32. Chapter 32 #3
The queen’s barbed laughter slices through our little moment of reprieve.
“Lies! My nieces have spent the last two centuries trying to keep your existence a secret. Upon your return, I would’ve raised you in a world filled with love and light.
But instead, they raised you in a world of shadows and darkness! ”
What the hell is she talking about?
Snow pulls herself off the ground, grimacing like she’s just been pinched. “We had no other choice,” she says. “She would’ve killed you the moment she found out you were back.”
Back?
Back from what?
Frantically, my gaze traces the freckles that dust her cheeks. Amber is Fall, Snow is Winter, and Sunshine is Spring. They are the Harvest Queens. But why did they lie to me?
Glimpses of memories begin trickling through me like rain slipping down a windowpane.
An image of Snow rocking me to sleep as a baby, back when my nightmares had been bigger than my dreams. A vision of Sunshine concealing me beneath a trap door at the age of five, while the wardens were slaughtered upstairs by the Divine Army.
A glimpse of Amber running alongside me through an open field of daisies, followed by the sound of my giggles echoing all the way to the stars.
The birds had even stopped their squawking to marvel at us.
These women helped raise me. How had I completely forgotten?
“Why?” I choke out, a cleft wedging into my chasmed heart. “Why pretend to be maids and claim that you have no names? Why force me to forget?”
Amber touches my forehead and says with a gentle whisper, “We did not force you to forget, Raven. Your memory is not yours to keep. It must be retrieved carefully, lest it be shattered at the seams.”
My jaw swings open. “I don’t know what that means.”
“We swore a blood pact to protect you through every lifetime. In this one and the last. That protection involved protecting your fragile memories as well,” Amber says.
“Protect me? You tried to poison Lily with arsenic! You… you tried to kill my friend!”
“Who was being influenced by the queen and plotting your demise,” Snow corrects. “Although admittedly, it wasn’t one of our proudest moments.”
A forced laugh escapes my throat, feeling like a white-hot knife of betrayal. “If you were so keen on protecting me, then where were you when Master Grimwell banished me from the orphanage? Huh? Where were you when I took to the streets after Eric betrayed me? I needed you, and you weren’t there!”
The three of them share a cautious look. “The queen would have found you, had we intervened. Staying away was the hardest thing we’ve ever had to do,” Sunshine says, a tear slipping down her cheek.
“Hence why we disguised ourselves as maids and snuck into the castle,” Amber admits, giving my hand a quick squeeze. “We never left your side. Not really.”
The queen’s voice slithers up my neck. “Enough of that serpentine tongue! Speak normally, or not at all.”
Wait, we were speaking in Tannerian?
But I don’t even know Tannerian…
The queen wades out of the water, her gown clinging to her body like molten silver, accentuating the outline of her navel, the dips of her breasts, and the way her hips sway as she stalks toward us.
Water cascades off her in sheets as she pauses to inflict me with a glare of such intensity that I stop breathing.
“You are coming with me,” she says.
I open my mouth to speak, only for my voice to be smothered by a pall of unyielding light as a dragon descends over the clearing.
A tantalizing, incredible, powerful white dragon, with three horns jutting out of its face like whetted blades and alabaster scales that shimmer like crystallized rain.
The dragon rips a roar across the clearing as it lands with a world-shaking thud, whamming its pronged tail into a nearby evergreen tree and crumpling it like parchment.
Sylas. You came.
The queen whips around, her hands igniting in a passionate display of sparks. “To what do I owe such pleasure, king?” she shouts.
Sylas blows a breath of frosty flames into the air, which turn the lake to ice.
“I have to get back to the statue,” I say, searching through the trees to find the tunnel’s maw.
“It’s the only way to destroy her.” Something shifts from behind a tree.
Bella’s curtain of blue hair, along with Maxine’s curious eyes.
Maxine mouths something incomprehensible as she waves me over, then swats her own forehead with frustration after I fail to discern what she says.
“Friends like that only come around once in a lifetime,” Snow observes with a soft tilt of her head as the queen calls upon a flurry of armored icicles and directs them at Sylas’s strong hide.
“Sylas is providing you with a diversion. I suggest you take it. We will protect your friends in the interim, don’t fret. ”
I nod. With her permission, I take off like a firefly across the forest, leaving the Harvest Queens, my friends, and Sylas behind.
I burst through the tunnel’s maw and dart up the stairs like there’s a three-headed ghost nipping at my heels. Every atom in my body vibrates with energy as the walls begin to close in around me, which only gives me cause to push myself to move quicker… faster…
I can do this. I can do this. I can…