Ring of Cren [18+]

Chapter 6

Anastasia's POV

That night I watch the Harvest from afar. It's a larger crowd than expected. I wear a thick coat around my shoulders, hiding my jewel dress beneath.

In the crowd of the Harvest I see the usual faces, and some new ones. The scroll passed to me earlier today from Rurx said to watch my back, word the Cren was seen as up for grabs, was spreading. It was an unknown sender.

The Bone kingdom was more interested in death. They were dead once they released their spirit. The Eye were all ghosts.

The Cren and the Mal were the two co-existing ruling entities.

The Mal Kingdom was visiting, they were meant to be our allies, but I had my hackles raised. We were meant to be unified in battle, to defeat the Boned people, which we were, but...

I always considered my only threats to be people disloyal to me, but then again, Mal could always try and take control of the Cren spirit as well.

Their maleficent spirit, the Mal, if released, would corrupt minds. They wouldn't be interested in death, as much as things like torture and pain.

One of our agreed pacts was to stay separate, only our armies mingled on the ground.

When their officials were sent to speak with my father and brothers – it was rare, very rare.

We had the Ice Glacier, between us, fertile lands we shared for food, and on the other side – the Mal Kingdom was centred in a dense forest. They were intensely interested in magic, so finding your way through their cursed forests was their biggest defence.

Ours? Aside from the Cren – it was the cold. It was bitterly bleak for us, but the Mal people liked the warmth, and it was enough to kill any troublemakers that thought they might wander this way.

Any travellers that came this way had to be escorted by our guides.

That's why the Mal being here without warning, is a worry.

They're striking while I'm weakest.

48 hours into my father's death, they must have travelled here nonstop – eager to face the last Ice Seer.

The Mal King's two adult sons are here, I see them enjoying the food and the Cren's concubines, known to all to be a one of a kind beauty that couldn't be found anywhere else. There is a large party of Mal officials also mingling with my allies. I take comfort knowing they are all unarmed since they came in here.

I stand on the balcony outside the library, it had a view of the courtyard connecting to the Harvest hall. Firepits hold some crowds of my own local allies, as they talk about the newcomers in the hall.

Rurx was the assassin in the Crows, so he is already mingling with everyone, trying to get information.

Axe and Damion stay with me.

Krystoph worries for his little brother, and he watches from the firepit down below, also from afar, occasionally looking up to me and Damion and Axe as they flank me above it all.

My fur coat ruffles with the wind.

"I think I have a plan," I whisper, finally speaking since my spying of the Harvest. I take my hand out of my cloak, showing my ring with the crystal in the shape of a C, "I could open the vault. Release the spirit. The Cren will kill any disloyal here."

Damion makes a noise, a kind of sigh of worry and growl combined.

I look to Axe and he is looking at me, he is tall enough that when I stand below him I can see his eyes clearly below his infamous hood.