Helaina closed her eyes, attempting to calm herself. She could have sworn the wind around her shifted, almost pushing against her back. A strong force circled her body for a split second, forming a cocoon. In a way, the sensation soothed her. She opened her eyes, but there was nothing there. She patted around the air, but whatever it was, it was gone now.
She looked toward the gate. Her brother was still standing there, staring back at her, his face contorted in horror.
“What?” she asked innocently, looking around for the cause of his sudden upset.
He shook his head. “Nothing. Stay safe, we’ll be back soon.”
She watched him go, so many questions swimming in her head as Cedric and Teirn closed the gate.
CHAPTERSEVEN
Prince Jordon Poroma of the Mirrored Deserts. The name of the man she would soon marry.Helaina Poroma. It sounded terrible, like an ugly plant used to make bitter medicines in the south wing.
“Prince Jordon is an exceptional man, I hear.” Fessyk clearly wanted to feign some semblance of family between them.
“Then you marry him,” Helaina whispered under her breath.
He either didn’t hear or chose to ignore her as he continued his ramblings. “Did you know his armies are made up of women? The land there can be so harsh. Their smaller frames need less water and food to survive the long treks in the scorching days.”
Helaina rolled her eyes. She already knew about the deserts, the terrain. Oakmire’s library had filled in her understanding of faraway kingdoms long ago. What she wanted to know, she couldn’t find in a book. What sort of man was Prince Jordon? Why had he agreed to marry her without ever meeting?
“They say he still possesses magic. That he controls sand snakes and has called upon them to poison his enemies.”
Helaina had heard the stories about the desert people and their sustained magic. She couldn’t believe they were anything more than spun rumors. Only the fae held on to that kind of power now, and even theirs was nothing like what the gods had gifted in the beginning. Helaina’s magic wasn’t a gift at all, it was something else, something dark.
“I’m sure if he doesn’t find me satisfactory, he will simply sneak a viper into my bed, and that will be that,” she mused. She didn’t give Fessyk a chance to reply. She turned her back to him and walked off to her room.
When she entered her chamber, Laurelai was organizing Helaina’s shoes, her treasured books, and the absurd amount of jewels she owned.
Helaina sprawled her body over the lounge chair, refusing to take part in the preparations for the journey. None of these things even mattered, it was all junk. She couldn’t remember the last time she wore any of those jewels.
There was only one piece she kept with her, which she never took off. She carefully thumbed the stones around her wrist, letting the sunlight flicker and dance on their edges. The shimmering blue beads were her only means of protection. Her people called them tempest tears. The legend read that the first clusters of the astonishing gems were found right after the gods left Lynor to return to their own realms. Leaving their creations caused such devastating sadness in the gods, their extreme emotion forged a storm the likes of which no one had ever seen. Kydon’s Sea rose up, drowning the earth in waves. When that storm’s lightning struck the earth, patches of rock melted deep underground, forming beads that looked strangely like icy tears.
Her lips turned downward as she recalled that fable, her fingers tracking the smooth dewdrop shape of each individual piece.
She watched her handmaiden continue to pack away parts of her life. Laurelai turned her attention to folding her dresses and riding tunics into the many velvet-lined trunks. Helaina rarely wore dresses anymore, what would be the occasion? Other than funerals, there was simply no need for formal attire. She frowned as she appraised her loose-fitting clothing, a simple pastel-green tunic that almost stretched to her knees. She always wore things a bit large on her frame, she liked it that way. But this—this was months of wasting away. Now, everything she owned draped over her like a dining cloth.
Not that it had ever mattered what she wore. No one from neighboring lands had even seen her, aside from the fae. King Oren was never one for extravagant birth announcements, parading his newborns for all the townspeople to gawk at like other royals.
It made it all the more bizarre that someone had made an offer for her hand in the first place. Prince Jordon had agreed on marriage without ever seeing her face. It didn’t instill confidence that such a distant man was so desperate.
Laurelai looked up from her sorting. “I hear the desert lands have an unnatural beauty to them.”
Poor Laurelai. She was being dragged into this misfortune as well, getting uprooted from her home to a strange new place. It was easy to ignore Fessyk’s ramblings, she couldn’t stand the man. But Laurelai was kindhearted and had been by Helaina’s side since adolescence. Still, even idle conversations with people she cared about seemed too hard right now. She preferred quiet.
“I heard plants actually grow there,” Laurelai continued. “Tall vine-like trees with flowers, and instead of petals, they bear bright-colored thorns.” Laurelai eyed the princess while folding sets of undergarments.
“Sounds lovely,” Helaina replied. It came out more clipped than she meant it to.
She stretched over the chaise with a deep sigh, fingers intertwined over the inward curve of her abdomen. At the crinkling of paper, she looked up, catching sight of something in Laurelai’s hands. The girl tossed the wrinkled parchment into the pile of items that were old or simply too large to pack in the trunks for the nine-day journey. The pile would be torched when they left. Yes, any remaining clue that she had lived here the past twenty-three years would be set ablaze the moment she was gone.
Helaina sat up. “That... I’m taking that with me.”
Laurelai’s eyebrow rose in question, but she picked the crumpled thing back up and placed it in Helaina’s waiting palm.
Adriel’s note. Though she had no intention of ever opening it, parting with it wasn’t an option either. It was a piece of him after all. An ugly one, but a piece nonetheless.
Helaina placed the stained, folded parchment between the brown leather covers of her favored mythology text.
