“Unbiased?” she challenged, arching an eyebrow. “How could you possibly provide an unbiased examination?
“I am a scholar,” I bit back, reining in my temper. “I work with the facts. And if we don’t have a fair accounting of what happened to the Lady of Tomorrow, then our forces will have a difficult time accepting Vander’s fate.”
“Is that a threat,Bonder? What will happen if the young soldier is tossed into the Juniper? Will your forces react? Does the queensguard not have his hounds on their leashes?”
“It’s a request for a peaceful resolution. If the evidence implicates Vander, then we will support your authority to condemn him as you will.”
The words tasted like ash on my tongue, and my gut sank.There is truth in death, I reminded myself. My heart hurt as I replayed Father Marcus’s words. Was he still in the dungeons at Mount Telum? We never went back for him.Was he even alive?
The queen narrowed her bright eyes on me as she considered.
“I will make you a deal, Bonder.”
My stomach twisted.
“I will allow you to examine the bones before their offering to the Beyond, in exchange for time with me to hone the Obscura and Transcindiel powers. Every day until the Rising forces depart.”
I blinked.Train me?Queen Antares was a mystic. A very powerful one, if the stories from Isla and the others were true. I was still learning the basic commands of magic: water and wind whispering, spell work, and tree singing. Few mages were elevated to the status of mystic, often taking hundreds of years.
Unease stretched as she kept her cool gaze pinned on me, the temperature in the room sinking. The others would kill me for this.
“Not until our departure. We have yet to come to an agreement on that timing,” I said as confidently as possible. “Five days. No more.”
“Ten,” she countered in a quiet command. “To be completed before the end of summer.”
“Seven.”
“Eight.”
For fuck’s sake. I reined in the scoff ready to escape. She didn’t blink.
“Fine. Eight days,” I conceded.
Her pink lips curled up in a conniving grin as she snapped her fingers. A young elven mage with dark skin and deep brown eyes approached. He bowed to the queen before offering me a polite nod.
“An air oath,” Queen Antares purred to the young mage. “In the common tongue, if you please.”
My stomach threatened to bottom out as color leached from my face.
“An air oath?” I stammered.
The queen raised a light brow at me. “Of course, Bonder. We don’t take deals lightly in this land. It shouldn’t be a problem unless you don’t intend on holding up your end of the bargain.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“Come. We need to be closer,” she crooned, motioning me forward with delicate, manicured hands.
My mind spun, searching for any possible solution to avoid being bound to the queen, coming up empty. We had to save Vander.
I stepped up to Queen Antares as she moved closer, stopping inches from my face. Her sickly-sweet scent shoved its way up my nostrils, and I opened my lips to breathe from my mouth. Her porcelain skin shimmered as she cocked her head.
A musty wind, spinning from the elven mage in her command, swirled around the room, clearing it, as he recited:
“Wind becomes life, as air becomes breath,
and bound without it, so too it calls death.
With it, these words become law,
