Four Dead Queens(67)

Another spasm jerked deep inside. She curled into a ball and howled in agony. Not much longer! she begged to the queens watching silently from above. Please. Make it stop!

“I’m sorry, my queen,” Lali said, her head bowed. “I had to tell the advisors about your daughter. For Quadara.”

Marguerite wanted to rip her hand out of Lali’s, but she didn’t have the strength. She had trusted her. Trusted she would never utter those words again. Your daughter. But Lali had betrayed her, and now Jenri asked for the impossible. He had decided Toria was more important than her wishes, more important than her daughter’s well-being.

But that was not his decision, nor her handmaiden’s, to make.

“Please,” Jenri said. “You must tell me where she is. Tell me to save your quadrant, to save the nation.”

“I cannot,” she replied. “She is not prepared.” But it was worse than that. Much worse, for how could her daughter be ready to take the Torian throne when she did not even know she was of royal blood? She would not thrust her daughter into this life without any warning. And the palace was no longer the safe place Marguerite had thought it to be.

But what would that mean for her beloved Toria and the rest of Quadara? Marguerite was a rare queen; when she’d first entered the palace, she found she could not focus solely on her quadrant. She wanted to be involved in all decisions. She wanted to make Quadara stronger, not only Toria. Now the nation was shattered, and the only solution was to give up her child’s whereabouts.

“There’s no one else,” Jenri said. He looked truly remorseful for the situation they had found themselves in. “You know I would never ask something of you unless I had no other options.”

“Anyone else,” she rasped, her eyes wildly bouncing around the room. “Please, Jenri. If this happened to me, then it is sure to happen to her as well.”

Too young. Far too young.

Lali knew how much this secret had cost Marguerite over the years. She knew it was worth everything to her—to ensure her daughter was kept separate from this world.

How could she?

Someone gripped her chin as her eyes rolled into the back of her head. The pain in her chest was too much, and the fatigue too aggressive. Marguerite longed for stillness.

The machine attached to her started beeping wildly.

“We’re losing her,” the doctor said. “We have minutes left.”

“Tell us, Queen Marguerite,” someone begged. Marguerite’s vision was tinted black. “Tell us to save Quadara!”

“There are no other female relatives,” someone said. “We cannot find anyone to take the other thrones. Toria is our only hope. You are our only hope!”

Marguerite shuddered, breaths leaving her body in gasps. She couldn’t give up her child to this wicked palace of darkness and death. She was a mother, and although she hadn’t seen her child since her birth, she had to protect her daughter.

She was also a queen.

Sworn to protect Toria, sworn to keep the peace between the quadrants. With no queens, Quadara would fall to chaos. The nations across the seas would turn their eyes toward the wealthiest nation. Quadara needed to remain strong.

Could she continue to choose her daughter’s future over the nation’s?

“Queen Marguerite,” the inspector began. “We need to—”

“No!” she cried. “Leave me be!”

But someone gripped her shoulders. Jenri. “We will protect her. I will protect her. I will not allow this tragedy to reoccur, but we need to protect Queenly Law. We need to save Quadara.”

Marguerite wanted to laugh. Jenri had not stopped the poison from being sprinkled across her precious maps; the inspector had not stopped the assassin from slaying her sister queens. How could they stop a shadow without a name?

She closed her eyes and bit her lip as another spasm took hold. Was it her imagination, or did it feel less aggressive? Her body went numb, as though floating to the queens who awaited her arrival. Her beloved sister queens.

“Queen Marguerite,” a voice called to her from this world, grounding her. “This is what you’ve spent your life working toward. Don’t let it fall to ruin. Don’t let the assassin win!” It was Lali. “Don’t let them destroy Toria!”

You will make it up to them, Iris had said years ago when Marguerite had fretted over what she’d done to Toria by hiding her daughter. It was a decision that had haunted her every day since.

Was this the moment Iris had meant? A chance to redeem herself? But what about her daughter? Her safety? With an assassin loose in the palace, how could she knowingly bring her into this?

Marguerite rolled her head. “Do you swear it, Jenri?” she asked, her eyes trying to find him. “Swear she will be safe?”

“Yes, my queen,” he replied from somewhere beside her. “She will be safe here, with me. I will go, alone, to retrieve her. I will not leave her side while she’s here and until we find the assassin. I promise you. Toria and your daughter will be safe from harm.”

If Jenri promised to care for her daughter, ensuring nothing happened to her, then they could still save Quadara.

Seventeen years ago, she’d placed her daughter’s well-being above the nation’s. She broke Queenly Law. Now was the chance to make things right. And she wouldn’t only make it up to her people; she’d make it up to Quadara. She had to. With all queens dead, this was the only option. Jenri would bring her daughter to the palace and teach her the ways of the queens now passed.