Circe listened without interrupting. Her father had not been a good father. That fact had been stamped in her mind, especially after the way he treated Rowen for all those years. But despite his shortcomings and the failures he had accumulated in his role as a father, he had truly loved Thalora, and that much had always been apparent. Theirs was the kind of marriage that poets wrote sonnets about.
Thalora let out a sigh filled with so much unspoken emotions.
"He was a good man," she said. "A good husband. A good king. But none of those things made him a good father." She slowed her steps slightly, looking ahead rather than at Circe. "I should have seen that sooner. I should have done sothing about it but I didn’t. I was living a life so far removed from everything I had left behind that I was afraid of losing it. And then you were born, and your existence reminded too much of what I had run from. So I took sothing from you and told myself it was for the best. I told myself that for years. It doesn’t change what I did. Your anger was justified. You have every right to hate . I deserve it."
Circe opened her mouth and then closed it again.
This was more than Thalora had ever given her. Since the day Circe had found out what had been done to her magic, she had wanted an explanation and now that she had it, she found she didn’t quite know what to do with it.
When she finally spoke, she didn’t address the apology directly. Her mind had snagged on sothing else, a phrase her mother had used without elaborating on.
"The life you ran from," she said. "You an the faelands. Being a Liraelith."
Thalora went still. It was barely perceptible but Circe caught it.
"What was it like?" Circe asked. "Being a Liraelith."
Thalora was quiet for a long mont. She looked out over the grounds, as though searching for the right words.
"The existence of the Liraelith is a bleak and lonely one," she said. "Isolation is part of our nature. We are born into it and we die in it. That is simply the core of what we are. It is especially true for the center of the Liraelith. We are born without power and gain it gradually over the years. Then, after the second century of our lives, the previous three Liraelith pass on. The new center is expected to absorb their essence. To drain their power and their life force so that she can use it to birth the next generation. That responsibility was to be passed down to ."
"And you didn’t want it," Circe concluded.
"I wanted none of it." Thalora glanced at her. "My sisters didn’t understand that. Myrdena least of all. She thought ungrateful. She said I was unworthy of being the center and of the power I had. This was the path that had been laid out for before I was even born, and I was prepared to throw it away. She hated for it."
"I had made up my mind to leave," Thalora continued. "I was tired of the isolation. Tired of living a life that had been decided for before I could have had any say in it. I wanted sothing different. I wanted to be free to choose. On the day I planned to go, Myrdena convinced our other sister to join her. Together they moved to stop . They tried to bind permanently to the grove where we lived, so that even after death my soul would have no passage to the land of the dead. I would have been trapped there forever, in the very place I was desperate to escape."
"So I fought back. As hard as I could. And in the end there was no other way out of it. I used the full force of my magic against one of my sisters and I trapped her instead in an unending sleep. I never wanted it to end that way. I was left with no other choice. After that, I left and I never went back."
Without prompting, Circe took her mother’s hand in hers and smiled. In that mont, she understood her mother a bit more and it pleased her to no end.
***
Circe and her mother remained outside for a while longer before finally turning back toward the manor, both eager to return to the warmth it promised.
But only a few hours later, Circe was inford of the arrival of n from the capital. They were already within the estate, requesting an audience with her.
The mont she heard, tension settled in her chest.
If they had co from the capital, then they had been sent here to settle official business— of that she had no doubt. And if they had been sent, then it was by soone within the palace.
As she left her chambers to et them, her thoughts turned restlessly. Why now? And for what purpose?
When she entered the grand foyer of the manor, she found two n waiting for her. They stood side by side near the center of the space. At her arrival, they bowed deeply, straightening only when she gestured for them to rise.
"Prince Ragnar is not here, if that is why you ca," Circe said, her gaze shifting from one man to the other in a sharp and assessing manner. "Surely you would have been inford of this already."
"We are aware that His Highness is not in Amris," one of the n replied.
Circe’s eyes narrowed slightly at that. "Then why are you here?"
The second man cleared his throat, stepping forward just enough to draw her attention. "We are here to deliver a letter from the queen."
As he spoke, he reached into his satchel and produced a sealed parchnt, holding it out to her with both hands. Circe did not take it imdiately. Her eyes lingered on the seal, noting its insignia, her caution deepening before she finally accepted it.
She cracked the wax seal before unfolding the letter to read.
A silence so tense fell over the foyer that one could hear a pin drop.
Circe’s eyes moved over the words once.
Then again and again.
But they refused to make sense.
A faint ringing filled her ears as she read it the first ti. By the second reading, it grew louder, pressing in on her thoughts. By the third and fourth, the ink itself seed to blur, the lines of the script bleeding into one another until she could scarcely make them out.
Still, she forced herself to read.
It was a letter from the queen and within it, written carefully were words that should have been impossible.
In the letter, the queen was expressing her deepest condolences for Ragnar’s untily death.
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