Protect the Prince (Crown of Shards #2)(19)

Chapter Five


I left Sullivan standing at the wall and headed over to Serilda and Cho, who met me in the middle of the lawn.

“Sorry to disturb you,” Cho said in a cheery tone, “but we thought it best to come fetch you before your loyal subjects decided to swarm you again.”

I eyed the nobles. Fullman kept glaring at Sullivan, while Diante was talking to her grandsons and gesturing at me, as if she was trying to get one or all of them to come over and try to woo me.

“I suppose I should be grateful that Fullman and Diante didn’t demand that I marry someone right then and there in the throne room.”

“Too bad they didn’t,” Serilda drawled. “It would have been amusing watching you dance your way out of that.”

I gave her a sour look. “You’re enjoying my misery far too much. You’re the one who put me in this position, remember? You’re the one who made me queen.”

“You made yourself queen,” she corrected. “And I’m not enjoying your misery.”

“Much,” I accused.

She grinned. “Much,” she agreed. “But misery or not, our job is to keep you alive. Dealing with the nobles and their petty schemes is up to you, Evie.”

I sighed. Sometimes I thought that being queen was like trying to wrangle a pond full of baby ducks that were constantly squawking at, swimming circles around, and trying to drown me, all at the same time. Quack, quack, quack.

“But you handled the nobles well,” Cho chimed in, trying to put a positive spin on things.

I resisted the urge to throw up my hands in exasperation. “Why does everyone seem so surprised by that?”

Serilda shrugged. “Because no one remembers that you’ve been here all along, watching the nobles, learning their games, and surviving their schemes. But after today, none of them will forget it again. I heard several of them inside, whispering and frantically trying to remember every mean and nasty thing they ever said about or did to you.”

I snorted. “Well, that should keep them busy for a good long while.”

Cho chuckled. “Yes, it should.”

I scanned the lawn, searching for the rest of our friends. “Where are the others? Have you learned anything about the assassin yet?”

“Theroux is questioning the kitchen staff, trying to find out how long that girl had been working here,” Serilda said. “Auster is doing the same with the guards, trying to track her movements through the palace and determine if she ever went into the city. Xenia is searching the girl’s room, and I asked Paloma to get Sullivan to examine the goblet and the dagger, to see if he can figure out what kind of poison she used.”

In the distance, one of the glass doors opened. Paloma strode outside and headed toward Sullivan.

I turned back to Serilda and Cho. “And what are we going to do?”

“We’re going to get some answers about your would-be assassin, Maeven, and everything else,” Serilda replied.

“How are we going to do that? The girl is dead.”

“Yes, but there is someone else at Seven Spire who is still very much alive.” She grinned again, but this time her expression was cold and predatory instead of warm and friendly. “And I am very much looking forward to getting answers out of him—one way or another.”

*

I followed Serilda and Cho back inside the palace. We walked to the end of a hallway, pushed through a door, and went down a set of stairs. Then another set of stairs, then another. It didn’t take me long to realize where we were going.

The palace dungeon.

Located on the very bottom level of Seven Spire, deep within the belly of the mountain, these hallways were dim and empty. The only sound was the faint rasp of our boots against the flagstones, but the murky shadows and eerie quiet soothed me. At least no one was plotting against me down here.

Our twisting, turning route took us past a large, gaping hole in one of the walls. Serilda, Cho, and I stopped and peered through the opening.

A beautiful stained-glass door used to stand here, fronting the workshop of Alvis, the royal jeweler I had been apprenticed to for years. Xenia had told me that she and Gemma had fled down here during the massacre and that Alvis had used his metalstone magic to collapse the wall and ceiling to stop the turncoat guards from reaching them. Then the three of them had escaped using a secret passageway in Alvis’s workshop.

Sometime during Vasilia’s brief reign, the crushed stones had been removed, as had the jewels, tools, and tables that had filled Alvis’s workshop, leaving it an empty, hollow shell. I drew in a breath, but I couldn’t even sense the metallic tang of his magic anymore.

Sadness rippled through me, along with anger that Vasilia had taken something else away from me, even though she was dead, but I pushed the emotions aside. The most important things were that Alvis was alive and well and that I would see him and Gemma during my trip to Andvari.

Serilda didn’t say anything, but the scent of her salty grief filled the air. She didn’t enjoy seeing Alvis’s workshop like this either. Cho reached over and squeezed her shoulder. She nodded at him, then walked on, and Cho and I followed her.

A few minutes later, we arrived at a door at the end of a long hallway. Instead of a regular door, this one was an enormous round dome, as if half of a silver shield had been set into the wall. A single figure was inlaid in the center of the metal—a woman with a braid trailing over her shoulder and a sword in her hand who seemed to be glaring at anyone who dared to approach. Another image of Bryn Blair, my ancestor and the first queen of Bellona.