Page 11 of Blood of Two Crowns

The vision disappeared, and I realized I’d stopped in the middle of the hallway. Thalia’s head tilted as she studied me with keen interest. “Does that happen often?”

I gave a noncommittal grunt and resumed our journey down the hallway.

“You’re having visions, no?”

At my silence, she continued, unperturbed by my rudeness. “I used to know someone who had them.”

My eyes finally slid to hers for a moment. Her expression took on a sudden hardness as though pained by a memory. “And?”

Her frown deepens. “And they’re dead.”

“… That is not what I meant.”

Her eyes flicked to mine, annoyed. “You really don’t make it easy for someone to like you, ya know. I thought we were trying to be allies.”

A tiny pang of guilt knotted in my chest. “I suppose I’m not very good at…this.”

Thalia gave me a scrutinizing smirk before clapping me on the back with the strength of an ogre. “Nor am I… Now, let’s get you to your mother,petulant prince.”

My eyes narrowed, even if a corner of my mouth quirked. “I am not petulant.”

She huffed a laugh. “Prickly? Ah, yes. That suits.Little…” Thalia’s eyes gave me a cursory side-eye “… Thebehemothprickly prince…”

I hummed in consideration. “Hmmm… doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.”

Thalia rolled her eyes, grinning. “Shall I add petty? Persnickety?Punctilious?”

I snorted. “You just taught me a new word.”

Thalia chuckled, shaking her head as we arrived in the dungeons. At my hesitation, Thalia arched a brow. “So what happened with your friend if you don’t mind me asking?”

Sadness flickered on her face. “She said that the outcomes sometimes changed. Nothing was guaranteed. It all depended on our decisions and choices. Something about lessons and repeating them endlessly until we actually learn them.”

Anxiety tightened in my chest. I could only pray that somehow, someway, Mareina and I wouldswiftlylearn whatever lessons needed so that we could have love between us one day, as it had appeared in my vision.

Thalia turned away, continuing down the dungeon’s steps. “Come on… This place gives me the creeps.”

Admittedly, the female was charming, but even without Miroslav’s warning of Thalia, which had been gradually working its way deeper into my mind, she had been keenly obliging when it came to opening my mother’s dungeon door, and it had only made me that much more distrusting of her.

How the fuck did she know how to open these doors hidden and sealed by magic?

As if reading my mind, she wiggled her dainty fingers at me to display a plain, unsuspecting ring. “It’s a family heirloom; cuts through wards.” She pressed a hand against the wall glamoring Zurie’s cell door, and that strange ephemeral barrierappeared with glowing runes. Thalia pushed the door open a crack before winking at me and turning on her heel to leave.

“What happened with the harem?”

Thalia hesitated for a moment, shifting to look back at me. “They were eager to please and even more eager to be free. Most of them anyway. A few of them requested to stay, but they still vowed their silence.”

“Stay for what? Loyalty to Zurie?”

Thalia shook her head. “I don’t think so, no. I think they were just afraid to go back to wherever they came from.”

“Even after you offered to give them the coin they needed to start over?”

Thalia’s brows pinched, frowning. “Money can’t always solve the problem.”

I grunted, neither in agreement nor descent. “Maybe. But that sounds an awful lot like something only someone who’s never known poverty would say, princess.”

Something dark flashed behind Thalia’s eyes. In the next moment, it disappeared, swiftly replaced with a condescending smile that had me seeing her with new eyes. I tugged at my Knowingness, but it remained silent.

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