Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 100363 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 401(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100363 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 401(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
I choose not to think, and instead let the words come out as they will. "I picture my revenge, Guardian."
Luthian's fingers still again.
Though he doesn't solicit further, I continue. "I imagine all of my pain as the pain that will be inflicted on him. Breaking his bones. Slashing his flesh. I envision making him kneel before me. I feel myself cutting his wings off."
My guardian hisses, goes rigid behind me.
"Soap is getting into my eyes, Guardian." Have I stunned him? Frightened him? Let him be a little afraid of me. Now that I've learned the power of fear, it tastes delicious.
"Those are quite inventive thoughts," he murmurs. There's a scrape of glass as he lifts a decanter from the small table beside us. Warm water pours over my head, rinsing the suds and vanishing any trace of the dirt they carry away. "I do hope you'll never direct that ire toward me."
"I don't think I would ever be able to, Guardian." I let my head loll back onto his shoulder as rivulets flow down my neck and breasts.
"Cenere, I could almost believe that you like me." He traces one of those watery paths down my chest, beneath the surface, and cups my mound. "Or at the very least, you don't resent me."
I close my eyes and sigh. "Why wouldn't I like you, Guardian? You're upholding your end of our agreement. You're going to make me a queen. And I'll be able to fulfill every one of my revenge fantasies."
When he speaks again, his tone is different. Not teasing. Softer, almost pleading. "Don't let them consume you, Cenere. Your spirit is too bright a flame to be extinguished by hatred."
He can’t possibly understand my hatred. There’s no way anyone could. My rage is my own, a terrible thing locked away in my heart, a burning ember I will tend and feed until the blaze of it consumes my mother’s killer.
“Yes, Guardian.” I close my eyes and give myself over to his tender hands smoothing over my body.
It’s the first promise I’ve made to him that I do not intend to keep.
Chapter Twelve
My day is free from lessons, but there’s little for me to do at Luthian’s home. Grand as it is, it offers little in the way of diversion. There are books, of course, but they’re written in fae languages I can’t understand. Even if I could read them, I would have to do so standing up; my backside is too sore for sitting. The ancient housekeeper offers to give me chores if it will prevent me from straying into her line of sight, so I opt instead to walk in the gardens.
I’m not certain where we are. I know I’m in Fablemere; the stars outside my windows at night are in their familiar constellations. Perhaps Luthian lives in the Springlands; the balmy weather and cheerful blooms on the hedges support that theory. I can rule out the Sorrowlands, where nothing grows and the sky is stained red. I suppose we could be near Lua, across The Divide. But we are far from my home in Grimm. Winter still held the land in its rainy grasp when I left there.
The garden is endless to my eye, tier after tier of fountains, hedges, and paths descending in slices toward an impossible horizon. I carefully note how far I walk, for I’ll have to return. There is no chance I’ll make it to the end, and even less that I would be able to make it all the way back.
So, I amuse myself by skipping stones in a basin of fish that leap with excitement at every ripple, their bodies painted in piebald spots of purple and green and creamy pearl. I smell the flowers, then pick some, winding stems and grass and blooms into a girlish crown for my hair. I’m lying on the grass, nearly napping in the warmth of the late afternoon sun, when a whisper of breeze and the tinkling of bells disturbs me.
Firo rides on a palanquin, his bandaged feet elevated before him. It appears his conveyance hovers in the air, but a shimmering, pale blue outlines the four sylphs that bear him; it’s their language I heard floating on the air.
“Here,” he commands them, and they sink to deposit the chair on the grass very near me before he waves his hand, dissipating them.
I’m unsure of what to do. I haven’t been forbidden to speak to him, but I don’t wish to. He’s Luthian’s student, as I am, but I feel no kinship toward him. It startles me to realize that I’m competitive; even when Cadwyn Thrace entered my mother’s life and stole her attention from me, I felt my place in her heart was secure. But this situation, my deal with Luthian, the esteem with which he holds me, seems not only threatened by Firo’s mere existence, but robbed of something I am innately entitled to.