Father. Dorian had no authority to do such a thing, nor did Norok. It would have been Mother or Father who dismissed them,
unless they were paid to leave.
Talia stared at me as she watched the wheels in my brain turn, her eyes darting towards me and then to the entrance of the
tent. She knew something, or she suspected something. I knew my sister. She was the one who always had her ear to the ground.
She heard every whisper, every gossip within that castle walls. She knewsomething.
“What is it, Talia? Do you know something?”
She shook her head quickly as she placed the entire deck of cards down on the table and stepped back from it. Her neck
became flushed as she fumbled with the lace of her dress sleeve, something she always did when she was nervous.
As she backed away, towards the entrance, I stepped out from the table and quickly gripped her by the wrist. Pulling her
close enough to my face as possible, so as to whisper and hope no one outside heard me.
“If you don’t believe it was an accident, nod for me.”
She swallowed a lump in her throat and lowered her eyes from my gaze for a second before she nodded slowly. She didn’t
hate me. She just wasn’t sure if she could trust me fully. There was no telling what Dorian had told her.
“Talia, whatever you do, do not trust Dorian. And when you can, you run from this place. I will find you when I get out. If
our father was murdered, it was not by Nicholas or any of the Obsidian Fae, you must believe me.”
She nodded again and placed her other hand over mine, tightly squeezing it. It wasn’t something I expected. At that moment
all I wanted to do was hold my baby sister in my arms, protect her and keep her from harm.
“Why did you really leave, Ella?”
“I offered myself in exchange for Norok to be healed. I didn’t want to leave, but I didn’t want to marry Dorian either. Going
with Nicholas—the Shadow King was my best option and honestly, I don’t regret the choices I made. Norok is alive.”
“But now we are at war.”
“Talia, I will do everything I can to keep you safe. That is a promise.”
Pulling her into a tight embrace then, I kissed her forehead and squeezed her even tighter. I wanted nothing more than to
keep her close to me but, as a throat cleared behind us, I let her go to see Dorian standing there with a smug look upon his face.
His presence sent shivers down my spine and my blood set to boil. I hated him down to my very core. Now that I had all
my memories intact, I knew the extent of what he did to me, not just fragments.
I knew what he did, where his hands had been, and my skin itched like crazy as I watched his eyes take in the view of me.
My dress was still stained with my blood, and mud and sand coated the bottom of it. I wasn’t given the option for clean clothes,
even when Talia asked Norok for them. In his fit of anger he’d told me I deserved to rot in this dirt.
“I can barely see you under all the muck.”
