Four Dead Queens(71)

Her spine.

I clenched my stomach and twisted back behind the wall. Before I could stop it, I doubled over and heaved. But there were no contents in my stomach. My last meal was yesterday.

What was worse than seeing her body slain like that was how the comm chips brought forth all the details I couldn’t see with my eyes: the thin knife in the killer’s hand, the feeling of the blade slicing through her skin like butter, the curtain of blood as it flowed down her neck and Queen Iris’s hands as they reached for her bloodied throat, then for the murderer, splattering the greenery around her.

There weren’t any red flowers. The red was blood.

I heaved again. And again.

My body convulsed a few more times until the shaking subsided.

With Queen Iris slain exactly as I’d seen it on the chips, it confirmed my suspicions. The comm chips were instructions on how to kill the queens, sent to the assassin from the person orchestrating the murders. Which meant that Mackiel had delivered the rerecorded chips to the assassin, or he was the assassin.

I had to tell Varin. The queens were being killed exactly as we saw it. The only question was who was next?



* * *



—

SINCE I’D LEFT the processing room, two guards had been posted on the outside door.

No one in, no one out.

Staying out of sight, I looked around for something—anything I could squeeze through and into the processing room. There had to be a way . . .

There. An air vent in the wall, low to the ground. There would have to be another leading to the processing room, allowing air into their makeshift prison hold.

I slid over the marble tiles, cursing as my split knee made contact with the floor. Varin was right, I needed it to heal, or I’d leave blood streaks wherever I went. I pulled my lock pick from my bracelet and began working the screws out one at a time. Once I’d removed the fourth screw, I lifted the grate and crawled through.

The ventilation shaft tunneled in two directions. I took the left.

The tumbling fear of small spaces was surprisingly comforting, momentarily blocking the image of blood splitting apart a pale neck and the red-stained hand that clutched the knife. If I kept moving, focused on something—even the pressure building in my chest—then I wouldn’t break.

I hadn’t seen that much blood since my father’s accident. Guilt began clutching my sides with ravenous claws.

Focus, Keralie. Focus.

The voices in the processing room had hushed to a murmur as those held captive resigned themselves to the fact they’d be detained indefinitely. As much as I hoped the assassin had been caught in this room, I doubted it.

I shivered, feeling as though the assassin’s shadow was attached to me, walking the palace halls and now shuffling through the ventilation shaft merely a whisper behind me.

The exit vent opened into the processing room at floor level. I couldn’t see much from the ground, only pants, dress hems and shoes. Some people had sat down, indignant about their predicament. Others, mostly Eonists, refused to sit, standing still. Standing out.

Varin.

He wasn’t far from the vent’s exit, but too far for me to call out without attracting attention from the guards. I needed a way back into the room, and there was only one way to enter a room unnoticed.

Create a distraction.

This was going to require a more sophisticated trick than tripping someone. It needed to be something bigger. Louder.

The guards’ amplifiers. Yes. That would work.

I quickly shuffled back along the ventilation shaft, ignoring the tightness in my chest, and unfurled out into the corridor. While it was still empty, life was returning to the palace; heels clicked and clacked against the floors, and voices carried from down the hallway.

Get in quick. Get out quicker.

Only two guards were posted at the entrance to the processing room. I grinned; they made this too easy.

I studied my bracelet before removing a ball-shaped charm. Mackiel had given it to me for my first job. “It will be like taking candy from a baby,” he’d said. Which, of course, was exactly what he’d asked me to do. Something he’d already perfected at the age of six. “But you must take it without the baby realizing it’s gone.”

It had sounded easy enough at the time. A baby would have a short attention span. A baby wouldn’t fight back. A baby couldn’t have me arrested.

Only I hadn’t realized that when a baby had something they wanted in their grasp—something they loved—it wasn’t that easy to distract them. In the end, I had to buy another piece of candy to swap with the child. I hadn’t known back then that Mackiel was always watching. I thought he hadn’t discovered my trick. Years later, I realized he appreciated my resourcefulness.

He’d rewarded me that day with the small round charm. The first of many.

I threw the charm down the corridor to the right of me. It smashed into tiny fragments of glass.

“Bastard,” I muttered under my breath. He’d told me the charm was a precious stone.

The guards immediately moved into action; one gestured to the other to follow the noise. As soon as he left, I was behind the other guard, my hand in his pocket, removing the amplifier.

The other guard called back, “It’s just a piece of glass, must’ve fallen from a chandelier.”

Before he had the chance to return to his posting, I was back inside the vent, the amplifier in hand.