Chapter 8 #2
Alora carefully tucked it back into the journal and continued skimming the pages, her heart aching with a mix of longing and sorrow.
Her mother’s elegant handwriting had become erratic over the years, the letters smearing, words twisting with madness as the illness took her.
The last pages were splattered with ink and torn where the quill had pressed too hard.
Alora could only distinguish four words.
When the moon bleeds, the bloom must sing.
Alora’s vision watered.
Her mother had unraveled at the end. Taken by an illness that had no cure. What had she been trying to say in her last entry? Perhaps a plea for magical healing. Her mother wove magic with songs but could not sing in her last year.
The Blood Moon came every five years, a time when magic rose from the land. The flowers shone and the fairies sang, rejoicing in renewing power of the Midlands. Her mother must have wanted to go home.
Would that have saved her?
No point in wondering now.
A faded green shawl rested on the settee. She brought it close, hoping to find a trace of her mother’s scent, but smelled only dust. Sighing, she wrapped it around her shoulders and continued exploring the workroom.
In front of the drawn windows, rested her mother’s old spinning wheel, draped in a heavy cloth. A basket of cotton and wool lay at its side, coated in a thick layer of dust. An odd habit for a queen, to spin her own yarn, but she had always made Alora the most beautiful dresses.
This place was once vibrant with her mother’s laughter and the fragrance of blooming flowers. Now it was a tomb of memories.
It was once her favorite place, because of one thing.
Alora yanked aside the large curtains over the windows, swirling motes into the air.
Light spilled through stained glass, casting a pattern of brilliant colors of across the floor. Alora’s throat tightened. Her mother used to sit by this window, humming songs while working on her many projects as Alora twirled around the room as a little girl.
She missed that brief moment in her childhood.
Where she knew nothing but joy and song.
So Alora stepped into the sunlight, eyes fluttering shut.
Her lungs expanded with a deep breath, a smile rising to her lips and she hummed softly.
Her voice echoed in the workroom, reverberating through her soul.
She swayed in the dust with an invisible partner, letting the colored light sweep across her closed eyelids.
The phantom arms curled around her, guiding her steps in an old, forgotten dance.
And she sang the lullaby her mother used to sing to her to sleep.
Deep in the forest where shadows weave wide,
A mother whispered to the stars, her guide.
With a heart so heavy, her wish took flight,
For a daughter born from whispers of night.
The hair rose on her nape when a draft swept through the workroom.
Alora… a voice whispered behind her.
She spun around and shrieked at the sight of Prince Eldrik. She stumbled backward, nearly crashing into the covered spinning wheel. She braced herself on it, drawing a sharp breath as she gawked at him.
“What are you doing here?” Alora demanded.
“Easy pet, I didn’t mean to startle you.” Prince Eldrik gave her a slow grin. “Don’t stop on my account.”
She stared at him mutely, still recovering from her shattered daydream. Calveron guards stood outside the threshold of the workroom, trapping her in with him.
Alone.
Alora stood firm, refusing to show fear. “By no account should you be here.”
Smirking, he tugged off his golden riding gloves. “I trust I need no introduction, princess.”
Alora held his stare in defiance, despite the knot tightening in her stomach. “I know who you are, Prince Eldrik. My question remains. Why are you here?”
He gave his guards a nod, and they shut the door. Alora’s heart instantly raced at the sense of being trapped and reached behind her blindly, tugging at the cloth covering the spinning wheel.
Eldrik strode forward. His gaze swept over her with a calculating glint as if appraising livestock.
“I was curious about my future bride and came to see what thing we had bought. I expected some horrid milkmaid, but I suppose you are rather pretty for a half-breed.” He reached out, fingers tracing her ears that were not round like a human or pointed like the fae but came to a soft curved peak.
“I can see why my father wanted this match.”
“Don’t touch me.” Alora smacked his hand away. “I’m not a thing.”
“No. You’re a prize.” He grinned. “One I have already won.”
Revulsion churned in Alora’s gut. Her hand closed over what she had sought, and she brought the spindle needle to his throat. “I warned you not to touch me.”
His skin blistered against the needle and Eldrik jerked back with a snarl. He rubbed the welt, his eyes flashing with a predatory gleam. “What is that?”
The crystal hummed in her palm, low and lulling, a whisper in a tongue she did not know. For a heartbeat, the old scar on her fingertip throbbed. Alora tightened her grip and shook the feeling away.
Whatever the artifact was made out of, magic lurked within it. And it had stung him.
Alora braced herself as she held the eight-inch needle like a knife. “This is bloodglass, more lethal than iron to your kind. Cross me again and it will find your eye.”
Eldrik blinked at her and burst with laughter. “Incredible, you truly can lie.”
She scowled and backed away, continuing to point the needle at him.
“I was not aware Lady Zinnia had her ward trained in the arts of needle making,” he retorted as she made her way to the door.
Alora faltered a step. He knew the Thornbearer?
“She trained me in many things, Prince Eldrik. Etiquette. Music. Art.” She took the doorknob. “More importantly, how to gracefully nick critical arteries of boorish males.”
His eyes gleamed with something voracious. “Spirited. I like that. It will make breaking you all the more enjoyable.”
Though he didn’t attempt to approach her again.
“You will find I’m not so easily broken,” she hissed, yanking the door open.
But his guards were there waiting. Her needle would likely break against their armor.
Eldrik chuckled, a low, mocking sound that grated on her nerves. “We shall see, princess.”
With a dismissive wave, he motioned the guards to stand back. Then Eldrik strode out of her mother’s workroom, golden cape fluttering behind him, leaving Alora seething in his wake.