Merciless Is My Crown: Wicked Realms: Book 3 by L.A. McGinnis

Author:L.A. McGinnis [McGinnis, L.A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fools Journey Press
Published: 2024-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

32

ANARIA

Zephryn’s lazily arrogant claim about having enough gold to buy the largest army in the history of the known world brought the meeting to a quick close and thank the gods for that, because now I was finally doing something I actually wanted.

Creeping down a dark set of steps that might very well be haunted.

“I’m the only one who’s been down here in three hundred years,” Bella whispered, the constant breeze battering her torch so badly there were heart-wrenching moments of almost total darkness as we descended the spiraling stairs.

“Vireena boarded the library up but didn’t think books were important enough to guard.”

The flickering torch revealed the boards nailed haphazardly over a door twenty feet tall, the frame engraved with strange symbols. “Follow me. It’s through here.” She ducked beneath a loose piece of wood and disappeared through the narrow opening, the keys at her waist jangling faintly.

I crouched beneath the boards and lost my breath when she lifted the torch over her head.

The coven’s library rivaled Torin’s room at the Citadelle, shelf after shelf of books in all shapes and sizes stacked to the ceiling, unused rolling ladders covered with thick cobwebs and an inch of dust.

If abandoned had a smell…this was it.

Opulently rich and desiccated and dusty at the same time, but gods…I took another deep inhale. I could smell this scent all day and never grow tired of it.

“Welcome to the great depository of the High Barrens Coven.” Bella swept her foot over the dusty floor, revealing an inlaid symbol—a triangle within a circle—of deepest black against the once-beautiful wood. “Besides me, you are the first person to set foot in here in three centuries.”

“Since Vireena became priestess,” I murmured, my faint whisper creeping over the cold stone walls. “What did she do? Challenge your old priestess and kill her in the Arena?”

“Hardly.” Bella shot me a sideways glance while she set the torch into an iron holder.

“She murdered our old priestess while she was on the throne, ripped the crown off her head, and sat down in the pool of blood. Then she ordered her loyalists to kill anyone she marked as enemies. More than a hundred innocents died that first day alone.”

“So she staged a coup?” I didn’t like where this was heading. “Do you remember anything about the Wynters? Lord and Lady Alaric Wynter?”

Again with that knowing, sideways glance. “I know the Wynters’ story all too well,” she said quietly. “After she took the throne, the first thing Vireena did was send Alaric and Zephora to Tempeste with enough wealth to buy the entire kingdom. The next we heard, they were part of Carex’s inner court and had built a palace high in the mountains.”

She leaned her hip into the table. “I heard Lady Wynter blackmailed half the royal court and made a fortune off the Fae. Raked our mortal enemies over the coals, though it sounds like the Wynters’ sins caught up to them in the end.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell Bella the Oracle had had the Wynters killed to further her own schemes.

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