Page 35 of Once Upon a Crown
“Come now, Elara. I daresay you even owe it to me. One for you, one for Cai and one for me. It’s nice how it works out like that. It will be safe in our hands. Just like our ancestors probably would have wanted it. The objects will be out of harm’s way and our kingdoms will be at peace. Everybody wins.”
“If Cai and I should find those objects, the only thing we will be doing with them is destroying them.”
“Destroy them?” Lance frowned. “Didn’t you know that they cannot be destroyed?”
My expression told him I did not.
“I’m surprised that in all your research you had yet to discover this. The magic that was used on the stones also protects them. If you should try to destroy any of the objects, it would kill you and anyone in the vicinity.”
I suddenly felt foolish for believing that Cai and I would so easily be rid of the objects once we’d discovered them. Of course the stones couldn’t just be destroyed, otherwise someone would have done it a long time ago. I tried to prevent the frustration reaching my face.
So many thoughts were running through my head, and combined with the many sleepless nights, I was no longer thinking straight.
Cai and I had our suspicions about what some of the objects could be. Both the heirloom necklace and the dagger he’d given me appeared to have small Myrgonite stones in them. But that didn’t make them the magical objects that belonged to QueenRiona all those centuries ago. We needed the diary to be certain, and if we couldn’t destroy them, then we had to find another way to keep them hidden from the world.
“All right, then,” I reluctantly agreed, surprising both myself and Lance. “How do I get to the diary, then?”
“I don’t know if the diary is in there for sure, but I know it can’t be opened.”
“You just said it could. All we need is the key.”
His facial expression suggested I was being naive. “Don’t you think that if it were that easy to get the key, we would have already had it by now?”
All the hope and excitement from earlier started to drift away from me. We’d come so far.
“It can’t be that difficult.” I placed my hands on my hips. “Where is it, then?”
“It’s a story Mother once told me, when I was a child.”
I was momentarily surprised. Lance had never spoken about our mother before.
“She used to love history and reading.”
I wouldn’t go so far as to say I was jealous of Lance knowing our mother before she died. Even after I’d gone through her things. It was difficult to miss someone I’d only seen in paintings. But I’d never heard Lance bring her up until now, so this had to be worth something.
He carefully got up, taking a moment to find his footing. Lance stumbled to the dressing table not too far from his bed and started drinking water from the pitcher that was meant for cleaning his face.
I avoided rolling my eyes, staying quiet so that he would keep talking.
“She knew so much about the kingdom. I don’t know where she’d heard the tale or if it was just some made-up childhood story. But Mother believed the key to be in the centre of theforest.” I couldn’t help but gulp as soon as he’d said the words. The mere memory of that day created a knot in my stomach. The day I’d lost Ray. Cai and I walking through those misty woods, unsure if we would ever get out alive.
“Where in the centre of the forest?” I dared to ask.
“There’s a large willow tree in the middle of it all, the oldest tree in the kingdom. Mother used to say that somewhere inside the tree, the key was hidden to all Everness’s secrets.”
That sounded promising.
“But it didn’t come without a cost. You had to reach into the willow tree with your hand, and if the tree found you unworthy, it would kill you by taking your soul and then morph you into the tree itself.” Well, that was a nice image to think about.
“If this is true, then why didn’t King Magnus ever do something about it?”
Lance snorted, taking a seat on the bed again. “Father had no interest in that sort of thing. In fact, he was rather against it.” For some reason, this didn’t surprise me. Magnus never came across as the kind of king who would be in support of using magic. Although, looking back at all the trouble it had caused us, that may not have been entirely unreasonable.
“And what about you, then? You nearly caused a war with Norrandale trying to find out more about those Myrgonite stones.” And here he was, still chasing after them.
“I found the box a long time ago and tried everything to open it. But I think it comes down to getting that key. I’ve sent men from the palace repeatedly, but none of them have come back alive.”
Well, of course not. Not if the magical and deadly mist in the centre of the forest could help it. Cai and I hadn’t told anyone about our experience in the mist. And I wasn’t about to spill it to Lance either.
