Page 32 of Queen's Griffon

“Haven’t you ever wanted to know for sure? To understand what happened?”

He wanted to yell that he didn’t care, that it didn’t matter, but truthfully… “A part of me fears that answer. What if he was responsible?”

“I thought you blamed Basil.”

“Basil never did anything without my father’s say so.”

“Your father was important?” she queried.

“You might say that. He was Verlora’s chancellor. What Daerva would call king.”

Her eyes widened. “Wait, you’re from a noble family?”

“The last of my line, as far as I know.” Heir to a country that no longer truly existed. Leader of a people almost extinct.

Avera got an impish grin and she curtsied. “A pleasure to meet you, your highness.”

He grimaced. “We don’t partake in such foolish pageantry. As a matter of fact, while my father might have been head of the government, he wasn’t the one making all the decisions. We used to have thirteen senators, one for each district, who would propose and vote on proposals, with my father usually accepting the laws and resolutions they wanted to pass.”

“In Daerva, mother made all the rules advised only by her duke.”

“Which is how it is on every other continent, if by different names.” Some had emperors, others kings or queens. The Pequilha called their leaders Warlords. Many of those positions were inherited at birth. His own family had been ruling Verlora for centuries.

“Verlora always fascinated me,” she admitted as they entered the castle. “I used to be so excited when one of your machines would arrive in the market.”

“Gadgetry was our main export. We had scientists always looking to innovate and design machines and tools to ease the burden of certain tasks.”

“But machines weren’t all you did. I thought you mentioned something about experiments.”

“We had a department that played around with how nature worked. What elements combined would create something new.Most attempts were failures, some ended up being dangerous even. The day of Verlora’s fall, when the ground started to shake, we at first assumed someone in the lab had managed to explode something again.”

“Only it was the volcano.”

“Yes, the volcano erupted, but to this day I don’t know if it was a natural occurrence, or one caused by something the scientists did.”

“You mean Basil.”

Griff tucked his hands behind his back as he muttered, “From what I understand, Basil was playing around with things incompatible with the rules of science.”

“Meaning what?”

“Keep in mind everything I know is second-hand. But according to someone close to him who escaped, Basil became fascinated by magic because it didn’t follow the usual laws of nature. Supposedly he travelled the world, returning with items he claimed held power.”

“Did you ever see them?”

“Probably, but as a young boy, I didn’t pay much mind. I was more interested in playing games and ditching school.”

“Was my father a nice man?” she asked softly.

He startled, having forgotten her claim Basil had fathered her. “I liked him well enough. He was outgoing, smart—too smart, my dad said. Charming. I’m not surprised to hear he seduced your mother.”

“And left her.”

“Basil only truly loved one thing: his work.”

“Mother claimed he asked her to return with him to Verlora. She obviously refused, but I do believe she regretted that.”

“Had she returned with him, we would have known each other from a young age,” he pointed out. “Basil lived with us in the Citadel.”

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