Capture the Crown

by Estep, Jennifer

  I didn’t know if he heard my snide thoughts, but Leonidas squared his shoulders and stepped forward, as though he was going to come and help me, and damn the consequences—

  Several liladorn vines shot out of the secret passageway and wrapped around the prince’s arms, stopping him.

  What are you doing? Leonidas’s voice filled my mind, even though he was talking to the vines. Stop! Stop!

  The liladorn didn’t listen. Instead, the vines dragged him back into the passageway. A moment later, the door slid shut, cutting off Leonidas from the workshop.

  Armina! His voice sounded in my mind again. Get out of there!

  His voice quickly grew fainter, as though the liladorn was pulling him away from the workshop and back through the secret passageway toward the rookery. Still, Leonidas’s abrupt departure gave me an idea.

  I curled my hands around the vines and focused on the tangle of thorns in front of my face. Help me. I sent the thought to the liladorn. Please.

  Nothing happened. No vines twitched, no thorns quivered, no voices sounded in my mind. Apparently, the liladorn only concerned itself with the Morricones.

  Down below, the door opened a little wider, and footsteps shuffled forward. I closed my eyes and banged my head on the vines in frustration. This was it. This was the end. Milo would discover me in his workshop and sound the alarm. If I was lucky, he would blast me off the wall with his lightning, and the fall would kill me outright—

  A vine snaked around my ankle.

  I choked down a surprised shriek, but I jerked back without thinking, and my heels slipped off the vine that I was standing on. I started to fall—

  The liladorn caught me.

  Another, larger vine shot out and curled around my waist, and I hung in midair, like a puppet suspended over a stage. Then the liladorn hoisted me up next to the window. I reached out, intending to open the window and crawl outside onto the roof, but once again, the liladorn had other ideas. The vines whipped me around, then plastered me up against the wall. My head snapped back against the stone, causing a dull ache to bloom in my skull.

  Another vine crept toward me, then another one, then another one. In seconds, the liladorn had covered my entire body, except for my face. I felt like a fly stuck in a spider’s web. A very hard, thorny spider’s web.

  Did liladorn vines drink human blood? I shuddered. Oh, I hoped not.

  I tried to move, to escape, to reach the window that was so tantalizingly close, but the vines were as hard as stone, and I couldn’t budge them. A thorn whipped out and dragged along my right cheek, not quite deep enough to break my skin, but more than enough to get my attention.

  Stop struggling, a stern voice sounded in my mind. Helping.

  Helping? I didn’t know about that, but I quit moving. I didn’t have another choice.

  Down below, Milo finally strode through the open door. “You’re right. It is past time that I showed you my workshop.”

  He held out his hand. Another giggle sounded, and a woman stepped into the room.

  Emperia Dumond.

  My eyes bulged with shock. I had expected Milo’s paramour to be Corvina, his fiancée, not her mother. What was Emperia doing here?

  She wasn’t . . . They weren’t actually . . .

  Milo drew the older woman into his arms and crushed his lips to hers, while Emperia swooned into his embrace. Waves of lust rolled off both of them, making me even more uncomfortable than the vines still wrapped around my body. If I had to stay up here and watch them . . . Well, that would be almost as bad as being caught. Almost.

  Emperia broke off the heated kiss and trailed her hands up and down Milo’s chest. He started to yank her toward him again, but she put a finger up against his lips, stopping him.

  “Business first,” she murmured. “Pleasure later.”

  Milo leered down at her. “Isn’t it all one and the same?”

  “When destroying our enemies? Absolutely,” she purred.

  Milo reached around and pinched her ass, making Emperia gasp with surprise. Then he turned to the side and held out his arm, playing the part of the polite prince. Emperia threaded her arm through his, and he led her through the workshop, pointing out various tables and objects.

  I listened closely to everything he said, but Milo did an excellent job of talking about his experiments in vague terms, using phrases like unusual properties and shows great promise, without revealing what he actually hoped to accomplish with his tinkerings. Smart of him to employ such a tactic. He was far more cunning than I’d realized.

  Emperia smiled, nodded, and murmured the appropriate responses, although annoyance kept pinching her face, as though she too was frustrated with his obtuse talk.

  Finally, Milo reached the table with the piles of books. He moved several of them aside, clearly searching for something. My hand fisted in my skirt. I knew what he was looking for—the arrow in my pocket.

  “You promised to show me an example of your new weapon,” Emperia cooed. “I’m most eager to see it.”

  Irritation filled Milo’s face, although his back was to Emperia, so she didn’t see it. “I thought I had left one in here. I must have put it in the old armory with the others.”

  He shrugged, as if the arrow’s location was of little importance, but I latched onto his words. Old armory? Was that where he was keeping the tearstone? And just how many arrows had he crafted out of it?

  “Perhaps we can go there tomorrow morning, and you can show it to me then,” Emperia said. “I should be able to sneak away from Corvina.”

  Milo nodded. “Very well.”

  Emperia eyed him, a calculating look on her face. “Maeven will not approve of any of this. Not your new weapon, and especially not us. If she were to find out what we’re planning, well, death would be a blessing, rather than the prolonged torture she would inflict on us.”

  Milo huffed. “I am well aware of what my mother is capable of, but I can handle her. I’m almost as strong in my magic as she is.”

  “Almost isn’t good enough,” Emperia replied in a sharp tone. “Not where Maeven is concerned.”

  For the first time tonight, I agreed with her. Maeven was an extremely powerful lightning magier, which made her a dangerous enemy, but even more impressive was the fact that she had held on to her throne for the last sixteen years, despite all the potential usurpers in Myrkvior. No, as much as I despised the Mortan queen, Maeven was most definitely not to be taken lightly, or worse, underestimated.

  Milo rolled his eyes. “My mother is getting older and weaker every single day. You saw her tonight. She left her own birthday dinner early, rather than stay and shore up her support with the nobles. She never would have made such a glaring mistake in years past.”

  “Leaving a dinner early doesn’t mean anything,” Emperia replied, her voice even sharper than before.

  Milo finally noticed her tone, and he peered down his nose at her. “I told you before—I will handle my mother when the time comes. If you’re having second thoughts, then perhaps I should find another ally. Someone who isn’t so interested in questioning my judgment.”

  Emperia’s lips pressed together, as though she didn’t appreciate him making light of her concerns. She was right to be worried. I would have been worried too, if I were plotting against Maeven.

  “Besides, my mother won’t be queen for much longer,” Milo continued. “We’ll put our plan into action as scheduled. First, we’ll take the palace. Then, when all my weapons are ready, we’ll turn our sights toward our true enemies.”

  So Milo was planning to wrest the throne away from Maeven. No surprise there, but I wondered who he considered his true enemies. Andvari? Bellona? Ryusama? He could be targeting any one of them. Or perhaps he was as ambitious as King Maximus had been and wanted to conquer all the kingdoms.

  Emperia’s concern melted into a sly, seductive smile, and she stepped forward and started toying with the gold buttons on Milo’s jacket. “I do have one request regarding your
mother.”

  “What?”

  Her smile took on a toothy edge. “I want to be there when you finally give that arrogant bitch what she so richly deserves.”

  “Of course,” Milo replied. “You’ve been so helpful supplying the men and the funds I needed to secure the tearstone and smuggle it out of Andvari. I promise that you’ll be right by my side when I finally tear my mother down off her throne.”

  My eyes narrowed. So Emperia was financing Milo’s scheme. Smart of the prince to get the noble to pay for his border raids. Still, the information only increased my worry. Dealing with the Morricones was bad enough, but the Dumonds were equally dangerous. An alliance between the two families could spell disaster for Andvari.

  “And what will you do with Maeven afterward?” Emperia’s voice sounded casual, but her long red nails dug into Milo’s jacket, indicating how important his answer was to her.

  Milo shrugged again. “I’ll have to kill her. She’s too stupid to realize that she’s already lost, and she’ll fight for the throne until the bitter end.”

  Even though Leonidas had said that his brother was plotting against Maeven, more shock still spiked through me. Milo was talking about assassinating the queen, his own mother. No, not just talking about it—actively planning it with a noble rich and powerful enough to help him pull it off.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised, though. If the Seven Spire massacre had taught me nothing else, it was that assassinations, even of queens, were easy enough to arrange.

  Emperia nodded, as if satisfied with Milo’s answer. “What about your brother and sister? They won’t take your mother’s death very well.”

  Milo shrugged yet again. “Leonidas and I have never seen eye to eye. He’s always been soft and weak. Always wanting to broker peace with the other kingdoms rather than bringing them to heel under Mortan rule like they should be. I’ll kill him too. That way he can’t cause us any trouble.”

  Worry churned in my stomach, and twin spikes of fear and dread skewered my heart. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about Leonidas, but he had saved me from the mine, and I didn’t want him to be killed, especially not so Milo could seize power.

  Emperia nodded again. “And Delmira?”

  “If she makes too much of a fuss, then yes, I will kill her too,” Milo replied in a flat, emotionless voice. “But I doubt that she’ll do anything more strenuous than cry. Delmira doesn’t have enough magic to threaten me, so I’ll marry her off to some lord in search of a young, pretty wife. Someone rich and loyal, who shares my vision for Morta.”

  Emperia nodded for a third time, apparently pleased by his plotting. Then another seductive smile spread across her face. “I must return to my chambers soon, before Corvina wonders where I’ve been. But before I go, perhaps we can finish what we started in the hallway.” She tilted her head toward the open archway. “That looks like a perfectly serviceable bed.”

  Milo grinned. “I do so love experiments. Let’s test out your theory.”

  He leaned forward and kissed her neck, even as his hands slid down her back and he pinched her ass again. Emperia let out another girlish giggle and wrapped her arms around his neck, a triumphant smirk filling her face. Milo might think he was in charge, but the noble lady definitely had her own agenda. She was probably just using him to kill Maeven, and then she would turn around and kill him, clearing her own path to the throne.

  Milo started walking Emperia backward toward the archway. She giggled again, then took his hand and tugged him into the other room. A few seconds later, springs squeak-squeak-squeaked as they dropped down onto the bed. After that, well, I tried to block out their passionate sounds, although I wasn’t entirely successful.

  Once I was sure that Milo and Emperia were fully . . . engaged, I reached out with my magic, speaking to the liladorn again.

  Let me go now. Please.

  The vines quivered, then slowly loosened their grip and retreated. I turned around, plastered my chest up against the wall, and tiptoed over to the window.

  I tried to open the window, but the frame was stuck. Frustration filled me, but I forced myself to stop and listen. Milo and Emperia were still engaged with each other, so I sent out a tiny trickle of magic, just enough to loosen the frame.

  It screeched as I lifted it, but no shouts rang out, so I pushed the frame up as high as it would go, then hooked my leg over the sill and crawled out of Milo Morricone’s workshop of horrors.

  * * *

  The window opened up onto a steep, sloping roof that was cold and slick with frost. As soon as I was outside, I used my magic to shut the frame behind me. Hopefully, Milo and Emperia would be too distracted to sense my small bursts of power.

  My relief didn’t last long, though. I might have escaped the workshop, but I was still stuck on a roof, some five stories above the ground. I started to get to my feet, but one of my heels slipped, so I took off the shoes and shoved them into my pockets. The frost burned my hands and feet, but my skin sticking to the stone made for much better traction. I sat on my ass and slowly wiggled down the roof, making sure not to go too fast lest I slide off and plummet to the courtyard far, far below. Nothing would save me from a fall that high.

  I reached the bottom of the roof, where a stone gutter cordoned it off from the open air. I glanced around, trying to figure out how to get off this roof and onto the one below, and I spotted a drainpipe at the corner that ran down vertically to the next level of the palace. The drainpipe was also slick with frost, but I gripped the stone with my toes and used my magic to anchor my hands around it. Then I lowered myself down the drainpipe an inch at a time.

  It was difficult, but I managed to climb down one story. A balcony jutted out from this level, and I stepped over onto the railing. Perhaps I could slip back inside this way—

  A door opened, and Corvina Dumond strolled out onto the balcony.

  I froze, with one arm still hooked around the drainpipe and my feet on the narrow railing. Then my mind kicked into gear, and I plastered myself up against the palace wall, hiding as best I could in the shadows. My heart pounded, and sweat dripped down the back of my neck as I waited for the inevitable shouts of surprise and discovery.

  But they never came.

  Instead, an arm snaked around Corvina’s waist, and a man stepped forward and kissed the side of her neck, making her giggle just like her mother had. I grimaced at the eerily familiar sound. Corvina moved into a patch of light, revealing the man behind her.

  Captain Wexel.

  I almost fell off the balcony railing. First Milo and Emperia. Now Corvina and Wexel. Was no one here fucking whom they were supposed to be fucking? Myrkvior was an even more duplicitous place than I’d realized.

  Corvina whirled around to face Wexel. She looped her arms around his neck and gave him a pretty pout. “I thought you had to work. That’s what you said earlier when I asked you to meet me here.”

  Wexel pulled her closer. “I managed to get out of guarding Milo’s chambers. I’d much rather plunder yours.”

  Corvina giggled again and batted her lashes at the captain. “Did you stay long enough to see my mother sneak into Milo’s workshop?”

  Once again, I almost fell off the railing. Corvina knew about her mother’s affair with her fiancé?

  “You were right,” Wexel said. “Emperia seems to have Milo wrapped around her little finger. He was quite eager to get her alone in his workshop.”

  Corvina nodded, as if she had expected the information.

  The captain frowned. “Doesn’t it bother you? Your mother and Milo? He is your fiancé.”

  She shrugged. “Milo is just a means to an end. The only reason we got engaged is because Maeven wants to broker a lasting peace between the Morricones and the Dumonds. She thinks once Milo and I are married that my family will finally bow down and accept her rule. But that will never happen, not as long as one Dumond lives. She’s killed far too many of us over the years, including my grandmother.”

  Cor
vina’s face hardened, anger sparked in her eyes, and a few small gray hailstones flew out of her fingertips. I’d thought no one could hate Maeven more than me, but I was starting to think I was wrong about that—and a great many other things.

  “So I’ll go along with the engagement and smile and pretend that everything is fine. Let my mother fuck Milo all she wants in the meantime. It will save me the trouble of climbing into his bed.” Corvina’s red lips curled with disgust.

  Wexel’s eyes narrowed. “What are you planning?”

  “I’m not planning anything. Even better, I don’t have to actually do anything. That’s the beauty of this whole situation. Emperia thinks she’s being clever, manipulating Milo, and he thinks he’s doing the same to her. Let them plot and scheme to kill Maeven. If they succeed, then I will heartily applaud them.”

  “And then?” he asked.

  Corvina smiled, but it was a cold, cruel expression. “And then, when the time is right, I will get rid of Milo and my mother, and I will be the one sitting on the Mortan throne. With my loyal captain by my side, of course.”

  She stood on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his. Wexel growled and yanked her even closer. Their loud, smacking kiss went on for quite some time before they broke apart.

  Wexel brushed a stray lock of Corvina’s hair back over her shoulder. “What if Milo and Emperia fail? What if the queen is the one who comes out on top?”

  Corvina shrugged again. “Then Maeven will most likely kill my mother, and Milo too. I’ll claim that I had no idea what my mother was scheming, and Maeven will have no choice but to believe me. She still needs my family and our magic, money, and connections too badly to get rid of me as well. Then, after an appropriate amount of tears and groveling, I’ll suggest to Maeven that I get engaged to Leonidas to heal this ugly rift between our families. I’ll handle Leonidas the same way I have Milo, with soft words and sweet promises I never keep.”

  She grinned. “Then, when the time is right, I’ll stick a dagger in Leonidas’s back and slit Maeven’s throat. It might take longer than I want, but make no mistake. One way or another, I will be queen of Morta.”