The problem, I realized, was that I had no idea where the Crown’s offices were. Though Eleanor had mentioned them on her tour, the only two rooms in the palace that I could both find on my own and remain in undisturbed were the palace dungeon and my bedchambers.
Neither was ideal, but I suspected if I led Henri to the dungeon and its dark, caged cells, his blade would be embedded in my side before I had a chance to explain.
My chambers it would have to be.
I kept my face forward as I marched down the halls, too scared to look back and see the hatred in his eyes. With my thoughts so flustered, I made it almost all the way to the royal wing before I realized I no longer heard the click of his footsteps behind me.
I turned to see him fifty feet away, his focus glued on a door set slightly ajar. Whatever he was watching had captured him so completely that he didn’t even notice me as I came up beside him.
I followed his line of sight into a small reading room. Nestled in a back corner, Luther and Aemonn were arguing heatedly in hushed voices.
My insides lurched. If Aemonn saw Henri sneaking into my bedroom… I doubted whatever secrets Luther held over him would be enough to buy that level of discretion.
I grabbed Henri’s arm. “We have to go. They can’t see you here.”
A thunderous crash came from the room. When I looked back, Aemonn wore a vicious smile despite hanging from the wall, legs dangling, held in place by the hand Luther gripped around his throat.
That conversation was not going well.
I yanked on Henri’s sleeve. “We really, really have to go.”
“It’s him.” He was transfixed, breathless. “The man I saw—the one who killed the mortal boy. That’s him.”
My chest squeezed tight.
Though I had already mentally convicted Luther for the horrific crime, a piece of me had clung to the hope that it was all some misunderstanding.
Now, it was a truth I couldn’t escape. Henri would never forgive me if he knew I was working alongside the man he despised so fervently that he’d been willing to die to bring him to justice.
“He’ll pay,” I said. “I swear it—I’ll make sure he pays. But I can’t do that if he sees you here.”
Henri glared at me, then looked back to the room, rage smoldering in his narrowed eyes. “Fine.”
I pulled him toward the royal wing, but I spotted a crowd of guards chatting outside of my rooms and froze. No matter how discreet Eleanor and Luther considered them, I wasn’t willing to bet Henri’s life on it. I tugged Henri around the corner and yanked him into the first bedroom I saw.
When I turned back, Henri’s face had shifted. He stared at the Crown floating above me, his anger giving way to something far more devastating.
“You’re the Queen,” he murmured.
I wanted so badly to throw my arms around his neck and bury my head in his chest. To turn back the clock until we were no more than two naive youth, discovering what friendship could grow into with trust, honesty, and a little time.
A little time meant something very different for each of us now.
“I didn’t know,” I pleaded. “I swear to you on my life, on Teller’s life, I had no idea.”
His eyes snapped to mine, dark with distrust. “How is that possible? How could you not know?”
“I have the same questions myself, believe me. When the King died, this thing just… appeared. I thought it had chosen a mortal, until…” I flinched at the memory of the dungeon. “I didn’t truly know until last night.”
The hardness in his expression eased—just barely. “It was your birth father, then?”
“That’s the only explanation. My mother has brown eyes, and she has aged too quickly to be Descended.”
“Do you think she knew?”
That was the question I wanted more than anything to be able to ask her—and the question I most feared hearing the answer to.
“She had her secrets, but I have a hard time believing she would keep this from me. She always told us the big things, the things that mattered.”
Henri looked away, an indecipherable expression scrawled on his features.
“What about the flameroot powder?” he asked. “Was that part of all this?”
I started to deny it, but—was it?
I’d never told anyone, not even Teller, the full story. I’d only claimed that I had wild hallucinations and the flameroot had made them stop.
But my mother knew.
All those years ago, as a scared little girl, I’d confessed the entirety of it only to her.
I’d told her that, in my visions, I could make the glow of candlelight paint a picture across the ceiling. I could persuade the shadows into leaving the corners of rooms and curving around me like a warm quilt. I could make them dance together, light and darkness, in a jaunty waltz. I’d told her that the bright and the dark were my friends, silent companions that answered to my beck and call.
In return, she’d told me I had a disease, and the crimson powder would make it all go away.
And it did—until I stopped taking it two months ago. Right before the voice that Luther called the godhood had begun urging me to fight.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” I whimpered as the full breadth of my mother’s betrayal sank in. I staggered to a table and gripped the edge for support, blowing out air to keep myself from retching.
Henri’s hand gingerly touched my back. I focused on the feel of it, clung to it like a rope dangling off a cliff.
“The flameroot powder must have blocked my Descended side somehow,” I forced out between gasps. “And my mother knew. She knew my magic was coming in, and she—”
“Can it negate everything about the Descended?”
I looked up at Henri. His face had taken on a shrewd glint.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“The other Descended traits. Strength, healing, hard skin and bones, long life. Could the flameroot block those, too?”
I was still struggling to breathe, fighting to keep my stomach from turning inside out. “I’m not sure. I don’t th—”
“Where did she get it? Do you have any more?”
“I destroyed my supply a few weeks ago. I don’t know where she got it, but I—”
“Could you get more of it? Or show me how to make it?”
My lips parted as realization dawned. “You want to use it as a weapon.”
Henri stilled. His eyes jumped to the Crown, then dropped back to me.
An awkward awareness passed between us—and a question.
Henri was a Guardian of the Everflame, a group devoted to infiltrating, even killing the Descended. He’d shown me the rebels’ faces, their meeting spots, the tattoo they used as a secret mark of membership.
And I was not just their enemy, but their enemy’s Queen. I could have every Guardian rounded up and executed for treason. I could even have their friends and families killed as a deterrent. The Descended laws set no limits for the punishment of mortal traitors.
Or I could let him go—forget I knew him or the Guardians or any of it, and pray their maneuvering never targeted me. I could watch my best friend, the man I cared for as deeply as I’d ever cared for anyone, walk out of my life forever.
Or…