Chapter 34
CLEO
AURANOS
“My son has returned to the palace.” The king’s words wrapped around Cleo’s throat like an icy glove, stopping her in her tracks as she moved through the halls. “I’m sure you’ve greatly anticipated his return.”
She turned slowly to see King Gaius standing in the shadows, accompanied by Cronus and his dreadful hunting dogs.
“With bated breath, your majesty.”
“He captured a group of rebels who attacked one of my road camps. Those that did not fall under his blade have accompanied him back here for public execution.”
Jonas. Her heart skipped a beat with both dread and anticipation.
“I feel safer already.” She forced a smile to her lips.
“I’m sure you do.” The king studied her with those cold, serpentine eyes. “I’m watching you, princess.”
“As I am watching you,” she replied sweetly.
“Remember one very important thing. You have no power here and you never will again. You continue to live at my whim, but I can take that courtesy away at any time without warning— just as I did with your little friend. What was her name again? Mira?”
Her blood turned to ice. “Good day, your majesty.”
She continued down the hall smoothly until she turned the next corner. There she pressed up against the wall and commanded herself to stop trembling.
“He will not defeat me,” she whispered, angrily wiping her tears away. “He thinks he has power, but it’s sand falling through his fingers. He will lose it all and have nothing left.”
But she knew her days were numbered. The wedding tour was over. The shine of the false “romance” between Magnus and herself had begun to fade. Her allies had dwindled to two boys—one who couldn’t bear to look her in the eye after her rejection of him, and another who might be dead or bound for execution.
Cleo rubbed her ring, staring down at it and praying—though not to the Goddess Cleiona, not after what she’d learned of the thieving, power-hungry Watcher—for a way through the darkness that stretched out before her. “Please. Father, please help me. I don’t know what to do. Am I a fool to believe that I have any chance against someone like King Gaius?”
The book Song of the Sorceress had told her more about Eva—that she could work magic with all four elements as easy as breathing. And at the end of the book there were two lines that had stayed with Cleo.
A thousand years after her death, the sorceress shall be reborn as a mortal beyond the Sanctuary’s veil. Once awakened, her magic will reveal the hidden treasure sought by both mortals and immortals alike.
Eva had been killed by her greedy sisters, Cleiona and Valoria, who’d stolen the Kindred and used its power to become goddesses.
That was a thousand years ago
A sorceress reborn—one who could harness all four parts of elementia with ease.
“There’s something strange about that girl.” Her attendant Helena had been speaking with her sister only two days after Cleo’s return from the wedding tour, not realizing Cleo could hear them. “The princess was tutored by a witch.”
“A witch?”
“The king chose the witch himself for the task, but now I think she’s dead. I saw her before they took her away. Her face was filled with fear. She whispered about fire and ice. She believed Princess Lucia to be evil.” Servants did gossip about the most fantastical things. Yet Lucia had set the library alight. . . .
“Magic,” Cleo whispered. “Is that what you were doing that day, Lucia?”
Was the gossip of servants true this time?
Eva’s ring—the sorceress’s ring—had glowed when Cleo touched Lucia. It hadn’t done that with anyone else. Only with the stone wheel, said to be connected to the Watchers.
There had to be more to this.
Cleo moved through the labyrinthine hallways toward Lucia’s chambers. No one stopped her. No one even noticed her. What are you even thinking, you fool? she chastised herself as her steps quickened. You believe the King of Blood’s daughter—Magnus’s sister—could be the sorceress reborn?