"Oh, but I could."
How much therapy do I need? More than I thought, clearly, because my overriding feeling in this room is one of sexual tension. "I take the potion every month to make myself appear mortal.”
"Why hide the fact you're an immortal?" He asks, crossing an ankle over one knee.
"Rexxan, when I first met Renna, she was a child, in a state I can only hope no child ever has to endure again. She didn't read or write. She only spoke the same three words, over and over.I'm a mortal. It was all she could say. And beside her was Onyx, another child in terrible condition. He growled at the healers whenever they tried to touch Renna, he shouted at them when they asked her any questions. "
Bloody hell, Espan. Spill my entire life story why don't you? I don't want or need pity.
"...my point is, Rexxan. Whatever reason Renna is hiding her past, it isn't malicious, and it isn't because she's a spy. I've known her since she was a child and there is nothing in her heart but good. Let her leave with me. She will not come near you again."
"Keep her hands cuffed until she's across my borders," instructs the King, as guards pick me up and drag me away, out of the hall that houses his throne.
An hour later, with the wind whipping past my ears, I gallop out of the forest. I vow never to return, never to see King Rexxan again.
Chapter15
Not a Dungeon (Rexxan)
If that huntress ever steps through my Kingdom Gate again, I'll kill her.
But as I lie awake under the stars on my balcony, it's not my anger at Renna that's keeping me awake, it's a different anger entirely. I hurl a knife at the wall, get out of bed, and ride to the mansion of the only person who can give me the answer I crave. With my spare key, I unlock Lynna's front door.
"Lynna, it's Rexxan!" I shout, walking through the marble grand foyer of her home. A twelve-foot tall, white stone statue of a goddess stands in the centre between the two staircases. In one hand, she holds a sword, in the other she carries a real bunch of flowers. Lynna's estate contains so much art that it is worth more than the entire City of Rivers.
I walk up the right staircase, pink flowers winding their way up the banister. As the granddaughter of the Goddess of Nature, she has enchanted all her flowers to never die. I walk into the grand upstairs hallway, past the marble carving of a mother feeding her newborn child, past the portrait of me and my parents, past the life-sized statue of a woman on her knees, red blood pouring from her chest. Lynna’s home is a shrine to femininity in all its forms.
"Lynna," I whisper, outside the door to the master bedroom, a room I've spent many nights in. I crack open the door, but she is not in there. Only a decisively male form sleeping in the bed beside a female form with jet-black hair.
Of course she is still awake working at this hour. “Lynna," I say again, outside her study.
She jumps, a jewelled hand on her chest. "Rexxan, I didn't know you were coming."
"Who hit her?"
"What?"
"Renna. Who hit her? She wouldn't tell me."
"She didn't want you to know, Rex."
"Lynna," I warn, shooting her a look that has most people bursting into tears.
She sighs wearily, putting her white quill into its holder and neatly folding her hands on her lap. "She had an altercation with King Kelen. She dragged him into her prison cell, and he hit her."
My voice drops to a deadly soft volume, a vision of his hands on her clouding my mind. "So, just to reiterate, because you know Iloveto be clear. Kelen hit Renna. Yes?"
"Rexxan, don't kill him."
I don’t answer her. I won't kill him, but I will make him beg to be killed. "Are you aware two people are asleep in your bed? How doyouget to keep the angelic reputation, but I don't?"
I look down at her notes as she laughs. She is studying the Delsk Potion; the one Renna takes. My mind is not the only one plagued by her, it seems. "Lynna, forget her. She's not worth our time."
She shrugs ever so slightly, her aqua eyes glowing in the dark. "She is a puzzle to be solved."
"She's nothing but trouble."
"She has a heart of gold."
