Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 145728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
81
The queen’s private quarters were plush, yet practical. There appeared to be a place for everything and everything was in its place.
I saw a sitting room with a white chaise lounge and a white fur rug in front of a fire and a music room with a pure white piano and a harp with golden strings.
The floor was carpeted in white too and at first I was afraid my shoes—still my school-issued Mary Janes, since Lachlan hadn’t changed them into anything else when he changed my uniform into a gown—would stain it. But it didn’t seem to be stainable. The dense, spongy carpet, which had the same consistency as memory foam, barely held a footprint before it bounced back into place and didn’t show any kind of marks from my scuffed school shoes at all.
“Now then, my dear, come in here.”
The queen ushered me into a small room with only one piece of furniture—if you could call it that. It looked like one of those stone birdbaths people have in their front yard sometimes—just a wide bowl on a pedestal. Only this one was made of pure silver with golden markings etched all over it.
“This is my scrying room,” Queen Elia explained. “It’s going to help us get to the bottom of all this.”
“The bottom of all what?” I asked. “You mean it will help you find out my identity? My parentage?”
“That is what I hope,” the queen said evenly. “Of course, it might be something I would rather not know, but now that you’re here, it cannot be helped—I must find out.”
“Why would you rather not know it, Your Majesty?” I asked, frowning.
She sighed and ran a hand over her silver hair.
“Ah, my dear—you are so innocent. My husband and royal consort, King Tyr has…shall we say a wandering eye. Several times he has been unfaithful to me and you have his eyes. Exactly his eyes—the triple ringed purple iris which only a descendent of one of the Summer Court with royal blood may have.”
Oh crap. I remembered now, how several of the Fae girls back at Nocturne had asked if I was the king’s bastard or love child or whatever. Of course it wouldn’t be pleasant for the queen if she found out that I was the living proof that her husband had cheated on her!
“But I am hoping for a different outcome,” she said to me, breaking into my worried thoughts. “Because there is also a prophecy…well, I will not speak of it now.” She shook her head. “It was given to me a long, long time ago—so long that I have despaired of it coming true.” She sighed and made a motion to the silver birdbath thing. “Well, shall we?”
“Shall we what?” I asked uncertainly, stepping up to the wide silver bowl.
“Find out your parentage, of course,” Queen Elia said to me. “My scrying bowl can tell us.”
I looked into the silver bowl again and saw my own reflection wavering there. After two weeks, it still gave me a start to see myself looking so different. I tried to concentrate instead on the bowl itself. It was filled to the brim with clear water—I mean, so filled it looked like it ought to spill over at any minute—but somehow it didn’t.
Surface tension, I thought, remembering the words from a long-ago science class. I wondered uneasily if I would ever take another science class. Would I get to go back to the human world to Nocturne Academy and finish taking AP Biology or was this it for me?
“How does it work? I don’t see anything,” I said, trying to push my fear away.
“Of course not—we’ve not given the scrying bowl anything to work with yet,” the queen said reasonably. “Come, my dear, we must each give it a drop of blood.”
Reaching into the bun of silver hair at the back of her neck, she drew out a long golden pin with a real diamond at the end of it. The diamond’s many facets winked and threw rainbows in the dim room. She pricked her pointer finger and let a single drop of crimson fall into the silver basin. Then she offered the diamond pin to me.
“Thank you,” I said politely. “But if you don’t mind, I have my own.”
I drew the hairpin with the red pearl at the end of it, out of the back of my collar, glad that it hadn’t transformed into something else when Lachlan had changed my uniform to a dress. It was the same one Megan had loaned me when I had Marked Bran and Lachlan as mine, what felt like a million years ago. When I had tried to give it back, she’d refused to take it.
“Keep it,” she’d said, winking at me. “For when you choose which of your guys you want to Blood Bond to you.”