Golden Box Book Publishing One Picture: Thousands of Words | Page 43

whereabouts, even should they have wanted to, so they were executed
one by one.”
I sighed hard. “I would have given myself up but I had not the
strength nor power to do so. I regretted every heartbeat; every cruel
slash of their blades, every twist of magic, but eventually they left.
Eventually…
“Days passed. I think. I could not move, but I did not want to. In
due course the original binding spell began to lift. Weak and fearful
of what I might come across I stumbled from the remains of the
kitchen…” My next sigh became a sob, “What met me was the rubble
of my father’s kingdom, the desecration and enslavement of what had
been my world; my people’s world; my family’s world; I made it to
the stateroom the day your celebrated father sent mine kicking and
screaming into a Grim Trap. It was in the shape of full-size silver
mirror. They left it on display for a week before your brother with the
raven eyes and the pale hair smashed it, leaving my father to wander
the in-between forever: with neither a way back, nor forward. By
then mother and my siblings were already gone, but my twin had
become your father’s trophy. Liam, they’d hurt her! Even as my
father suffered his demise, her gaze was on something only she could
see.”
I paused, then said, “I swore I would save my sister. And I almost
did. Later that night, I found her. I dropped my guise and I got
through to her; implored her to leave with me, and for a blink her
gaze turned lucid and her voice spoke reason, yet I had already lost
her.”
I closed my eyes.
“I’m not long for the Void, Etruia.”