Total pages in book: 210
Estimated words: 200096 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1000(@200wpm)___ 800(@250wpm)___ 667(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 200096 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1000(@200wpm)___ 800(@250wpm)___ 667(@300wpm)
With a heavy sigh of relief, I ask, “Then where does Cirilea’s door lead for Sofie?”
“To a place deep within a cave where the Fate of Fire can collect more soldiers. There is a stream there and a gateway to the Nulling.”
“Fates. I know where it is.” Zander closes his eyes for a moment. “Radomir showed me a nymphaeum door in Soldor. There’s a gaping hole in the side of the mountain. I was going to tell you, but with everything else going on, it slipped my mind. That must be where these Saur’goths are coming in.”
“And how Malachi and Sofie got to Cirilea so fast.” It makes sense now. “Where else can she go?”
“The not-queen’s path is limited by the designs of those who used these doors when they were created.”
“The nymphs.”
“And their people. But the Queen for All is not limited.” She gestures around the room.
“Which one leads to Soldor?”
“That one, there.” She points to a carving across from Cirilea.
The itch to reach out with my affinities is strong. “If I were to go through there now, what would I find?”
“I cannot say. Possibly nothing, possibly a grave threat.”
“How many of these Saur’goths has he brought through?” Zander asks.
“I do not have a number.”
“Do you have a thought?” he snaps.
Lucretia grins and then in the next instant, she morphs into Sofie.
Zander and the legionaries draw their swords in a split second.
“They are still arriving?” she says, her French lilt perfect.
In the next second, Lucretia’s form morphs again, this time into the man I recognize from the stone tomb beneath Sofie’s castle.
“And they will continue to for many years before they are depleted. I have forged an army that can replenish itself twice over. No army of this realm shall defeat it,” the male standing before us says in a deep, accented voice before he vanishes, and Lucretia reappears.
Silence hangs in the crypt as the weight of what we just heard—a projection of what the sylx witnessed firsthand, I have to assume—settles on our shoulders.
“That mine weaves through half of Venhorn,” Abarrane says. “This army could be moving through it and we would not know.”
“No, especially when we’ve been so distracted with the rift and Lyndel and Mordain.” Zander curses as he paces, his hands on his hips. This is what we have been waiting for. This is what Malachi has been planning.
First things first. “How do we destroy Soldor’s nymphaeum door?”
“Destroy it?” Lucretia’s pretty face puckers. “You cannot.”
“Can the nymph elders?”
“You would have to summon them to ask, and there would be a cost.”
I cringe at the idea, the painful memory of interacting with them still too fresh. “How do I summon them—”
“No.” Zander shakes his head. “The nymphs were said to barter in lives. That is what Gesine once told me. I doubt this will be a cost we are willing to pay. We must find another way.”
I wait for Lucretia’s mocking retort, something about how little Gesine knew about anything. For once, though, she remains quiet, which only heightens my fear that what Gesine said was right.
“So what’s the play here?” I ask.
“We cannot allow Malachi such easy access for his soldiers to move through Islor.” Zander grits his teeth with determination. “We will take down the mountain around it.”
Dawn brushes the sky in shades of lavender and spun sugar as we march through the halls of the castle, adrenaline pumping through my veins. “For the record, I think this plan is nuts and you are crazy.”
Zander’s lips twitch. “Then it seems I am paying you back for all the insane schemes you have dragged me into.”
I cast a sideways glare. We brainstormed late into the night before resting for a few hours, knowing today might require my full well of power. “We need Mordain’s best stone casters for this to work.”
“I am sure Solange will comply with her Prime’s order.”
“Don’t call me that.” I raise a finger in warning. “And I know. I just hope they aren’t too tired from fighting at the rift last night.” Because the sooner this is done, the better.
“You know they will just find another path out of the Nulling.” Jarek flanks my other side, checking and rechecking the multitude of weapons strapped to his lethal frame while ignoring Lucretia who trails him.
“Maybe, but they won’t have a door to Cirilea beside it.”
“Your Highness! Please, a moment!” Agatha calls out, rushing down the hall from the wing dedicated to the scribes’ sleeping quarters, a book tucked under her arm.
My hope blossoms at the urgency in her voice. “Did you find an answer about the host body?” I had emphasized the importance of that when we returned from our first visit to Cirilea with Sofie’s demand.
“No.” She pauses, resting her hands on her knees as she catches her breath. “But we discovered more about what happened to the mystics.”