Todos los capítulos de THE LYCAN PRINCESS THEY BURIED : Capítulo 71 - Capítulo 80

Elira's POVFor three days, I did everything right.I measured Mother's tonic. I helped the housekeeper count linens. I sat at supper and said the correct things at the correct moments, and no one looked at me twice.And for three days, I read the same eleven lines over and over.I kept the letter in the bottom drawer, under my old list, under the crumpled attempts to Bastian, where no one would think to look. At night, I took it out. In the morning, I put it back. I told myself I was only checking that the words hadn't changed.They never did.It is about your past.I tried to be sensible about it. That was what I did with frightening things. I took them apart and laid out the pieces.My past was not complicated. A girl taken in at three, from somewhere nobody could name. Fifteen years in a good house, learning herbs at a mother's knee. A crime, taken on for someone else's sake. Two years in a cell for it.That was the whole story.So what in it could possibly interest a King?Not th

Elira's POVThe house went quiet in a way I didn't trust.Not the old quiet, the one with a held breath inside it. This was something newer. A hush like a room after a storm, when everyone is still counting what broke.Selene took her meals upstairs now. When she did come down, she sat at the foot of the table, ate little, and spoke only when spoken to. Nobody had told the household why. Ronan hadn't said a word. But the servants had stopped bowing so low when she passed, and she'd stopped waiting for them to.Once, in the long gallery, she came toward me with a shawl over her arm. She slowed. For a moment I thought she'd say something."Mother asked for this," she said instead, and held it up like proof of purpose."I'll take it to her," I said, and then, because it was true and I couldn't stop myself, "You look tired."Her eyes lifted, startled and wet. Then she nodded, handed me the shawl, and walked on, her back very straight.I stood in the gallery with that shawl and didn't know

Elira's POVIt took less than an hour.I'd barely made it back to my room, my hands still unsteady, when a quiet knock came at the door. I opened it and found Kael standing in the corridor, alone, his traveling coat still dusty at the hem.He didn't speak at once. He only looked at me, and I saw how tired he was. The lines beside his mouth had deepened. His eyes were red-rimmed, as if he hadn't slept properly in days."Elira," he said. "Forgive me. I know this is abrupt.""Your Majesty.""Kael, please." It came out almost pleading. He drew a breath. "The Lady Isolde would like a word with you. Privately. Tonight, if you're willing."The hair rose on the back of my neck."Why?" I asked."She'll tell you." He hesitated. "I asked her to wait. I told her we'd do this slowly, over a few days, once you'd had time to settle. I promised you wouldn't be frightened." A strained breath of a laugh. "She lasted about forty minutes.""Who is she?""Someone I trust more than anyone alive," Kael said

Elira's POVI didn't answer right away.The Queen didn't press. That was the first thing I noticed. She sat with her hands clasped and her eyes on my face, and she waited, the way you wait for a frightened animal to decide whether the open door is a trap.I looked at my own hands.They weren't shaking anymore. That surprised me. Something in me had gone still and cold and level, the way it had in the prison yard when a guard called my number and I couldn't yet tell whether it meant a beating or a release. It wasn't calm, exactly. It was the part of me that had learned to think straight while the floor was falling."If it's true," I said slowly, "what happens?""Whatever you want," the Queen said."That isn't an answer."A faint, rueful smile. "No. You're right, it isn't." She drew a breath. "If it's true, you'd be my daughter. Kael's sister. The heir to a throne you've never seen. There would be a court, and duties, and enemies you don't yet know you have." Her voice stayed even, thou

Elira's POVThe room at the top of the west wing hadn't been used in years.I'd never been inside it. Kael led me up a narrow stair behind a door I'd always taken for a linen closet, and at the top, he lifted a latch, and the whole night opened above us. The old observatory had a roof of iron ribs and sliding shutters, and Kael had pulled every shutter wide. Moonlight poured through the open frame in a single cold silver column and fell across a round stone table in the center of the floor.I stopped on the threshold.On the table stood a shallow basin, polished silver, filled with water so still that it looked like a coin laid flat. Beside it lay a small knife with a bone handle. Nothing else. No candles. No fire. The moon was enough.Elder Orrin waited by the table.He was very old. Older than I'd imagined, with a spill of white hair and a back bent like a question mark, and hands knotted with age. But his eyes, when he lifted them to me, were clear and dark and steady as a well. He