“Are you alright, Princess?” Finn narrowed his eyes in concern and came into the library.
“Um, yeah, I’m great.” I lowered my eyes and walked back to the desk I’d been studying at. I wanted space between us, and a huge wooden desk would definitely help out.
“You look so pale,” Finn said. “The trip must’ve taken a lot out of you.”
“Yeah, we all worked really hard there,” I said and flipped open a book so I would look busy. I wanted anything to keep my mind off of Finn and his dark eyes.
“That’s what I heard.” He leaned on the desk in front of me. “Loki came to see me today.”
“What?” My head jerked up, and my stomach dropped. “I mean, did he?”
“Yeah.” Finn gave me an odd look. “Are you sure everything is okay?”
“Yeah, it’s all great,” I said. “What did Loki say?”
“He told me what he learned about the hobgoblins from your visit to Oslinna,” Finn said. “All of the damage was focused on property, and people happened to get in the way. He seems to think the hobgoblins are relatively peaceful, but he’s still coming down to help me train the trackers tomorrow.”
“Oh.” I fidgeted with my wedding ring and lowered my eyes again.
“I’m starting to think he might not be quite as bad as I thought he was,” Finn said, almost grudgingly. “But you still spend too much time with him. You have to be careful about appearances.”
“I know.” My mouth suddenly felt very dry. “I’m working on it.”
Finn stood on the other side of the desk, as if waiting for me to say something, but I had nothing to say. I stared down at the book, almost too nervous to breathe.
“I just came to see how the trip went,” Finn said.
“It went well,” I said quickly, nearly cutting him off.
A few minutes later he left, and I let out a shaky breath.
I buried myself in the books, although it didn’t do much good. I couldn’t find anything. I’d tear apart the entire library if I had to, but I really hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
It was getting late when Willa knocked on the open door.
“Wendy, I know you’re really busy, but you need to come see this,” Willa said. “The whole palace is talking.”
“About what?” I asked.
“Elora’s new painting.” Willa pursed her lips. “It shows everyone dead.”
18. Future
Elora had the “gift” of precognitive painting, although she’d be the first to tell anyone it was more of a curse. She would paint one scene from the future, from an event yet to happen, and that was it.
Since she’d been so weak lately, she’d hardly painted anything. It drained her too much, but if Elora had a powerful vision, she couldn’t hold it in. The precognition caused her terrible migraines until she painted them and got them out.
Also, Elora tried to keep her paintings as private as possible, unless she thought they had some value that everyone should see. And this one definitely did.
The painting sat on an easel at one end of the War Room. Elora had tried to keep the gathering small, so only the people who needed to know would see it, but as Willa said, word of the painting was spreading through the palace like wild fire.
Garrett stood by the door, keeping the riffraff from sneaking a peak. When Willa and I entered, Marksinna Laurent, Thomas, Tove, and Aurora were gathered around it. A few others were sitting at the table, too stunned to say anything.
I pushed Laurent to the side so I could I get a good look, and Tove stepped back. The painting was even more horrifying than Willa had explained.
Elora painted so well it looked like a photograph. Everything was done in exquisite detail. It showed the rotunda, its curved stairwell collapsed in the middle. The chandelier that normally hung in the center had crashed and lay destroyed on the floor. A small fire burned at the top of the stairs, and gold detailing was coming off the walls.
Bodies were everywhere. Some of them I didn’t recognize, but others were startlingly clear. Willa was hanging off the destroyed stairs, her head twisted at an angle that she couldn’t survive. Duncan was below the chandelier, broken glass stuck all over him. Tove lay in a pool of blood spilling out from him. Finn was crumpled in a mess of broken stairs, his bones sticking through his skin. Loki had a sword run straight through his chest, pinning him to the wall like an insect in an entomologist’s display box.
I lay dead at a man’s feet. A broken crown lay smashed near my head. I died after I’d been crowned. I was Queen.
In the painting, his back was to the viewer, but his long dark hair and black velvet jacket were unmistakable – it was Oren, my father. He had come to the palace and caused all this carnage. He killed countless people, at least twenty or more bodies littered the scene Elora had painted, and he had killed me.
We were all dead.