Kill the Queen

by Jennifer Estep

  I opened my mouth to ask their names, but a group of servants rushing up behind me forced me to walk past the guards or risk getting trampled. It wasn’t until I reached the far end of the hallway that I was able to step out of the servants’ way, stop, and look back.

  A third man had joined the other two—Nox, the personal guard to Princess Vasilia.

  Unlike the other guards in their red tunics, Nox wore one that was a bright, vivid fuchsia and trimmed with gold thread, in keeping with Vasilia’s colors, although he never bothered with a breastplate or any other armor. He was quite handsome, tall and muscled with broad shoulders, golden hair, purplish eyes, and tan skin, and more than one servant snuck an admiring glance at him.

  Nox had come to Seven Spire about nine months ago with a group of visiting Mortan nobles. Vasilia had taken an immediate shine to him and had convinced him to stay on as her own personal guard, despite the fact that he was a minor royal in his own right. Ever since then, rumors had flown fast and furious that the two of them were sleeping together, despite Nox’s flirting with every woman he encountered, even me, on occasion.

  Sex was just as much a weapon at the palace as swords were in the gladiator ring. For some, it was their preferred weapon, wielded with cold cunning. More than one fresh-faced ingénue, male and female alike, had come to the palace only to leave a few weeks later in poverty, disgrace, tears, and heartbreak after being fucked over—literally and physically—by some more experienced lord or lady.

  I didn’t like Nox. Not because he was Mortan, as Isobel would have insisted, but because he knew exactly how handsome he was and used it to his advantage. He was always dazzling the servants with sly smiles and pretty words to get what he wanted, whether it was the best cuts of meat at dinner, a bottle of expensive wine from the cellar, or fine silk sheets for his bed. But his smile was always just a little too bright, and his laughter was always just a little too hearty to be genuine. He reminded me of a coral viper lying in the grass, waiting to strike the unsuspecting soul who was unlucky enough to step on him.

  He was a perfect match for Vasilia that way.

  Nox spoke to the guards, who nodded back to him, as well as to the servants who hurried by. Perhaps Captain Auster hadn’t rounded these guards into shape yet, and they didn’t realize that they should be watching people, instead of greeting them.

  Either way, I couldn’t do anything about Nox or the guards, so I pushed my unease aside, left the hallway, and headed up to my chambers on the seventh floor.

  Contrary to popular belief, a person’s living on a higher floor had absolutely nothing to do with their position, wealth, title, or magic. It just meant that I had to climb more than a dozen sets of bloody stairs every time I wanted to go to my room. Oh, I could have taken one of the metal lifts, but they were always far too slow and crowded.

  Fifteen minutes later, I reached a door tucked into the back corner of that level. Much like Alvis’s dungeon workshop, this area was deserted, and not a whisper of sound broke the silence. No one ever came up to this hidden nook unless they were looking for me, but even that was a rare occurrence. Usually Captain Auster was the one who came calling, to sternly remind me of my royal duty on the rare occasion when I skipped some tedious tea.

  Since no one ever came up here, I never bothered to lock the door, so I opened it and stepped inside. Unlike the other members of the royal family with their spacious apartments on the lower levels, my quarters were shockingly small. An old, creaky table with a couple of mismatched chairs stood in the front of the room, with my bed pushed up against the back wall. In the corner, a wooden armoire loomed over the vanity table sitting next to it. A door set into the opposite wall opened up into a bathroom that was barely big enough for the white porcelain tub, toilet, and sink inside.

  Since I didn’t get any visitors, I didn’t bother to keep my room clean. Childish, I know, but it was the only bit of rebellion that I could consistently get away with. Piles of books were stacked up on one of the chairs, the different colors, shapes, and sizes almost making it look like a person was sitting there. More books covered the table itself, along with gems, bits of metal, and tweezers. A magnifying glass like the one in Alvis’s workshop stood on one side of the table, while a fluorestone headlamp was hooked over the back of one of the knobs on the empty chair.

  Still more books were stacked up three and four dozen high on the floor, and I wound my way through the paper maze. Most of the volumes were research for one function or another, and colored ribbons stuck out of the pages, marking the passages that were the most pertinent. I might despise being the royal stand-in, but I prided myself on always being prepared and always doing a good job. That meant learning everything I could about the people, politics, and objects at every tea, recital, and art exhibit that I attended.

  I sat down at the vanity table, sliding aside the newest stack of books that I’d borrowed from the palace library. A wooden music box shaped like an ogre’s face perched on the top volume, although I could still read the book’s title that glimmered in silver foil—Step by Step: Traditional Dances of Unger.

  In addition to making pies for the Andvarian ambassador, I was also scheduled to perform the Tanzen Freund, a dance of friendship, for the Ungerian ambassador when she visited next week. The dance was far more complicated than the pies, and far more important, since relations between Bellona and Unger had been strained for years.

  I had planned to spend a rare lazy morning in bed, listening to the music box, reading through the book, and reviewing the dance’s intricate steps. At least, until Isobel had knocked on my door and told me about my new, last-minute, pie-making duties.

  Once the music box and the books were out of the way, I studied my reflection in the mirror. Alvis was right. I looked like I’d been rolling around in flour. White stains covered my tunic and streaked across my cheeks like makeup that I’d forgotten to blend in. No wonder the strange guards had nodded at me. They’d probably felt sorry for me, the clueless servant wandering around with flour all over her face.

  I sighed and dropped my gaze from the mirror to a silver framed portrait propped up on the corner of the table. The painting showed a beautiful woman with black hair sitting next to a handsome man with wavy dark brown hair. My mother, Leighton Larimar Winter Blair, and my father, Jarl Sancus.

  The two of them had been sitting in front of the fireplace in our home. I had ducked behind the paint master and had made silly faces, trying to get them to laugh and break their poses. I could still see that silent laughter shining in their eyes and in the faint lift of their lips. The portrait had been painted a few weeks before their murders, and it was one of the few reminders I had of them.

  My heart squeezed tight, but I stared at the portrait, studying my parents’ faces, even though I’d long ago committed them to memory. Everyone told me that I looked just like my mother, since I had her black hair and gray-blue eyes.

  All the Blairs had gray-blue eyes. Tearstone eyes, some people called them, named after all the tearstone that the Blairs had mined out of Seven Spire and the surrounding mountains. Some stories said that the royal family had dug so much tearstone out of the ground that it had turned our eyes the same shifting gray-blue color as the stone.

  My eyes and features weren’t nearly as pretty as my mother’s had been. Still, I tried to look as much like her as possible, even braiding my long hair in the same elaborate style as in her portrait.

  A series of bells rang out, warning everyone that there was only an hour left until the noon luncheon. I couldn’t go to the event covered in flour. Queen Cordelia paid little attention to me, but even she would notice that.

  My parents’ portrait was a bit crooked, so I straightened the frame, lining it up with the edge of the table.

  “There you go,” I whispered.

  It almost seemed as though their eyes brightened and their smiles widened, although it was just wishful thinking on my part. I wasn’t a time magier, so I never got glimpses of the
past or had visions of the future.

  I stared at my parents’ faces for a few seconds longer, then got to my feet to get ready for the luncheon. The ache in my heart lingered, though, the way it always did.

  The way it always would.

  * * *

  I went into the bathroom and washed the flour off my face, then stripped off my dirty clothes and replaced them with black boots and leggings and a long-sleeve midnight-blue tunic trimmed with silver thread—the colors for the Winter line of the Blair family. I also grabbed the black velvet pouch with Alvis’s memory stone and slid it into my pocket.

  I checked my reflection in the bathroom mirror. More tendrils of my black hair had escaped their braid and curled up like tiny gargoyle horns all over my head, so I wet my hair and smoothed them down. I also dabbed some berry balm onto my lips, but I didn’t bother with any more makeup. Most of my cousins were quite pretty, with servants and thread masters to help them make the most of their good looks. I could never compete with them, especially not with Vasilia and Madelena, the two princesses, so I didn’t even try anymore.

  I started to leave the bathroom when my gaze fell on the bracelet lying on the sink. I hesitated, wondering if I should wear it to the luncheon. It was a simple, elegant piece, compared to my cousins’ ropes of pearls and cascades of diamonds, but I’d learned long ago that someone was always ready, willing, and eager to take away what little that I had. Not because they needed or wanted it, but just because they could, just because that sort of pettiness amused them.

  But it had been such a lovely, thoughtful gift, and I didn’t want to abandon it less than an hour after Alvis had given it to me. A compromise then. I slid the bracelet onto my wrist, but I pulled my sleeve down so that the fabric covered the band.

  Once that was done, I left my room and walked back downstairs. By the time I reached the first floor, the hallways were empty, even of guards. Everyone must have already gone to the luncheon, which was being held on the royal lawn. I stepped into the hallway that would take me to the lawn when a snide voice called out behind me.

  “Everleigh, a word, please.”

  I sighed. And the day had been going so well.

  I plastered a smile on my face and turned around. A man strode toward me, his boots banging out a constant, annoying beat. Instead of the usual scarlet, his long-sleeve tunic was black, although it was adorned with several rows of gold thread, as were his black leggings. His black hair and mustache were brushed and curled just so, and his black boots were as polished and glossy as mirrors.

  Felton, the queen’s personal secretary, stopped in front of me and straightened up to his full height, which was little more than five feet, despite the ridiculously high heels on his boots. I’d never understood how he managed to walk in those things, but I’d never seen him wear anything else. A small red book dangled from his fingers like a sword he was about to snap up and bring down on top of someone’s head—my head.

  In addition to scheduling the queen’s life, Felton also assigned me all my so-called royal duties, including baking those bloody pies this morning. Despite all my other royal relatives who lived at the palace, Felton always summoned me first. He knew that I didn’t have the authority to say no to him, so he always singled me out for the most pointless, menial, and disgusting tasks, like eating that raw liver. Like everyone else at Seven Spire, Felton enjoyed wielding what power he had, and the bastard took great delight in humiliating me whenever possible.

  Well, that was going to change. As soon as I had the queen’s permission, I would leave Seven Spire, and I would never have to see the odious little toad again, much less swallow my pride and anger and obey his orders.

  Felton didn’t even deign to look at me as he snapped open his book, pulled out the gold pen inside, and made a little check mark on one of the pages. Even with his ridiculous boots, I was still a good six inches taller, and I leaned forward and discreetly scanned the page.

  Felton had a list of names, probably of everyone attending the luncheon, and they all had check marks beside them, as my name did now. I was surprised that he’d given me a check mark, though, instead of a big, black X. Normally, he would have marked me as tardy just for the petty pleasure of getting me in trouble with the queen.

  “Your meeting with the Ungerian ambassador next week has been canceled,” Felton said in a distracted voice, still concentrating on the list of names.

  “What?”

  It had taken Cordelia and her advisors months of negotiations to get the Ungers to agree to travel to Bellona, and it was to be a historic goodwill trip, since no Ungerian ambassador had visited Seven Spire in the thirty years that Cordelia had been queen.

  So why had the meeting been canceled? The whole point of the ambassador’s trip was to shore up a treaty between Unger, Andvari, and Bellona, promising aid if the Mortans attacked any of the three kingdoms. The political ramifications of the trip not happening were enormous, like a pebble being dropped into a pond and making waves all the way over to the opposite shoreline.

  Then another thought occurred to me. “But what about the dance?”

  Felton flipped over to the next page in his book, which also contained a list of names, and ran his pen down the paper, double-checking his check marks. “What dance?”

  Anger spiked through me, but I kept my voice level. “The Tanzen Freund. The traditional Ungerian dance of friendship. The one that I spent the last three months learning at your insistence.”

  Felton had been particularly gleeful when he’d informed me that I had to learn the dance, and even more so when he’d introduced me to my tutor, Lady Xenia, an Ungerian woman who had married a Bellonan lord and had moved to Svalin more than twenty years ago. Xenia’s husband had died long ago, and she spent her days running a finishing school, teaching royal, noble, and other wealthy children things like etiquette, languages, and dances. Everything one needed to know in order to marry into money, snare a sponsor, and hobnob in Bellonan society and those in the other kingdoms.

  I had enjoyed brushing up on the Ungerian language and customs, but Lady Xenia had quickly become the bane of my existence. She was a stern taskmaster who made Alvis seem as warm and cuddly as a baby gargoyle in comparison.

  Then there was the dance itself. The Tanzen Freund was an intricate, complicated affair that was performed barefoot and had not one, not two, but thirteen separate sections. To make matters even worse, Xenia was overly fond of poking me with her cane whenever I got the smallest thing wrong, whether it was a step, a bow, or even a hand flourish. And I got them wrong quite frequently, given how bloody many of them there were. I still had the bruises on my arms, legs, and feet from our last session three days ago.

  “It’s just a dance,” Felton said. “Nothing important.”

  My hands clenched into fists. Oh, no. Just my time, energy, and effort. Nothing important at all. But I forced myself to keep my voice level again. “Who canceled the meeting?”

  “Vasilia, of course.”

  And just like that, all my anger, indignation, and resistance cracked away, like a brick bludgeoned to bits by a sledgehammer. I couldn’t summon up another word of protest. There was no point. Nothing I could say would change things. Not with Felton, and especially not with Vasilia. The crown princess always got her way. Vasilia always won, especially when it came to hurting me, just as she had ever since we were children.

  Still, once my surprise wore off, I frowned. The trip had been Cordelia’s idea. If anyone should be canceling anything, it should be the queen.

  “You can inform Xenia of the cancellation during the luncheon,” Felton continued.

  Not only had he casually dismissed all my months of hard work, but he was also going to make me break the bad news to Xenia, who would probably poke me with her cane for wasting her time as well. Terrific. Just bloody terrific.

  Felton stuck his pen into his book and snapped it shut. He didn’t even glance in my direction as he walked past me. “Well, come along then, E
verleigh. We wouldn’t want you to be any later than you already are. Then again, punctuality has never been one of your virtues. Not that you really have any virtues to start with.” He delivered the insults without breaking stride, which was impressive, even for him.

  A sick, empty feeling spread through my body. The same feeling that I had experienced countless times before. The same defeated, hollow feeling that I always had whenever Vasilia won and I lost.

  Damned if I did, damned if I didn’t. But that was duty for you, and I had as little choice in this matter as I did in all the others at the palace. So I sighed and trudged after Felton.

  Chapter Four

  Felton opened one of the glass double doors at the end of the hallway. He didn’t bother to hold it for me before he strode outside, and of course it slid shut before I could grab it. I sighed again, opened the door, and followed him.

  The royal lawn was one of the largest common areas, a mixture of stone and grass that stretched out for thousands of feet before a wall cordoned it off from the cliffs on this side of the mountain and the two-hundred-foot drop to the Summanus River below. Towering trees dotted the lawn, although their branches were brown and bare for the winter. The flower beds were brown and bare as well, except for a few hardier blossoms, like the ice violets and snow pansies that bloomed year-round. Cobblestone paths wound across the grass, many of them lined with iron benches where people could sit and enjoy the view of the city. The lawn was one of my favorite places, and I tilted my face to the sun, soaking up the surprising heat of the late January day.

  The royal lawn was used for all sorts of events, including dance recitals, concerts, and even stargazing. If there was a large enough crowd, wooden bleachers would be erected on the grass, turning the lawn into a makeshift arena. Today’s luncheon was on the small side, with fewer than two hundred guests, including the Andvarians, along with the Blair royal family and some notable nobles. A grand ball was planned for next week to properly celebrate the Andvarians’ visit and let them mix and mingle with Bellonan society.