Capture the Crown

by Jennifer Estep

  Milo, Corvina, and Emperia were still drinking and talking to some nobles, and it didn’t seem as though they were in any hurry to leave. I scanned the rest of the room, but I didn’t spot Reiko anywhere. I wondered if the dragon morph had also taken this opportunity to skulk around the palace. Probably.

  “Let’s go,” Leonidas said.

  We hurried through that courtyard and a couple more beyond it. Eventually, we reached two double doors made of liladorn, similar to the ones outside Delmira’s chambers. The doors soared more than seven stories into the air, making them impossibly heavy. Leonidas waved his hand, and they easily swung open, although I thought that had more to do with the liladorn obeying the prince’s command than the strength of his magic. I shivered. Either way, it was unnerving.

  Leonidas strode through to the other side, and I trailed along behind him.

  “And this,” he said, pride and joy filling his voice, “is the rookery.”

  I looked up and let out a startled gasp. We were in an enormous open-air tower dimly lit by strings of soft white fluorestones. Liladorn vines twined through the gray stone walls, which featured dozens and dozens of hollowed-out spaces. At first, the spaces appeared to be empty, but then two eyes appeared, glowing like purple matches in the shadows. Then two more eyes in another space, then two more, and two more, until dozens and dozens of pairs of eyes were peering at me.

  My breath caught in my throat. Slowly, the eyes crept forward, and the shadows morphed into strixes. The hollowed-out spaces were their nests, starting at the ground level and climbing to the tops of the tower walls. Some of the strixes were larger than Floresian stallions, while others were babies, no bigger than kittens, with lilac-colored feathers, instead of the darker amethyst ones that marked the older creatures.

  At the sight of the prince, the strixes fluffed out their feathers and chirped out high, happy, singsong greetings. Soon, the notes Leo! Leo! Leo! pealed through the air like bells ringing. Longing pierced my heart. The gargoyles often greeted me with similar, albeit lower and more grumbling, cries whenever I visited them on the Glitnir rooftops.

  One of the strixes flew down from a high perch, landed in front of Leonidas, and nuzzled up against him. Lyra, of course.

  Leonidas laughed and stroked one of her wings. “Sorry I haven’t been around much today. Maybe we can go for a ride tomorrow.”

  “Hold you to it,” Lyra chirped, then fixed her bright eyes on me. “Maybe she can come with us. The gargoyle is almost here.”

  Leonidas frowned. “Gargoyle?”

  Lyra opened her beak, but I cut her off before she could answer him.

  “As much as I’m enjoying seeing the rookery, I thought we were going to break into Milo’s workshop. We need to do that before he leaves the dinner.”

  Leonidas eyed me. He knew I was changing the subject, but he didn’t call me on it. He stroked Lyra’s wing again, then gestured at me. “This way.”

  He rounded a fountain and headed deeper into the rookery. Lyra hopped along behind us, her talons scraping against the flagstones, while the rest of the strixes watched silently from their nests.

  Leonidas walked to the very back of the rookery and stopped in front of one of the walls.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. “We’re wasting time. Milo could decide to leave the throne room at any second.”

  “We’re taking a shortcut.”

  A mischievous grin creased his face, softening his features and brightening his eyes, and I was suddenly reminded of the boy he had been—the one who had seemed so genuinely concerned about me. My heart twinged, but I ignored the tug on its strings.

  Leonidas pulled down on a particularly large thorn on one of the liladorn vines. A soft click sounded, and part of the wall slid back, revealing a narrow corridor with a low ceiling. “This way.”

  He stepped into the corridor. Lyra looked at me, as did the other strixes. I wondered if the creatures would eat me if I didn’t do as their prince wanted. Probably. Either way, I doubted I could leave the rookery without getting torn to pieces, so I stepped into the chamber.

  Lyra stayed behind in the courtyard. She pushed that same thorn back up with her beak. The wall closed behind me, casting the chamber in total darkness.

  A hand grabbed mine, and I had to swallow down a surprised shriek.

  “This way,” Leonidas said. “You can trust me. Promise.”

  I couldn’t see his face, but his voice floated through the darkness and wrapped around me as surely as his hand clutched mine.

  “Lead the way,” I whispered back.

  His fingers slowly curled into mine, and he carefully drew me along behind him.

  I didn’t know how long we were in the passageway. It could have been a minute, or two, or ten. But sometime later, Leonidas abruptly stopped, and I slammed into his side. We stood there, pressed up against each other. I tried to ignore how warm and strong his body was, how good he smelled, and especially how this innocent contact made me think of other, far more pleasurable and wicked things we could do in the dark together.

  Leonidas dropped my hand and stepped away. I started to reach for him but clenched my fingers into a fist instead, grateful the shadows hid the traitorous motion.

  He must have pulled on a handle, because another soft click sounded, and I heard something slide back.

  “This way,” he whispered. “And be quiet. A guard or two is usually posted outside.”

  Leonidas took my hand and led me forward again. The longer we walked, the more light that appeared, and I blinked against the growing glare. A few seconds later, we stepped out of the passageway and into a large chamber.

  Unlike the rest of the palace, no paintings or tapestries adorned the walls. A few purple rugs featuring the Morricone royal crest done in gold thread were strewn across the floor, but they were the only bits of softness in here. Shelves filled with books, maps, and more hugged the walls, while large stone tables covered with glass tubes, jars, and beakers marched down the center of the room. Tools also littered many of the tables, along with swords, daggers, and shields. The air smelled sharp and clean, like orangey soap, although a faint coppery stench lingered under the other, stronger aroma, like rust hiding on the back of a shield.

  To the left, an open archway led to a smaller area with a bed and several settees, and a door beyond that opened up into a bathroom done in black tile. Milo seemed to spend as much time in his workshop as Leonidas and Delmira did in their respective chambers.

  I drifted forward, staring at the table closest to me, which was empty—except for the dried blood.

  Dull brown stains covered much of the tabletop, and the surface was nicked and scratched, as though more than one sharp blade had scraped across it—or had been driven through someone’s body to pin them to the stone underneath.

  A cold finger of dread slid down my spine. “This is Milo’s workshop?” I whispered.

  Disgust filled Leonidas’s face. “Unfortunately.”

  I didn’t know what I’d been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t this—whatever this truly was, other than horrifying. “Have you been in here before?”

  “Yes, although not for a few weeks,” Leonidas replied in a low, soft voice. “I’ve never found any tearstone in here, but I keep hoping that Milo will slip up and leave a clue behind about his plans. Let’s see what we can find.”

  He went over to a table filled with tools. I started at one end of another table and walked down the length of it, scanning the contents.

  At first glance, most of the items were ordinary, if a bit strange. A bronze sword with a bent, dented blade. A gold spear with a shattered tip. A silver shield that had been cleaved cleanly in two.

  But the closer I got to the back of the workshop, the odder and more grotesque the items became. A jar filled with purple strix feathers spattered with what I assumed was strix blood. A lilac-colored strix egg that had been smashed to bits and left to rot inside another jar. Gray, brittle, withered liladorn vines wi
th chopped off thorns that were curled up on a tray like a nest of dead coral vipers.

  Milo seemed to enjoy experimenting on—torturing—creatures. I wondered if his experiments also included people. I shivered again. Part of me didn’t want to know.

  But perhaps the most curious things were the rocks littering one of the tables. Chunks of limestone, slabs of granite, even a few diamonds, sapphires, and other gemstones. Some of the rocks were whole, smooth, and intact, while others had been cracked and dented, and a few had been shattered to shards.

  Next to the rocks were open journals with worn, tattered purple covers, although the handwriting on the faded, yellowed pages was so tiny and cramped that I couldn’t make sense of the scribbled words and rows of numbers. The only thing I could see clearly was the large, bold signature at the bottoms of the pages—King Maximus.

  Another shiver zipped down my spine. These were Maximus’s journals, although Milo seemed to be using the information to help with his own experiments. No matter how disturbing I found the notion, I could understand Milo tinkering with creatures and trying to take as much of their blood and magic as possible, just like his uncle had done. But what was he doing with the rocks? And how did his experiments tie in with the tearstone?

  “Find anything?” Leonidas asked.

  “Just your uncle’s journals and your brother’s experiments. You?”

  “Nothing important. Just the tools Milo uses to inflict pain on others.”

  I gestured at the jar with the smashed, rotten egg. “Does he only experiment on strixes? Or does he use other creatures too?”

  Grief lined Leonidas’s face, and pain rippled off him. “Strixes, mostly. Some coral vipers too. No gargoyles or caladriuses, as far as I know, but not for lack of trying. Milo is always looking for new creatures to experiment on. We’ve had quite a few fights about it.”

  “Let me guess. You care about the strixes, and Milo doesn’t.”

  Anger flared in his eyes. “I am fucking sick and tired of people slaughtering strixes. They’re magnificent creatures and the bloody symbol of Morta, of the Morricones. We should be protecting strixes, nurturing them. Not burning them up like candles and then tossing them aside when their blood and magic are gone and they’re of no further use.” He spat out the words as though they left a bad taste in his mouth.

  More disgust crinkled Leonidas’s face, and he spun back around to the table, angrily sorting through the tools there, his fingers curling around the pliers, saws, and more as though he longed to use the tools on his brother the same way Milo had used them on the strixes.

  I moved on to another table covered with books, papers, and maps. I eyed the books, which all had to do with various creatures. Strixes mostly, although several volumes focused on gargoyles and caladriuses. Leonidas was right. Milo wanted to experiment on other creatures, not just the strixes he had easy access to.

  “Can Milo absorb magic from strix blood?” I asked. “Like King Maximus could?”

  Leonidas jerked upright as though I had just shoved a sword into his back. An answering heat exploded in my gargoyle pendant, making it burn against my chest, but it couldn’t hold back all of his emotion, and his rage slammed into my heart like a red-hot hammer, leaving me breathless.

  “No,” he growled. “Milo can’t absorb power from strix or any other kind of blood. He didn’t inherit that bit of Morricone mutt magic, thank the gods.”

  He paused, as if struggling to find the right words. More of his rage slammed into my heart, although waves of cold bitterness and roiling anguish quickly washed it away. “Milo is always searching for more magic and better, easier, quicker ways to kill his enemies. But he mostly experiments on the strixes because he knows how much it hurts me. My brother might kill the creatures, but they die because of me.”

  Leonidas dropped his head, and his fingers clenched the edge of the table as though he wanted to rip it apart with his bare hands.

  Sympathy filled me, and I had the strangest desire to walk over, wrap my arms around his waist, lay my head on his back, and tell him that it wasn’t his fault. That nothing in this sick, twisted workshop was his fault.

  The urge to comfort him was so strong that I actually took a step in his direction, before I thought better of it and stopped.

  Leonidas raised his head, released the table, and returned to his search. He didn’t speak, but his rage, bitterness, and anguish kept cascading over me, making me sway from side to side as I turned back to my own table. He had knocked my internal ship off course, in more ways than one.

  His confession also made me even more puzzled. If Milo couldn’t absorb magic, then why was he so eager to experiment on creatures? He might be cruel, but the piles of books and pages of notes indicated that he had some goal in mind, something more important and sinister than simply torturing his younger brother.

  I sorted through the books again, glancing at the titles, and scanning the sections Milo had marked. Most of the passages were dry, technical treatises speculating how strix, gargoyle, and caladrius magic was different than the power that human magiers, morphs, masters, and mutts wielded. Milo had also marked several sections theorizing about how magic could be used, absorbed, created, transmitted, and destroyed. Strange, and a bit frightening, but the books and notes still didn’t tell me what he was plotting.

  I picked up another book, and a bright gray gleam caught my eye. Curious, I set the book down, snagged the item with my fingertips, and pulled it out from underneath a stack of papers to reveal . . .

  An arrow.

  Disappointment surged through me, along with relief that it wasn’t a dead coral viper, or something else equally disturbing. I started to shove the arrow back underneath the papers, but its bright gray gleam caught my eye again, and I held it up to the light for a better look.

  The arrow was quite a bit shorter than normal, only stretching from my wrist up to my fingertips. The pointed tip was razor-sharp, but the arrowhead itself was unusually large and lined with hooked barbs that reminded me of fishing lures. I wasn’t a weapons expert like my stepmother, Captain Rhea, but this arrow was clearly designed to do as much damage as possible. Even if you survived the initial impact, removing the arrowhead would be extremely painful, since its hooked barbs would tear out even more of a person’s flesh.

  “Find something?” Leonidas asked, glancing over at me.

  “An arrow.”

  He nodded and continued with his own search, distracted by something on his table, but I kept staring at the arrow. Suspicion bloomed in my mind, and I twirled the weapon back and forth in my fingers. The arrow was a bright light gray, although it turned a dark midnight-blue when I moved it away from the light . . .

  The arrow was made of tearstone.

  Surprise shot through me. I’d heard Milo silently bragging to himself about his weapon at dinner, and I was certain this was it, although I was puzzled as to why he would think this arrow was something special. The small, compact design was wicked, to be sure, but it was still just a common weapon. It wasn’t even the first tearstone arrow I had seen. Alvis crafted them for Rhea from time to time.

  So why was Milo so impressed with himself for creating this arrow? What could it do that a regular one couldn’t—

  Across the workshop, a soft click sounded. I froze, recognizing the sound of a key turning in a lock.

  Milo was here.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Click.

  A key turned ominously in a second lock.

  Leonidas whirled around to face me. “We have to get out of here!” he hissed. “Now!”

  He sprinted over to the secret door, which was still standing open, and stopped inside the entrance, waiting for me.

  I hesitated, wanting to put the arrow back where I’d found it, but there was no time to slide it under the stack of papers, so I shoved it into my pocket instead. Then I rounded the table and hurried toward Leonidas, keeping an eye on the closed doors at the front of the workshop—

 
; My dress snagged on the corner of the table, jerking me to a stop. I grunted and tried to pull free, but neither my dress nor the table would budge. I couldn’t move forward, so I backed up, reached down, and yanked the fabric free.

  Click.

  A key turned in a third lock, and one of the double doors cracked opened. My gaze snapped over to Leonidas, who was still standing in the secret passageway.

  “Hide!” he hissed again.

  I whirled around, searching for a settee, a desk, or some other piece of furniture large enough to crouch behind, but there was nothing like that in here. No doors led out of these chambers, and there were no windows. Desperate, I spun around and around, trying to find someplace to go—

  A gleam of glass caught my eye, and my head snapped up. There was a window in the workshop, but it was fifty feet up on the wall. Normally, I could have used my magic to float myself up to the glass, but if I tried it now, Milo would probably sense my power, storm into the workshop, and fry me with his lightning.

  Still, it was the only chance I had, so I rushed over to that wall, the only place in the entire workshop where there was any liladorn. The vines looked weak and brittle, as if they were starved of sunlight, but I took hold of them anyway and started climbing. The vines were as hard and slick as ebony glass, and the long thorns scratched my hands and ripped into my dress, but I kept going.

  Ten feet, twenty, thirty . . . I scrambled up the vines, climbing as high as I could, but the liladorn stopped about five feet short of the window. I stood on my tiptoes, stretching out and up, but I couldn’t reach the windowsill.

  Move! Leonidas’s voice sounded in my mind. Before it’s too late!

  I glanced down. One of the workshop doors was now standing wide open, but Milo wasn’t striding inside. Instead, a faint giggle sounded, along with the rustle of clothing.