Chapter 10
Elara
My foot tapped on the floor of the council room.
After my discovery in the study last night, I knew I needed to call a meeting as soon as possible. But not with the council. If my guesses were correct, this information could be too valuable to share with people I wasn’t sure I could trust.
I’d asked Rhen to call everyone here first thing this morning and now I was waiting for them to make their way to the council room.
I rubbed my hands together. A servant had yet to come and light a fire and the room was freezing.
My head jerked up as the door opened and Cai walked inside, and a little bit of relief settled over me.
“You’re here,” I said, trying not to sound too surprised. He looked tired and I wondered if he’d managed to fall back to sleep after the two of us had retired to our rooms.
Cai gave me a small smile and took a seat next to me at the table. “You doing okay?”
I nodded and he placed his hand atop mine on the table, and I immediately felt better.
“Cordelia left for the country today.”
Cai gave a slow nod, and I knew he was thinking about Jack.
“It’s probably the best decision for her.”
“I know.” I sighed. “I’m just going to miss her. But hopefully we can visit her once this is all over.”
“Yes, hopefully,” he said but his expression suggested we probably wouldn’t live to see the end of the war.
I squeezed his hand.
Anesta arrived next.
As a lady of the court, she didn’t really have much to do with the political situation of the kingdom. But this was about more than armies and land. If the diary truly contained knowledge about what the Myrgonite objects were, we needed to find it as soon as possible, before someone else did.
Anesta looked uncertain and I couldn’t blame her. But she was my friend. And this affected all of us.
Rhen entered next, looking slightly out of breath. Alastor followed shortly behind, and I gestured for them to take a seat at the table. Gwen and Lance were the last to enter the room. Poor Gwen hobbled in with a walking stick to support her injured ankle.
Cai wasn’t too happy about allowing Lance to join the meeting, but I convinced him that Lance knew more about Everness and its history than any of us. He’d grown up in this palace. If anyone knew something that could be valuable to us, it was him.
Though, after what Lance had put us through, I didn’t blame Cai for his hesitance. Lance was once almost as eager as Aries to get hold of those stone objects. His motivations were never entirely clear, as Lance was also a fantastic liar. I had to tread carefully in how much we chose to involve him.
Once everyone was seated, a servant had lit a fire and the room was starting to heat up a little, I motioned for Rhen to close the door for privacy.
“Thank you for meeting me here on such short notice,” I said, somewhat nervously folding my hands together. Everyone looked at me expectantly.
“I know we’ve all been on edge with everything going on lately.” And rightfully so. “But I’ve been doing some research, and I think Cai and I may have found something that could help us.”
I unfolded a map of Norrandale and Everness, placing it in the centre of the table.
“What I’m about to tell you must not leave this room,” I said sternly.
“I don’t want the court or the public to know anything about this.
” But I knew they, my inner circle, were the only people I could rely on for help.
I looked at Cai for approval. He hesitated for a moment but gave me a small nod. We had nothing to lose at this point. This knowledge was dangerous, but the situation required risk.
“Aries isn’t only trying to conquer Norrandale for power.” I pointed to the mountain ranges of Norrandale on the map. The mountains that had been part of Everness a very, very long time ago. “He’s after something much more valuable.”
Lance gave a bit of a snort, catching my attention.
“Is there something you’d like to say?” I called him out, slightly annoyed.
“Don’t tell me you’re caught up in this fairy-tale nonsense now.
” Had the situation not been so serious, I could have laughed at the irony.
There was a time, not too long ago, that Lance had tortured Cai over that fairy-tale nonsense.
I decided to keep my voice calm and proceed as diplomatically as possible.
“I’m not, but regardless of whether or not it’s true, Aries believes it, and this could be a way to stop him.”
“I’m sorry,” Gwen interrupted. “But could someone please tell me what the hell we’re talking about?”
“Myrgonite stones,” Rhen said. “The valuable gemstones our kingdoms fought over centuries ago.”
“Are we to receive a history lesson now?” Lance queried and Rhen pressed his mouth into a line of disapproval. But he knew better than to try to correct the prince.
“Long ago, people believed these gemstones to be in the mountains that are now in Norrandale. For some reason, King Aries seems to have committed to this belief and that’s why he’s gone on his expedition through Norrandale,” I continued.
Which was half true. Aries knew the stones could make him wealthy, and if he couldn’t find the objects, at least it wouldn’t have been a lost cause. But based on my brief encounter with the King of Argon, I doubted he would ever stop looking for those three magical objects.
“I remember hearing stories about lost treasure in Norrandale as a child but surely King Aries isn’t risking all of this on some childhood story,” Gwen said.
“Oh, Aries is a crazy bastard,” Lance replied. “That’s exactly the kind of thing he would do.” I didn’t know how much knowledge Lance had on the Argonian king, but his tone sounded a little sarcastic.
“The point is—” I tried to bring everyone’s attention back to the topic — “if anyone knew anything about this, it would be the first king of Everness.”
“Really?” Lance said, and I reined in my annoyance at his repeated interruptions. “I would think that if anyone knew anything about this, it would be the King of Norrandale himself.” He looked at Cai and slowly everyone else turned to the exiled king.
My heart rate increased along with the tension in the room. Why did Lance have to choose this moment to pick on Cai?
I watched his face change as he contemplated how to respond to Lance or perhaps if he should punch him in the face.
“Why should His Majesty care about some old legend?” Gwen asked before Cai could respond. “It has nothing to do with running a kingdom.”
Lance’s eyes glinted with amusement as he looked at Gwen. “I only mean to say that if His Majesty knows anything about this, it would be kind of him to indulge us.”
Cai’s expression told of all the things he could imagine doing to Lance, none of them indulging.
“I was doing some reading in the study last night when I came across some important information.” I was starting to think that calling this meeting was a mistake. Perhaps we were in over our heads, with no way out of this mess.
“It is believed that King Evrin, the first king of Everness, had a diary. I found some documents that refer to it. If there’s any information that could tell us more about this, it would be in there.”
“Your Majesty?” Rhen said. “How can we be certain that the diary still exists?”
“We can’t,” I admitted. “But if it does, then there’s a chance it could still be in the palace.”
“You have no way of knowing that,” Lance replied.
“If you have any better ideas, I would love to hear them.” Brother or not, if he did not pipe down, I would seriously reconsider that prison cell he spent a few months in.
“Not at all.” Lance put his hands up defensively. “I’m merely suggesting we don’t put all our faith in this.”
“Of course not. The rest will be for me and the council to worry about. But if I may ask a favour of all of you, it would be to start looking for anything you can find about that diary. The more of us working on this, the quicker we will find something.”
“Your Majesty, if I may.” Anesta spoke up with uncertainty. She’d been very quiet thus far. “What do you think we’ll find in the diary?”
“Hopefully some answers as to what went down in the kingdom during the reign of our first king.” I had a gut feeling that a lot of history was about to be unravelled.