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At the end of the winding lane, four black horses with perfect white stockings led a sizable carriage, vines and leaves hand carved into the sides. Crimson banners waved from the top, proudly displaying the Edenvale emblem—the emblem of the king. I fought the sudden urge to obliterate the flags with my water harpoons.
Muttering a few curse words directed at the king, I ducked inside.
“Did you say something?” Arkyn asked, peering up at me over the top of a crisp newssheet.
“I was just saying what a lovely day it is outside,” I covered as I sat on the opposite side from him.
The coachmen clicked his tongue, and the carriage began to move.
“Indeed,” he replied skeptically, his gaze returning to the paper.
I leaned against the wall of the carriage, listening to the horses’ hooves clack against the brick-paved road. The wheels of the carriage created a constant, steady hum. Occasionally, they would groan in protest before they kicked a stray rock to the side.
“I think it is rather odd that a girl who works at a bathhouse would be living in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Belamour,” Arkyn remarked as he folded the paper and tucked it beside him. “Either you do your job exceptionally well, you are living in the back alley, or you have someone wealthy helping you. So, which one is it?”
I had a feeling this question was going to come up. “I’m staying with some friends,” I replied honestly, remembering his unnatural ability to detect my lies. My hands smoothed my lilac skirts. I hardly wore dresses—most of the time I found them impractical and cumbersome—but this one, when I found it, I couldn’t resist.
“Does the property belong to one of your friends?” he asked, crossing his legs, hands folding neatly in his lap.
“Tell me, my lord—” I smiled sweetly. “—do you conduct interrogations with all the women you court?”
He chuckled, a wink of a dimple appearing in the corner of his cheek. “I only do it with women I find particularly intriguing.”
“How flattering,” I said ambiguously, choking back the sarcasm. The clacking of horses’ hooves sounded different than before. Now, it sounded softer, more forgiving. I tugged the merlot curtain open and peered out the window. Panic gripped me—we were no longer in Belamour.
An expanse of tumbling, rolling hills spanned the horizon ahead, the gentle rolls blanketed in long, brown grass that had long gone to seed.
“Where are we going?” I demanded to know.
“We are going to the Temple of Light,” Arkyn replied. He gestured to the seat. “You might want to brace yourself; it is going to be a bit of a bumpy ride from here on out.”
By the time the carriage came to a rolling stop, I was eager to get out. I had never felt such a vast appreciation for land.
A bit of a bumpy ride?
It was a gods-given miracle that the wheels had not fallen off. The soft, rolling hills had quickly turned into a steep, jagged incline, the trail full of big rocks and lumpy, frost bumps that made the carriage jump with each strike.
I hoped we did not have to take that same trail to get back, but I suspected we probably did.
Arkyn spoke briefly with the coachmen before he turned and walked towards me. The pin he’d worn earlier, a status symbol of the king, was no longer pinned over his heart. I wondered if he was trying to downplay who he was. I could think of a few reasons why he might do that.
He extended his arm. “The carriage won’t be able to make it any farther. We must walk the rest of the way.”
“That’s fine. I don’t mind stretching my legs anyway,” I replied.
If things weren’t so whatever they were with Von, then I might have felt something when I settled my hand on Arkyn’s arm. Afterall, Arkyn was handsome, with his wild red hair and glowing honey-brown eyes. He was tall and tan, and under the bright afternoon sun, he seemed almost . . . radiant.
But he wasn’t Von.
And worse? He was the king’s advisor—thesameking who had overseen the deaths of countless innocents. The same king whose actions led to people living in poverty. The same king that had taken my brother for his selfish, useless war. I wondered, as we walked down the slender, bricked path, how big of a role Arkyn had played in all those needless deaths.
As we walked, people of a variety of ages and ethnicities joined us. Some were on the same path as us, and others joined from smaller trails that joined with ours. I imagined the trails were like the veins in a leaf, ours being the main one that fed the rest.
We walked on a steady incline, my view of what lay ahead blotted out by the tall trees that surrounded us. Their branches, almost finished shedding their leaves, swayed leisurely over top. There was something comforting in those slumbering giants, probably because they reminded me of home.
People by the dozens descended onto the path until we were shoulder to shoulder with them. It felt constricted, the pace dropping to a crawl. What started as a faint melody in the distance trickled towards us, carried on the tongue of each man, woman, and child.
Praise the Lady of Light,
