Chapter 37
The covered wagon rocked as more white-robed priestesses filed onto the benches.
Anniliese cowered lower into the thin folds of her robes.
It wasn’t that it was cold; the summer was fast approaching and even Khento was feeling its warmth.
Every girl who stepped into that wagon—and earlier, every person who’d watched her walk through the castle gardens—looked at Anniliese with a concerned wariness that made her want to crawl out of her skin.
She’d once loved that attention. Craved it. Wanted to be the focus of every soirée, the mistress of every party.
Not anymore.
Men shouted outside the canvas walls of their wagon, horses nickering and metal clanking. It added to the clamor of her growing panic, the deep unease settling low and heavy in her stomach.
Kol had ordered the entire castle south, and all of it made her nervous.
No, not just nervous. Terrified.
House Laurent’s forces had finally arrived overnight, their soldiers given no more than twelve hours of rest before the order came through to move out.
It seemed Gabriel’s punishment last week was successful in that regard.
The last holdout of resistance amongst the Royals, burned out with golden flame.
Her golden flame.
The canvas entrance parted again, and, as if the gods wished to play some sick, mocking game with her, the Laurent heir rode past.
He was slumped on his horse, still healing and very much not well enough to travel but forced to do so anyway. Gabriel Laurent had been a handsome man, wearing all the golden beauty of his Royal Onitan bloodline.
Now the right side of his face was burned almost beyond recognition, ugly raised scars already forming across once-smooth skin. They crawled down his neck, under his tunic. He clutched his arm to his chest, visibly wincing with every step of his horse.
Anniliese tore her gaze away, nausea rising in her stomach.
She’d done that. This shameful, poisoned magic she’d been cursed with had caused all that harm to a man who very much did not deserve it.
Anniliese had met Gabriel a handful of times before that day; had danced with him, as was expected of two young Royal heirs.
In another life, she might’ve even been married to him, their two houses joined for the betterment of Onita.
Instead, Queen Ryenne had abdicated the year she was born, and she was not permitted to marry. Because the goddess mandated that married ladies could not be queens.
Anniliese wound her hands through the thin material of her robes.
She hated Qhohena. Hated all the gods and whatever games they were playing, toying with human lives as if they meant nothing to them.
Perhaps they didn’t, and Anniliese and others like her were just ants in a hill, milling about aimlessly until they grew bored and sank their boots into the home they’d spent their whole lives constructing with care.
She wanted no part in it. Long gone were those feelings of freedom and joy that swept through her when her magic had first awakened. Gone were her feelings of rage and vindicated breathlessness, quashed beneath malignant shadows and forced obedience.
All she felt now was cowering hatred and bitter, tugging regret.
Horns blared through the gathered army. Calls echoed through the ranks. Galloping horses raced by, and their wagon lurched into motion.
A dragon’s roar broke through it all, shaking the canvas of their wagon.
Anniliese hid in her corner as Kol’s army started south.