The Orphan Queen (The Orphan Queen #1)(91)

“You won’t turn me in, will you?” His expression was twisted with fear and sadness.

It was hard to tell from our ledge, but I didn’t think it was my people we had to worry about. His were burning up the city. A wheeled tower filled with people banged against the stone wall of the palace, and men jumped onto balconies and through windows. Were my parents safe? What about Melanie and my other friends?

“Wilhelmina?”

I met Tobiah’s eyes and tried to ignore our great height, the stink of fires, and the cold in my toes. “No. No matter what our fathers are fighting about, General Lien never should have taken you.” Kings and queens were supposed to be good and fair. They always were in stories.

I shivered as thunder crashed again. But it wasn’t thunder. It was buildings exploding in the city.

It hadn’t been thunder that had awakened me.

Tobiah took my hand, his fingers warm around mine. “If my side wins and they ask who you are, don’t tell them your name. Lie. You don’t want to be the Princess of Aecor when they’re coming to retrieve the Crown Prince of the Indigo Kingdom.”

He was right. I didn’t want to be me.

I squeezed his hand and watched as my world burned down and men in indigo slaughtered men in red. When the Indigo Army found us on the ledge, they put me in a group with other castle children. I told them my name was Mina and Tobiah told them I’d saved his life.

I was spared. My parents were not. My kingdom was not.

I was there when the war began.

And when it ended.





THIRTY-TWO


MY BODY ACHED as I approached the gloomy old castle. The bag strap dug into my shoulder, all my belongings weighing me down. Clouds covered the sky, leaving the world in heavy, palpable blackness. The wraithy wind that blew in from the west bore breaths of freezing and destruction.

I had to hurry.

I whistled the four-note signal as I walked through the outer curtain, a hulking, mossy shadow in the darkness. While I waited for someone to disarm the traps around the state apartments door, I knelt and groped through my bag. Black Knife hadn’t lied when he’d said he found all my things. There was the shape of my notebook, my grappling hook and line, my daggers, and several other weapons. Even my stolen sword.

“You’re a pretty poor vigilante these days, Black Knife,” I muttered as I hooked my weapons to my belt and slipped my other supplies—lockpicks, matches, a coil of silver wire—into my pocket. “Though I suppose you probably paid for my sword.”

For a whole three heartbeats, I entertained the image of an ink-cloaked boy approaching a terrified blacksmith, flinging money at the counter. But I remembered our inevitable war, Lady Meredith, and magic: things that would always come between us.

“Wil?” Melanie’s voice came from the doorway. Candlelight flickered as she shoved the stick at someone else, and boots thudded on the ground. Her arms wrapped around me, squeezing tight. “Wil, you’re safe.”

All my aches forgotten, I hugged her back and breathed in the familiar scent of my best friend. “I was so worried about you.”

“You too.” She squeezed and stepped back, holding me at arm’s length. “What happened? I got out of the palace, but couldn’t get back in without being spotted. There were so many guards. I waited around for a while, until I heard they caught Black Knife—a girl—and that she’d killed the king, and she only got caught because she went back to kill the prince, too.”

Who made up these rumors?

“I’ll tell you everything later. But first, there’s something I have to say to everyone. Are the Ospreys all here?”

“Yes.” She grabbed my bag and leaned into me again, voice low. “It was Patrick. You were right.”

My stomach tumbled, and I wished I didn’t know Black Knife’s identity. Then I wouldn’t have cared as much that Patrick had killed Tobiah’s father. Though I had no love for King Terrell, my feelings toward his son were . . . immeasurably different. Immeasurably complicated.

I dragged my gloved fingertips over my daggers as Melanie led me to the state apartments door. Connor waited there, wide-eyed and pale.

“Wil!” He thrust the candle to one side and hugged me with his free arm. “I was so worried. You stopped writing to me.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” Pretending I didn’t hear his hiccup and sniff, I smoothed back his hair and whispered, “I missed you, too. Have you been strong?”

He gave a stiff nod. “Even when I thought I couldn’t be, I made myself strong. Looking at your old notes helped.”

“Good.” I kissed the top of his head, too exhausted and relieved to hold back affection. “I’m proud of you.”

On the way into the common room, I met several other Ospreys. I traded embraces with Theresa, Oscar, Ronald, Carl, Kevin, and Paige, and finally, as I entered the common room, lit with a roaring fire and candles all around, I found Patrick staring out the window, his hands clasped behind his back.

“Welcome, Wilhelmina.” He didn’t turn around. The fire threw splinters of light and shadow across his back and the short crop of his hair. The set of his shoulders said he was displeased, and again I wondered if a dead queen was easier to fight for than a defiant one. Was he disappointed I’d been set free?