Page 29 of Heart of the Summer Queen

Weeks following his brother’s funeral, Elaric was declared Crown Prince. Shortly after, the king’s council started pressuring Theron to remarry. If anything happened to Elaric, the crown would fall into his brother’s hands. Yet Theron wrote he could not bear to take a second wife and that Hester would not be so easily replaced.

Even years later, Theron was so full of grief that he didn’t remarry. Knowing it was a futile endeavor, the council’s focus turned to Elaric, who was now twenty-two.

But Elaric refused to entertain any prospect of marriage, regardless of how many princesses from foreign kingdoms visited Avella. Elaric insisted he didn’t want to spend his life caged up in the palace and wanted to travel the world before his freedom was bound by a family and a crown. Besides, Princess Cerise had just given birth to a son, and the king’s grandson would inherit the throne before his brother.

While this child was reassurance enough for Elaric, his father still harbored great fears. The baby was so young, and it could not be certain he would survive his first year without succumbing to fever. And even if the baby remained healthy, it would take countless years for him to become of age. If another disease spread through the kingdom and claimed both Elaric and the king, his drunkard brother would have to reign in the baby’s stead until he was old enough. That would be plenty of time for the kingdom to plunge into ruin.

Elaric’s only argument was that it would be the same case for his children, except his sons would be even younger than his nephew. After a heated argument, with Elaric telling his father to marry again himself if the matter of producing heirs concerned him so greatly, Elaric decided to leave and pursue his desire to travel the world while he was still young.

For three years, the king heard nothing from his son. For all he knew, Elaric could have been killed in the far reaches of the world. The entries from this point forward are filled with as much anguish as when Theron lost his wife and eldest son. He writes of how he regrets pushing Elaric so hard into marriage, and that he should have known with his stubbornness it would cause him to resist harder.

A knock sounds on my door. I look up from the journal.

“Come in,” I say.

The door opens to reveal Elona. “Kassia and I are heading home for the night, milady. Do you need anything else before we leave?”

I shake my head. “I’ll be fine. Thank you for checking.”

With that, she bids me good night and closes the door.

I lift the journal from my lap, the blue light from the candles beside my bed causing the leather edges to gleam, and I inspect its pages from the side. I have around a quarter left.

I lean back into my pillow and sigh. As enlightening as this journal is, I have little left, and I’ve not yet found anything to help break the curse. I’ll have to begin my search anew tomorrow morning. At least I now have specific dates for the first twenty-two years of Elaric’s life. And plenty of names, too. Maybe the information I’ve discovered tonight will point me in the right direction.

I lower the journal and keep reading.

Three years later, Elaric returned home. The king’s worries were absolved, and Princess Cerise had given birth to two moresons. With three grandsons, the eldest of which was nearly four, there was less reason to fear his brother destroying the kingdom.

Throughout the following year, all was well. Elaric resumed his duties as the crown prince and visited many towns throughout the kingdom in his father’s place.

And then, the flames struck.

Without warning, a town burned to ash overnight. Then another. And three more.

The enemy left few survivors, but one boy in the third town was lucky to escape with his life and ran as far as he could until he reached the nearest city. After being found by guards, he was brought before the king to report what he’d seen.

The boy spoke of a ferocious beast of scales and wings and talons, wreathed in flames.

The king sent hundreds of men to hunt the monster, and though they found its lair deep in the southwestern mountains, they were no match. Few survived, bearing horrific burns. But they’d seen its power and the truth.

The enemy was no mindless beast but also took the form of a hauntingly beautiful woman.

A witch.

I sit up straighter, fingers digging into the journal’s leather case. Though this witch harnesses fire rather than ice, it’s the first mention of magic I’ve found in Theron’s journal. Could this be the clue I’ve been searching for?

Heart pounding in my chest, I read the next pages at double speed.

Fire rages through my kingdom, destroying more life than the plague eight years ago which took Hester and Caltain. I know not what we have done to enrage this witch, for her to begin this wicked crusade against my people, but this time our enemy has a face and a name. My son tells me he heard rumorsof this villain during his travels and believes that her name is Seraphina.

While little has been heard of Seraphina in recent years, her sister Isidore, an ice witch, froze the Kingdom of Eruweth a decade ago and the island disappeared overnight. If Elaric is correct about this fire witch being related to Isidore, then I fear she seeks a kingdom of her own and has decided to seize Avella.

Elaric says he encountered another witch during his travels, one which goes by the name ‘Belinda,’ and he claims she is more reasonable than Seraphina and Isidore. He leaves tomorrow morning, to see if he can gain her alliance, and although I am reluctant to let him leave our kingdom again, anywhere in the world is safer than here at this moment in time.

After that entry, a month passes with no mention of Elaric’s return. By then, Seraphina has destroyed countless more towns and cities and half of the kingdom has fallen. Fearing Elaric may never return, or that the kingdom will be long lost by the time he does, the king writes he plans to launch a devastating attack against the fire witch, seeking to end her reign of terror once and for all.

I turn to the next page. But it’s blank. I turn to the next and the next, but every page left in this journal is empty. After declaring his intentions to fight Seraphina himself, the king never wrote another entry.

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