“Take her to our rooms. Lock her in. She is attended by no slave and no wife and keep the animal from her. Do it now,” Lahn ordered, stood and stalked down the steps while I blinked after him.
“Come, my golden queen, now,” Zahnin demanded firmly and slowly, dazedly, my head turned to him.
His arm was extended to me.
I looked back where Lahn had disappeared and I felt my chest rise and fall with my rapid, deep breaths.
Whatever was wrong wasn’t over. And I had the distinct feeling, even as bad as that was, the worst was yet to come.
So I stood without the aid of Zahnin, straightened my shoulders, kept my head held high and I walked to Zephyr.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The Reveal
I paced Lahn and my bedroom, my sarong flying behind me and I did this for a long time. It could have been an hour or it could have been five of them.
It felt like five.
I didn’t even have Ghost with me and as the time slid by, my adrenalin surged, as did my agitation. I was so freaking out, I was stuck in my head and I didn’t cleanse my face or even take off my crown of feathers.
I just paced or walked to one of the four windows and tried to see what I could see in the torchlit streets.
I could see nothing.
So I paced more.
Lahn had locked me in our rooms.
Locked me in our rooms.
He didn’t look at me, he didn’t speak to me, in fact, although he said he believed me and made threats to defend me; he didn’t look or speak to me at all during his confrontation with King Baldur.
He could do this, and had before, when he was in king mode but with where I was now, I knew this was something else. Something not good. In fact, so not good, it was bad.
And that King Baldur had known me. He’d said he’d known me since I was six.
What was that all about?
But I had a feeling I knew. I knew about pirate ships and kings. It was all coming together.
I was in a parallel universe and there was another Circe here, one who looked just like me, one who was not here now.
And King Baldur had called her his enchantress.
So maybe she held magic, knew she did, could manipulate it and maybe it was her who had transported herself out of this world and to mine, sending me here.
If she knew how, after being seized by pirates and then Korwahk scouts, she would. If she knew of their practices in Korwahk and what awaited her while she waited in that corral, she’d do it. I knew it.
Sending me here.
Good God.
And knowing this, she’d never want to come back. She could have no clue that Lahn would be who and how he was. She would only think she’d escaped a nightmare.
Which meant, since my magic wasn’t at my command but at the whims of my emotions, I couldn’t get back to explain things to my father, my friends, to say good-bye and certainly there would be no visits back and forth.
I was stuck here forever and now I wasn’t certain that was good.