Аманда Хокинг - Torn

She said that last part somewhat bitterly. As part of returning to the Trylle, I was supposed to undergo a christening ceremony and change my name to something more fitting. I hadn’t wanted to, and thanks to the Vittra busting up the ceremony, I hadn’t had to. Elora had relented and allowed me to keep my own name, and I’d been the first Princess to do so in our history.

“But you didn’t contest it?” I asked, ignoring her little jab at me.

“No. I had to put my own wants behind the greater good of the people. That’s something you’ll have to learn to do.” The light shone on her hair as if she had a halo. She turned back to the window, and it was gone.

“If a simple wedding would end the abhorrence, then I had to do it,” Elora continued. “I had to think of the lives and wasted energy of both the Trylle and Vittra.”

“So you married him,” I finished for her. “Then what happened?”

“Not a lot. We weren’t married for very long.” She rubbed her arm, stifling a chill only she felt. “I’d met him a handful of times before the wedding, and he’d been on his best behavior. I hadn’t loved him, but…”

She didn’t finish her thought, and the way she let it hang in the air led me to believe that she had cared for him.

I couldn’t imagine Elora caring for anyone. When she flirted with Garrett Strom, it seemed like a show. I’m not sure if they were actually dating or not, but he seemed to like her and hung around a lot. Plus, he was a Markis, so she could marry him if she wanted.

Both Finn and Rhys had told me of a secret, long-standing affair that Elora had had with Finn’s father, after my own father was gone. He’d been a tracker and married to Finn’s mother, so they could never be together openly, but Rhys claimed that she truly loved him.

“What happened after you were married?” I asked. Elora was lost in thought for a moment, and she shook her head when I brought her out of it.

“It didn’t go well,” she said simply. “He wasn’t outright cruel, which made things harder. I couldn’t leave him, not without just cause. Not with so much riding on it.”

“But you did eventually?”

“Yes. After you were conceived, he…” She paused, thinking of the right word.

“He became too much for me to bear. Right before you were born, I left him, and I hid you. I wanted a strong family to protect and shelter you, should he come looking.”

“Is that why Finn was trailing me already?” I asked.

Trackers usually waited to retrieve changelings until they were eighteen or so, once they were legal adults with access to trust funds. Finn had been following me around since the beginning of my senior year, making me one of the youngest changelings to ever return.

He’d claimed it was because I had moved and they’d been afraid they lost me, and I suspected that they’d been afraid that the Vittra had gotten to me first.

“Yes,” Elora nodded. “Thankfully, I wasn’t yet Queen when we separated, so Oren had no standing over the kingdom. Otherwise things could’ve gone a lot differently.”

“When did you become Queen?” I asked, momentarily distracted from information about Oren.

I couldn’t imagine Elora as a Princess. I knew she must’ve been young and inexperienced at one time, but she had the regality of someone that had always been Queen.

“Not long after you were born.” Elora turned to me. “But I am glad that you’re here.”

“I almost didn’t make it back,” I said, trying to elicit some concern from her. She raised an eyebrow but said nothing. “Their tracker, Kyra, beat the crap out of me. I would’ve died if Oren wasn’t married to a healer.”

“You wouldn’t have died,” she brushed me off, the same way everybody seemed to when I told them of Kyra hurting me.

“I was coughing up blood! I think a broken rib punctured a lung or something.” My ribs still ached, and I’d been certain that I would die in that dungeon.

“Oren would never let you die,” Elora said dismissively and stepped away from the window. She went over to the chaise lounge to sit, but I stayed standing.

“Maybe not,” I admitted. “But he could’ve killed Matt and Rhys!”

“Matt?” She was confused for a minute, an expression that looked unusual on her.

“My brother. Er, my host brother, or whatever you wanna call him.” I grew tired of trying to explain him as anything else and decided that from here on out, I’d just call him my brother. As far as I was concerned, he still was.

“Are they here now?” Her expression shifted from confusion to irritation.

“Yeah. I wasn’t going to leave them there. Oren would kill them to spite me.” I wasn’t sure if that was true or not, but it felt true.

“You all made it out of there then?” For a second, she sounded and looked as if she actually cared. Not the way Matt would react, but closer to something human and loving.

“Yeah. We did. Finn and Tove got us out of there without any problem.” I furrowed my brow, remembering how easy it had been escaping.

“Did something happen?” Elora asked, honing in on my unease.

“No.” I shook my head. “And that’s just it. Nothing happened. We practically walked right out of there.”

“Well, that is Oren for you.” She rolled her eyes. “He’s too arrogant, and that’s always been his downfall.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s powerful, very powerful.” Elora intoned a sense of awe I hadn’t heard from her before. “But he’s always thought that he could take anything he wanted, and no one would stop him. It’s true most trolls are too afraid to cross him. He incorrectly assumed I would fall under that category.”

“But I’m your daughter. He didn’t think you’d even try?” I asked dubiously.

“Like I said, he’s too arrogant.” She rubbed her temple and settled on the chaise.

Elora had the gift of precognition, as well as some other telekinesis. I didn’t know the extent of all her powers, but I hoped to get a better grasp of them soon. She used her paintings to predict the future, and I turned to look at her paintings more closely.

She only had two completed in the room, and one she’d recently started. The new one only had a swatch of blue painted in the corner, so I couldn’t get anything from that.

The first finished one showed the garden behind the house. It started under the balcony and ran down the bluff, surrounded by a brick wall. I’d only been in it once, and it had been idyllic, thanks to the powers of the Trylle that kept it always in bloom.

In her painting, the garden had been covered in a light snow that glimmered and sparkled like diamonds. But the stream, flowing like a waterfall to a fountain in the center, hadn’t frozen over. Despite the wintery scene, all the flowers were still in full bloom. Petals of pink and blue and purple glistened with a light frost, making it all look like an exotic fairy land.

Elora had a breathtaking skill for painting, and I would’ve commented on it, if I’d thought my opinion mattered to her. The beauty of the garden painting enraptured me so much it took me a moment to realize there was something dark lurking in it.

A figure stood by the hedge. It appeared to be a man with hair far lighter than my own, but the shadows made it hard to tell. He stood in the distance in the picture, making his face too blurry to be distinguishable.

Even though I couldn’t see much, there was something menacing about him. Or at least Elora thought so when she painted him. I got a vibe from the canvas.

“When did you know the Vittra had gotten me?” I asked, realizing that she might’ve known all along.

“When Finn told me,” she answered me absently. “He came and retrieved Tove, and they left to get you.”