Page 32 of The Queens and the Kings
“Not sure, exactly.”
He winced.
Also as he feared.
She blew a raspberry. “Stop looking like I’ve betrayed you. We have thirteen years before my power fades and I die. My visit to the Arcanist of Souls is still over a decade away.” Her eyes gleamed with anticipated pleasure, as if the thought of death excited her. “My limited time left doesn’t matter, Pedr. What matters is that the Wyvern Kings weren’t newly exiled when I came into the sky.”
“Thirteen years left, you say?”
She hesitated, then nodded. “If not exactly thirteen, close to it.”
“Which means their one thousand years of exile is almost up.”
“Yes.”
“How intriguing.”
Her head tipped to the side. “Do humans still think the Wyvern Kings are folktales? I don’t spend much time around humans anymore. That’s for Jordaire.”
His teeth tapped together as he considered her question. The Wyvern Kings had long been discarded to folklore. Wyverns, believed to be wild animals, were an annoying plague, but not one the mainland could do much with. Impossible to kill—former Lordladys and Ladylords had tried—and nasty to a fault, all the mainland could do was keep them chained. If they released the wyverns, the beasts wreaked havoc on their populace, slaughtering innocents left and right.
They were penned, mostly, but alive.
Pedr gestured to the book he’d extracted from his shelves. It lay on the deck a few paces away, fluttering in a whipping breeze. “That diary seems to think there will be signs when the banishment of the Wyvern Kings ends. It’s my diary,” he added, “but also Havard’s.”
A note of amusement brightened her chuckle. “Havard was an interesting character. I imagine his diary is revealing.”
“Amongst other things,” he wryly replied. The former Arcanist of the Sea, a dotty old boy named Havard, had been borderline insane.
She canted an eyebrow. “Why should you believe Havard?”
“Based on a few factors, it’s safe to say that Havard wrote this diary at the time when people still understood who the Wyvern Kings were. Not many, mind you, but enough to paint a picture of fear around . . .”
Those who banished and cursed the Wyvern Kings,he silently added.
Himmel, clad in a gossamer dress of ever-changing color that shifted to aquamarine, sapphire and then midnight, said, “I see.”
The words,they cursed me too,lifted in his throat. He pushed them away. Himmel already knew who cursed him. She’d seen it.
“I understand you want to end your curse, Pedr. But?—”
“You don’t,” he rasped. “You couldn’t possibly understand.”
Her full lips closed. She pursed them, nodded once. “You’re right. I don’t fully understand the weight you carry, and I wish I could help you out of it. But that doesn’t mean?—”
He rudely overrode her inevitable, undesired advice by asking, “What do you know about the signs that precede the Wyvern Kings’ return?”
The stirring curse slid around his throat in warning, not yet restricting. He kept his thoughts off of . . .them. . . and focused solely on the new Ladylord, the existing wyverns, wild and feral and irritating as hell. Himmel overlooked his uncouth behavior. She’d always been more patient than the Arcanist of the Land, Jordaire, who loathed him.
“Only that the signs would exist within the wyverns themselves. In order to face a thousand years of exile, their more intelligent parts would have been . . . slumbering. Not literally, perhaps. Knowing the Siren Queens the way I do . . . it’s fair to say they would have blunted the Wyvern Kings’ intelligence during their exile.”
His heart raced at the wordsSiren Queens.Just thinking about them lodged the prohibitive ball firmly at the back of his throat. He didn’t have an Arcanist’s prayer of ever speaking those two nasty words.
Himmel, watching him closely, continued. “You’d have to study the wyverns to confirm it, or to gauge how close to their diminishing exile they stand, which you’re attempting to do now.”
“What would I see in the wyverns?”
“Increased agitation, I would imagine. Understanding. They’d be plotting to go west.”
