Page 174 of Hidden Kingdoms

I barrelled from the room close on her heels, gritting my teeth as my magik flared around me in a way I wasn’t sure I had control over.

I didn’t have time for ‘no’.

62

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

ELODIE

As the door to Arden’s room slammed shut behind me a second time, I was viscerally aware of the asshole that was following. Deciding once again that getting lost in this palace was more than worth getting away from him, I blindly turned the next corner, speeding up the second I did so.

Would there ever be a day that we could be in a room for longer than an hour without it descending into… a fucking shit show.

Did it really matter? Probably not.

I wasn’t going to tell him what had been dragged from some lost corner of my conscience. Memories of me laying in a bed that dwarfed my child body, next to a woman with soft skin and hair the same colour as mine that fell over the pillows as she held me in her arms. Her gentle melodic voice singing in a language I didn’t know, in a voice that wasn’t familiar.

I knew that she must be my mum.

Pain splintered through me at that tiny sliver of time I had regained with her, tearing at that parent shaped hole I carried in my heart.

Her image had threaded through jumbled memories of a childhood I had barely any recollection of. Too many tangledends for me to understand, and no way to disentangle the threads. The memories twisted and blurred in ways so that I didn’t know where one began and another ended.

Vestiges of a life I had once lived and been forced to forget. Even now, I could feel an insistent will to ignore everything Arden had just forced from behind that wall. Everything that had been all but invisible.

I wouldn’t forget, not now.

And Nanna,fucking Nanna. I knew she had a hand in it.

All the things she knew, the way she had hidden entire parts of my life. How she had redirected my inquisitive child mind, told me just enough that whatever had locked away my life allowed me to be satisfied with the crumbs she fed me. Her influence threaded through everything that made no sense.

And the last thing I had seen before I opened my eyes to find Bastian staring down at me, had been that same soft skin, the same white hair. Yet this time, it was streaked with crimson as blood clumped the strands. It coated her skin, and as I looked through the eyes of the memory, it had coated mine, too.

I felt the echo of pain as her hair decorated the ground. There was a dim realisation of chaos reigning around me, but the memory was faded—the edges blurred. I had no way to sharpen its focus.

Nothing I saw today could help Bastian; everything had been but a snapshot of my past. There were no secret weapon plans, no grand battle strategies, but of course he wasn’t going to believe that.

The despair of those memories was flooding my system, clouding all thoughts.

I needed space, to run from here, and I couldn’t let him see that.

I needed to scream and rage and knock all these stupid paintings off the fucking wall until the sharp remnants of theirglass fronts littered the floor in mirror of what was left of my heart, but I couldn’t stop and give him the opportunity to catch up.

The edge of heat began to tease at my back, and I sped up as heavy footsteps thudded closer than I would have liked. A turn in the corridor gave me the chance to up my speed, wanting nothing more than to increase the distance between us. I hated the relief that pressed against me as I saw another turning close up.

Fury at the acknowledgement I was running from him churned bitterly with the rage that he had already planted there. Blindly, I threw myself around the corner, uncaring that not a single thing around me was familiar and paying for that impulsiveness as I slammed into a wall of muscled body.

Stumbling back, my heart lurched in surprise. I tried to continue my escape, attempting to dodge around this newest obstacle while hurried apologies fell from my lips. Until large hands gripped my arms, righting me before I could get away, and I looked up to the harsh lines of a face carved from the mountains themselves.

“Little One,” Marcellus said, eyebrows dipping slightly as he looked me over. “What’s wrong?”

I opened my mouth, unsure how to answer when the footsteps trailing behind me turned the corner, stopping. I closed my eyes in defeat, the heat he radiated too close.

“Elodie,” Bastian growled.

“Fuck,” I breathed, opening my eyes as a wave of anger-infused magik flooded my body.

Marcellus’ hands tightened for a moment as energy pushed beneath my skin, and his eyes fixed over my head.

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