Yet.
I gave him my most grateful smile. “Only a fool would turn down such a valuable gift. I always welcome your guidance, Regent.”
The tension dropped in his shoulders, his expression regaining its charm. “I’m pleased to hear that. Shall we meet tomorrow to discuss strategy for the House Receptions?”
I faltered a beat.
“House Receptions?” I repeated.
“Private meetings with the heads of each of the Twenty Houses. They are the most vital step in avoiding a Challenge.” He arched a single brow. “Surely my son has begun preparing you for them.”
“He has not,” I clipped. “All the more reason to more closely heed your counsel, it seems.”
It was the right thing to say—at least if Remis’s triumphant smirk was any indication.
“I beg you to forgive my son’s error, Your Majesty. I’ll have a stern word with him.”
“Please do. Let him know that his Queen does not appreciate him withholding vital information that she would dearly like to know.” I flashed a smirk of my own. “Be sure and use those exact words.”
He gave another exaggerated bow, the dip of his head barely concealing his smug self-assurance. “Until tomorrow, Your Majesty.”
I spun on my heel, rushing for the nearest door. Even I could only feign so much confidence in one day before I succumbed to the mess I felt on the inside, and the idea of meeting with the most powerful Descended in Lumnos—meetings so important that Remis thought we needed a strategy—had me close to my limit.
A throat cleared behind me. “Your Majesty—I believe that way leads to the servants’ passages.”
Shit.
“Yes, I’m aware,” I lied cheerily, waving a hand in the air as I disappeared behind the door. “A Queen must know every inch of her palace!”
I found myself halfway down a dark, nondescript hallway. Cabinets lined each wall, overflowing with buckets and rags, piles of crystal glassware and silver cutlery, linens in a kaleidoscope of colors, and fat, waxy candles of every size. Windowless walls stretched left and right, lit with glowing orbs that floated at far intervals.
I walked up to the nearest one and gazed at it, struck by the odd feeling of familiarity that thrummed in my chest. It felt like a tiny part of me had been plucked from my ribs and hung from the ceiling.
Whose magic fueled these lights? Was there a servant somewhere whose job it was to illuminate these halls with their powers? Or did it all somehow stem from the very Crown atop my head?
“I heard she’s already sleeping with Aemonn. Didn’t take her very long.”
Footsteps drifted from my left, along with the quiet murmur of voices.
“I heard she killed the King. One of the guards said she attacked him the day he died.”
My jaw clenched. A group of servants was approaching—and evidently gossiping about me. A part of me wanted to hold my ground and confront them, but a far larger part filled with panic as I searched for an exit.
“The King was already dying. If she did finish him off, it was a mercy. Everyone knows he’d been wanting to go ever since his mate died.”
The voices grew louder. Through a cracked door, I caught sight of walls lined with divided shelves, many bursting with folded parchment or twine-wrapped boxes.
A mailroom—I remembered this from Eleanor’s tour. An opening on the room’s opposite corner led to the palace’s front halls.
“Well, I think she’s up to something. How is it possible she’s more powerful than Prince Luther, yet no one’s heard of her? She has to be a—”
I slipped out just in time to avoid the servants as they passed down the hall. My lungs burned with a deep exhale of relief. As I crept out of the mailroom, I grinned to myself at my narrow escape from certain humiliation, then turned to make my way to the foyer.
And ran straight into the chest of Henri Albanon.
Chapter
Eleven
Once, when I was a young girl, I almost died.
Teller and I were in the throes in a months-long tree-climbing duel, and I’d set my sights on a towering cypress edging the marsh that was nearly twice the height of his tallest conquest.
A third of the way up, the spindly branches grew too thin to support my weight, but pride—and my brother’s teasing—goaded me into ignoring my instincts. Up and up I ascended, until a fateful snap had me tumbling head-first into shallow water.
It’s hard to say whether it was some benevolent god, my secret Descended blood, or just dumb luck that kept my neck from snapping in that collision into the rocky shores. When I finally came to, my lungs were full of water and my limbs were too numb to move. I watched in horror as the world slipped slowly away and a cold, hollow dread took its place.
Stumbling upon Henri, my mortal best-friend-turned-lover, in the middle of the royal palace with the Crown of Lumnos on my head felt exactly like that moment.
I stared helplessly as emotions rotated across his face like spokes on a carriage wheel.
Shock, then confusion.
Realization.
Grief.
Then anger. So much anger.
I said something—his name, or maybe some feeble explanation—but I couldn’t hear it. I could feel my mouth moving, feel the throb of my pulse, feel my gauzy dress turn to lead and pull me down, down, down into the dark, but the only sound in my ears was Henri’s voice and the words he kept repeating.
“You’re one of them. You’re one of them.”
I staggered a step toward him. He recoiled as if I were some noxious disease he might accidentally contract.
“You lied to me.”
The hate in his eyes was tangible. I could swim through it. Drown in it.
“I didn’t know,” I pleaded. “I swear, Henri.”
“Didn’t know?” he spat.
I took another step. He dropped the sack he was carrying, piles of letters spilling across the marble floor. He must have finally convinced his father to let him take over some of the palace courier duties.
Just my luck.
Henri’s hand went to the hem of his tunic and slid toward his navel—toward the small, flat blade that I knew he kept concealed in his waistband.
A knife the guards at the front would have missed when they searched him for weapons.
He was going to stab me.
Henri. My Henri.
He saw me note the gesture, and he froze. For a brief moment, we both understood each other in the most wretched, painful of ways.
Guards near the entrance took notice of the open hostility on Henri’s face and closed in around us, swords sliding from their sheaths with an ominous scrape. Nearby, nosy servants pretended to busy themselves with an invisible task, while a pair of Corbois cousins unabashedly gaped from an adjacent room.
Too many curious eyes. Too many honed ears and sharp blades.
I straightened, raising my voice with manufactured haughtiness. “You there, courier. I have something I’d like you to deliver. It’s a message to someone I value very dearly.” My eyes flared wide. “Will you follow me to my study so I can retrieve it?”
Every quivering atom begged him to hear my unspoken plea: Give me a chance. Don’t give up on me yet.
My knees almost buckled at his barely discernible nod.
Two guards stepped forward to join us. “No escort is necessary,” I commanded, waving them off despite their wary stares of disapproval. “We’ll go alone.”