The Queen. Rosalind. By any other name, she was still the main character.

Ari braced herself against the cold night air, made all the more cutting by the speed at which their horses cantered, her palfrey next to Sir Edwin’s night-black charger; no carriages for the lady tonight. The palfrey, Steps, shuddered beneath her: a poetry in muscles and sinew. The air tonight tasted like rain tomorrow.

Somehow, having met Hesperus and Tristram, Ari’s nerves about meeting someone from the main cast had diminished to the lightest flicker. What was Rosalind going to do? Accuse Ari of spirit possession? Be lying face-down, murdered? Been there, done that, though she could do with a t-shirt.

Or perhaps it was simply drowned out by the dread that filtered through from Claribel. Dread. Heavy, leaden dread, piled on top of the searing anger, aimed at Rosalind.

If they were to call in a Royal Coroner for Rosalind come tomorrow, Ari could name one sure person with a motive.

Unlike Claribel, Ari was on home ground. There was something about saving the world from war, something about the journey there, where she and her companions could stride in silence towards a shared sense of purpose. For a moment, they’d feel like the good guys, pure and simple, before the terrible things they’d have to do, before they’d have to called in the cleaners.

‘Not a word about the marriage or the eye to anyone else until I have spoken with the Queen. Understood? Your mother and sisters’ lives are on the line, and it’s not me who is doing the threatening,’ said Claribel, forcing her words into a mouth that wasn’t truly Ari’s once again. The wind whipped them away as they formed, coming out jagged.

Still, Sir Edwin gave her a firm nod.

Claribel had briefed her servants the same, but Ari knew: rumour was a thing that could creep through the smallest of crevices. Natty she could trust with her life, but the rest of the witnesses were unknowns, therefore unreliable. Leaky, by default.

By tomorrow evening, the whole of Eirene would be whispering it by the fireside. But she’d speak with the Queen tonight.

Soon, yet still not soon enough, the limestone walls of the palace loomed close enough for her to scan the dark, hollow windows for flickers of candlelight. It stared back like a many-eyed beast, biding its time. In a world uncrowded by soaring skyscrapers of glass and steel, it dominated.

Two guards trailed towards them from their positions at the gate, pikes in hand, pointless really, unlike the lance that Sir Edwin now had at his disposal, left outside the gates of Claribel’s manor along with his horse. Instead, Sir Edwin chose to flash them his chain of office.

‘Oh, it’s you, sir. And… Ah… My lady!’ They scrambled, bowing, and pulled open the wrought iron gates.

‘On the business of His Majesty the King!’ cried Sir Edwin with enough authority to fly through the gates without surrendering lance, rapier or bollock knife.

Ari made a mental note of the lax security. If Lady Oriana had been undetectable during the burning, then how did these men know that they were truly them?

~What are you going to do with that information? Kill the King?~

~One duke is enough, I should think.~

~It’s not his life or death that people care about… rather the aftermath. Much like now, with Tristram,~ she said, voice laden with a silent sigh, and steered them away from the front of the palace.

‘Where are you going, my lady?’ called Sir Edwin, turning to follow her into the gardens, dismounting in a single sweeping motion despite his earlier injury.

‘This leads to the Queen’s quarters. I shall pass a message onto her chambermaid to grant us an audience.’

Ari tied Steps to the trunk of a tree. Security was even worse than what had been displayed at the gates. Wearing Claribel’s face seemed enough to get her past all the Royal Guards. What if they could harness possession as an assassination technique? A loving wife, running a hand down your back; a fluttering kiss, served with a slit through the throat. A true gamechanger.

Steel gleamed behind a bush on her right. Two steps, and she was behind the shelter of a stone statue. Except the steel was mere armour, and the only sword that might have been on display was in the knight’s breeches. His right hand was intwined in a lady’s hair, loosening one of the flower pins in her braids, while the other busied about the bottom of her gown, leaving him vulnerable to surprise attacks.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

She was about to let them enjoy an evening far better than hers when Sir Edwin drew his rapier and blasted the knight onto his back. He barely had time to twist the lady out of harm’s way: a mid on [Dexterity].

‘What is the meaning of this, sir?’ said Sir Edwin, voice suddenly as cold as the glint of the winter moon.

‘Wait, you… Oh,’ said the knight, as his eyes focused on Ari.

Now that she could rest assured that his breeches were still in place and study his face, it might or might not have been a familiar one. His golden curls and night-sky eyes should have been memorable, but from the look of triumph that crept onto the lady’s face, he was likely trash; Ari would rather spend time telling Wini and Patricia apart.

‘Sir Aurelius, I bid you good evening,’ said Claribel, spilling an unsurprising name for the knight, but with surprising calm, as if she’d already known. ‘Lady Jehanne, my consolation about your situation with Lady Oriana. I am glad that Sir Aurelius is already consoling you in such a difficult time, for I hear that Lady Oriana likes to discourage Houses pledged to Auster into marrying ladies-in-waiting who have been dismissed from her service without a letter of recommendation. Now, please excuse me, for I must seek an audience with Her Majesty. A piece of advice, if I may? Next time, try one of the disused chambers in the palace’s second floor, west wing.’

‘Do you wish me to duel him for your honour, my lady?’ said Sir Edwin. ‘I know you can pelt him across the roof of the palace if you should so wish, but I will oblige if you don’t wish to dirty your own hands.’

‘You have injured your leg, good sir,’ Claribel whispered back, ‘and he is the Captain of the Royal Guards.’

‘A Royal Coroner needs to be able to detain a Royal Guard, even if he should happen to be the Captain, my lady. I don’t need a good knee to bring him to his.’

‘No need. Thank you, sir.’ She steered him away, leaving Sir Aurelius sprawled across the ground in the palace garden, patting his pockets for a handkerchief to offer a distraught Lady Jehanne. ‘Sir Edwin, I must ask you to keep one more secret. Will you please keep what you just saw to yourself?’

The best way to get someone to like you was to make them do you favours. She’d never been much good at taking Max’s advice, but Claribel was a natural. At this rate, they might turn Sir Edwin into an ally yet.

‘I’m only interested in who killed Tristram, my lady. Unless it was Lady Jehanne colluding with Sir Aurelius, I have no reason to bring their liaison into public knowledge, or indeed anyone’s knowledge.’

Ari dashed him her best smile with as much of a quiver in her lips as she could manage, hoping that she looked like a lady putting on a brave face through heartbreak: a heartbreak that she couldn’t pull from Claribel, as if it didn’t exist, as if it never did. As if they’d never tasted the buzz of an accidental brush of their fingertips, as if they’d never hovered, uncertain, in each other’s presence, waiting for words to turn longing into certainty.

A flash of Claribel. A hand, clinging to a silk ribbon, as soft as spring blossom, embroidered with roses as red as passion. A quickening heart, then a pair of strong arms lifted her from behind. A scent of lavender and a note of musk.

A phantom memory, created by the present, as all thoughts were, as all thoughts are.

Just like the apparition before them. Phantom.

Silver hair streamed down his back, glowing with some supernatural force so that it was impossible to tell whether it was borrowing light from the moon or the other way round. His face was turned away from them, buried in his hands, and his Atlas-like shoulders shook out a sigh.

With the softest clink of Sir Edwin’s rapier, the apparition’s head snapped up, shedding its lost, defenceless ghostly guise. Duke Aquilon leap to his feet in one fluid motion, hand on the hilt of his sword, ready to draw until his gaze settled on her.

‘Clary!’

It was lucky that Sir Aurelius had not strayed to this part of the gardens, or else he’d already be fertiliser.

‘Father,’ said Ari, forcing out the word that was worse than any curse. What now? Ask him a meaningless question? Are you all right? Obviously not. How did the meeting with the King go? Clearly not well.

‘Why are you here?’

‘Because…’ If she spoke about the contract marriage here, what other ears will hear? ‘Because I am worried…’

‘There is nothing to worry about,’ he said, squaring his shoulders, as if to prove it to her, as if she’d never caught him slumped and defeated a moment ago. ‘We’ve agreed on a course of action, and His Majesty has already assigned a Royal Coroner to investigate the case – a gifted young man named Sir Edwin. The matter is in good hands.’

‘My hands actually,’ said Sir Edwin, bowing low. ‘Sir Edwin, glad to be of service, Your Grace.’

Duke Aquilon gave him a long stare and nodded. ‘I have heard much about your prowess, Sir Edwin. You used to be House Carnell’s man before taking up mantle as Royal Coroner, did you not? If you should ever wish to spar, you know where to find me. I shall be staying with Clary at Wingshill House until the end of the tournament.’

‘It will be a great honour, Your Grace,’ he said, bowing lower still. ‘I… I saw you joust and come out as the victor in the mêlée at the tournament that Duchess Aquilon threw when she came into her inheritance… You were awe-inspiring. That’s what inspired me to become a knight. I didn’t think I’d really make it one day and meet you. This is like a dream.’

He was – what? – starstruck? At a time when war might break out with one wrong move? Ari tried to picture herself, on route to sky dive into the enemy’s lair, bomb ticking, but there they were: Trojan Threnody, offering to sign her Kevlar vest.

‘I’ll leave you two to catch up,’ she said.

‘Wait, where are you going?’

‘To see the Queen.’

‘It’s late.’ Duke Aquilon furrowed his brows, leaving Sir Edwin’s gushing praises unanswered. ‘I’ll go with you.’

‘I am not here to fight bandits. I’m here to see the Queen for a relaxed conversation between two ladies because,’ she hazarded a guess, ‘we are friends, and I am worried about her. She was close to Tristram, after all. Leave us be, please.’

Duke Aquilon sighed and shook his head. ‘Understood. I will wait for you out here. If you need me, I am nearby. If you don’t,’ he flashed her a dazzling smile, one that she must learn to copy and use against others, ‘all the better.’