I glanced behind me once, but since the palace had no windows to light it up, I could hardly make out its dark shape looming behind us.
Finn’s silver Cadillac waited for us at the edge of the trees. The moon filtered through the branches, glinting on the car, and I quickened my pace. I didn’t have the stamina to run all the way to Förening, and I had become a little afraid I might have to.
When we reached the car, Duncan had already jumped in back, and Matt stood next to the open car door, waiting for me to get there. Rhys stood next to him, but he was far more anxious, shifting his weight from one leg to the other.
“Get in the car! Let’s go!” Finn commanded, looking at them like they were idiots. Tove was the only one who complied, climbing in the front passenger’s side.
“Wendy,” Rhys said. “I can’t sit down.”
“What?” Finn looked irritated, his eyes bouncing between Rhys and me.
“I used my persuasion on him, and I got him stuck-” I tried to explain lamely, but Finn cut me off.
“Just tell him to get in the damn car,” Finn said. I didn’t understand, so he elaborated. “Use the persuasion. Make him sit in the car. We’ll sort it out when we get home.”
I looked at Rhys, barely able to make out his eyes in the moonlight, but I didn’t know if seeing him actually mattered. Using all my concentration, I told him to get in the car. A few seconds later, he got in the car and let out a massive sigh of relief.
“It feels sooo good to sit down!” Rhys said, and fresh guilt washed over me.
Matt got in the car after him, but he didn’t close the door. He was waiting for me to get in back with him, but Finn still had my hand. He led me around the front of the car, and I got in the driver’s side. I slid over so he could drive and sat on the armrest hump in the middle.
Matt started to voice his complaints, but Finn put the car in drive. Matt swore, slamming the car door shut as Finn sped off down the road. The rest of us settled into a tense silence. I think we all expected the Vittra to put up more of a fight, especially after the way they’d pursued me. This felt almost… too easy.
“That’s weird,” Duncan said. “They didn’t do anything. They didn’t even try to stop us.”
“We did just damage their army,” Tove said, offering some kind of an explanation. “I’m sure most of their people are recuperating or…” He trailed off, unwilling to verbalize that the Trylle had been forced to kill the Vittra in the attack.
Duncan made a few more comments about how strange it was and how the palace was different than he’d thought it’d be. Nobody said anything in response, so eventually he stopped talking.
I got as comfortable as my seat would allow. Once I felt safe, my exhaustion really had a chance to take hold, and I don’t think it would’ve mattered where I was sitting.
I rested my head on Finn’s shoulder, taking a small, private glee in being close to him. As I drifted off to sleep, I could hear him breathing, and that definitely helped me relax.
8. Predictions
It may have felt good falling asleep next to Finn, but it did not feel good waking up. My body still felt sore from the recent Kyra attack, and the uncomfortable way I’d slept had left me full of kinks and aches.
When Finn pulled up in front of the house, I stretched, and my neck screamed at me. I got out of the car, rolling my shoulders, and Matt stared up at the mansion with shock.
Opulent and gorgeous, it really was a palace. Resting on the bluffs of the Mississippi River, vines covered the white exterior. It hung off the edge, held up by thin pillars, and the entire wall facing the river was made of glass. I remembered how the elegance had hit me when I first arrived, but now I was too angry to even take it in.
I wanted to talk to Matt about everything, but I had to talk to Elora first. She had lied to me, again. If I had known that the Vittra King was my father, I never would’ve taken Rhys to see Matt. I would never have put them in danger that way.
When we went into the house, I left Rhys to help show Matt around. I hadn’t figured out how to fix him yet, so I’d settled for telling him to stand up, and leaving Finn and Tove to help him sort it out.
Finn told me I should calm down first, but I ignored him and stormed down the hall to see Elora. She didn’t scare me anymore, not in the slightest. Oren would actually hurt me. At her worst, Elora would just humiliate me.
The palace was divided into two massive wings, separated by a rotunda that served as the front hall. All of the official business took place in the South Wing, where there were meeting rooms, a ballroom, a massive dining hall, offices, the throne room, as well as staff quarters and the Queen’s bedroom.
The North Wing had the more casual rooms in the house, like my room, guest bedrooms, and the kitchen. Elora’s sitting parlor sat at the far end of North Wing. It was a corner room, so two walls were made entirely of windows. She spent most of her free time there, painting and reading, and whatever else she did to relax.
“When were you gonna tell me that Oren is my father?” I demanded, throwing open the door.
Elora lay on her chaise lounge, her dark gown flowing out around her. Even in repose, she had an innate elegance to her. Her poise and beauty had been something I’d been envious of when I met her, but now I saw everything as a weak façade. Everything she did was for appearance, and I doubted that anything went deeper than that with her.
I stood just inside her parlor, my arms crossed over my chest. She held her arm over her eyes, as if the light were too painful to deal with. She had migraines, so that might have been the case, but she left the blinds open on the glass walls, letting the morning light stream in.
“I’m glad to see you’re safe,” she said but didn’t move her arm so she could actually see me.
“I can tell.” I walked in front of her. “Elora. You need to tell me the truth. You can’t keep hiding stuff from me this way, not if you want me to rule someday. I’d make a very horrible Queen if I was ignorant to everything.”
I decided to play it reasonably, instead of shouting all the things I wanted.
“And now you know the truth.” She sounded tired of the conversation already, and it’d only just begun. She finally lowered her arm, wearily meeting my angry stare with her dark eyes. “Why are you looking at me that way?”
“That’s all you have to say to me?” I asked.
“What more do you want me to say?” Elora sat up in one smooth, graceful move. When I didn’t back down, she stood up, apparently not fond of the idea of me looking down on her.
“I was just kidnapped by the Vittra, the King of whom is my father, and you have nothing to say to me?” I stared incredulously at her, and she walked away, putting her back to me as she went over to the window.
“I’d feel more sympathetic to your plight if you hadn’t run away.” She folded her arms over her chest, almost hugging herself as she stared out the river flowing below. “I specifically forbade you from leaving the compound, and we all told you it was for your own protection. After the attack, you knew firsthand the dangers of leaving, and you left. It’s not my fault you put yourself in that situation.”
“Because of the attack I thought they’d be too injured and afraid to try anything like that again!” I yelled. “I didn’t think the Vittra would have any reason to keep coming after me, but I would’ve if I had known about my father!”
“You took your life into your own hands when you left, and you knew it,” Elora said simply.
“Dammit, Elora!” I shouted. “This isn’t about placing blame, okay? I want to know why you lied! You told me my father was dead!”
“It was far simpler and cleaner telling you that than the truth.” She said that like it would make everything okay. It’s easier lying to me, so that’s fine. I wouldn’t want to make her life complicated or anything.
“What is the truth?” I asked her directly.
“I married your father because it was the right thing to do.” She didn’t say anyth
ing for so long, I thought she might not continue, but then she said, “The Vittra and Trylle have been fighting for centuries, maybe forever.”
“Why?” I stepped closer to her, but she didn’t look at me.
“Various reasons.” She shrugged slightly. “The Vittra have always been more aggressive than us, but we’ve been more powerful. It led to an odd power structure, and they were always jostling for more control, more land, more people.”
“So you thought marrying Oren would end centuries of fighting?” I asked.
“My parents thought so. They had arranged it before I even came to Förening.” Elora had been a changeling, like I had, but she never spoke of it. “I could’ve contested it, of course, the way you contested your name.”
She said that last part somewhat bitterly. As part of returning to the Trylle, I was supposed to undergo a christening ceremony and change my name to something more fitting. I hadn’t wanted to, and thanks to the Vittra busting up the ceremony, I hadn’t had to. Elora had relented and allowed me to keep my own name, and I’d been the first Princess to do so in our history.
“But you didn’t contest it?” I asked, ignoring her little jab at me.
“No. I had to put my own wants behind the greater good of the people. That’s something you’ll have to learn to do.” The light shone on her hair as if she had a halo. She turned back to the window, and it was gone.
“If a simple wedding would end the abhorrence, then I had to do it,” Elora continued. “I had to think of the lives and wasted energy of both the Trylle and Vittra.”
“So you married him,” I finished for her. “Then what happened?”
“Not a lot. We weren’t married for very long.” She rubbed her arm, stifling a chill only she felt. “I’d met him a handful of times before the wedding, and he’d been on his best behavior. I hadn’t loved him, but…”
She didn’t finish her thought, and the way she let it hang in the air led me to believe that she had cared for him.
I couldn’t imagine Elora caring for anyone. When she flirted with Garrett Strom, it seemed like a show. I’m not sure if they were actually dating or not, but he seemed to like her and hung around a lot. Plus, he was a Markis, so she could marry him if she wanted.
Both Finn and Rhys had told me of a secret, long-standing affair that Elora had had with Finn’s father, after my own father was gone. He’d been a tracker and married to Finn’s mother, so they could never be together openly, but Rhys claimed that she truly loved him.
“What happened after you were married?” I asked. Elora was lost in thought for a moment, and she shook her head when I brought her out of it.
“It didn’t go well,” she said simply. “He wasn’t outright cruel, which made things harder. I couldn’t leave him, not without just cause. Not with so much riding on it.”
“But you did eventually?”
“Yes. After you were conceived, he…” She paused, thinking of the right word. “He became too much for me to bear. Right before you were born, I left him, and I hid you. I wanted a strong family to protect and shelter you, should he come looking.”
“Is that why Finn was trailing me already?” I asked.
Trackers usually waited to retrieve changelings until they were eighteen or so, once they were legal adults with access to trust funds. Finn had been following me around since the beginning of my senior year, making me one of the youngest changelings to ever return.
He’d claimed it was because I had moved and they’d been afraid they lost me, and I suspected that they’d been afraid that the Vittra had gotten to me first.
“Yes,” Elora nodded. “Thankfully, I wasn’t yet Queen when we separated, so Oren had no standing over the kingdom. Otherwise things could’ve gone a lot differently.”
“When did you become Queen?” I asked, momentarily distracted from information about Oren.
I couldn’t imagine Elora as a Princess. I knew she must’ve been young and inexperienced at one time, but she had the regality of someone that had always been Queen.
“Not long after you were born.” Elora turned to me. “But I am glad that you’re here.”
“I almost didn’t make it back,” I said, trying to elicit some concern from her. She raised an eyebrow but said nothing. “Their tracker, Kyra, beat the crap out of me. I would’ve died if Oren wasn’t married to a healer.”
“You wouldn’t have died,” she brushed me off, the same way everybody seemed to when I told them of Kyra hurting me.
“I was coughing up blood! I think a broken rib punctured a lung or something.” My ribs still ached, and I’d been certain that I would die in that dungeon.
“Oren would never let you die,” Elora said dismissively and stepped away from the window. She went over to the chaise lounge to sit, but I stayed standing.
“Maybe not,” I admitted. “But he could’ve killed Matt and Rhys!”
“Matt?” She was confused for a minute, an expression that looked unusual on her.
“My brother. Er, my host brother, or whatever you wanna call him.” I grew tired of trying to explain him as anything else and decided that from here on out, I’d just call him my brother. As far as I was concerned, he still was.
“Are they here now?” Her expression shifted from confusion to irritation.
“Yeah. I wasn’t going to leave them there. Oren would kill them to spite me.” I wasn’t sure if that was true or not, but it felt true.
“You all made it out of there then?” For a second, she sounded and looked as if she actually cared. Not the way Matt would react, but closer to something human and loving.
“Yeah. We did. Finn and Tove got us out of there without any problem.” I furrowed my brow, remembering how easy it had been escaping.
“Did something happen?” Elora asked, honing in on my unease.
“No.” I shook my head. “And that’s just it. Nothing happened. We practically walked right out of there.”
“Well, that is Oren for you.” She rolled her eyes. “He’s too arrogant, and that’s always been his downfall.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s powerful, very powerful.” Elora intoned a sense of awe I hadn’t heard from her before. “But he’s always thought that he could take anything he wanted, and no one would stop him. It’s true most trolls are too afraid to cross him. He incorrectly assumed I would fall under that category.”
“But I’m your daughter. He didn’t think you’d even try?” I asked dubiously.
“Like I said, he’s too arrogant.” She rubbed her temple and settled on the chaise.
Elora had the gift of precognition, as well as some other telekinesis. I didn’t know the extent of all her powers, but I hoped to get a better grasp of them soon. She used her paintings to predict the future, and I turned to look at her paintings more closely.
She only had two completed in the room, and one she’d recently started. The new one only had a swatch of blue painted in the corner, so I couldn’t get anything from that.
The first finished one showed the garden behind the house. It started under the balcony and ran down the bluff, surrounded by a brick wall. I’d only been in it once, and it had been idyllic, thanks to the powers of the Trylle that kept it always in bloom.
In her painting, the garden had been covered in a light snow that glimmered and sparkled like diamonds. But the stream, flowing like a waterfall to a fountain in the center, hadn’t frozen over. Despite the wintery scene, all the flowers were still in full bloom. Petals of pink and blue and purple glistened with a light frost, making it all look like an exotic fairy land.
Elora had a breathtaking skill for painting, and I would’ve commented on it, if I’d thought my opinion mattered to her. The beauty of the garden painting enraptured me so much it took me a moment to realize there was something dark lurking in it.
A figure stood by the hedge. It appeared to be a man with hair far lighter than my own, but the shadows made it hard to tell. He stood in the
distance in the picture, making his face too blurry to be distinguishable.
Even though I couldn’t see much, there was something menacing about him. Or at least Elora thought so when she painted him. I got a vibe from the canvas.
“When did you know the Vittra had gotten me?” I asked, realizing that she might’ve known all along.
“When Finn told me,” she answered me absently. “He came and retrieved Tove, and they left to get you.”
“And you just…” I was about to ask if she let them go without sending along help, like an army perhaps. But my gaze had moved onto the other painting and I stopped.
This one showed me, a close-up from my waist up. The background was a blur of blacks and grays, giving no indication to where I stood. I appeared much the same as I did now, except dressed much better. My hair had been left down, the dark curls lying beautifully. I had on a gorgeous white gown, decorated with diamonds that matched my necklace in the ones in my ears.
On my head, I had a crown, ornately twisted silver adorned with diamonds. My face looked expressionless, and I couldn’t tell if I was pleased or upset to be crowned, but there it was. A picture of me as Queen.
“When did you paint this?” I pointed to the painting and turned to Elora. She had her arm draped over her eyes, but she lifted it up to see what I was asking about.
“Oh that.” She dropped her arm. “Don’t concern yourself with that. You’ll drive yourself mad trying to discern and prevent the future. It’s much better letting things unfold.”
“Is this why you never seemed worried about me dying?” I asked, surprised to find how angry I felt. She knew I wouldn’t die. She had proof that I’d someday be Queen, and she hadn’t bothered letting me in on that.
“Among other things,” Elora sighed.
“What does that mean?” I snapped. “Why do you always have to be so damn cryptic all the time?”
“It doesn’t mean anything!” She sounded exasperated. “For all I know, that painting means you’ll be the Vittra Queen. The future is far too fluid to ever understand or change. And just because I paint something, it doesn’t mean it’ll come true.”
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