The Skalia household was supposed to arrive at Castle Sangmere by the new moon, but a series of unexpected spring ice storms delayed them. The purple blush of dead nettle, the bright green blades of new grass, and the budding berry canes caught the waning moonlight, making the farms and fields glimmer like cut jewels, but the roads had turned into ugly mires, muddy beneath the frosty veneer and littered with branches broken by the weight of the ice.
It wasn’t uncommon weather so far north so late in the year, but members of the palace staff making ready for the bride-to-be told one another that holding a wedding with ice on the ground foretold a frigid marriage.
Etian waited as long as he could stand on the night the Zinote delegation should arrive—about half an hour—then gave it up as a waste of time. He wasn’t going to spend all night staring toward the carriage gate when he could be studying the royal blood magic or attending the Hall of Law. Word came later that the roads had held them up at least two nights away, but by then Etian had found something useful to occupy his time.
Over the winter, the Hall of Law had become a fascinating place, and it was there that the crown prince spent a good portion of his scant leisure time, observing the men he would one day rule. Lord Clarencio of House Mattius had returned with the royal progress and taken up his family seat for the first time in four years. Clarencio was half the age of most of the lords and their representatives, and as his family’s former allies had abandoned ship after his father’s execution, he had no votes to back him. This didn’t seem to deter the young lord in the least. He argued paradigms with the confidence of a man who knew his holdings did not rely on the approval of any other house, and put forth motions as if certain that one day he would not be alone in his convictions.
It became so that even the most negligent of lords began to grace the Hall of Law with their presence, ousting their representatives. The heads of the noble families had no better luck taking the floor against Clarencio than their clerks and sons had. The tap of his walking stick and his uneven footfalls became a sound that set their teeth on edge.
One or two lords had the courage to ask the king what he was thinking to allow this son of a traitor to speak freely, let alone take the floor against men who had staunchly supported Hazerial all along—though they never worded it quite so bluntly.
“We value the active participation of our future son-in-law in the pursuits of our noblest houses,” was all Hazerial would say.
It was enough to keep the lords uncertain of how much authority House Mattius actually had. Etian watched them alternately plotting against Clarencio and trying to attract his alliance.
“I don’t know whether your father is setting me up for public annihilation or waiting for an opportune moment to force my vote in some unexpected way,” Clarencio told Etian one evening during the House’s luncheon hours. “But until it happens, I intend to wring every last bit of my own ends that I can from these archaic blood clots.”
“I think the archaic blood clots intend to wring your neck.” From what Etian was seeing, Clarencio had set himself up for a war that demanded total victory or death. The crown prince approved of the gamble, but suspected the Lord of the Cinterlands was going to lose on simple numbers. Only Josean could lay waste to an entire army himself and survive. “Or hire someone else to wring it for them.”
“That wouldn’t surprise me in the least.” Clarencio winced as he took the first stair down toward the Hall’s exit, one hand firmly on the wall. “They could probably get it done cheap on the claim they were trying to protect the kingdom from another Cinterlands Rebellion.”
“Your friend shouldn’t joke,” Vorino told Etian while they sparred. “I know a handful of Royal Thorns who would cast lots for the job.”
Of Kelena, Etian saw very little. When spring came, the princess was suddenly no longer allowed at meals with the rest of the family, and the mad queen would answer no questions regarding the girl. Loath though Etian was to try this particular strategy, concern that his half-sister had been murdered by her insane mother eventually drove him to search the hidden passages for a viewing hole into the princess’s chambers.
The slot was easy enough to find, as there was only one hidden passage in the tower, and only one member of the royal family resided therein. The rest of the rooms were jumbles of forgotten furniture, outdated armor, and the unfinished, rat-chewed paintings of Etian’s Teikru-blessed ancestor Prince Farro. A lunatic, artist, poet, and walking disaster of a secondborn prince, Farro was the Thorn all other royal second sons endeavored not to become.
Kelena’s rooms were furnished as Etian supposed young princesses liked: lots of frills and cushions, childish pinks and blues. The floor was covered in lush carpeting everywhere except for an oblong section that looked as if it had been torn at random from the center of the room, where portions of a few bare flagstones shone through.
No sign of violence, but no sign, either, that the room had ever been inhabited. A layer of dust coated every book and toy and even the neatly made bed. He knew Kelena lived there—or had lived there, if Jadarah had murdered her—but it looked for all the world as if the room had been furnished and forgotten sometime around the beginning of his grandfather Ikario’s reign.
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Then he saw the dark purple hair ribbon lying crumpled on carpeted floor near a large chest. It was the only piece of scenery out of place. The chest was large enough to conceal a small body if the body were positioned right—two bodies, if they were dismembered.
Now that he was looking closer, he could see a small stain that had collected around one foot of the chest. No, not a stain. A puddle. The chest was leaking.
His first thought was that he’d missed the chance to help the poor girl. If he’d tried harder, he could have prevented this—there was nothing he couldn’t eventually find a way to do—but the blessing of Josean had worked against Kelena this time. It had spurred Etian onward in his own concerns while ignoring everything else around him.
His second thought was what a blow this would be to Izakiel. The elder prince was likely the only friend Kelena had ever had.
“Uh-oh, someone got tired of watching their betrothed’s empty bedchamber.” The sudden appearance of Jadarah’s grating voice in the silence made Etian’s heart thunder. “Do you find the view stimulating, blind prince?”
Etian lifted his face from the viewing slot and scowled into the darkness. He couldn’t see the mad queen until his eyes adjusted, but he could smell her. In such a confined space, her stench was nauseating.
He had to fight the urge to gag. “What’s in the chest down there?”
Jadarah chuckled. “It’s not ready yet.”
“When will it be? When Kelena’s body has completely moldered away into dust?”
“So the blind prince can see but not hear? Should we call you the deaf prince instead?”
Still laughing that maddening laugh, the queen draped herself over Etian, rubbing and wriggling. He shoved her off, but she grabbed him by the hair with surprising strength. She yanked him to the view slot again. The side of his head thumped against the stone, sending pain flaring through his ear and knocking his lenses askew.
“Listen, Etianiel. Listen!”
The silence stretched out. Finally, Etian heard it. A faint, high, wavering whine. Then a ragged breath.
“You vile—” Etian straightened up and shoved Jadarah off, yanking her twisted fingers out of his hair, tearing a good chunk out with them.
The mad queen went staggering back. She tripped on her skirt and sprawled in the narrow passage.
She purred. “Oh, do it again.”
The closest exit from the passage was past Jadarah. There was another exit a few floors down. Etian headed for the stairs.
“By the time you reach her room, the chest will be gone,” Jadarah called after him. “Not even the blind prince will find her this time, no matter how many holes he looks through.”
Rather than argue, he changed directions. Disgust was no reason to lose a battle. As he pushed past her crouched form, the mad queen hooked one arm around his waist and wrapped the fingers of her free hand around his ankle. He sprawled onto the floor as awkwardly as she had, half on his elbow and side, legs tangled with the laughing wench. His lenses slid to the end of his nose, then dropped away, clinking on the stone.
“Why do you care, Etianiel?” she snarled. “Do you think she’ll reward you for rescuing her? Do you think you can hold her out of my reach? I know what’s inside you, and it isn’t Josean-blessed. I can smell it on you—on every man, no matter which strong god favors him.”
Etian’s heart pounded against the back of his throat. A long-forgotten childhood terror came back to him: Jadarah standing over his bed with a knife and the decaying head of his mother.
Panic closed his throat. He kicked and shoved, feeling greasy skin and thick, animal-like hair. Part of him knew his lenses were probably being crushed by their flailing, but he had to get her off, had to get away. He’d go blind for the rest of his life if he could just escape.
“Hazerial doesn’t care what I do with her.” Jadarah dug in tighter. “He won’t care if you tell him she’s in there, and he’ll never make me give her up. I won’t! I’ll never give her up, no matter what anyone says! She’s mine! I made her! She belongs to me!” Her fists battered wildly against his legs. “Mine! Mine! Mine!”
As Etian struggled, Jadarah clawed herself forward, heaving on top of his legs, no longer screaming words, just weird bestial grunts and growls.
Sweat ran down his face and soaked his clothing. His hands raked greasy hair and burning flesh. In the blurred darkness, he couldn’t imagine the thing he was touching was human. What once had been a madwoman was now a slavering, deadly beast.
In the chaos, one of his boots slipped from the tangle of body and limbs. He planted it on her chest and straightened his leg, peeling her off and pushing himself farther up the passage. His other boot stayed wedged beneath her, but he left it behind and scrambled forward on his hands and knees. A few paces away, he stumbled up to a running position.
He burst onto the landing of the main stairwell, breathing hard.
His lenses were gone. He was covered in dust and cobwebs. He had on one boot. He must look ridiculous. He felt ridiculous. A man running from a woman a head shorter than he was and nearly twice his age. The Josean-blessed Crown Prince of Night terrified of the mad queen.
He swallowed hard, forcing himself to breathe slowly, to think, and turned toward Kelena’s chambers.
The outer door was already open. Some panicked, irrational part of his mind was certain that the creature he’d left in the passage had snapped her gory fingers and made the chest disappear.
He strode through the antechamber and swung the bedroom door inward. Through the lensless blur, he found the room exactly as he’d seen it from the viewing slot. The chest with its slow leak hadn’t been moved.
But he couldn’t hear the whining or the ragged breathing anymore.
He knelt in front of the chest. A wooden arm off some sort of doll had been jammed into the loop of the hasp to keep the lid from opening.
His fingers were trembling so badly that he couldn’t twist the wooden arm free. In the end, he just snapped it in half at the elbow and the splintered pieces fell out.
When he lifted the lid, a wave of stench hit him, and for a heart-stopping moment, he actually saw Kelena’s decaying body, death stretching her face into a toothy rictus, eyes milky, blackened tongue stuffing her mouth like his mother’s had in that terror he’d convinced himself was a dream.
Then the princess launched herself out of the chest, laughing and sobbing weakly and threw her arms around Etian’s neck.
“Izakiel,” she whimpered, shivering and shaking worse than Etian was. “Don’t let her take you away! Don’t let her, don’t let her, don’t let her!”