Four Dead Queens(92)

Perhaps the darkness was kind; I could pretend I was somewhere else—somewhere bigger. Somewhere where breathing wasn’t painful, where I was not racked by nausea and heart palpitations.

Deep, ragged breaths in. Deep, ragged breaths out. I’m stuck in here. I’ll never get out.

My fear of confined spaces had complete control over my body and mind. I curled into a ball, hoping to make myself smaller and not be crushed within the room. My light-headedness was a constant companion in the dark.

The day after I’d been thrown down here, the inspector paid me a visit. He asked the same question over and over.

Why did I do it?

No matter how many times I told him I hadn’t, he wouldn’t believe me. Mackiel had bewitched them all with his lies, as he’d bewitched me at ten years old. Funny that it took his betrayal for me to finally see the truth. He’d tended to the greed in my heart, which had blossomed into a twisted vine, touching every part of me.

My throat was raw from screaming my innocence. While there were several cells in the underbelly of the palace’s prison, they were all empty—no inmates to keep me company. Had the guards removed them in fear of my superior assassination skills? Did they believe I could kill someone merely by looking at them? Guards were posted outside the door leading down to the prison, but they only visited to deliver my food with a side order of spit.

There was nothing to distract me from imagining myself rotting away. Skin turning to bones. Bones to ash. But that was silly. They’d kill me before that happened.

This cell was merely a precursor to the main event: my hanging. For a crime as serious as murder would be punished by their quadrant’s preferred method. And Toria favored the gentle caress of a rope around the neck.

Lucky me.

I wished I had that dagger now—my dipper bracelet—because I knew what to do with it. Find a nice home between two of Mackiel’s ribs.

Perhaps I was an assassin after all.



* * *



—

I KNEW THEY were planning to kill me the day the food started improving. It wasn’t normal prison food. It was we’re about to kill you, therefore you might as well enjoy it while you can food.

It was the evening of my third day in prison, and my sixth day within the palace. For dinner, they served me a piece of roast chicken with two gooey garlic bread rolls. My favorite.

I hurled the bread rolls across the room.

Mackiel. He must’ve told them my favorite meal. My final dinner.

He was playing me still.

I couldn’t let him win the final game between us. I let my fury ignite within me. I’d get out of here. I’d show Mackiel how well he’d trained me.

This was another job. Mackiel’s final lesson. The scenario: to be locked inside a cell with nothing but my wits. I didn’t even have buttons or zips or laces; the cutoffs from the old dresses were intentionally unembellished. The stiff material chafed against my skin, which became more sensitive the longer I sat hidden from fresh air and sun.

I needed something to pick the lock. Anything. But the guards hadn’t given me utensils; they knew all my tricks. I could use anything to escape. After all, I’d managed to break out of the processing room, sneak around the palace, and kill all four queens without anyone seeing me.

I laughed quietly to myself.

I ate the chicken and kept the small bones, hiding them under my bed. I would wait for them to harden until I could break them into shards.

Then break the cell lock.

I hoped there was enough time.





CHAPTER FORTY





Arebella



The days after the assassin’s arrest were the best in Arebella’s seventeen years. But she had to hide that fact. She needed to appear like a fish out of water, a grieving daughter, a fledgling queen, for a little while longer. Until it was acceptable to be the queen she was born to be. The queen she’d spent her lifetime becoming.

She’d waited this long; she could wait a few more weeks until her true capabilities showed. She’d run the scenarios through her mind late at night: days would be too short, but weeks wouldn’t be suspicious. Months? Well, she couldn’t wait that long.

Arebella knew her plot to rule Quadara wouldn’t be without opposition. If any blood relatives were found, then they could rightfully take their places, but Mackiel had promised they’d been taken care of, and no descendants would step forward—could step forward.

Still, it made Arebella nervous. Even inside the palace, there was a chance everything could fall down around her. Her perfect plan ruined. And while everything had gone smoothly thus far, she felt unsteady. One unruly, and unexpected, card could topple the entire pile. She wondered who or what that card might be and how she could remove it without collapsing her entire plan. Yes, she was inside the palace, but she was still waiting. Forever waiting. She was soon to be named queen of Toria, but that had never been her ambition. To change Toria and improve their standing, she needed to be queen of all the quadrants. If not, everything she’d done had been for nothing.

At night, while her mind ran through the details of what had come to pass, and what was still to come, the image of her dead mother could not be forgotten. Sometimes she imagined her mother speaking to her from the world without borders. She would say that she understood, that she was sorry she’d denied Arebella what was rightfully hers. Other times, she imagined her mother’s skin peeling back from a slice in her neck, black bile dripping from her lips, hair floating around her crown as though she were submerged in water, and red flames reflected in her eyes. She would point a bony finger at Arebella and open her mouth to scream, cursing her for everything she’d done to her and her sister queens.