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"Very good, Samuel," she cooed. "Very good."
Samuel looked like a hound that was getting scratched behind the ears. "Thank you, Mistress."
"And you brought the rest of it?"
He nodded eagerly. A smile warmed his face. Rachel had thought him a cold-looking man, maybe because of his strange, golden eyes, but when he smiled it seemed to mask his nature. With that smile he was a better-looking man than most, although to Rachel he was, and always would be, a monster. A warm smile wasn't going to change what he had done.
Samuel seemed suddenly in a good mood. Rachel hadn't ever seen him this happy. Although much of the time she'd been in a sack, tied over the back of his horse, so she supposed that she didn't really know if he'd been in a good mood or not. She didn't really care.
She just wanted him dead. He had killed Chase, the best thing that had ever happened in Rachel's entire life. Chase was the best man who had ever lived. Chase had taken her in after she'd escaped from Queen Milena, the castle at Tamarang, and that terrible Princess Violet. Chase had loved her and had taken care of her. He taught her things about taking care of herself. He had a family he loved and who loved and needed him.
But now they had all lost him.
Chase was so big and so good with his weapons that Rachel hadn't thought that anyone could ever defeat him, especially not a man by himself. But Samuel had appeared like a ghost and run Chase through while he slept, run him through with that beautiful sword that Rachel just knew couldn't belong to him. She hated to think of how he had gotten that sword and who else he'd hurt with it.
Samuel stood looking like an idiot, his arms hanging, his shoulders slumped, as the woman ran her fingers back through his hair, whispering comforting, fawning words. It seemed completely unlike him. Up until then Samuel had always seemed confident and sure of himself. He always made it clear to Rachel that he was in charge. He always knew exactly what he wanted. In the presence of this woman, though, he was different. Rachel half expected his tongue to hang out and for him to start drooling.
"You said you brought the rest of it, Samuel," she said in her hissy voice.
"Yes." He lifted an arm back toward the light. "It's on the horse."
"Well, don't leave it out there," the woman said, her voice taking on an impatient edge. "Go and get it."
"Yes… yes, right away." He seemed only too eager to do her bidding and scurried off.
Rachel watched him rushing back through the cave, making his way over rocks that lay in his path, sometimes using his hands on the ground for balance, hurrying past the creepy gallery of drawings and toward the cave entrance. She noticed then light flickering on the dark walls. When she heard the sputtering sizzle she realized that it was light from a torch. She turned back around to see someone else, carrying a torch, appearing out of the darkness.
Rachel's jaw dropped.
It was Princess Violet.
"Well, well, if it isn't the orphan Rachel come back to us," Violet said as she stuck the torch in a bracket on the rock wall before taking up a place beside the woman in black.
Rachel's eyes felt like they might pop out of her head. She couldn't seem to make her mouth close. Her voice had fled down into the pit of her stomach.
"Why, Violet, dear, I do believe you've scared the little thing witless. Lose your tongue, little one?"
Princess Violet was the one who had lost her tongue. But now it was back. Somehow, as impossible as it seemed, it was back.
"Princess Violet…"
Violet's back stiffened as she straightened her broad shoulders. She seemed to be half again as big as the last time Rachel had seen her. She was meatier-looking. Older-looking.
"Queen Violet, now."
Rachel blinked in astonishment. "Queen… ?"
Violet smiled in a way that could have frozen a bonfire.
"Yes, that's right. Queen. My mother, you see, was murdered when that man, Richard, escaped. It was his doing. He is responsible for my mother's death, for the death of our beloved former queen. He brought us all nothing but grief and terrible times." She heaved a sigh. "Things have changed. I am queen now."
Rachel couldn't make it work in her head. Queen. It all seemed impossible. Mostly, though, it was dumbfounding that Violet could again speak after having lost her tongue.
A humorless smile spread on Violet's lips as her brow drew down. "Kneel before your queen."
Rachel couldn't seem to make sense of the words.
Violet's hand came out of nowhere, striking Rachel so hard that it knocked her sprawling. "Kneel before your queen!"
Violet's shriek echoed back and forth in blackness.
Gasping in pain and shock, Rachel held one hand to the side of her face as she struggled to her knees. She felt warm blood running down her chin. Violet was a lot stronger than before.
The painful slap was like her past slamming right back down on her, as if everything had been a dream and she was waking again to the nightmare of her former life. She was all alone again, with no Giller, no Richard, no Chase to help her. She was again helpless before Violet without a friend in the world.
Violet's smile had vanished. As she stared down at Rachel kneeling before her, her eyes narrowed in a way that made Rachel have to swallow.
"He attacked me, you know. Back when he was Seeker, Richard attacked me, hurt me, for no reason." She planted her fists on her hips. "He hurt me bad. Attacked and hurt a child! My jaw was broken. My teeth were shattered. My tongue was severed, just as he had once promised to do. I was left mute."
Her voice lowered into a growl that chilled Rachel to the bone. "But that was the least of my suffering."
Violet took a breath to calm herself. With the palms of her hands she smoothed down her pink satin dress at the hips.
"None of my mother's advisors were any help. They were bumbling fools when it came down to doing anything worthwhile. They offered endless potions and poultices and aromas and incantations. They said prayers and made offerings to the good spirits. They applied leeches and hot jars. None of it worked. My mother was buried without me there. I was unconscious at the time.
"Not even the stars had anything to say about my condition or chances. The advisors mostly stood around wringing their hands—and probably plotting who would steal the crown when I finally died. I suspect that if it wasn't soon then one of them would have helped me along into the afterlife with my mother. I heard their worried whispers about me becoming queen."
Violet took another calming breath. "In the middle of my nightmare of pain and suffering, of anguish and grief, of my growing concern about being murdered, Six arrived and helped me." She gestured up at the woman standing beside her. "Just when I needed it most, Six came along and helped save me, helped save the crown and Tamarang itself, when no one else could or would."
"But, but," Rachel stammered, "you're not old enough to be a queen."
She knew it was a mistake the instant the words had left her tongue, before her better judgment had time to stop them. Violet's other hand whipped around, slapping Rachel across the other cheek. Violet seized her by the hair and roughly pulled her back up onto her knees. Rachel cupped a hand to the new throbbing ache and with the other hand wiped blood from her mouth.
Violet shrugged, indifferent to the pain and blood she had caused. "Anyway, I grew up in the last few years. I'm no longer the child I was back then, the child you still think of me being, back when you lived here, enjoying our kindness and generosity."
Rachel didn't think that Violet had grown up enough to be a queen, but she knew better than to say so again. She also knew better than to think of enslavement as "kindness."
"Six helped me as I recovered. She saved me."
Rachel stared up at the pale, smiling face. "I offered my services. Violet welcomed me into the castle. Her mother's advisors certainly weren't doing her any good.
"Six used her power to heal my broken and grossly infected jaw. I had grown weak from only being able to sip a thin broth. With
Six's help I was at last able to begin to eat again and recover my strength. New teeth even came in. I don't suppose that anyone ever grew a third set of teeth before, yet I did.
"But still I could not speak, so when I was well enough, strong enough, Six used her remarkable powers to grow me a new tongue." Her fists tightened at her sides. "The tongue that I lost because of the Seeker."
"The former Seeker," Six corrected, under her breath.
"The former Seeker," Violet acknowledged, considerably calmer.
A smug smile returned to Violet's plump face. It was a smile that Rachel knew all too well. "And now you have been brought back." Her tone expressed a threat that her words hadn't named.
"What about all the others?" Rachel asked, trying to buy time to think. "All the queen's advisors?"
"I am the queen!" It seemed that, along with the rest of her, Violet's temper had gotten bigger as well.
