A Fate of Wrath & Flame (Fate & Flame 1)

She shakes her head. “It tires me. I am nowhere near as powerful as Margrethe was. She was a healer too. She might have been able to do more for you.” Her gaze settles on my shoulder and she smiles. “Yes, I think that is better.” She eases out of her chair and slowly shuffles—another result of her healing—to the vanity to collect the handheld mirror.

Margrethe was the high priestess. I’m assuming that’s a rank position. “Have they replaced her yet?”

“No. That is … not an option.”

“How many of you are there in Islor? Casters, I mean.”

“Few remain now. It is quite the journey to get here, and most are not interested in taking the risk.”

“Why not?”

“Because.” I sense her shutting the door on that conversation. She lifts the mirror in front of me.

I check my reflection. The marks haven’t shrunk much, but the raw redness of the knitted skin has faded noticeably.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t do more. If we are lucky, the scars will turn silver. They may be almost invisible under certain light.”

I highly doubt that. I’ll never be able to wear a tank top or bathing suit—if I ever get out of this hellhole—without attracting notice, but it’s a far cry better than what it was. I stretch my arm above my head. It’s a bit stiff, but the ache is gone.

Wendeline caps the jar as I pull my nightgown back into place. “The salve will keep working through the night. I know it will be tempting, but do not wash it off when you bathe tonight. Whatever healing you have left will happen while you sleep. You can remove it in the morning.” She nods to herself as she collects her things, as if satisfied. “Very well, then. Take care, Your Highness.”

“Romy,” I push, as I often do when she calls me that. Something about her farewell this time feels different, though. She doesn’t normally curtsy that deeply. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

The doubtful look on her face answers me before her words do. “If the king deems it beneficial, but I’ve healed you as much as I can. I don’t know that my skills will make any more difference.”

If Wendeline doesn’t come back, I’ll be left with no one but Corrin and the footsteps of two guards. Dread tugs at my insides. “What about my mental health? Does the king deem to know when I lose my damn mind locked up in here?” I can’t keep the bite from my tone. I hope the question reaches his ears. Maybe it’ll satisfy him to know his punishment is working, enough that he’ll relent.

Her attention veers toward the sealed windows, her brow furrowed deeply. “He is not the monster you think him to be.”

Says the woman not being held prisoner by him. “He executes people. Burns them.” From previous experience, those people are all monsters.

“And you would not?”

“No. I’m not my—” I cut my words off. My mother. Except we are no longer talking about Romeria from New York.

“His Highness did what any king or queen would do, given the situation. Your parents have executed traitors for far less.” Her eyebrows arch as if daring me to challenge something she knows is the case. “As a queen, you would, as well.”

Her early words spark something Annika said in the sanctum. So far, I’ve pieced together that Princess Romeria’s marriage to Zander was arranged by her father, the king of Ybaris, under the guise of an effort for peace between the two kingdoms, though in reality, she was conspiring with an Islorian named Lord Muirn to raise an insurgent army and take the throne. Someone else—someone intricately connected to the royal family—helped her. And, on the day she was to marry Zander, when everyone was focused on a wedding and enemies easily flooded through the gates, her scheme unfolded. But obviously, all didn’t go as planned.

What I still don’t understand is, why Princess Romeria felt she needed to murder them in the first place.

I choose my words carefully. “Why would I do the horrible things I’m being accused of?”

“Why else does one kingdom fall but for another to rise?”

“I plotted to wipe out the king and his entire family, so I could have Islor’s throne?” Which Princess Romeria was already destined for, as Zander’s queen. Maybe she didn’t want to share? But if Zander is right and she promised marriage to this Lord Muirn, then she would have had to share, anyway. It doesn’t add up.

Setting the salve on the table again, Wendeline returns to my side. “You were taught from a young age that Islorians are your enemy. I know what that is like, to be raised with hatred for something you do not understand, for I was taught the same in Mordain. It can be hard to accept that you were wrong all this time about an entire people. But the Islorians are no different from you or me. We all want to sleep soundly in our beds and protect our loved ones.”

She ties the strings of my gown, her fingers working unhurriedly. “I’ll admit, I was afraid when I left my home to come here. I’ve found a life now, among them. But Ybaris has never tried to understand or accept them, not in all the centuries since the Great Rift. They’re a people born of the same elven blood that courses through your veins, and yet you have labeled them demons and cast them from your lands.”

My skin tingles. Did I hear that right? Did she say elven?

As in elves?

Is she saying I’m surrounded not by humans but by elves?

That Princess Romeria was not human?