The Call of the Void (Shadows and Crowns Book 3) by S.M. Gaither

Author:S.M. Gaither [Gaither, S.M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-09-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

The next morning, Cas was awakened by the slamming of a fist upon her guest room door.

She rolled out of her sinfully soft bed and stumbled across the room, bleary-eyed and cursing. When she flung open the door, Prince Alder stood on the other side of it. His smile was bright.

“I have something I wanted to discuss with you,” he informed her.

She blinked. Glanced over her shoulder and narrowed her eyes toward one of the windows. The sunlight streaming through it was weak, still shrouded and bound by the last threads of night. “Now?”

“Come along, come along,” he said, already down the hall and nearly out of sight.

“Give me a moment,” Cas yawned.

She walked back to the bed and started to dig through one of her bags, searching for clean clothing—only to pause as it suddenly occurred to her that she was alone; the sheets still held the outline of Elander’s body and his cold winter scent—but he was gone, and she didn’t know where to. She had apparently been asleep when he left.

She’d actually been asleep.

She was tired now, too, and weak with what felt suspiciously like hunger.

Was it because of the strange air in this realm? It dulled her divine magic, and apparently her other divine tendencies as well. Elander had seemed restless last night, too; was he succumbing to the same things?

And where had he gone this morning?

There was no time to find out, or to even give it more thought, because Alder was suddenly back at her door. He pounded even harder on it this time.

“I’m coming,” Cas growled, yanking her clothes on and twisting her hair into a messy knot on top of her head.

She caught up to him and followed at a slight distance, studying the paths they took, making notes about how to find her way through the labyrinth-like halls…just in case she needed to make a quick escape.

She was met with a mixture of expressions as she passed the various palace dwellers. Some gave her the same bright greeting their prince had. Others seemed to be following his wife’s lead, instead, and they regarded her with what— at best—seemed like suspicion.

“I found it very peculiar yesterday,” said Alder as they walked, “that you were able to summon that Storm magic in the garden. Nobody uses such purely divine magic in these halls.”

Cas didn’t reply right away. That moment in the garden felt like a fluke—she hadn’t been able to replicate it since—and she was trying not to think about how quickly and utterly this place seemed to be smothering her powers. It was as she’d expected, in some ways; a relief to not have to endure the full force of those different powers battling for dominance inside of her…and yet more strange and disconcerting than she thought it would be, to not be able to easily summon either of those kinds of magic.

“And it was Sun-linked magic, at that,” Alder went on. “So, there’s something else to you aside from that mark of the Dark God that you wear so brazenly.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.