father and Decimus, perhaps he has no power over Decimus’s sons.”
“But you will.”
“We’re going to go there and find out the truth. I have to speak to my father first, though, so he can give me the specifics before I run in there blind.”
“Your voice sounds odd.”
He grunted.
“Varic?”
“You’ve known me less time than all those around me, and yet can tell from merely a sound that something is wrong.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s not like my father to allow something ancient to remain in place. He’s purged so many antiquated laws, I have to wonder why this situation in Ophir has been allowed to continue.”
“And you think there’s some horrible reason.”
“Perhaps not horrible, merely regrettable, but either way, we will find out the truth.”
“Okay,” I said, exhaling deeply.
“You sound relieved.”
“I just… I knew that when you learned there was a problem there, you would go and investigate. I was certain no one had informed you.”
“You had that much faith, did you?”
“Always.”
Smug male grunt that I loved. “I’m glad you have so much trust in me.”
“How could I not?”
“That’s right,” he said, sounding so very arrogant. “How could you not?”
“What if Decimus won’t let us in when we arrive? What then?”
“He’ll let us in.”
“You seem very confident.”
“I’m the draugr. He’ll let me in.”
But what if he didn’t? What if Varic was forced to use modern weaponry, and they barricaded themselves in and used innocent people to make sure we—
“Your mind is running.”
“It is,” I confessed.
“I need you to remember something, all right?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t tell the Noreia, my people, that I have power. As the draugr, the one who protects and punishes in the king’s name, they can feel my power when it rushes over them.”
“But—”
“And I can stand outside and send that power through rock and stone and steel and whatever else stands in my way.”
I had felt that power myself in small waves and seen the different forms he became. That was the part that couldn’t be scientifically explained like the double canines or the blood mutation. In Varic’s line, the line of Ascalon, there was a power that the prince inherited from his father where he literally became the incarnation of the wolf of Maedoc. Originally, Varic explained that the power transferred from father to son, leaving one, entering another, when the son grew stronger than his sire. No one wanted to say that, to put it so bluntly, but that was the truth of the matter. Varic told me that the prince assumed the mantle of the wolf when he became the defender of the laws, the one who made certain all the rules were followed. But what actually happened was biological.
Everyone descended from Ascalon possessed this trait. One of the things I explored during my time in the palace was the transformation of the wolf. Before Isabella retired to her island, I asked her to accompany me down into the archives, and we hunted through the rooms in the hypogeum together.