I Bought the exiled king (by Natalie Winter) novel Chapter 74

Chapter 74

Valencia

What?

I stared at him for a while, trying to register the words he had just said..

Half my mind was confused and doubting if my ears were deceiving me. Killian stalked off into the castle without another backward glance and I stood frozen on the spot.

Had he really said that?

My brain got numb for a few seconds and I tried to recall if I had said that out loud to him, if I had shared my past, specifically my childhood insecurities

with him.

I couldn’t remember if I had.

Had I opened up to him and blabbered stuff I had not even said to myself out loud? Somehow I felt like he had slapped me without even touching me.

I had felt the lap and his behavior today was torturous but that last line had been an icing on the cake.

A cold, bitter one.

I only watched stupidly as he disappeared behind the castle entrance. Granted, I was late to the training today, but this was not the way to handle it.

I had apologized several times, yet he was stoic and arrogant.

I didn’t want to go back to the room and see his face or even look at him. If this was how he was showing his tough and mighty side, fuck him.

But then I hovered outside the castle door wondering where should I spend the rest of the day.

Thankfully, I looked around and my eyes fell on the Red Temple.

I recalled last night’s conversation with the Crone and realized I had an answer to my problems after all.

Wasting no time, I headed straight towards the entrance of the temple and called out for her.

“Hello, are you here, Crone?”

She didn’t show up, so I paced restlessly outside the entrance.

I was about to call out her again, but then I heard the sound of fabric rustling, and then a very disgruntled looking woman ran towards me.

“Shh, keep your voice down!”

“Sorry,” I said, and she looked at me up and down.

“The Crone is busy. What do you need?”

I supplied.

***

“She asked me to come and work at the temple in exchange for teaching me how to reach my magic.”

The woman didn’t seem impressed at all. She didn’t gawk at me, didn’t widen her eyes on hearing the word ‘magic‘ and just didn’t have any reaction in general.

“Okay, you may come, but after you shower and get dressed in something decent. You stink right now.”

1/3

12:03 Mon, 25 Aug @

Chapter 74

I sniffed at my body, and she was most definitely right. Though she could have worded it nicely.

She began to hurry off inside again, but I asked. “Is there somewhere I can wash up?”

She wondered about it and said, “Let me check,” and ran inside. I stepped closer to the temple walls because the heat was now growing unbearable and there was hardly any shade on the outside due to the angle at which the sun was.

I waited for a few more minutes that seemed to last forever before she showed up and pointed somewhere behind the temple.

“This is the key to one of the rooms of the Temple Keepers. You will find spare clothing there and everything else you need to clean yourself.”

She handed me the key and said, “And don’t shout when you are done. Just enter the passageway you see on your left after stepping out of the quarters and you will find me.”

Why was everybody being rude to me today?

I sighed and headed to the quarters which appeared to be a small building with various rooms meant for the temple keepers to live, possibly.

It was not grand like the castle but a modest space with the bare minimum necessities. There were several rooms built on multiple floors that oddly reminded me of a packhouse.

I shoved down that memory of home or Killian’s line that was oddly reminiscent of my play dating traumatic childhood and went inside the first room!

found.

The room was devoid of any decorative furniture, just a bed, a wardrobe and a table with two chairs. It was all white, no splash of red to be seen.

But it would have looked like a bloodbath to live in a room painted red. I stripped myself and cleaned all the dirt and muck off my body thoroughly.

I looked through the wardrobe but couldn’t find anything to wear. There was only a set of towels that I had wrapped around myself, one around the torstel and other around the hair.

But that woman had said I would find everything…had I perhaps entered the wrong room?

I debated what to do for a while before opening the door and craning my head out of the door.

At first there was nobody, but then I saw something red flutter through the passageway behind the temple and shouted loudly.

“Excuse me!”

The lady paused and looked around before spotting me.

“Yes?” she asked in a voice too low for me to even hear, but I answered anyway.

“There are no items of clothing in this room for me to wear. Can you please help?”

She nodded and hurried up the stairs to grab a long white gown for me to wear. It was loose, but better than nothing.

“Thanks a lot,” I muttered, and she smiled. “No problem”

She began to hurry away, but I didn’t want to wander around all by myself, so I called out.

“Can you please wait for me? I will be done in 5 minutes.”

“Sure,” She said and waited outside the door while I quickly put on the gown and dried my hair to the best of my ability.

Water droplets were still trickling down my hair when I opened the door, half dreading she had hurried away but was pleasantly relieved to see her waiting for me.

I closed the door and fell in step beside her.

Verify captcha to read the contentVerify