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⊰ chapter nineteen ⊱
It's been a week since Ayree had given Dara the foul mouth of hers. Dara decided to cut the delay and settle herself to meet eyes with Adona. The blissful silence between them was tense. None of them spoke. They walked by the yards, the echoes of soldiers training in the main field hitting the grounds as they strolled. Adona held her lower stomach as she walked, her eyes puffy and red. They did not look at Dara once.
She was upset with her.
And Dara knew it better. She denied seeing her for dinner as well but when Dara knocked on her door, she couldn't reject the heir anymore. She didn't mean much disrespect as she spat softly, "They say you took over the States at the Kauv, you have four states now. How did you do this in under a week?"
The news of Dara invading three other States within a week, sitting at home, and building a scheme that none of the advisors had met eyes with was everywhere. Dara was going to be four big states if she was crowned, something an heir in the past centuries did not have the allowance to try. Having no one to tell her around, Dara was now palming four States, all alone. She sighed, "It all takes a good scheme."
"It's impossible to invade those lands without war-unless you are using magic," Adona didn't look at her to give her the look of suspicion but her voice held all the grudges and rage.
Dara waved her the compass, handing it to her, "I do use magic to cleanse out my Kingdom from people like your brother. But the magic does not help me in politics, or tables of men telling me what to do. It tells riddles, tales and tells me who is what, and what is who."
Adona finally looked up, "It told you about Theon?"
"I had to solve it-,"
"You could be wrong, he couldn't-,"
"I couldn't be wrong. I will never be wrong about my throne, Adona. You know me," Dara told her, "If he wanted to play fair, we could sit and evaluate. But he played dirty. He threw me off the table. He tried murdering me in my room, announced my death and his five days of rule had my economy fall to my feet. Picking that damage up took two weeks."
Adona stayed silent. Rubbing the compass against her thumb, "This is an Eastern compass. Made by Aevi,"
"How do you know?"
"I read a lot." it was true Adona had the sick habit of reading everything and anything. She used to read all the books Arver got her from his foreign war camps, or the ones in different languages that he used to find in invaded Kingdoms-Adona would learn many languages that way, "I found a book in Uncle's chamber last Winter, he let me read it. It was about The Curve. The last pages spoke of this....you sure this does magic?"
"Hmm," Dara nodded, "Who is illari?"
"I don't know that, I heard of her once from your father," Adona said, her eyes soaking again. But she quickly whipped her tears and returned Dara her compass, "You had to ban him?"
