From the corner of her eye, she saw a hawk—was it the same one from earlier?—take perch in a nearby tree.
Jonas drew Cleo to a halt. “I still don’t like this.”
“I don’t like it much, either. But I need to go.”
When his gaze locked with hers she remembered their kiss all too clearly. Her lips still tingled from it. They stood for a moment, not speaking.
“Be ready on your wedding day,” he said. “Ten days from now everything changes forever. You understand?”
She nodded. “I understand.”
Jonas squeezed her hand and finally let her go. With a last look, she turned from him and walked confidently into the guards’ camp.
Chapter 16
QUEEN
ALTHEA
AURANOS
Just before dawn, Queen Althea left the safety of the palace to emerge into the warm night air. She wore a commoner’s cloak to hide her identity, just as she’d done a handful of times before. No one would ever guess who she really was.
The witch was also cloaked and waiting in the usual spot. Althea approached her, heart pounding.
A necessary evil. I’m only doing what I must.
Witches were said to be descendants of exiled Watchers. When these immortals entered the mortal world, they too became mortal. They were able to breed with other mortals and have offspring, some of whom could channel small amounts of magic—or so the legend went.
This witch, placed in the Limeros dungeon by a word from Sabina, the king’s former mistress, was capable of more than that. Sabina had allegedly seen her as a threat since her own magic had faded over the years.
Even before her family had left to mount the siege upon the Auranian palace, Althea worked swiftly and secretly to free this witch from her prison. She found a sickly, bone-thin woman who could barely speak. She had her hidden away at the castle, fed, bathed, and clothed, then offered her freedom—for a price.
She was to help the queen learn more about Lucia’s elementia.
The witch agreed, and Althea learned the true prophecy about Lucia that Gaius had never shared with her. She learned stories about the Watchers, about the Kindred, about Eva, the original sorceress. About Cleiona and Valoria, who envied their sister Eva’s power so much that their greed drove them to steal the Kindred for themselves—an act that resulted in their total corruption by a power so vast they had no chance to control it. In the end, neither won. They destroyed each other.
As a devout worshipper of the Goddess Valoria, Althea had been stunned and sickened by all of this. She wanted to deny the truth of it, but found the more she learned, the more she could not. The witch was an Oldling, one who kept these stories, passed down from generation to generation; one who worshipped the elements themselves as if they too were gods and goddesses.
If this witch was to regain her weakened power, blood magic was the only option, and she would need more than a sacrificed animal.
And the queen needed her magic.
No common mortal was good enough, the witch said. It had to be someone with strong blood, a pure heart, a bright future. Althea found a boy named Michol, one of Lucia’s suitors. He had come by the castle one day looking for the princess shortly before she departed with Gaius and Magnus for Auranos. He was so young, so alive. The queen enticed him into her chambers with the promise of a betrothal to her beautiful daughter.
There, the witch was waiting with her dagger. The boy’s blood ran red and true.
Instead of inciting pity, however, Michol’s dying screams only fueled the queen and gave her much-needed strength. The boy had to be sacrificed so Lucia could be saved from the darkness of her magic. And saved Lucia must be—even if it eventually meant the girl’s own death.
Any good mother would do the same.
Althea remembered that night only too clearly.
The magic had shimmered in the air, making the queen catch her breath as the fine hair on her arms stood up.
Michol dropped to the ground, dead, his cheeks wet with tears. The witch’s hands were coated in his blood and she pressed them to her face. Her eyes glowed so bright—like the sun itself.
“Is it working?” the queen asked, shielding her eyes. “Do you need another? I can find a servant.”