I barked out a harsh laugh. “Your mother had as little use and regard for me as you do.”
“But you still tried to save her. Why?”
“I don’t know,” I growled. “Maybe it had something to do with all those history lessons about being a Blair and always doing my duty to queen and country.”
Vasilia shook her head. “Poor, silly, stupid Everleigh. Still trying to be a good little girl. Still trying to win everyone’s approval. Still trying to beat me. You should know by now that I always win—always .”
My fists clenched tighter, but she was right. She had won, and everyone else had lost.
Vasilia glanced at my hands, and amusement sparked in her gaze, along with a bit of curiosity. “What’s that on your wrist?”
I looked down. Sometime during the massacre, the bottom half of my tunic sleeve had been ripped away, revealing my right arm from my elbow down to my wrist. My silver bracelet still circled my wrist, although blood coated the crown in the center of the design, blackening the blue tearstone shards. It was a good thing that Alvis had given me the bracelet today.
I wasn’t going to be alive to appreciate it tomorrow.
But the bracelet wasn’t the only thing on my wrist. The black velvet bag was hanging right alongside it. The bag’s drawstrings had tangled themselves around the bracelet’s thorns, and together, the two of them felt as tight as a noose digging into my skin.
“What’s in the bag?” Vasilia asked.
I didn’t answer. She would kill me soon enough, open the bag, and see the memory stone. Making her go to that small trouble was the last bit of petty satisfaction I would ever have.
Vasilia waited, but when I didn’t answer, she shrugged, as if it didn’t matter. And it didn’t, not really, not at all. Because she had won, and I was going to die.
She turned her attention to Auster, who was being guarded, with Nox’s sword still at his throat. “And you, captain,” she said. “I can’t imagine how horribly you must feel, knowing that you had one job, to protect your queen, and seeing how spectacularly you failed at it.”
Anger stained Auster’s cheeks a bright scarlet, and his eyes glittered with grief and rage, but he couldn’t deny the truth of her words any more than I’d been able to.
“You see, Captain Auster helped the Andvarian assassins kill the queen he was sworn to protect. What a betrayal.” Vasilia clucked her tongue in mock sympathy.
Auster sucked in a surprised breath, and horror filled his face. Shock jolted through me as well, followed by sick understanding.
Vasilia might be heartless, but she was also smart, and she was going to make Auster her scapegoat. It was plausible enough, given Auster’s access to the queen, the guards, and the palace, and it would garner Vasilia sympathy from all corners of Bellona. And, since she’d killed the rest of our cousins, there was no one left to challenge her for the throne. Oh, a few Blairs were always scattered at their estates throughout the countryside, but no one with enough magic to take on Vasilia and win.
“Why did you betray your queen, Auster? Was that Andvarian gold really worth it? Was that why you helped the assassins?” Vasilia continued spinning her lies. “Felton discovered your secret bank accounts too late to save my mother, although he did warn me in time.”
Felton smirked and waggled his red ledger at the captain. Rage replaced Auster’s shock, and he glared at the queen’s secretary.
Vasilia shook her head. “I managed to save myself from your assassins, and then, with my loyal guards, I cut down the Andvarian traitors and captured you, but not before you had murdered everyone else. But traitors always pay for their sins, Auster. And a nice, public execution will be the perfect reward for your crimes.”
Auster turned his hot stare back to Vasilia. “Your mother was right,” he growled. “All you want to do is plunge us into war.”
My mind spun at their words. Blaming Auster for the queen’s murder was bad enough. But claiming that he was working with the Andvarians, and that the ambassador and the prince had orchestrated the massacre, had potentially catastrophic ramifications for both Bellona and Andvari.
It meant war.
I looked at Maeven, who had remained quiet through Vasilia’s preening. Somehow, I knew that she was the ultimate architect of this. But who was she working for? Morta? Relations with Morta, especially the royal family, had always been strained, ever since Bryn Blair had defeated their king and driven the Mortan invaders out of Bellona centuries ago.
But this was about far, far more than just putting Vasilia on the throne. Morta was going to use the queen’s death to get Bellona to invade Andvari. And that was just the beginning. The ramifications stretched on and on, like a web weaving itself together, each strand darker and more ominous than the last, a black, poisonous web that could potentially destroy Bellona and Andvari and let Morta conquer the entire continent.
Maeven stared back at me, then her gaze dropped to the bracelet on my wrist. She frowned, as though something about the silver band annoyed her. “She’s a Winter, isn’t she?”
“So what?” Vasilia said.
“So kill her and be done with it,” Maeven snapped. “That was our agreement. We help you murder the queen, and you eliminate the Winter line of the Blair family—forever.”
Two types of magic ran through the Blair family—Summer and Winter, named after Bryn Blair, who’d had the powers of both a magier and a master. Those with Summer magic were often powerful magiers, like Cordelia with her fire and Vasilia with her lightning. Those with Winter magic could be magiers too, like my mother with her control over ice and snow, but they were more often masters, like those who had built Seven Spire. Thanks to my mother, I was considered a Winter, despite my seeming lack of magic.
I could understand why Maeven wanted to eliminate the Blairs, so that no one could challenge Vasilia for the throne. But the Summer line was widely considered to be the more powerful. So why target the Winter line specifically?
I thought back to Cordelia’s words, about how I was a Winter queen. I had thought that she’d just been babbling, that she’d been in too much pain to be thinking clearly. But what if there was more to it than that? Although I couldn’t imagine what that more might be.
“Kill her now, or I’ll do it myself.” Maeven held up her hand, and a ball of purple lightning crackled to life in her palm.
Vasilia huffed. “Fine. I was going to do it anyway.”
My cousin stepped up so that she was standing about five feet away. Everyone tensed. Felton, Nox, the turncoat guards, and especially Maeven.
“Everleigh,” Auster rasped, breaking the silence. “I’m sorry. So sorry. For all of this. I failed in my duty to protect you and the queen and everyone else.”
I forced myself to smile at him. “It’s all right, Auster. You did your best. No one could have fought harder. You did your duty, and you honored your queen today.”
A stricken expression filled his face, and tears gleamed in his eyes. Auster nodded at me, and I nodded back. Then I looked at Vasilia again.
She raised her hand, white lightning sparking on her fingertips. The cold, hard power of my own immunity rose up in response, the way it always did whenever I was around any magic.
For the first time since my parents had died, I didn’t flinch at my immunity or ignore it or push it down. Instead, I reached for my power, grasping and clawing and holding on to it in a way that I never had before. I pulled it up and up and up until I could almost feel the invisible strength of it crackling along my skin, the same way that Vasilia’s lightning was on her fingertips. I didn’t know what good it would do, since I doubted that my immunity was stronger than her lightning, but I was going to fight until the bitter, bitter end.
Vasilia smiled at me, savoring the moment. The smug, sneering triumph on her face made icy rage spread through my body, and my resolve hardened, along with my magic.
“The queen is dead,” Vasilia sneered. “Long live the queen.”
Th
en she reared back and threw her lightning at me.
The bolt hit me square in the chest, lifting me up and off my feet, and throwing me over the side of the wall.
Chapter Nine
For a moment, I was suspended high in midair, and I could see the entire lawn.
The debris. The blood. The bodies. They all seemed small and far away, as though I was peering through the window of a child’s dollhouse at the tiny people and furnishings inside.
Then another bolt of lightning streaked out of Vasilia’s fingertips, shot through the air, and slammed into my chest.
And I started to fall.
My bird’s-eye view of the lawn vanished, and the last thing I saw was Vasilia’s sneering face before the lightning filled my vision, turning everything a bright, eerie white. The lightning danced over my body, trying to fry me alive. I screamed and batted my hands at my chest, even though it wouldn’t do any good. I sucked in another breath to scream, and the hot, caustic stench of Vasilia’s magic filled my nose. For some reason, the stench cut through my panic, and I quit screaming, gritted my teeth, and pushed back against the lightning with my own power.
I imagined my immunity like a cold fist, wrapping around my body and squeezing, squeezing tight, throttling every single spark of Vasilia’s lightning. For the last fifteen years, I had hidden my power the same way that I did my feelings, but I didn’t have to do that anymore. No one was watching, and I wanted to keep my promise to Cordelia. I wanted to live . So for the first time since my parents had died, I fully embraced my power, this strange little quirk that let me destroy other people’s magic.
And it worked .
My immunity smothered Vasilia’s lightning like a bucket of water dousing a candle flame. The sharp, stinging jolts of power vanished, although smoke wafted up from my body where her magic had singed my clothes. My vision cleared. I blinked the world back into focus and then immediately wished that I hadn’t.
Because I was still going to die.
Vasilia’s lightning had knocked me clear of the sharp, jagged cliffs on this side of the palace, so I wasn’t going to tumble end over end down the rocks and break every single bone in my body. Instead, I was going to hit the river far, far below, which would probably still break every single bone in my body.
The world spun around and around in a crazy, disjointed blur of white clouds, gray rocks, and blue water. If I had any hope of surviving, I couldn’t hit the water headfirst, and I managed to flip myself over in midair so that my feet were pointing downward, even as the rippling surface rushed up to meet me—
WHOOSH!
I hit the water, and everything went cold, wet, and black.
* * *
Everything was cold, wet, and black.
I stood in front of a window, watching the rain spatter down onto the palace. A bit of snow mixed in, but the rain washed it away before it could stick to anything. Back home at Winterwind, my family’s estate in the northern mountains, it would have been all snow, and the fat, fluffy flakes would have turned the evergreen woods into an icy wonderland. Here, the rain reigned, turning everything a cold, wet, miserable black.
I missed the snow. The mountains. My home. My parents. Everything I had lost.
It had been more than a month since my parents had been murdered. Ever since then, I had been passed from one cousin and estate to the next. No one had kept me for more than a few days. This cousin already had two children. That one never wanted kids. This one was far too busy with her social engagements to bother with her own children, much less a distant orphan cousin.
I had moved from relative to relative, traveling south all the while, until I had ended up in the capital city of Svalin. Now I was at Seven Spire, waiting for someone to tell me where to go next. I hadn’t seen Queen Cordelia yet, and I had no idea when or even if that might happen. After all, she had far more pressing things to worry about than one little girl. I wondered if she would take me in and make me part of her family. Probably not. No one else had. But maybe she would at least order someone else to do it for her.
“Hmm-hmm-hmm . . . hmm-hmm-hmm . . .”
The sound of light, happy humming caught my ear, breaking the steady slap of the rain against the glass, and a girl skipped down the hallway toward me. She was quite pretty, with long, golden curls and a pink silk dress that bounced and swished with every step. She looked like a ray of sunshine on this gloomy day.
I expected the girl to skip past me, but to my surprise, she stopped, as if she’d been looking for me.
“Hello!” she chirped. “My name is Vasilia. I’m the crown princess.”
Of course she was the crown princess with a dress like that, not to mention the diamond tiara that sparkled like a ring of pink stars on her head. I was suddenly aware of how plain and shabby my own blue dress was, as well as the fact that it was three inches too short. It had been a castoff from one of my younger cousins. All my clothes had been at my home—a home that had been destroyed when my parents had been murdered.
I gritted my teeth and dropped into a curtsy. “Forgive me, Your Highness. I’m new here, and I didn’t know—”
Vasilia stepped forward, grabbed my arm, and lifted me to my feet. “There’s no need for any of that nonsense. You can call me Vasilia. After all, our grandmothers were sisters, so that makes us second cousins. That makes us family.”
She had a far different idea of family than our other cousins did. They couldn’t wait to pass me along to someone else. But I didn’t trust anyone, not after what had happened to my parents, so I drew in a breath, tasting her scent. Cinnamon curiosity. Well, that was better than the sour-milk reluctance I’d sensed from everyone else.
“You’re Everleigh, right?”
I nodded.
“Excellent. Come with me.”
Before I could protest, Vasilia grabbed my hand and tugged me along the hallway with her. A few minutes later, she pushed open a large door and led me inside an enormous room.
She let go of my hand and skipped around. “This is my playroom.”
Playroom? It was more like a treasure vault. Every toy imaginable lined the floor-to-ceiling shelves that took up two of the walls. Dolls, balls, hoops, games, puzzles, wooden swords and shields. And still more toys peeked up out of the chests that were scattered here and there. And they weren’t just mere toys. They were works of art, gilded with gold and studded with jewels.
As if the toys weren’t wonderful enough, a padded seat with books scattered on the cushions ran the length of the picture window that took up the back wall. My heart ached. I’d had a seat like that in my own room back home.
Vasilia grabbed my hand and led me over to a glass-topped table with four chairs. Dolls had been propped up in two of the seats. One of them was your typical princess in a frilly purple dress, while the other was an ogre morph with a scary face and teeth jutting out of its mouth. A diorama of a miniature arena perched on that end of the table, complete with two tiny figures with swords, as if the dolls were watching a gladiator bout.
Vasilia dropped into one of the empty chairs and tugged me down, so that I was sitting next to her. A fine tea set had been laid out, along with plates of real food—crustless sandwiches with slivers of cucumber, honey cranberries dipped in powdered sugar, and dark chocolates shaped like Vasilia’s tiara.
I stared at the food. My stomach rumbled, an embarrassingly loud sound that reminded me how long it had been since I had eaten.
“Poor thing,” Vasilia crooned. “Are you hungry? Here, have some hot chocolate.”
She picked up a teapot and poured the chocolate into my cup. I was so hungry that I gulped it all down. The hot, steaming liquid burned my tongue, but the rich, dark chocolate slowly warmed me from the inside out, and I felt calmer, stronger, and more like myself than I had in weeks.
Vasilia smiled. “There. Isn’t that better?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
She patted my hand, her gray-blue eyes bright in her pretty face. “You know
what, Everleigh? You and I are going to be fabulous friends.”
For the first time since my parents had died, someone was treating me like an actual person, instead of an unwanted piece of furniture to be hauled off to a new location. Someone wanted to be around me. Someone wanted to take care of me. Someone wanted to be my friend .
For the first time in weeks, my heart ached with gratitude instead of sorrow. Tears stung my eyes, but I blinked them back. I wasn’t going to start bawling like a baby.
Vasilia didn’t seem to notice my turbulent emotions as she poured herself some hot chocolate, then refilled my cup. She picked up her cup and gestured for me to do the same.
“So . . . friends?” she said, smiling at me again.
Despite everything that had happened, I found myself smiling back at her. “Friends.”
Her smile sharpened, and we clinked our cups together . . .
For a moment, I could still smell the warm, rich steam rising off that hot chocolate. But it was just a dream, just a memory, one that splintered into shards as something cold and wet slapped me in the face, jolting me awake.
My eyes snapped open, and I sucked down a breath, not knowing where I was or what was going on. Then another wave washed over me, dousing me from head to toe, and I realized that I was in the Summanus River.
My right arm was splayed over a dead tree that had fallen from the riverbank over into the water. A tangle of thorns ringed the tree, and they’d embedded themselves into what was left of my tunic sleeve and my skin underneath, hooking me like a fish. The thorns had also caught on my silver bracelet and the black velvet bag, both of which were still wrapped around my wrist, so tightly that my fingers had gone numb.
I didn’t remember anything after hitting the water, but the current must have swept me downriver and into this tree. The thorns stabbing into my clothes and skin were probably the only reason that the river hadn’t sucked me under and finished drowning me.
I lay there, getting my breath back, and feeling the water pushing against my back, trying to drag me even farther downriver. Then, when I felt strong enough, I raised my head and straightened up. To my surprise, my feet touched the bottom, and I was able to stand up, since the water only came up to my chest.
Kill the Queen (Crown of Shards #1) Page 48
