CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I hardly noticed the journey south.
I had lost everything I had ever loved: my family in Avalon, my mother, my lover, and now my father. Even Octavia was forbidden to accompany me. Once again, I was alone, facing the prospect of another new home; it seemed like each time I traveled somewhere new, my heart became heavier, weighed down by another form of pain.
Life had just begun to feel normal again. The homesickness I had felt for Avalon had begun to fade; the shock and blinding grief that gripped my soul at my mother’s death had begun to loosen just enough to let me breathe again; even my father had shown a flicker of his old genial nature—and then all the wounds were slashed open in a single instant.
My horse trod the miles without prodding or direction, as
