The knights stared back, stern beneath their helms. They wanted to refuse, she knew. Before the changing of her world, she would have heeded their judgment. But the Lionguard could do little if Taristan and the wizard turned on her. Her husband could not be harmed by weapons of the Ward. His accomplice was Spindletouched, crawling with magic. It made no difference if her knights followed at close range or waited for her screams, to come charging to glory and death.
Sir Emrid made a noise low in his throat when she turned her back, stepping through the archway. He was only a year older than the Queen, the newest recruit to the Lionguard, and the least disciplined. She kindly ignored his attempt to check the Queen of Galland, leaving her knights behind.
The roof of the great hall was gone, broken all over the ruins in ragged piles of stone and mortar. Moss lay across everything in a velvet blanket, the stone blocks like lumps beneath. It was springy under her feet, soft to walk on. Her boots left light indentations. So had his.
She followed the footprints.
Erida felt the all too familiar sensation of being watched. She wondered if the ghosts of the people who used to live here still clung to the stones. Were they following her now, whispering about the Queen of Galland as the rest of the world did?
She imagined what they might say. Married to a nobody. Four years a queen with nothing to show for it. No conquest, no victory.
Just wait, Erida told them. There is steel in me yet.
She found Taristan and the wizard in the old chapel, in front of the single intact window, its glass blue and red and golden. The goddess Adalen wept sapphire tears over the body of her mortal lover, his chest torn open by hounds of Infyrna, a realm of fire and judgment. Their forms retreated in the back of the glass, burning and unholy. Erida knew the scriptures. Adalen’s mortal gave his life to save the goddess from the fiery hounds. Strange, the scriptures never gave him a name.
Red Ronin knelt near the window but did not pray to it. Instead he put his back to the goddess while he whispered, eyes shut, his voice too low to hear. In the shadows of the chapel wall, Taristan prowled, a tiger with naked claws. His courtly attire was abandoned, traded for rough leathers and the same weatherworn cloak he’d first arrived in. He looked as far from queen’s consort as a man could be. The Spindleblade flashed in his hand, drawn from its sheath. The steel was clean, a mirror to the blue-and-white sky.
His eyes met Erida’s like lightning finding the earth.
She stopped walking, holding her ground. The air crackled between them, the work of a Spindle. Torn or close enough to feel. Burning or willing to burn. She sucked in a breath of air, wanting to taste it.
“Is it done?” she said, her eyes darting.
But the chapel looked unremarkable. Old stone, broken rocks, moss and roots. The trees weren’t old enough to form a new roof. She saw nothing out of place, nothing to hint at a Spindle torn, a realm opened, another gift given, be it an army or a monster.
“Not yet,” Taristan answered, his voice as deep as she remembered. She could still feel his fingers in her hair, still see his blood on her bed.
Erida glanced to Ronin, then back to the broken castle around them.
She took another breath. She couldn’t taste a Spindle, but she tasted truth. “An earthquake destroyed this place two decades ago. People said it was the will of the gods, or a simple act of nature. But that isn’t true, is it?” Sunshine filled the window, making Adalen glow. “There is a Spindle here, closed but waiting. It broke the castle, not anything else.”
The wizard’s eyes snapped open, his prayers cut off. “Your histories said as much, for anyone with the mind to see it,” he hissed. “Even the echoes have power.”
His red-rimmed glare ran over Erida’s skin from her wrists to her neck. It was like a glowing poker, close enough to throw off cloying heat, but not enough to burn. She raised her chin. The wizard would not best her with tricks.
It was Taristan who stepped between them, breaking Ronin’s raw-eyed stare.
“I thought you’d like to watch,” he said, silhouetted against Adalen’s tears.
Overhead, a cloud passed over the sun, plunging them all into shadow. The wind found them in the corpse of the castle, pulling at her traveling clothes with invisible fingers. It stirred the hair falling from the braided crown around her head, blowing a curtain of ash brown across her vision.
She held Taristan’s gaze.
“Indeed I would.”
He turned on his heel, stalking to the stained-glass window, his empty hand raised in a gloved fist. Without so much as a grunt, he punched clean through the goddess’s face, shattering blue and white onto the mossy ground. A few shards punctured his knuckles and he picked them out with a wince.