Page 43 of The Phoenix Inheritance

I didn’t. However I’m too stunned to resist the guards when they toss me into a cell and lock it.

“You’re to await here for your execution in the morning.”

“I wouldn’t attempt to escape if I were you. The whole Kingdom knows what you’ve done by now.”

There’s the sound of rattling metal as they march away. My muscles are too weak to support me, and I sink against the wall.

My father, my mother…?

Dead?

For all the resentment that brewed within me over their stifling presence in my life, something breaks inside me. My dad’s last words… They were to grant me my wish to see Isobel.

Yes, perhaps it was under the pressure of my uncle. But still. For a few moments there, he understood my pain. He knew what it feels like to love a human, and he dropped his merciless facade. He let me break the rules. And for a man who never spoke in anything other than the Royal ‘we’ even before his own sons, that meant a lot.

As for my mother…

I don’t know if it’s less excruciating or all the more bitter, that I can’t recall a single moment of warmth. I know that she suffered. That her ravenous jealousy stemmed from deep insecurities I can finally understand, now that I’ve fallen for a mortal.

The ties of matehood are unbreakable indeed. Most matches are happy ones, though I’ve heard of rocky starts. Eventually the two mates grow in their love and affection for each other. I can imagine it’s easy to succumb to the deep, instinctual bond fortune fashions especially for us. A clean knot that’s worlds away from the tangle of doubts, trials and blunders that intertwined my existence with Isobel’s.

But now I understand that even in matehood, feelings don’t always follow through.

My father was devoted to his mate. He admired my mother, feared her, sought her power by his side.

I don’t think he ever loved her quite like the loved Honora. From the glimpses of grief a decades old memory unveiled, I can now tell that everything good in my father belonged to Honora. My mother only ever had what was fated for him, an unbreakable bond.

The restlessness consumed her so ardently that there wasn’t room for anything else. Not even Warwick and me.

And now, after such a wretched existence, she’s gone. Just when I’m finally beginning to understand her.

The hollowness in my chest sucks the breath out of my lungs until the darkness is filled with my ragged, dry heaving. I can’t weep though. It seems I shed all my tears on Isobel this morning.

After an endless moment captured within the prison of my sorrow, the clinkling of metal resounds again. Only this time, it’s not the guards. A tall shadow strikingly familiar to the father I just lost spills through the bars of the cell.

“Uncle Thorsten?”

Not once since the terrible news did a single thought for my own fate pass through my mind. Yet blissful relief washes through me, because despite the pain, I don’t want to die tomorrow like the guard announced – not when Isobel is still within Østrom’s walls.

“I-I didn’t do this,” I stammer when he remains quiet. “You know I would never betray my own father.”

“I know.”

For some reason, despite his assurance, a chill runs down my spine.

“I didn’t liberate the Hunters. I was at the opposite end of the dungeons, with Isobel.”

“That’s not how things appear to be.”

I stroll towards the door to see him better. It’s Uncle Thorsten alright, with his reddish beard and placid eyes, the same as he’s always been. Perhaps a little too much the same, I note with a frown as I study his unperturbed air.

“Perhaps,” I say slowly. “But it’s the truth. You were there, as well as a dozen courtmen when I asked permission to see Isobel.”

My uncle’s grey gaze bores into mine, hard as stone. “Indeed. But the witnesses find a coup against the King more plausible than a love story with a measly mortal.”

I cross my arms, not liking the direction this conversation is headed one moment. “That makes no sense. I won the tournament. I was supposed to be crowned within days.”

The hulking man searches his pocket, until he retrieves a terribly familiar flask. Mine. The one I used to always carry around with a dose of potion. The coat of arms assigned to me at my birth glints tauntingly at me.

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