Total pages in book: 182
Estimated words: 171176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 856(@200wpm)___ 685(@250wpm)___ 571(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 171176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 856(@200wpm)___ 685(@250wpm)___ 571(@300wpm)
“Are you my tour guide?”
“Yes. I can’t walk and read or I’ll trip and fall on my head. Then you’ll make fun of me, so this is a safe alternative.”
I laughed.
“Don’t laugh,” he hissed, looking around. “You’re supposed to be a captive! Which means we’re enemies.”
“Sorry,” I whispered, trying desperately to wrestle away my smile.
“We’ve landed later than originally planned,” Dante went on, staring straight ahead. “Skirting around that storm put us behind. Factoring in the stop, it means we might not get to the castle until just after dark.” He leaned in a little closer and dropped his voice. “Not to worry—this kingdom is very safe. We have patrols on the regular. If you are to be re-abducted, it won’t happen now.”
“Fantastic,” I said in a dry tone, still wrestling that smile.
He straightened and resumed his tour guidance. “Yes. Now, if you’ll turn your attention to the right, this whole area used to be called the Royal Wood. Back in the days of the Mad King, it was for use by royals and the court only. Peasants called it the Forbidden Wood. To enter for any reason would be punishable by death.”
I paused and turned my head to look at him. “Are you serious?”
“Very, though I wasn’t here then, or for the curse that followed the Mad King’s death, so this is all secondhand.” He huffed. “Stop interrupting or I’ll kick you off the tour. Anyway, now the wood is open to all, but with strict requirements regarding hunting. You need to apply for licenses and whatnot so that we don’t kill off all the game.”
“Who owns the land on the left?”
“It’s also part of the Royal Wood, but I thought it would be more dramatic if I gave you a direction in which to look.” He stuck out his hand, gesturing toward a field through the trees on the left. “Ah, here we have the famous Everlass plant.” The plants stood in rows, green and leafy and tended to with much more care than our gardens in the village. “It is the pride and joy of the dragons, growing wherever they live and carrying all sorts of amazing healing properties.”
The name was familiar. “That’s what they gave me on the ship, right? Everlass?”
“The elixir was made with Everlass, yes.”
“And the one that saved me after the run-in with my drugs?”
“Your product mixed with Granny’s drugs, you mean? Yes, that had Everlass, but the plant that elixir was made with was blessed by the phoenix.”
“Blessed? Is the phoenix their god or something?”
Dante looked over at me in confusion. “The phoenix is the queen’s brother.”
Hadriel had talked about that with me. While I had been blown away, I wasn’t sure I’d fully processed it, because it still didn’t seem real. Phoenixes were a myth. They were in books. They didn’t walk on mortal lands.
But just like Hadriel had said, apparently there was one. A real one—a walking, breathing phoenix whose magic had already saved my life not once but twice.
“Wow,” I said, blown away all over again. “I honestly thought Hadriel was being overly dramatic. That’s . . . insane.”
“Yeah, right? The guy can’t ever die. Isn’t that wild?” He shrugged. “Moving on—well, now we’ve passed the Everlass field.”
I let out a low whistle. “I need time to adjust to a myth coming to life anyway. You didn’t even need to capture me. If you’d just told me I’d get to meet a phoenix, I would’ve come willingly. Holy crap. Is he hot?”
He held up a hand in exasperation. “For the love of the gods, don’t ever ask that again.” He dropped his hand. “Come on, let’s talk about the history of the kingdom as it was told to me until we get to the village and can get your wolf pulled out. That’ll give me a lot fewer headaches.”
Before I could protest, he launched into specifics about the Mad King and the curse. I lost track of the miles through the woods while listening. Hadriel had been over much of this, but his accounts were told from his personal point of view, which were often crazy, colorful tales that kept my attention for different reasons. The history told to me by a nonfiction lover gave me a whole new perspective, and I was completely engrossed in his tales.
We passed another Everlass field, this one much closer to our path. Unlike the other field, people wandered through this one. Some picked leaves and placed them on the trays they carried—probably to harvest for medicine, I surmised—and others just threw the leaves onto the ground.
I asked about the latter, and Dante shrugged.
“That’s how they take care of the plant. Dead leaves or something. I’ve never asked, mostly because I don’t really care.”
I blurted out a laugh as Weston took a right, looking over his shoulder at me. His eyes were still hard, no expression on his face, and I figured it was probably his “I’m the alpha and I’m very important” mode, something he hadn’t often done when we were traveling. It was like looking at an entirely different person.