The White Forest (Mages and Kingdoms Book 2) (17 page)

Amelie

She stood at the
mouth of the tomb in silent shock.

The slab was empty. He’d been here yesterday. Still, and quiet, with his beautiful face in a peaceful state. No worry lines creasing his eyes or mouth. He looked like he had been sleeping. She’d leaned in over him, curious.

Death still had not touched him.

And now he was gone.

She came to see him daily. To sit at his feet and cry in mourning. It was a hollow act. A selfish one that served no purpose but to release some of the blackness in her heart. Nothing ever changed when she finally picked herself up off the floor of the mausoleum. He was still gone and her chest was still tight and Candor still stood in limbo waiting for instructions from their queen.

And the dark parts of her heart that she cried into her robes grew back almost instantaneously with each step she took away from his side towards the castle.

His father was due to arrive today. King Armiss had dispatched to cross the Candor border as soon as he learned of his son’s death.

But he would arrive to an empty space.

Sir Duncan and Amelie stood in the entrance, their eyes roving over the small space.

“I knew the Grantham King’s letter was riddled with lies!” Sir Duncan roared. It was out of character for him. Not used to such an outburst, it snapped Amelie out of her stunned state and she gingerly stepped into the room. “He did not withdraw all his troops. He left some behind to snatch the body. He is a sick man, intent on tormenting us.”

Amelie shook her head. “No,” she said. Her heart pumped wildly and her head dizzied. Bits of words and information, puzzle pieces and conversations began clicking in Amelie’s mind.  A forceful knowing settled over her body. “No,” she repeated more loudly. She whirled around to face Sir Duncan. “Grantham doesn’t have him. Sir Duncan, Seth has a second power.”

She watched as Sir Duncan’s face changed, turning her statement over in his mind. She strode to him and gripped his arm. Her eyes shone.

“He is immortal.”

“Amelie…do you think?”

“Immortality is his second power. Just like with me, Henna must have drawn it out when she enhanced his resistance.”

Sir Duncan breathed in deeply, his eyes turning grave. “And he wouldn’t know its emergence until he faced mortality. So why did he not return to the palace?”

Amelie’s eyes watered. Her knowing extended beyond Sir Duncan’s. For once, she was the one with the knowledge. Her time in the White Forest awakened the queen’s interest in the human realm. She had managed to leave, but at what cost?

Do not mistake her absence in the human realm as her inability to cross into it
, Simon had said.

Amelie had led her here. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name. She had enticed the queen to gaze into the human world and Queen Trinity had found something even more interesting. More threatening. Worth the trip into Candor. Worth the opening of this mausoleum.

“The White Queen took him,” Amelie spoke, voicing her fears and making them real.

Sir Duncan closed his eyes and used his hand against the wall to steady himself.

“She took him,” Amelie said again firmly. “And I’m going to get him back.”

To my husband
. Who nodded and smiled when I said I wanted to be an astronaut. Who nodded and smiled when I said I wanted to start a food truck business. Who nodded and smiled when I said I wanted to host a travel show for a cable network. And who nodded the hardest and smiled the widest when I said I wanted to author a book. You knew I had it in me. Thank you for supporting me and helping me discover what you already knew. And for patiently indulging my sudden thoughts on book two every time one entered my head. I promise I was listening to whatever you were saying every time that happened while you were in mid-sentence.

And to the reader. Always to you. Thank you.

Cara Coe is a Houston, Texan native, a wife, a mother of three, a librarian, a traveler (when she can), a recipe follower, a home provider to an English sheepdog abandoned at her library, a lover of books, an okay driver, and above all- the part of her that permeates everything else in her life- a dreamer.