Elisaf trails close behind us. Another day shift to follow the one he spent patrolling my door, but he looks no worse for wear from the lack of sleep. I feel him watching my every move intently, but at least his hand isn’t resting on his hilt as if primed to cut me down.
Elven, surely.
My eyes widen at the couple sitting on a bench beneath a tree with pink floral blooms—the man’s face buried in the woman’s neck, his hand snaked under her skirt. They’re tucked away but not that hidden.
“You still wear his ring. Why?”
“Huh?” Annika’s question catches me off guard.
“The betrothal ring my brother gave you. You’re still wearing it.”
I peer down at my hands, as if there might be jewelry there that I hadn’t noticed before. But aside from the cuffs on my wrists, there is still only one ring—the one Sofie slipped on my finger and warned me never to take off.
And apparently, also my engagement ring from Zander.
Is this the same ring? It looks the same, but the design is basic, and easily mimicked. Just as Princess Romeria and I look the same. Though, I hazard, that design is more complicated.
Annika is waiting for my response. What do I tell her? “The king told you that I don’t remember anything before the night the captain shot me with the arrow, right?” There isn’t even the faintest mark across my chest to hint at the wound.
“He did.”
I hesitate. “Do you believe me?”
“It would certainly explain many peculiarities.”
That’s not an answer.
We cross paths with a group of three women who quickly shift out of the way, curtsying deeply, their murmurs of “Your Highness” like a song’s chorus. I don’t know if it’s on my account or Annika’s, or both. Whatever the pecking order in this family, I suspect the king’s sister ranks high.
As with every courtier we’ve met on our walk, I sense their wide-eyed gapes at my back after we pass, and I instinctively pull the knit shawl closer to my body.
“Wendeline believes you,” she says when they are out of earshot.
A hopeful flutter stirs in my chest. “She does?”
“She shared a theory with us that would make sense. If anything does.”
I wait a long moment before I push. “What’s the theory?”
Annika’s pouty lips twist with a smirk. “There’s only one way you could come back from the dead after taking a merth-forged arrow to the heart, and that is if a caster summoned the fates for you.”
I don’t understand what she just said, save for one thing. “Wendeline thinks a caster did this?” That has to be Sofie. Does she have ties to this world? Did she know Princess Romeria? She must have. Except … Sofie never said anything about taking over the throne of Islor. I have one task here—to get Malachi’s stone so Sofie can save her husband from wherever he’s trapped.
“Not just any caster. Margrethe.”
“The high priestess who was killed by the daaknar?” The woman who was supposed to grant me sanctuary.
“Yes.” She watches me a moment, as if searching for a reaction to that suggestion, beyond my shock.
“Why would she do that?”
“That is an entirely different question. But it is the only explanation for the daaknar in Cirilea that night. We haven’t seen one in these lands in almost two thousand years, and the night you come back from the dead, one of Malachi’s henchmen from Azo’dem appears. It is far too coincidental to mean anything other than that Margrethe summoned him.”
Malachi. The one with the twisty black horns. A god with demons at his disposal? “So, casters can bring people back from the dead?”
She studies me through shrewd eyes. “What do you remember about elemental power?”
What the hell is elemental power? I want to say. I’ll never figure out anything in this world if I hold all my cards too close to my chest. Wendeline has handed me a precious gift: a viable excuse for my lack of knowledge. I need to use it—and Annika—to my advantage. “All I know is Wendeline healed me, but I don’t understand how she did it. I don’t understand these fates. I don’t know why Ybaris and Islor have been at war. I don’t know who I am.”