Chapter 8
Alora
Alora woke to a gray morning. Not cloudy, simply colorless. The room was still. Her gaze immediately fixed on the mirror. She rubbed her tender eyes as she sat up and lit a candle. Shadows danced on the walls, shifting like a couple twirling across a darkened sky.
Head full of dreams.
Had she imagined the voice last night?
Yet her skin buzzed with the memory of phantom fingers and a voice that should not exist.
She touched the twisted lock of her hair.
No. He was real.
That thought alone made her bones grow cold. Alora stared at her reflection, hands trembling in her lap. What had she done? What had she awoken?
Alora clutched her doll, seeking comfort from a childhood that had long faded. But she wasn’t a girl anymore. She couldn’t afford to be.
Tucking the doll away, Alora rose from her bed. She’d woken well before her ladies would arrive, so she dressed quickly and wandered out into the hall. The morning was spent familiarizing herself with the castle again. The walls were paler in the daylight, stripped of all warmth.
Every corridor was too quiet. Every hallway stretching too long.
Alora walked slowly, trailing her fingers along the stone as she passed, frowning at the blue banners clashing with the green mantle of Argyle.
Queen Delphi’s royal banners. They were woven in a deep ultramarine silk, like a twilight veil between realms. At its center were a stalk of delphinium blooms, rendered in vivid indigo and violet tones.
The blooms were entwined with a lattice of silver thorns.
Delicate in appearance, but symbolic of pain wrapped in beauty.
Alora retorted under her breath, “A perfect representation.”
Much like the poisonous flower she was named after, Delphi had killed all charm in the castle. The rich wood panels had been painted over in pale gray. The floors scrubbed to a marble-white gleam. Everything was cold and sterile. The warmth that used to fill these halls was long gone.
Everything she knew was erased.
Alora paused at a corridor where portraits once lined the walls, including her mothers. Blank nails were all that remained. The back of her eyes stung with anger. How dare they erase her.
A sudden distant sound of a child’s laughter echoed in the hall.
Alora gasped and turned sharply, but the dark corridor was empty. She waited, searching the dim corners. No more laughter followed. Goosebumps prickled her skin.
Rihan.
He would have been eleven now.
The feeling of being watched coiled around her again. Alora shuddered. Sacred Seven, the castle must be haunted. Or perhaps it was a draft, playing cruel tricks on her.
Because she refused to give what happened last night any weight.
Only a song.
Alora pressed a hand to her chest and kept walking. A dark form moved in the corner of her eye, and she bit back a yelp.
Delphi emerged like a shadow from the opposite corridor. Midnight-blue silk clung to her frame, her dark hair drawn back beneath a black coif shaped like a crown of thorns. Pale, unreadable, her presence cut as sharp as frost.
For a moment Alora barely recognized her. Delphi was glamored to pass as human, porcelain-skinned and youthful, though her pointed ears and violet eyes still betrayed her.
Alora had seen her true skin when she was a child, the shade of deep blue of midnight. Why change it now?
Vanity, she thought bitterly. Delphi would make herself hardly resemble her subjects while still clinging to her fae beauty.
Two fae males stood at her side, their white-and-bronze attire marking them as Calveron advisors.
They were out of place in Argyle’s dim corridors, like sunlit figures forced into gloom.
Why were they alone with her? Yet Delphi gave no sign of unease.
She moved as though their presence were expected, her violet eyes narrowing when she found Alora.
Forcing a smile, Alora took the ends of her dress and bowed low stiffly. “Your Majesty.”
The Queen tilted her head, her gaze sharp with cold scrutiny.
“Strange,” Delphi said, her voice as thin as the silk of a spiderweb. “When you were sent away, I never expected you to darken these halls again. You should never have left the Midlands.”
Anger surged up her throat.
“I’m sure you didn’t expect my brother to die so soon either,” Alora replied before she could stop herself.
The slap came sharp and swift, echoing in the hall.
Her head snapped sideways, hot pain blooming across her cheek. The halls seemed to shake around her a moment, but Alora drew in a shallow breath, swallowing the lump in her throat. Guilt settled like a stone in her stomach.
She shouldn’t have said that. Not to her. Not here.
Queen Delphi straightened her shoulders and tilted her chin. “Do not grow comfortable here, changeling,” she hissed. “You won’t be staying long.”
She turned and stalked away.
“As you wish, Your Majesty,” Alora replied, tone cool with indifference. “I will leave this castle ever in your care… once my mother’s portrait is returned to me.”
Delphi paused for a moment, then continued, vanishing into the corridor with her guards.
Alora exhaled shakily. Her fingers brushed her burning cheek, somewhat gratified she had finally stood up to that contemptuous woman. But she looked up at the vaulted ceiling and whispered a soft apology in case her brother’s spirit still lingered here.
“Forgive me, Rihan.”
Her whisper lingered in the quiet.
Alora flinched again at the sudden blare of trumpets outside.
A deep, echoing blast rolled through the castle from the outer gates, announcing an important arrival. One her father failed to mention last night, or better yet, withheld.
But she could already guess who it was.
Alora rushed to the nearest window. A carriage gilded in gold rolled into the courtyard, flanked by mounted soldiers riding white steads with manes of flame. A massive banner unfurled in the wind, bearing the mark of a golden six-headed Hydra on a field of white.
Calveron had come to call.
Alora crept through the upper corridors of the east wing, careful not to let her slippers echo on the marble. Reaching the mezzanine, she stood behind a pillar as she overlooked the foyer below.
Her father and servants waited to greet their guests.
Guards marched in, their armor strangely angular and faceless, helmets shaped like snarling snakes. At the center of the procession came a man in sharp ceremonial armor. King Thalion, she assumed, stern and hollow-eyed. And beside him…
Prince Eldrik.
His armor gleamed like forged sunlight, every plate wrought in white-gold so polished it nearly blinded her eyes.
The filigree traced in molten patterns along his breastplate caught the torchlight like fire, and a golden cloak spilled from his shoulders.
Even his helm, crowned with a plume of scarlet, lent him the bearing of a radiant conqueror.
His skin was warm, his pale hair resembling waves of silver sand and eyes like the clearest seawater. A beauty that was slightly too perfect, edged with something predatory.
The Prince of Calveron was tall, broad-shouldered, a crown of gold on his brow above his pointed ears. His expression was one of quiet satisfaction as his gaze swept over the castle, perhaps imagining the kingdom he intended to own.
Not if she could help it.
As if sensing her stare, the prince looked up and found her immediately.
Alora ducked out of sight, heart pounding.
She had no intention of meeting him today.
Careful not to make a sound, she slipped away before anyone else spotted her and rushed down the quieter halls in search of something familiar and a safe place to hide. The deeper she went into the castle, the darker the halls became.
Alora picked up a lantern from the servant’s quarters and continued.
Her mind whirled with the memory of that dark, unearthly voice from the night before, sometimes catching the echo of a child’s laughter.
She ignored the chill on her skin and continued into the abandoned part of the castle.
Her feet carried her almost on instinct through the winding corridors until she found a door carved with intricate details of vines and flowers.
Her mother’s old workroom.
Alora turned the brass knob, and the door creaked open slowly.
It was as she remembered, but now dim, dusty, forgotten, but full of remnants of a life that had once filled the castle with warmth.
The large room was dark, heavy velvet green curtains drawn.
It smelled of dust and lavender, long faded.
Alora coughed as she stepped in, shutting the door behind her.
The lantern’s glow spilled across shelves stacked with brittle parchment and jars of dried herbs.
No one had entered this place since her mother’s death.
The air itself seemed preserved, caught in a breath that had never exhaled.
Rolls of parchment and dried roses in a vase were left forgotten on a side table set beside a moth-eaten settee.
Books lined the walls, many of them herbal guides and celestial maps.
The table was still littered with open pages and dried ink, their surfaces curled and yellowed.
A single teacup sat untouched, now ringed with time.
Alora trailed her fingers along the desk, brushing away cobwebs before landing on an old, leather-bound journal stamped with her mother’s emblem of a harp laced with vines.
She carefully flipped through the pages.
They were full of neat, flowing script, sketches of flowers, and notes on various herbs and plants.
One page caught her eye with a delicate drawing of an unusual flower with thin spindly petals, annotated with notes about its origin and properties.
Something slipped from between the pages of the old journal, fluttering down. A dried red petal that matched the sketch.