The Glass Queen (The Forest of Good and Evil #2) - Gena Showalter Page 0,76

wanted to get in his face and demand answers. Have you spoken to Ashleigh again? How do you know about Leonora? What other lies has the witch fed you?

I needed to see my princess, to speak to her, but she had remained at the palace, as ordered. Why hadn’t I demanded she send me a message every morning to let me know how she was doing?

How did she fare?

I worried for her. I...missed her.

I missed falling asleep with her secure in my bed. I missed waking up with her right beside me. I missed our conversations and her daily transformation from mouse to tigress, as she found and wielded her inner strength.

I shouldn’t miss anything but her torment.

I shouldn’t be the miserable one, feeling as if I’d finally enjoyed the barest taste of contentment and now couldn’t live without more.

Why had I let Ashleigh cup my cheeks and offer comfort? Had I stopped her, my chest would not have cracked. Now it was too late. The damage was done, the consequences here to demand their due. I had softened irreparably toward Ashleigh, and there was no going back.

Deep breath in, out.

“Are you just going to stand there?” my sister shrieked from inside my tent. “The second official battle has started.”

I realized I stood at the entrance, one foot out and one foot in. Scowling, I stalked outside, entering the campgrounds.

Tempest followed me, remaining a few steps behind. I skirted a tent. A chill morning wind blustered, spreading the smoke that curled from abandoned firepits. A pack of wild dogs raced here and there, eating the food I’d had my men leave throughout the grounds. Any soldier or servant who’d imbibed too much the night before now sprawled in the dirt, sleeping.

“Well?” Tempest demanded. “Why aren’t you headed for the coliseum?”

Once I’d thought Leonora was the bane of my existence. In this life, my sister and mother held the honor. “This competition is a series of ten separate battle heats, with five combatants fighting in each.” The ten heats would garner ten winners. The last men standing. They would advance to the semifinals, which would take place sometime next week. “I have been assigned to the last heat.”

Noel had been in charge of selecting which combatants belonged in which heat. A task assigned by Philipp...after the oracle had manipulated him into thinking it was his idea, just as she’d manipulated him into bringing Ashleigh to Sevón on my behalf.

The oracle’s only task this time? Ensuring I wasn’t in the same heat as Roth. Instead, she’d paired us together. Why, oracle? Now one of us had to “die” today, and that one would be Roth. Or rather, his fae illusion. Everly was capable of casting a second illusion to convince the entire crowd he had expired, but such a feat would require untold amounts of magic, which could leave her incapacitated, which would erase Roth’s fae illusion, which would leave both of my friends vulnerable to attack. So, I would be fighting him for real but only pretending to slay him.

“You told me Mother would only stay six days,” I said with a glance over my shoulder. “It’s been six days. Why hasn’t she left?”

“You know why. She’s worried about you. So am I.” Tempest hopped over a log and picked up her pace. “I’ve read the journals Craven and his second incarnation wrote while they warred with Leonora. Did you know the tomes survived the fires in both lives, bespelled to last the ages? A scribe had them. His friary kept them safe all this time. When he heard rumors of your reincarnation, he gave them to Mother. That’s how I know Craven believed in the fairy-tale prophecies and thought he’d gotten stuck in some kind of twisted tale with Leonora. Is that what you believe, too?”

“No,” I snapped. Yes? I didn’t know anymore. Tyron had believed in the fairy-tale prophecies, too...at first. But he’d nearly driven himself mad trying to decipher his and Leonora’s roles in “The Little Cinder Girl.” In the end, he’d told his people only fools believed such nonsense. Over the centuries, the declaration had stuck. “Put the journals in a crate with rocks and drop it into a deep hole in the earth.” I’d written them for the family of my future incarnations, for this very purpose, thinking to warn them of what could be, and I’d been a brilliant fool to do so.

At my side, Tempest snapped, “Craven didn’t believe he had fulfilled his destiny.