Page 45 of A Baron of Bonds
“Oh, how ironic.” I nodded toward Rev who continued to rub his face while listening to us bicker. “Is that not the same thing you’re putting the Baron on trial for?”
The Queen sighed at my short temper and spoke softly, “I have decided to not proceed with a trial.”
Rev barely looked at her before turning to me, his hand back over his mouth, his eyes black as obsidian.
I cringed. I knew there was much he wanted to say to me, but not in the Queen’s presence.
She continued her inquiry. “How, Karus? How do you know it was the Blightress who woke you?”
I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry. If I was going to relive what I’d been through and heard, I might as well do it now. Rev would have to know eventually, and the Queen apparently knew plenty about the Blightress already. “Because that’s where I’ve been for two weeks. I followed the Blightress to her lands where I…discovered some things. Things I did not know were there to find. She told me things about myself and my past.”
Rev shook his head, his hands gripped so tightly in front of him, his knuckles turned white. “You found the Blightress in Felgren and decided to follow her around fortwo weeks?”
Oh, I was in trouble.
His voice came low and dangerous. I shivered, part of me infatuated with his anger, part of me dreading the talk we would have later.
I wasn’t angry in retaliation. I deserved every emotion that was flitting off his body, and I had spent my last few days thinking about how I’d bear every bit of his rage if only I could be with him again.
I opened my mouth to answer, but the Queen spoke first. “I was unaware that she could travel outside of her domain. All of my reports say that she never leaves the confines of the Northern Steppes.”
I replied quickly. “She wasn’t so much in Felgren as she was…under it.”
“Karus.” His eyes darkened further toward me, and I fidgeted my hands in my skirts.
“Let her speak, Baron Revich. You can scold her later,” the Queen spat.
He bent his head in defeat, running his hands through his hair. When he looked up, he sat back in his chair, quiet, black eyes locked on me, gesturing for me to continue.
The Queen nodded in my direction. “Go on, Karus. I must know exactly what happened and everything she told you.”
I slipped my fingers under my legs, sitting on my hands to ground them as best I could. Revich worked hard to keep his emotions in check while I told my second story of the morning.
I told them of the hole in the forest and how the lumens had fallen in and broken their legs. I spoke of the tunnel encased in blight and the portal she led me to. “It was a difficult choice, Rev,” I confessed to him, his dark eyes continuing to pierce my skin. “I knew you’d be angry, and I knew you’d be scared, but I felt like I needed answers and there they were, right in front of me. She knew so much about me that I did not. She spoke to mein my mind, and I knew there was something there between us. I knew I’d only find out what it was if I followed her.”
His expression didn’t change. I was hoping he’d soften a little when he heard why I had chosen to leave.
“Did you find your answers then?” The Queen asked. “You were there for so long, I’d imagine you and the Blightress would be friends at this point.”
My anger flared. I was glad I had chosen to sit on my hands. “No.” I turned to face Rev. “No, I did not choose to be with the Blightress for two weeks. The portal I stepped into…it slowed time and wouldn’t let me leave. What felt like only a few hours in the portal was fourteen days outside of it.”
There.
Finally, a slight movement in his jaw. I breathed a sigh of relief.
“How did you escape?” The Queen’s questions were more hurried now.
“I remembered the portal to Viridis. It wants your true name, the one that truly belongs to you before it will let you through. I thought this portal might want something as well. So, I started speaking. Telling the black void that I needed to get back to you.”
Rev squinted as if a dagger had sliced through his chest.
“I told the portal that I was leaving to find you and that nothing could stop me. I was angry. I screamed and yelled and when I showed that anger, it spit me out.”
“And you saw the Blightress and her land?”
I paused. The truth was, I didn’t know anything about how Queen Rina knew the Blightress existed. I didn’t know what those excursions she was accused of funding were, and I didn’t know how much she knew about my parents. “Yes. I fell out of the portal and found myself in her land.” I did not describe the cave, the beating heart that hung there like a pustule, pulsingand red. Later, after Rev scolded me, I would tell him about the beating heart that fueled the Blight.
“What is her land like? What creatures did you see there?” she rushed on.
