Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 73154 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73154 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
That’s it. He turns his back and rides off, and I’m left wobbling in the marsh, watching him.
Until he is gone and there’s no elegant cloak, no sharp tongue. No trace of his shadow.
Just the stillness of something abruptly ended, and the ache of something I don’t . . . have the words to name. A something that lingers.
The next week.
The next month.
Even three years later . . .
Faint creaks echo as I lift the trapdoor; my hands shake and my pulse races as I peer inside. Slats of wood and squares framed by dust.
I crouch, feeling in the shadows as if the books I’d been hiding there might reappear with wishful thinking. I put them back; I always put them back. What . . .
My mind races. If the luminists found them, I’m dead. If Father found them, I’m even deader. Either way, my dream of becoming a vitalian ends here.
“Cael!” Akilah barges in with a bang of the door against the wall. “Quick,” she says. “Your father—”
The trapdoor slams shut at my feet.
Does he know? “What kind of mood is he in?”
Akilah grimaces. “The kind where we all get very busy with our chores.”
My heart sinks lower.
The air is heavy with the scent of rain. The manor, once grand, is fringed with decay; faded murals whisper stories of a prouder past as we rush through the courtyards, our footsteps slapping against wet cobblestone. In the timeworn front yard, Father waits, his grim gaze shadowing over me.
“Follow, son.”
Akilah gulps and leaves me with “Good luck,” an unconvinced whisper.
My pulse quickens. Each step into Father’s study feels heavier than the last.
He knows.
He sits behind his parchment-cluttered desk, and I haul a lungful of ink and mustiness deep into my lungs.
“It’s time to discuss your marriage, Cael.”
I snap my head up. Not the conversation I was expecting.
But it’s worse.
“I’m too young.”
“Our king married at twenty-one. If he can, so can you.”
“Our king has a royal bloodline to protect. It’s understandable—”
“We have an entire household to protect! I let you put this off until Megaera came of age. She’s eighteen now. You’ll do the marriage rites immediately.”
Anxious heat thickens in my chest. I keep my voice firm. Steady. “I don’t love her.”
Father slams his fist on his desk, making the inkpot jump and loose papers shiver. “Love? What would you know of love? Love is a luxury.”
He’s not wrong. What do I know of love? My entire romantic experience . . . an accidental campout with someone so far above me he might as well be a star, when we were barely out of childhood. And a series of chance encounters with an infuriating man who never showed me his real face. The vanishing man. The man who left me behind over and over until finally, he never came back at all. What would I know. But still— “Should I pretend to be happy the rest of our lives?”
“Pretend hard enough, and you might believe it.”
I rock back on my heels; my voice cracks. “I need the real thing. I want it.”
Father points to a polished box on the edge of his desk. “Half of her dowry is gone to pay our taxes. That’s what we want. What we need.”
“You did what? How much?”
“One hundred pieces.”
One hundred!
“Or we’d have lost our home. The home your great-grandfather was gifted by King Timotheos Aetherion. We would have finally ruined the prestige of my grandfather.”
Great-grandfather, who Grandfather loved dearly and who shared his knowledge and his conviction. His belief—a belief I inherited—that a par-linea could wield vitalian power just as ably as a linea. The glory of his days still glimmers in these now-crumbling walls.
“Where would we go?” Father continues. “Your older brothers, their wives, your nieces—this is their home too. Can you see them cast out on the street? Squeezed into one room at the poorest end of town? No patient would come there for treatment . . .”
Not just the ruin of Great-grandfather’s prestige—the ruin of the family.
My father’s words hit me like a bone-splicing spell aimed at my chest. A marriage to Megaera would save my family, their home, their pride.
But . . .
I glance at the walls, the fading murals, and imagine them bare. Imagine my nieces huddled in some mouldy alley. I see the faces of the vagrants I’ve treated, their desperation a mirror of what my family’s might become.
But . . .
Marriage.
It would shackle me. The real me.
Father moves to a small, cloth-draped table and pulls off the dark fabric that covers it. A dozen vitalian spellbooks are stacked underneath. The books I’d hidden under my floorboards.
I suck in a breath. “How . . . How did you—”
“One of the aklos saw you treating that woman under the bridge last night. You’re lucky it wasn’t a luminist.” He leans closer, his voice firm. “Do you have any idea what they’d do if they found you with these? Behead you, Cael.” His voice falters, and for a fleeting moment, I see something in his eyes. Fear. “Publicly. I don’t ever want to see that again.”