Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 99201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Maybe. But to me, that sounds a lot like the delusional ramblings of an optimist. Or, more likely, a crazy person.
Which I am.
I can feel the antlers on my head. All twenty-two points of them. I can feel the string that is too tight under my chin. I am wobbling a little atop the wooden blocks. I can smell the mangy coat and the broken broomstick handle is clutched in my hand.
It’s not actually a costume, is it?
It’s me, pretending to be a queen, for all those years.
The nightmare was a warning, I think. A warning that a change was coming. And I felt it. I had that epiphany the morning I found the man-boys from the Realm of Pittsburgh. I was going to walk through that fucking door and accept my punishment with… determination.
I was going to be human, and I was going to rise to the occasion, and I was going be someone else.
I could feel this new beginning flowing towards me like it was water under a bridge.
“Well, I will say this about you, Callistina. You’re a lot more receptive to the truth than Eros could ever hope to be.”
I turn, slowly, and find a woman standing behind me. She’s pretty and blonde, wearing a light green dress that flows all the way down to her feet. Her eyes are bright, and there’s a smile on her face. And in this same moment of recognition, Vinca fades and we are in some other place now. An apothecary, I suppose. Because there are shelves, and shelves, and shelves of books, and jars, and bottles all around me.
I’m not surprised or scared.
I’m just… indifferent.
Pressia smiles at me. I didn’t know her back in Vinca, of course. She went missing the same day as Pie. But she had left a mark on the palace that would become my home. She was a very special kind of royal beast. A breeder. Like Pie. Like Pell. And so very, very unlike me.
There were pictures of her everywhere. Photographs and paintings. All under the age of seven, of course, but there is only one person this woman can be and I know she is Pressia.
I reach up to the too-tight string under my chin and pull on it until it comes loose. The antlers tilt, unbalanced, and then just drop over the side of my head and land with a dull thud on the floor.
I slip the coat down my arms and let that drop to the floor too.
Then I slip the blocks off my feet, let out a sigh, and walk over to a couch where I take a seat.
We stare at each other as I do all that. And then, once I’m settled, I say, “He didn’t deserve this.”
She doesn’t ask who I’m referring to. She just tilts her head and smiles. “Didn’t he?”
“No. He didn’t. He wasn’t going to kill me.”
“Really?” She laughs this word out. “And here I thought you had it all figured out.”
“He wasn’t going to kill me. You did it all wrong.”
“Did I?”
“I know it was all a spell. I know it wasn’t real. Obviously, I am not dead.”
She puts her hands together, clapping slowly. It’s a very small clap. Dainty and light. “Well, good for you. And where, exactly, did I go wrong?”
I blow out a breath. “You took us backwards. That was your mistake. Because I got to see him as someone else first. And so, by the time we got back to that moment, I knew he wouldn’t do it. Had never planned to do it. You lied. You set him up. You made him fail.”
“You’re wrong.” She’s no longer smiling, but she’s not frowning either. Just determined. “Let me show you the god-man you think you know so well.”
The scene around me changes again and this is when I realize that I am currently existing inside her magic. She is powerful.
But power is really nothing more than experience. She’s not an oracle, she’s a door traveler. In real time not even twenty years have passed. But Pressia doesn’t live in real time. She lives in hallways. She steps in and out of them as she pleases. So she has gathered up thousands of years of experience.
We are in a dark room now. But I recognize it. It’s inside the palace. A nursery. There are shades over the windows, casting everything in shadow, but sunlight peeks around the edges, so it’s not night. It’s day.
There is a fancy round crib dressed up in the softest white, cotton sheets. Handmade by the royal weavers. A canopy above with a slowly dancing mobile made of precisely balanced wires with paper stars hanging off them. There are pretty things all over. Toys, and stuffed animals, and a chair where the nursemaid feeds and rocks the baby.
I know the nursery because Lyrica, one of the royal alchemists and Pressia’s teacher, used to bring me here. Used to fill my head with dreams of babies.