Page 41 of Once Upon a Crown
“Lady Gwen.” I bowed, then walked past Cai and out of the room.
* * *
It was the afternoon, as I lounged about in one of the parlours, when my sister walked in, a look of pure determination on her face.
“There you are,” she said with a hint of annoyance.
“You were looking for me?” I didn’t move from my comfortable position on one of the settees, one leg hanging off and touching the ground.
“Yes, I need you to show me something.” She closed the door behind her, properly taking in me and the room. “What are you even doing in here?”
“Nothing actually,” I admitted. “In fact, I’m rather bored.”
Elara had a few rolled-up papers in her hands. She walked over to the settee and shoved my other leg off carelessly. “Come on, move over.”
I let out a slight groan, sitting up. “Cai was looking for you earlier, by the way. I told him I’d pass on the message.”
She didn’t say anything, but her face told me enough.
“Did something happen between you two?” I asked as she unrolled the papers and placed them on the wooden table in front of us.
“No, everything’s fine.”
“You know, you used to be a better liar before you became queen.”
I glanced at the many papers. They were all maps of Everness.
“I used to be a lot of things before I became queen,” she mumbled, straightening out the last one. “Now, I need you to show me where the key is.”
I looked at the table full of maps and then back to her. “Why?”
“Don’t be stupid — so that we can go and get it.”
“Who is ‘we’? I’m definitely not going in there.” I valued my life a little too much for that.
“We, me, it doesn’t matter. Just tell me where it is.”
“Where did you even get all this?” I started looking through the maps.
“In the library. They’re older, so I figured they’d probably be more useful.”
Most of the maps were too big, showing the entire kingdom and not the finer details that we needed. I shuffled through them until I found one that was more centred around the Evernean Forest.
“All right, see this creek here?” I pointed to a small line on the map.
“Yes.”
“You want to follow it straight into the mist. That’s where it gets tricky, because the creek ends and finding landmarks from there is damn near impossible.”
“Great,” she said sarcastically.
“It’ll probably be quite a walk but eventually you want to reach a pool of water. Now, if you’re coming from Levernia, you’re likely to be on this side of the water.” I showed her. “But the willow tree you’re looking for is on the other side of the pool.”
“How big is this pool of water?”
I stated the obvious: “I don’t know. I’ve never seen it.”
“Okay fine, there’s a pool and a tree and then what?”
