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With hasty steps, he left his room and rapped his knuckles on the next door over. After a few long stretches of silence, a tired face answered the door. But it was the face he trusted most when it came to those who served him—Lord Hardingham. Aside from having been his father’s most loyal councilman, he’d always treated Larylis with respect, bastard or no. He’d been at Centerpointe Rock. He’d seen the same terrors Larylis had. Though Hardingham had mourned Arlous’ death, he’d stated his support of Larylis’ impossible decision, even when the other councilmen continued to question their new king in whispers behind his back.
Only Hardingham would follow Larylis’ next demand without question.
“Keep this quiet,” Larylis said. “Gather a small selection of guards and meet me in the stables. We make haste for Ridine at once.”
Hardingham’s only reply was a widening of his eyes, followed by a nod.
Soon Larylis and a modest retinue took off under the blanket of night. His heart raced with fear, the excitement of his rebellion, and a pinch of shame. He knew he could be overreacting. He could be compromising everything.
But with every inch of distance he closed between himself and Ridine, he felt lighter. Freer. He let his thoughts go, lulled by the beat of horse hooves and Berol’s wings flapping high overhead.
50
Night had fallen and still Cora and her unwanted companions continued to walk. Her legs ached with fatigue, her neck stiff from trying so hard not to jostle her collar. She’d lost all sense of time, but surely they’d been walking for at least half a day now. Under normal circumstances, a lengthy walk was no problem. She’d traveled on foot plenty during her time stalking Morkai’s hunters with Valorre. But this was different. This was walking without rest. Without food. Without any sense of how near or far they were in relation to their destination.
At least the dying landscape of the Blight made for very few obstacles to navigate, but that was of little comfort with the exhaustion that tugged at her bones. She wasn’t certain how much time had passed since she’d left Ridine, but she knew she’d been awake for far too long. Thankfully, Etrix had offered her a skin of water—which had been the sweetest, most refreshing water she’d ever tasted—but she wasn’t sure how much longer she could go on that alone.
“Can we rest?” she ground out for what felt like the hundredth time.
“No,” Fanon said from up ahead. Not once had he fallen back from his position several yards in front of her.
“Then can I ride? If I can just get on Valorre’s back, we can travel much faster.” She kept her tone pleading and pathetic to hide the truth; if she mounted Valorre, she could outpace all of them and give her and the unicorn a chance to escape through the Veil on their own. If there was a way through, that is.
Fanon glowered over his shoulder. It carried the depth of his ire even with the nighttime shadows muting her vision. “I think not, human.”
“I have a name,” she said. “It’sCora,nothuman.”
Fanon had nothing to say to that and simply increased his pace.
“You must forgive Fanon,” Etrix said. Both he and Garot strolled at her side. As annoyed as she was with her captors, having the two close by was some comfort. The Blight was an eerie place. Too vast. Too empty. Too quiet. She constantly expected some faerytale creature to leap from the shadows with pointed fangs and threaten to claw out her eyes. Or perhaps a return of that enormous dragon. Now and then she was certain she could hear its screech in the distance, and she hadn’t forgotten what Etrix had said about the dragons chasing unicorns. Thankfully, she’d seen no such creature. In fact, she hadn’t seen a single soul aside from her companions since they’d passed the group of Faeryn.
Etrix spoke again. “Acting as Steward of El’Ara is a great burden to bear.”
The way Etrix had saidstewardmade her think the title was one of respect, and far higher in rank than a castle steward like Master Arther. She frowned at Fanon’s back.Heheld a position of power?
“He’s no Morkara.” A note of sorrow crept into his voice. “We haven’t had a true Morkara in a very long time.”
The unknown word piqued her curiosity, and she debated asking what it meant. Themorportion meant magic, of course, but what aboutkara? It sounded too much likeMorkaiorMorkaiusto ignore. While she’d kept quiet during most of their walk, focusing only on thoughts of getting home, it occurred to her that her companions might hold vital information about her enemy. Morkai had claimed to be an Elvyn prince, after all. Still, she didn’t dare bring him up directly. For all she knew, these three could be the lost prince’s most fervent supporters. But she could mine them for knowledge just the same.
“What is a Morkara?” she asked Etrix.
“Morkara is much like a steward, but the burden is given by blood, birth, andmora. They hold the highest position in El’Ara and are responsible for directing the flow ofmorathrough our entire world. Satsara was the last Morkara we’ve had, but she died about seventy-five years ago. Fanon has been acting as steward in her place ever since.”
“What happened to Satsara?”
A flicker of emotion passed over Etrix’s face before he steeled it behind a stoic mask. “Your kind found its way to El’Ara. A human. A worldwalker.”
“Oh, let me tell the rest,” Garot said, stepping closer to Cora’s other side. “You’re terrible at telling stories.”
“This isn’t astory, Garot. It’s a dark blot in our world’s history. Why would you relish telling such a tale?”
Fanon glanced over his shoulder with another scowl. “Why are you bothering to talk with the human at all?”
“I thought she should know the deeds her kind are responsible for,” Garot said, but when Fanon faced forward again, he gave Cora an exaggerated wink. She was starting to like the copper-haired Elvyn more and more. Where at first she’d been annoyed by his arrogant amusement over her plight, she’d come to realize his demeanor at least lacked cruelty.
“Fine,” Fanon said with a grunt. “Make sure she understands her people’s darkest deeds, not just the parts you like to talk about.”
Garot puffed his chest and stood tall, and his tone took on the same whimsical quality it had when she’d asked about the Veil. “Morkara Satsara’s reign was still new when she met Prince Tristaine, a human lost in El’Ara. He was more than a human, though. More than a prince. He had human magic. A witch, I think your kind call them. And this witch had one of the most dangerous powers we’d ever heard of. One that allowed him to travel anywhere in the blink of an eye.”
