Page 93 of The Shadowed Oracle (The Bonded Worlds #1)

It would’ve hurt to be separated from her, one of the few she could call a friend, but it didn’t bother her enough to change the way she viewed work.

She liked her solitude. Delighted in days when there were no responsibilities, no obligations holding her down.

She was a simple Viator. She only wanted to live, and live the way she liked.

So when Queen Enitha offered her a way out, she considered it. Thought, maybe, just maybe, if she recounted the exact story of how she wound up there, Enitha and the High King would believe the story. That they would be merciful. Would let her live.

But again, words failed her.

She couldn’t speak. Could barely move.

Had she been drugged? Or was it more magic? A hex? Some kind of spell ensnaring her? She could only stand, and even that felt like it was being aided. Her muscles were numb, all sensation in her toes and fingers had gone, and her tongue turned to heavy lead.

Silence again mantled the room.

“I was afraid,” a shy, nearby voice said finally.

Monia’s neck tingled at the sound of it. She tried to turn, to see where the voice came from. But again, her body failed her.

“I ran,” the voice went on. “When I saw what you were doing, I ran.”

The tingle spread, working its way up, then branching off over the top of Monia’s head.

“And what exactly was I doing?” Enitha hissed. The cruel queen was looking directly at Monia. Those lime green eyes firing bolts of disdain at her, as if Monia was the one speaking.

“You were changing them,” the voice said. “Changing them!”

Now Monia felt a hum in her throat, and that tingle was now covering her entire face, her neck, her head, fluctuating from hot to cold, cold to hot. She felt sick. Thought she’d surely faint, crumbling to the black marble floor any second now.

But she remained upright.

Held in place by something.

And then the smell seeped into her nose. An unplaceable, somewhat sweet, woody fragrance. So strong. So complex, so distracting. Her insides shuddered at it.

At that moment, all of her guessing ceased.

She knew the smell. Hadn’t smelled it herself, but she’d heard it recounted.

In her first week in the Occi Isles, washing laundry in the basin outside the servant’s entrance to the kitchen, she overheard one of Enitha’s male attendants describing it.

Out of boredom or mild interest or maybe just plain lust, the queen summoned this male servant to her side during one of her parties.

He remembered taking a drink of something Enitha offered him, smelling something like honey mixed with freshly chopped firewood.

Then the next thing he knew, he was buried within himself.

Like a permanent breeze inside his mind, and his body was only moved when driven by the magic Enitha had slipped into his cup.

He’d been bewitched.

Mother help me.

“Changing them?” Sylan asked, “What do you mean?”

“Using her magic,” Monia’s voice answered. She could only listen, watching and praying that what was said—what she said—wouldn’t get her killed. “She changed them.”

“Them?” Enitha asked. “Who do you mean, child? The traitorous princess? On the docks?”

“No,” Monia’s voice said, a surge of confidence now evident. “You were using your magic on all of them. The princess. Lady Ingrid.” Monia’s body creaked as she tried to stop herself, the joints in her jaw pushing back painfully. “Even General Sylan,” the voice continued.

Enitha erupted. “Lies! LIES! I did no such thing!” She turned to the High King. “She’s lying!”

Makkar only watched as Monia’s tongue continued to spin the tale, “You were so jealous of the Lady Ingrid. You envied her gifts. Envied how her companions looked at her. Not in fear. But real admiration.” The voice coming from Monia paused.

“You envied how the males looked at her. How everyone looked at her. You became so jealous, so jealous. And you lost control.”

“Lies!” Enitha cut in again furiously. “Lies lies lies!” The whites of her eyes were red and veiny, magic furling at her fingertips. “Lies!”

Monia’s body seized, tugging her forward. She couldn’t fight back, didn’t have any feeling or wherewithal to do so. She could only listen as her own voice damned her.

“You were so jealous. You wanted her dead. So you forced General Sylan to put Lady Ingrid in the arena. You bewitched him. He was already on the ship, ready to sail back here with the Oracle in tow! But it wasn’t enough for you.”

Oracle?

What was left of Monia’s mind shuddered in confusion. Was that the great gift Lucilla had been speaking about? Lady Ingrid was an Oracle?

“Silence!” Enitha’s finger raised, pointed nail aimed directly at her former servant. Embers sparked in the plume of smoke, then little silver orbs cast off wildly in every direction. “I demand you to be silent, or to speak the truth!”

In her mad desire for power over the maiden, Enitha was losing control of herself, just like the magic speaking through Monia’s voice accused her of.

“Do you see!?” that voice called out. “She’s mad! She’s doing it again! She means to hex me now!”

In answer, Enitha raised her other hand slowly.

Monia had seen this movement before. It was what preceded an outburst of her power. That black magic she brought Viator to their knees with.

Monia braced herself, tensing as Enitha’s hair sprawled out in mid-air, magic shrouding her completely, ember turning to flames, and those orbs turning darker, growing tumor-like, erupting in the room.

“Stop.”

It was a dry whisper, strange amidst so much screaming.

Then it was followed by a croaking sigh.

“Stop,” Makkar repeated. Only that one purring word, and the High King had defused Enitha and all of her magic at once.

“Leave us,” the Hydorian King said, and with a flick of his wrist, a silvery gust of wind blew Enitha away, casting her into the shadows of the colossal room. Not a peep of protest echoed as she was carried off on that shadow of power.

“General Aloris,” Makkar said plainly. “Is it true?”

Sylan pondered a moment. He did not deign a look at Monia, but that didn’t stop her from pushing as hard as she could against her invisible restraints to gaze up at him with doe eyes, begging him to show her kindness.

It didn’t even have to be an outright agreement. He didn’t need to confirm the voice’s claims. He only had to refrain from invalidating them. If Sylan kept the mystery of it alive and allowed the doubt to linger in Makkar’s mind, maybe she’d be spared.

“There are holes,” Sylan said finally. “I’m not certain, but the events on that dock are hard to grasp. Like nothing I’d experienced before.” He lowered his chin. “Apologies, my king.”

“Very well,” Makkar said, and turned his back on his small audience, cape billowing as he walked off in the same direction that he’d dismissed Enitha in.

Monia didn’t have time to rejoice before Sylan ushered her away. He placed a hand on her shoulder and led her out of the hulking black doors of the throne room. Her stomach was tangled, sweat drenching the nape of her neck as they made their way back down the stairs.

She’d escaped the gallows, for now, but she couldn’t avoid the dungeons. They retraced their path. Slowly, the tingling sensation faded, though the haze Monia had been clutched in lingered. Each step of the winding staircase looked to be the same. Endless.

Three, four, maybe ten levels down, Sylan said, “Are you alright?”

Monia opened her mouth tentatively, testing to see if she was still being controlled. She had the use of her mind and her tongue back, but her voice was hoarse. As if the machinations had gone rusty.

“I—I think so,” she said.

“Good.” Sylan kept his voice low and his eyes on the steps above, looking over Monia’s shoulder as she spoke.

“What is it?” Monia asked softly. “Is something wrong?”

He angled his head to see down into the darkness of the dungeons.

“Not at the moment, no.” He was calm, but there was a slight urgency in his movements.

A discordance that seemed, somehow, wrong.

The shift from icy composure to whatever this was, Monia couldn’t help note how unnatural it felt.

It was like he was expecting someone, had planned for something that was now going awry.

“I apologize,” Sylan said. He placed his hand over his chest, right at the emblazoned silver Hydra sigil of his court. “I didn’t want to do that to you. But it was necessary.”

Monia gaped, shocked. “Sorry for what? What did you do to me?” she asked too suddenly. The workings of her mouth still felt wobbly, and she couldn’t tell if her blurting seemed mocking or genuine. “I mean, this is your castle, Prince Sylan. What do you have to be sorry for?”

He shot his brow upward. “I think you know. You know what I did to you.”

With his words came an instant acceptance. Like she’d been granted access to his thoughts, she instantly knew that it was him. He’d thrown that veil over her. And she knew why he had done it.

He was using her to point the blame for Ingrid’s escape away from himself.

Monia nodded, still rigid. “Yes,” she said.

“I understand.” She didn’t know whether to thank the prince or to spit at him.

To be so violated, and so suddenly, it was something she never wanted to experience again.

On the other hand, he’d likely saved her life.

Ripped her from Enitha’s violent grasp and allowed her to live another day.

For that alone, it was impossible to hate him. And it would feel too close to groveling to thank him. So she landed somewhere in between.

“Make it up to me.” Her eyes were wild, wide and demanding. “Forget your apology. The only thing I want is to never see that dungeon again.” She shook the chains draped around her hands. “Please. Let me go. Let me leave this place. Please . I’m begging you!”

“Do not beg,” Sylan said with a smile. “After all you’ve done, it is below you.” A draft of air flooded in from above, ruffling the prince’s pitch-black hair. He ran a hand through it, moving it from his face.

Then Sylan Aloris, feared Prince of the greatest kingdom in Ealis, leaned over to whisper in the brave lady’s maid’s ear.

A promise. A dream. A grand story contained in only a few words, the vibration of which tickled Monia’s ear and made her mouth pucker at the sensation. Her eyes shut tightly from the chills running down her neck.

And when she fluttered her eyelids open again, she was alone, back in her cell. A new cell. Larger, cleaner, with a candle for the smell she’d complained about and a plated, steaming hot meal sitting atop a small wooden table.

As hard as she tried, she could not remember how she’d gotten there, how long she’d been back, or, more perplexingly, any specifics of what the general had said to her.

Only the sentiment remained, the poetry of his tale filling her with an all-consuming hope.

That story. It was more than a dream Sylan had painted for her. It was just as real as the chains strapped to her legs. Somehow, she knew it. It was real. It was inevitable.

Something was coming.

A new beginning to an old tale.

Shifting the very fabric of Ealis.