I’m not choked up with emotion—I feel far too content for that—but walking in this space brings me both awe and pleasure. These are the plants that I can thank for the bouquets set all throughout the castle. The room’s walls are painted a soft blue, before doming into a ceiling of glass that makes the blossoms sparkle, the silvery stems on which they grow matching the mist that clings to the windows.
As my eyes skim around, I notice that a cloud of mist has seeped inside the atrium as well. It swirls near one of the window panes, congested in a dense, large collection as if there’s a crack in the grass, letting it stream inside. My skin prickles ever so slightly just before I turn away.
“We thought you might like it, Your Majesty.”
With a nod, I walk down the aisle, the low heel of my shoe clicking across the blue-tiled floor as I gently skim a fingertip over the budding petals beside me. The soft floral scent seems to sink into my lungs and brush through my pores.
“It’s beautiful,” I say as I turn away from the flowers to face the twins, while Pruinn stands just off to the side, his gray eyes roving over the rows of plants as if he wants to clip a few blooms and stuff them in the merchant’s bag that’s always slung across his shoulder.
“Come, sit,” Fassa offers, and the twins part to reveal a dainty bench of gray stone set right in a semi-circle of blooms.
My heart turns automatically, nose pulling in the smell in this close proximity. I could bathe in this fragrance—have my bed brought up right here to slumber in its sweet perfume. It’s just so calming. I take a seat, while the twins also sit down on an identical bench that I somehow missed.
“Your Majesty,” Friano says, pulling my attention back to him. Both twins are leaning forward slightly, their elbows balanced on their knees and hands clasped in front of them, brown eyes boring into me as their sleek hair brushes against their shoulders. “Seventh Kingdom went from power to ruin. Much like you.”
“But together, we can fix both of those things,” Fassa says, dark eyes glinting. “We can restore this kingdom and you to your rightful places. We can help make you the most powerful queen in Orea.”
Eagerness travels up my spine. From my peripheral, I see Pruinn grin.
Because that—that is my heart’s greatest desire. I’ve been an unwanted heir, an unwanted wife, an unwanted queen. Yet if I was powerful, nothing like that would ever happen to me again. I’d make sure of it.
“Yes,” I breathe. “That is what I want.”
Friano smiles. “Then we will achieve it,” he says simply.
“How?”
They exchange a look, and my yearning sharpens. “My brother and I have very unique magic, my queen. They work only in tandem. I can instill something new.”
“And I can restore something old,” Friano finishes.
My brows lift. “Restore...like this castle?”
“Quite.”
“But our magic always has a price,” he explains. “Not only do they have to perform at the same time, it also requires a sacrifice.”
“Yes,” Fassa goes on. “We won’t lie, this magic will be the largest we have ever performed, but we believe in this purpose—believe that this is why the gods have given us our power.”
His brother cuts in. “So, in order to restore a kingdom and bestow a gift to a queen, we need two things. The first is we must wait for the new moon, when the gods bless new beginnings and our powers are at their peak.”
“And second, that the blood of a pure Orean royal is willingly offered to restore this Orean kingdom,” Fassa finishes.
“Me.”
They both nod. “You.”
I swallow hard. “Exactly how much blood...?”
“Never fear, Majesty,” Friano says affably. “Just a few drops will do. And by doing so, by offering this to us, I believe my brother’s magic will instill magic into you, giving you exactly what you need to rule.”
My gaze bounces between them as I take this all in. The scent of the flowers is nearly intoxicating as my breathing quickens.
I’m suddenly reminded of a memory. My seventeenth birthday, when my father called me to his office and told me just how ashamed he was of me. Just how disappointed.
Most Oreans who inherited magic showed some sign of it by the time they were fifteen. I’d been waiting for two extra years, and there wasn’t a single morning I didn’t wake up and pray for something—anything—to come out. I just needed the tiniest scrap of magic, and my father wouldn’t hate me so much, my people wouldn’t gossip about me, the servants wouldn’t pity me.
I waited and waited and waited. Yet nothing ever came. I still remember that look on my father’s face, the sneering hate. Without magic, I was useless to him, to Highbell. A wasted heir who couldn’t hold the throne on her own. A disappointment in the Colier line.
All my life, that’s been my worth—my own lacking.
So this…this fantastical sliver of a chance that they’re telling me has my breath quickening, my gaze sharpening. The heart in my chest tenses at the possibility.
Having power is all I’ve ever wanted.
“My magic works in mysterious ways, my queen,” Fassa goes on. “I believe the gods will see all those who have wronged you, all of your betrayals and hardships, and they will allow my magic to bestow something glorious in you. Something...powerful.”
“Magic,” I breathe. “You think you can give me magic of my own.”
“Is that not your heart’s desire, Majesty?” Pruinn cuts in quietly where he’s leaning against a gray pillar. “My magic is never wrong. It led you here for this reason.”
My mind whirls as much as the mist that covers the atrium’s glass roof. A small laugh escapes me. “It sounds too good to be true.”
“You deserve it,” he says with a soft smile.
“Exactly,” Fassa cuts in. “The gods knew that you were the queen this land needs—that the Colier line is pure and right. The moment you arrived, we could feel that you were perfect. You are the queen that will raise Seventh Kingdom to glory. You. No one else.”
Me.
My blood seems to sing, rightness flooding into my veins.
“What do you need me to do?”
The twins grin, and both of them stand to walk over to me in synchronized steps. They each hold out a hand for me to take. “All you need to do is say you agree.”
I’ve never been more ready to do anything in my life.
I take their hands, letting them lift me to my feet. “I agree.”
Behind them, Pruinn murmurs, “And so the bargain is struck.”
I feel as if I’m gliding on clouds when I walk out of the atrium. The others stay behind as I leave, and I head down the hallway with the lovely fragrance of the blossoms still in my nose. I’m absentminded as I walk, yet just as I pass by a window, I jerk to a stop and turn around.
The mist.
It’s leaked in here too, churning with both the light from the window and the shadows of the corridor. It’s so thick I can’t see through it, and that prickling feeling on the back of my neck returns.
It’s silly that I start to back up, but I find my feet doing it anyway, even though I try to tell myself it’s only mist.
I twist my ankle when I take another blind step backwards, and just as I suck in a breath at the pain, the mist tosses and seethes in front of me, making my eyes go wide as the light around it bends.
Then, I’m frozen in place as a hooded man steps out of the shadowed, swirling air.
“You.”
A deluge of fear dumps all over me, like a downpour of rain, though it doesn’t quite flood away my repose.
I know who he is, even though I only saw him once for those brief seconds. I’ve memorized that shadowed face hidden beneath his cloak.
“You killed Jeo. You tried to kill me.”
The man lifts his gloved hand, pulling back his hood and revealing his face to me, and I suck in a breath. Just as he manipulated the light and shadow around him, his brown skin is marbled, pale patches around his nose, mouth, and chin, and another at his neck. His eyes are deep ebony, no differentiation between his iris and pupil.
“You followed me all this way to kill me?”
At the back of my head, I recognize I should feel a sharper stab of fear, yet I don’t. I can’t.