A scream rends the night, rising from the stone stairwell outside the queen’s chambers. Mary’s hands go to her round belly. She’s not just the queen; she’s carrying the future monarch inside her. Jean whirls to me, eyes wide.
My heritage comes with a price. I was born to protect Scotland and the queen with my life.
Gunshots echo off the stone stairwell.
“Behind me!” I order, standing and throwing up my hands. Human guards can only do so much. Glamours are easy enough, but the protective barrier I call forth is much, much stronger.
Strong enough to stop bullets, though?
“David!” I shout. “Get closer!” He cannot see the wall I’ve made, but expanding the bubble of protection would spread my magic too thin. Already, sweat beads on my forehead.
David’s eyes are panicked. “I must defend the queen,” he says, all foolish nobility as he reaches for the dagger at his hip.
“No, just get behind—” I start, my voice strained.
The door swings open.
All hell breaks loose.
Men pour into the small room, crowding the doorway. I immediately spot the red plaid of Ruthven’s clan, but the man is pushed aside as Lord Darnley—the queen’s own husband—swings a pistol around the room, shouting something I don’t quite catch.
It’s all too much. The queen clutches her pregnant belly. Jean’s frozen in shock. And David, noble David, is still beyond the reach of my barrier, still holding that little dagger of his, hardly big enough to skewer a rat.
Glamours aren’t real, but they seem that way, especially to humans. I weave one of the most complicated glamours I’ve ever made, winding the threads of time to force them to slow down. Ruthven’s sword is still not fully out of his sheath; the men at the door barely inch forward. I cannot truly stop time, but the people all around act as if I have, believing their slow motions to be normal speed.
All but one.
Darnley. Like me, he has fae blood. His is diluted through the generations, though, so he’s not strong enough to counter my magic.
“What are you doing?” I snarl. Where are the royal guards? Have they all been killed?
Darnley’s eyes are ice chips. In his right hand is a pistol. In his left is—
“No,” I whisper.
A red stone no bigger than a robin’s egg is caged inside golden wire. I’ve only ever seen drawings of this sort of thing, but if the ancient books are right…
“I will be king,” Darnley says. He may be the queen’s husband, butshe refuses to grant him the Crown Matrimonial. She will not raise him in rank to be her equal, and he cannot abide the idea that a woman is more important than him, not even when she’s Queen of Scotland.
Darnley smashes the stone to the ground, and a red mist rises from it. The fog creeps toward the queen, who remains motionless, trapped in the same fearful position as when the attack started, like a field mouse frozen as an owl descends, talons out.
This is the work of the Red Caps. Vicious fae who feed on bloodshed and war.
That mist still leaks from the stone. When that reddish cloud touches a human, the person will become a target. The men Darnley has charmed and tricked and bribed will become mindless murderers focused on that one person. And it’s painfully clear Darnley intends the victim to be his own wife. Treason, yes, but with both the queen and unborn babe dead, Darnley will be in the ideal position to take the throne.
I must move fast. The mist is not affected by my glamour; it does not believe that time is slow. It rises and weaves, a snake about to strike, aimed at Queen Mary.
My protection barrier will not be enough. Not against something made by a Red Cap.
I pull all the magic within me, all the power I own, and call wind down from the hearth. Glamours cost me nothing, but this—realmagic—it comes from the very wild nature of the land.
The wind answers my call. The fire flickers, flames reaching like claws, and Ipush—
The mist floats away from the queen—
And wraps around David.
My heart screams, but I have no energy remaining to even whispermy horror. I had not meant to make David the target, but I can barely keep the protective bubble around me, Mary, and Jean, and wind is hard to control, and—
