And again, I was nearing slumber when his voice came.

This time, it was low.

But it was vibrating.

“Today proves what I suspected. You and I will be formidable, Silence. Your fortitude vigilance, tact and cunning, my strength, strategy and my father’s vision, once we put down this Beast, we will leave a Firenze to our children that is strong and bold. I know it to my soul.”

I closed my eyes tight, shocked he had these thoughts.

“I hope you are right, my king,” I said.

“I do not hope, my queen. As I said, I know it to my soul.”

I found his hand that was pressed to my breastbone with my own.

The instant I did, his fingers engulfed mine.

The way they did, so strong and true, I knew one thing.

He would be what he already was.

A good king.

As for my being a queen.

That remained to be seen.

51

The Sisterhood

Princess Elena

Fifty Miles Inside the Southern Border

WODELL

Hera, walking point with bow in one hand, arrow at the ready in her other, her quiver on her back, turned to me with a look that said, Get on with it!

Jasmine was at our right flank. True’s men Wallace and Luther were at our left. And Mars’s man Basil with Cassius’s man Severus were at our rear.

Such was the guard one current and two future queens had while wandering a forest.

It was suffocating.

It would be good to be back home.

In the meantime, I had this situation on my hands.

Whatever this was.

There had been a distance growing between Silence and Farah since Firenze, and now the feel between them was so awkward, it was hard not to cringe.

This distance seemed neither of their style, but Farah had an excuse.

And perhaps Silence did too. She hadn’t been immune to some traumas mixed with major changes in her life of late. Not to mention, she’d shared she’d never really had any friends so perhaps she didn’t know what to do when one of them was in need.

But this had to stop.

We might be parting, though only for a while.

But in the end, the only ones who knew what we faced, what was happening, and why, were us.

I had lived my life learning how important the sisterhood was.

Standing together, we could not be defeated.

They had not learned this.

It was time to teach them.

Thus, I rushed forward from where I strode in the middle of the two of them in our line, stopped, turned to them and declared, “Enough.”

They both stopped too.

Obviously, our guard stopped as well.

Silence looked guilty.

Farah looked uncomfortable.

I crossed my arms on my chest and asked, “What’s going on with you two?”

Neither said anything and they avoided looking at the other.