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)
He can’t stop me from loving him. And he can’t stop me from reading what it would be like to be loved by him.
I sit on the bed and pull the journal from its hiding place inside a pillow cover. I worried for a time that it would be found in my possession, but I couldn’t let it go. Now that I know Cassan better, I’m certain he will not punish me for having the journal, but I’ll still keep it a secret. Something of my own, my private connection to Luthian.
I open to a page at random and read.
Never have I experienced such a perfect day. We made love in the grove of sweet trees, while their petals fell all around us. Luthian never rushes our pleasure. Today, he took his time touching every part of me, leaving the most delicious places until the last, and then he explored those with his lips and tongue. I have never experienced rapture with Arcus the way I experience it with Luthian.
Perhaps, she should have tried killing him. That certainly brought me pleasure.
The entry goes on. I told Luthian how I begged Arcus for a child. His sons are all he needs to secure his line. How I envy their mother, for she knew the joy of bearing their creation light. Luthian won’t give me a child, either; he says it’s too cruel to bring another faery into the court while Arcus rules it. But when I imagine who that faery might be, I see her so clearly. Skin of snow, hair of fire, beauty that will bring the court to its knees.
The queen wanted a child, and Luthian refused her? I know nothing of faery conception, beyond the need for living essence, or what it might mean for him to make that refusal, but he granted my mother’s wish, didn’t he?
But then, my mother was not a part of Arcus’s court, and he was never any danger to me.
“You were born for it.”
The words taunt me. No, Arcus was inevitable. Luthian had been patient, far beyond the boundaries of time, and carefully planned to bring me to this place, simply to kill the king he loathed.
But for all the love he bore Parphia, he did not give her a child, for the next entry reads, Luthian will not budge in his stance against my child. It isn’t fair that Arcus should have two and I should have none at all. If he will not help me, there are hundreds of courtiers who will. I will order one to my bed and take his light. I will have my daughter. I will have my princess. All I need do is convince Arcus that it happened while he was too drunk to control himself and he spilled living essence. That I begged him not to, and that my pleas drove him into a lustful frenzy. He will not disbelieve that. It’s too like him.
I devour the next entries. Parphia’s selection of a young faery with the attributes she desired in her child. Copper hair, pale skin, a wry smile and laughing eyes. She took him in the labyrinth, during the monthly ritual, and commanded him to give her his living essence.
Her plan was successful.
There are entries about her pregnancy, her labor, the wisp of light she birthed and took to the nursery to be nurtured. She has such hopes for that wisp of light, a daughter she named...
After the Cenere tree I labored beneath, tended by a midwife of the Court of Seasons.
I throw the book aside as if burned, lurch from the bed and double over, vomiting up my dinner onto the pristine marble floor. My head swims. I am dizzy with the truth. Not the truth. The coincidence. It must be a coincidence.
I was born of a wish. Luthian gave me to my mother to fulfill her wish. She named me after the tree I was born beneath. She raised me, a human child...
A human child that she taught the ways of magic. Of flying. Raising plants from the ground. Listening to the birds. Noticing the flowers.
A human child of no consequence, raised by a faery woman who desperately wished for her.
But it is my name on the pages of this book. My appearance. My birth that is described. My mother named as midwife.
This cannot be.
It cannot be.
I have no wings. I have no magic. I am human, in all respects. I age. I bleed with the moon and burn beneath the sun.
I am human.
I am human.
The diary lies like a viper, waiting to strike me once more. My hands tremble as I lift it and trace the loops of my name, written in my mother’s hand.
My real mother’s hand.
Then, I turn to the next entry and read on. Luthian is furious. He thinks me too foolish to understand the consequences of my actions if I am found out. But how will Arcus find out? He believes the child in the faery nursery belongs to him. He celebrated her with a banquet and beamed with pride. He already has suitors lined up for her when she comes of age and returns.