Of Stone and Steel (The Queen Trials Book 3) by Penelope Wright

Author:Penelope Wright [Wright, Penelope]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-02-27T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

I’ve been through so much since my last rest break, I’m not entirely surprised when I open my eyes to see Glory leaning over me, inspecting every inch of my body. I am surprised to find that my skin has turned as blue as the water I know I’m sleeping next to.

“Hello, Glory. Nice to see you,” I say. I’m not sure why, but I feel incredibly mellow. After everything I’ve been through since the last respite, that’s not how I expected to enter this one, but it feels unbelievably pleasant to not be infuriated, scared, or annoyed for once.

Her eyes pop open with surprise. “Nice to see you too, Clio,” she answers briskly. “Could you please turn your skin back to its normal shade while we wait for the retinue to catch up?”

“I’m really not sure how I ended up blue in the first place,” I answer amiably, “but I’ll give it my best shot.”

I hold my arms in front of myself and concentrate on them as they begin to lighten and morph from the bright sapphire blue of a gemstone to the light color of a sky laced with cirrus clouds. I look around, and I’m not next to a river in this dream, the way I am in real life, but I’m also not back in the castle or anywhere I can ever recall being before. I’m sitting on the ground, with my legs stretched out in front of me on a bed of a soft, fuzzy, green, plant-like material.

I finger the velvety greenness. “What is this place?”

“It’s your dream,” Glory answers. “You tell me.”

“Hmm.” I press my lips together because I don’t think she actually expects a response, but the thought that popped into my head was “Shellor’s field.” Back in Fourteen, whenever my younger brother got overwhelmed or things just became too much for him, he’d zone out and wander away mentally to an imaginary field where everything had soft edges and there was no hardship, no suffering, no strife.

That’s what this feels like. Maybe it’s not Shellor’s field, though. Maybe it’s my own. Perhaps I’ve always had one too, and I’ve just never visited it before.

With soft pops, the members of my retinue appear one by one and by the time the last woman has materialized in my dream, my skin is its typical lightly tanned color. I spend most of my daytime hours deep underground, out of the sunlight, but I get enough of it on my walk to and from the shafts that I’m not the ghostly pale of an assayer or a metallurgist, who rarely ever go topside.

The retinue clusters around me, all except Vatusca, who takes Glory by the arm and leads her away, whispering. I wonder what that’s all about.

Vinia brushes my hair. Dua gives me a sponge bath, wiping the mud off my legs and dabbing gently at the various scratches and scrapes I’ve picked up since healing most of my wounds with the compound I brought back from the last respite.

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.