Since Esmera was abandoned on a stranger's doorstep as a baby, the only person who has looked out for her is herself.
Until a lark starts visiting her, leaving behind exotic flowers and iridescent pebbles that the internet doesn't recognise.
Esmera...
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Jilhari and Queen Ghallia left behind an absence Esmera felt like a black hole. It sucked all the joy, all the humour from the room with the inevitability of its doom.
But it wasn't an inevitable doom. There was something that could be done about it if the goddess was to be believed.
Esmera and the Lord and Prince on either side of her stared at the space before them in a silence punctuated only by soft breaths and heartbeats.
That was it. The goddess had no further instructions for them. No ideas where Esmera could start looking for a weapon in a kingdom she didn't remember anything about. No suggestions about what the weapon might be or who she could go to for help.
If the Finnaz family was as powerful as people believed they were, there had to be someone alive who knew their secrets, someone who had escaped the massacre as Esmera had. Then again, if they had been crafty enough to escape, they would've been crafty enough to hide so well that they couldn't be found, certainly not by a woman who hadn't even learnt to use her magical abilities yet.
Esmera gazed at the spot where the goddess had sat in a green halo moments before, willing her to reappear and offer some guidance, but she didn't. She had left Esmera to navigate a mission she wasn't sure she even wanted.
What did reappear was Belaren's fury.
"Great. So now we have a week to unearth the Finnazes' secret weapon and use it to defeat Ruagu, or Milatanur and presumably everyone living in it, including us, will be destroyed. Well done, Prince Tauram." From beside Esmera, Belaren presented the Prince with a sarcastic round of applause.
She wouldn't have taken him seriously in his fluffy, polka dot robe and candy-striped shower cap if it wasn't for his blazing eyes.
"Ten years after you first doomed your kingdom, you have doomed it again."
Lundas growled where he sat beside Tauram's ankles, baring his gleaming, pointed teeth. Esmera tucked her legs under her, above his sights and his vicious reach should he pounce, but Belaren paid him no heed. The Lord merely glared at Tauram across Esmera. She felt like a civilian in a war, not involved in the battle but within range of the crossfire.
Tauram's mouth hardened. "Who's to say I won't outsmart Ruagu this time?"
Belaren snorted, the last sound Esmera would've expected from a man as coolly elegant as he was. "Who's to say he won't find some other sneaky way to trip you up again?"
"He has taken everything from me. I have nothing left." Tauram lowered his gaze to his lap.
Esmera missed the infuriating, teasing museum owner, as evasive as he had been. She would've never imagined he was this sad shadow beneath it all, a man whose life was empty, meaningless. But she had seen a glimpse of him in the Himalayan exhibit when he looked at the painting of the family. She had asked him if he was also an orphan.
