When she looked up, the black mass in the air was gone. Instead, a man towered above her, handsome beyond words. His pure black hair swept back from a perfect patrician face, gaunt cheekbones offset by a thick, full-lipped mouth. A beautiful man, but the Queen wasn’t fooled by that beauty anymore. Red eyes glittered coldly down at her.
“As high as I set you, I can bring you low,” the dark thing informed her steadily. “I have lived longer even than you, Mort Queen. I see the beginning and the end. You will not harm the Tear heir.”
“Will I fail?” She couldn’t imagine it; the Tearling had no steel and a lounging army with a geriatric commander. Even the girl couldn’t change that. “Will an invasion fail?”
“You will not invade the Tearling,” the dark thing repeated.
“What am I to do?” she asked in desperation. “My army is restless. The people are restless.”
“Your problems are not mine, Mort Queen. Your problems are merely motes of dust in my sight. Now give me my price.”
Shaking, the Queen pointed toward the bed. She didn’t dare disobey the thing above her, but without new slaves, the situation would continue to worsen. She thought of her recurring dream, which came every night now: the man in grey, the necklace, the girl, the firestorm behind her. The real reason for her insomnia had become painfully obvious; she was afraid to sleep.
Behind her, she heard a slithering noise, the low hiss of the thing’s breath. She curled up tightly on the floor, cradling her injured hip, and wrapped an arm around her head, trying not to listen. But it was no good. A gurgling sound came from the direction of the bed, and then the slave boy screamed, his high, unbroken voice echoing around the walls of the chamber. The Queen tightened her arms around her head, tensing the muscles of her ears until there was only a thick roaring inside her eardrums. She stayed that way, eyes and ears shut tightly, until it seemed that hours must have passed, that it must be done.
She rolled over, opened her eyes, and screamed. The dark thing was right above her, its face inches from her own, its red gaze staring down at her. Its full lips were smeared with blood.
“I sense your disobedience, Mort Queen. Even now, I can taste it in my mouth. But betrayal has a price; I know that better than anyone. Harm the Tear heir, and you will feel my wrath, darker than your darkest dream. Do you wish that?”
The Queen shook her head frantically. Her nipples were rock-hard now, almost aching, and she moaned as the thing slithered off her, licking the last of the blood from its lips. The fire went out, plunging the room into darkness.
The Queen rolled to her other side. Grasping the oak foot of her bed, she began the slow process of hauling herself to her feet. Her hip shrieked as she made it into a squat. She explored the deep, angry welt with her fingers . . . a bad burn, one that would scar. A surgeon could fix it, but use of a surgeon would also prove that she could still be injured. No, the Queen realized, she would have to live with the scar.
Crossing the room by touch, she fumbled around at her desk. There was a candle on her bedside table, but she couldn’t bear to go over there in the dark. Something brushed her hand and the Queen gave a small squeal of fright. But it was only a spider, scuttling along in its own alien doings. Her other hand closed on the unmistakable shape of a candle and she lit it, gasping with relief. Her chambers were empty. She was alone.
The Queen wiped sweat from her forehead and cheeks; the rest of her naked body was damp as well. But her legs moved as though driven, propelling her to stand beside the bed. Taking a deep breath, she looked down at the boy.
He had been bled. Even by candlelight, she could see the pallor beneath his dark skin. The thing always used the cut she’d made; the first few times, she’d asked her pages to check the bodies for other incisions, but eventually she stopped. It wasn’t anything she wanted to know. The boy’s spine was arched nearly to breaking, one arm pulled so far from its socket that it hung limp and twisted behind him on the scarlet bedspread. His mouth was wide, frozen in a scream. His eyes were empty sockets, drained even of blood, viscous holes that stared past the Queen at nothing.
What do they see? she wondered. Certainly not the same pretty face the dark thing put on for her. All of them looked like this; there were subtle variations, but it was always the same. If not for the eyes, she might have thought the boy dead from pure fright.
Now her stomach began to churn, bile climbing up the back of her throat. The Queen turned and ran for the bathroom, one hand clamped across her mouth, her eyes wide and hunted.
She nearly made it.
Chapter 13
Awakening
In comparing the Glynn Queen to the Red Queen, we find few similarities. They were very different rulers, and we now know that they were motivated by very different goals. I should note that both queens displayed iron will, a shared ability to take the quickest route to what needed to be done. Yet history also gives us ample demonstration that the Glynn Queen, unlike the Red Queen, often tempered her judgments with pity. Indeed, many historians find this to be the crucial difference between the two . . .
—PROFESSOR JESSICA FENN, LECTURE TRANSCRIPT, UNIVERSITY OF THE TEARLING, 458 MARCH
Lady.”
Something cool swiped her forehead, and Kelsea turned her head, trying to ignore it. Mace had awakened her out of . . . nothing. No dream she could remember, only a sleep as cool and dark and endless as she’d ever had in her life, thousands of miles traveled in unfathomable waters. Her own Crossing, and she had no urge to return.
“Lady.”
Mace’s voice was tight with anxiety. She should wake up and let him know she was all right. But the darkness was so warm. It was like being wrapped in velvet.
“She’s breathing too slowly. We should get her to a doctor.”
“What doctor could help her now?”
“I just thought—”
“They don’t train doctors in magic, Pen, only healers, and most of them are frauds anyway. We just have to wait.”
Kelsea could hear each of them breathing above her, Mace heavy and Pen shallow. Her senses had sharpened; emerging from the depths one layer at a time, she could hear a man singing softly and the whinny of a horse some distance away.
“Did she bring the flood, sir?”
“God knows, Pen.”
“Did the old Queen ever do anything like that?”
“Elyssa?” Mace began to laugh. “Christ, I watched Elyssa wear both jewels for years, and their most extraordinary feat was getting stuck in her dress. We were in the middle of a reception for the Cadarese, and it took us thirty minutes to untangle the damned things with her modesty intact.”
“I think the Queen brought the flood. I think it took everything out of her.”
“She’s breathing, Pen. She’s alive. Let’s not look beyond that.”
“Then why doesn’t she wake?”
Pen’s voice was filled with something close to grief, and Kelsea realized that it was time now, that she couldn’t make them wait any longer. Breaking through the dark warmth in her head, she opened her eyes. Once again she found herself in a blue tent; time might almost have doubled back to that morning when she’d woken and seen the Fetch sitting there.
“Ah, thank Christ,” Mace muttered above her. Kelsea’s eyes were drawn first to a bright red patch at his shoulder. His uniform was torn and stained with blood. Pen, kneeling beside him, had no visible wounds, but Kelsea still found Pen the graver case; his eyes were circled dark, the rest of his face ghost-white.
Both of them reached to help her sit up, Pen for her hands and Mace behind her back. Kelsea expected to have a headache, but as she sat up, she found instead that her head felt wonderfully clear, miles wide. She reached up and found both necklaces, still around her neck.
“Don’t worry; we didn’t dare touch them,” Mace told her dryly.
“I hardly dare touch them.”
“How do you feel, Lady?”
“Good. Too good. How long did I sleep?”
“A day and a half.”
“Are you both all right?”
“We’re fine, Lady.”
She pointed to Mace’s wounded shoulder. “I see someone finally got through your guard.”
“There were three of them, Lady, and one was switch-handed. If Venner finds out, I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“What about the women?”
Mace and Pen looked at each other uncomfortably.
“Speak up!”
“Three lost,” Mace replied gruffly.
“But you saved twenty-two, Majesty,” Pen added, throwing Mace a dark look that, mercifully, he missed. “Twenty-two women. They’re fine, and so are the others. They’re on their way home.”
“What of the Guard?”
“We lost Tom, Lady.” Mace wiped his forehead with one palm. It was a commonplace gesture, but very expressive in Mace’s case; Kelsea thought it was the closest he would let himself come to grief. But she hadn’t known Tom well, so she wouldn’t shed tears.
“What else?”