The Beast of Salt (Saga of the Gods #1)

4. Avina

4

AVINA

Thirteen Winters Ago

Year 87, 9th Era

Sapphire Palace, Ridge Province

“ H ello, Emota. How is your son? Has he recovered from the sickness?”

Avina smiles brightly at the quirky woman with wild purple hair and several piercings. Fresh linens are stacked precariously in the woman’s arms as she bobs out of Avina’s bedroom. Instead of engaging in the young girl’s questions as usual, Emota gives a curt nod before shoving past, heading to tend to another room in the palace.

Avina freezes in the center of the corridor, watching the woman’s steps fade away. How could the same friend who taught her how to braid and find humor in the littlest matter now ignore her?

Perhaps her son is still ill? I will bake another loaf of bread to gift with a jar of Sapphire Palace honey.

Avina spins around to the servant’s staircase. Her lips twist into a crooked smile at the sudden presence of a boy her age who balances a sparkling silver pitcher up the servant’s stairs.

“Nik, are you up for a chess rematch later? I daresay my skills are even better than last time.” Her words trail off when he does not even glance her way. Has she offended him by suggesting she can beat him again? Perhaps losing next time would earn her favor with him.

She reclines against one of the many thick, floor-to-ceiling stained glass windows of the palace. Dazzling colors dance across the thick violet carpet spanning the length of the royal quarters. The pane at her back depicts Princess Sabelina, Avina’s ancestor, the last Keeper of the Ridge Sacred Stone. The Princess is painted in vivid hues in a Ridge gown while both hands clasp the dazzling sapphire.

According to legend, the Prince of the Salt Province tricked her into giving him the stone after the necromancer destroyed the Timber stone. Avina twists her head to look into the brush strokes of Sabelina’s blue eyes. Many people still believe all the Sacred Stones exist, and the Salt Province is collecting them all to rule Treland.

Somewhere in Avina’s soul, she knows her people’s sapphire is still alive and safe. Her invisibility powers prove that point even if her father insists she keep them a secret.

“Boris! Hiya, Boris!” She turns to a plump older man. He puffs up and hurries away from her as though she is a venomous snake. Refusing to be ignored again, Avina gathers the skirt of her pink dress and hurries after him.

“Boris!” She screams, slowing him to a halt just as he is about to reach a hidden door leading to the Academia Wing.

“Your Highness, is there something I can attend to?” He speaks rigidly without confronting the little princess.

Avina’s smile falters, and her shoulders slump. “No one will speak to me. I would feel awful if my actions hurt someone else’s feelings, and I cannot make it right.”

“The servants have jobs in the castle, Your Highness. None of which includes entertaining a bored Princess. Now, if you will excuse me.” He continues walking through the panel in the wall, leaving Avina empty as if a black void had opened in her heart, determined to obliterate her happiness .

She bites down on her bottom lip, feeling like a ship lost at sea.

Without a direction, she wanders through the castle, racking her brain for what she could have done or said to her friends. Then she remembers the exchange she had several winters ago with Queen Frida…

King Thord had ventured to the Ridge to visit her father, yet not before delivering a pristine chess set crafted of whalebone for Avina.

“I expect you to beat me next time.” With gentle laugh lines, the warrior king sets the rectangular box in young Avina’s arms. At this time, she had only seen nine winters. Her eyes bulge from their sockets as her fingers trace the squares.

“Thank you.” She breathes, unable to recall receiving another more thoughtful gift.

“You’re almost clever enough to take on my sons.” He ruffles her wild curls, evoking a little flush of color in her cheeks—a rare feeling that only came when the Salt King and Queen visited.

They made the little princess feel cherished.

“There’s King Ceowald.” Queen Frida kisses her husband deeply before he strides forward to greet Avina’s father, leaving the young princess alone with the tall and imposing Salt Queen.

“How have you been, Avie?” Queen Frida smiles down at Avina, referring to her by the unique nickname she had bestowed upon her since she was a baby.

Avina tucks the folded chess board underneath her arm with a frown. She had always been able to speak to Frida and Thord of her woes, as their guidance always proved sound. But this felt different. Admitting her latest mistake churns her stomach.

“It’s cousin Bertie. I hurt his feelings, and now he refuses to speak to me.” Her shoulders slump. “He’s my best friend, and I worry this is the end of our friendship.” Their fight felt monumental to the little princess, who looked up to her cousin and closest friend. Her bottom lip quivers, even thinking about what she had said to him.

Frida kneels to her level. Kindness dances behind her warm brown eyes, like a touchless hug.

“When you hurt someone you care about, the best action is apologizing. Look into the eyes of the person you have wronged and sincerely own your actions.” Frida lays a hand on Avina’s shoulder, but the little girl shakes her head.

“I messed up this time. I said something horrible because Bertie broke my favorite doll. I didn’t mean it, but it was terrible, Frida. How can words ever make up for what I said?”

Frida pulls Avina into a tight hug. The two sit in the embrace while Avina curses her tongue for lashing out at Bertie. She degraded him for something about himself, something out of his control, all because he broke her toy. What a horrible person she is.

“I am bad.” Avina sniffles, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.

Frida adjusts the clasp of Avina’s necklace so it rests on the back of her neck, and the tiny seashell pendant Frida and Thord brought her two months ago rests on her clavicle.

“We all say things we don’t mean, Avie. The only thing you can do is make amends. Now, what is Bertie’s favorite treat?”

“Favorite treat?” Avina muses. “He does enjoy raspberry rolls.”

Frida smiles. “I also happen to enjoy those. Come, show me to the kitchens. We have some raspberry rolls to bake and a letter to write.”

Avina stares into the empty, clean palace kitchen, remembering how she spent that time baking treats for Bertie with Queen Frida. The treats were packaged in a white box along with a handwritten letter from Avina, owning her words. She delivers everything to a furious Bertie, who takes one look at the letter before hugging her tight.

With a deep breath, Avina removes the large cookery book from the shelf and flips through the pages until her fingers rest on a recipe for spice cookies.

After a baking excursion, she stands coated with flour. Her cookies have cooled, and she balances them on a round tray. Carefully, she gathers the plate and wobbles out to the deserted hallway.

Servants quarters! I’ll check there.

She cannot see over the cookie mountain and gingerly steps down the stairs to hear fiddle music and laughter roaring from the servants on break for the evening. She confidently enters their gathering space to see most of them lounging and talking. Setting the tray on a table, she spins around with a nervous smile.

No one so much as looks her way.

Avina takes a handful of cookies and moves about to distribute them, but no one accepts them. No one gives the young princess a side glance at her appearance in the Servants’ Quarters. She zeroes in on Nik in a corner, playing chess with an older servant boy. She ambles over and sets two cookies on the edge of the board.

“I accept responsibility for my words.” Her apology reverberates with the utmost sincerity that a child of thirteen winters can muster.

Still, Nik and the other boy focus intently on the game rather than the cookie and the princess.

The pain of feeling shoved into the dark becomes unbearable. Her hands shake at her sides.

Why are they avoiding me?

“Look at me!” She screams, unable to contain the frustration riveting her petite form. And still, not a soul acknowledges her presence.

Avina abandons her tray of cookies, running back to the Academia Wing, hoping to lose herself in a book or anything else.

I am not going crazy. My friends are playing a prank, that is all.

She slows when she reaches the quiet hallway stretching to the library. Several doors seal the entrance to studies for Avina, her father, and his top advisors.

A sliver of light draws her attention to her father’s door, which stands ajar.

She freezes.

Father does not like to be disturbed and detests eavesdropping just as much.

She swallows, wondering if she can sneak past without him noticing. Everyone else seems to pretend she doesn’t exist, and his ignoring her would be no different.

As Avina steps on her tiptoes to slip past his door, she falters, hearing someone say her name.

“...Avina? ”

She lowers her feet and presses her side to the door, her ear in the opening between the door and frame.

“The servants received the warning, Your Highness. Anyone caught speaking to her will find themselves strung up by their thumbs for a week if not put to death immediately.”

“Good,” her father’s voice answers. “Princesses do not consort with servants. She needs to learn to make friends with the ladies of court rather than the staff.”

“I couldn't agree more, sir.” His chief advisor, Lord Byron Dolomite, sounds enthusiastic.

“See to it that her toys burn, too. I want her to focus less on running amok through the palace and more on her readings. She is to become the Queen of the Ridge someday.”

Avina backs away from his office and the library. Tears well in her eyes as she flies toward the eastern tower—the Queen’s Wing.

Here, in her mother’s old chambers, she sought regular solace by sitting beneath the lovely portrait of her mother, Viktoria Redwood, with her warm eyes. Avina often wonders what words of wisdom she would have given her daughter.

However, her mother’s portrait no longer hung proudly above the door to her old chambers. Avina’s world is cracking at the seams. First, her friends, then her father cutting off all of her happiness, and now this.

Her eyes focus on the empty space on the wall where her mother’s lovely smile looked down on Avina for as long as she could remember.

No, it must be here somewhere.

Avina desperately searches for the portrait, leading her into the late Queen's dusty chambers. Her tiny feet ominously creek along the tower's wooden floorboards. All the furniture remains draped in sheets and covered in a thick layer of grime, as it has been since her death when Avina was born.

But there is no portrait.

Avina collapses in a corner. Her feet tug close to her chest, and her arms wrap around her knees.

I can hide here forever until a prince rescues me.

Crack.

Avina shifts in time for another loud crack to echo dangerously. At the third crack, Avina screams as her tiny body plunges to the floor below.

“Ouch.” She stretches, having landed on a moth-eaten rug covering a floor of more wooden squeaky floorboards.

The new space is much smaller compared to her mother’s sitting room, with lower ceilings and only slits for windows. Unlike the grand furniture above, this room is for storage, with chests shoved against nearly every movable area. Avina climbs over a large square container to clutch the handle of the singular door.

She twists, and her chest constricts. “No. No!” Someone locked the door from the outside.

Avina rocks back and forth, clutching her chest as the feeling of being smothered sets in, and she gasps for air as she cries. Her teetering sets her on the edge until she crumples upon the floor in a heap of tears.

Does anyone care about me?

The setting sun casts an orange glow in the tiny circular room. Avina has slept most of her time inside the storage room and awakes to the evening sun twinkling in her eyes. As the evening light descends into the western sky, she is hunting for candles.

Avina coughs as dust assaults her senses. The lid of a small chest lays against the stone wall, revealing a collection of papers and one pillar candle.

She dives for the matchbox and candle when she catches parchment bearing her name scrawled in her father’s handwriting. Settling back on the balls of her feet, she withdraws a piece of paper with the words ‘Marriage Alliance’ blazing across the top.

Her eyes drink in the declaration, and she quickly realizes she is reading a marriage agreement between herself and a prince of Treland. Scrawled between her name and a torn edge is the future wedding date: her twenty-third nameday.

Avina flops onto the rug in the center of the room and reads over the document. Her father's scrawling hand is at the bottom, along with someone else whose name is illegible.

Is that a ‘T,’ she wonders, or a ‘U?’ Did King Urien from the Timber Province or King Thord of the Salt Province promise one of their sons to wed me?

“Princess Avina will hereby be wed to Prince…” She reads the testimony only to realize the Prince’s name is missing—not struck out or crossed off but chewed off the page by a mouse. That side of the page also bears marks of a province seal.

She lay alone in the dark room, staring at the marriage contract between her and her mystery prince. She hugs the paper, imagining his identity. Does he like animals, too? Would he love her in a way no one else ever would?

“Shadow? Shadow?” A young man’s voice calls from above.

“Down here!” She squeaks.

Candlelight illuminates the concerned brow of her cousin, Duke Bertram Alexandrite. His shoulders relax as he spots her.

“I was worried sick about you.” He scoffs as if her falling through the hole was her fault.

“Sorry, Bertie.” She apologizes for worrying him.

“I found her,” he calls over his shoulder. “Bring a ladder.”

Avina is thrilled to be discovered by Bertie and not his sister, who has a habit of picking on her.

Bertie turns his attention back to his cousin. “Whatcha got there, Shadow?”

She sighs. “Why do you still call me that?”

“Because you might have that nifty little invisibility power, but I still know you’re here. You can never fully avoid me.” He laughs. “Stop ignoring me and tell me what’s in your hand.”

Her gaze falls to the parchment, and her fingers trace over the torn end of the mystery prince’s name. Her mouth opens to tell her best friend, but something stops her. She folds the paper, slipping it into a pocket of her dress.

“Nothing.” She lies. “It’s rubbish.”