The young Queen.
So that was it. Selma dead, Adeline gone, and Mareda on the throne.
It was all Edward could have hoped for.
The gards took another step forward, coming in line with their Captain at some unspoken signal. Silas did not move, but found it in himself to raise a brow at the taller one, who leered at him. The brute who’d fought Adeline in her first round of the Tourney, he realised.Brenner, or Ben—no. Benan?Silas dragged his gaze away, back to Captain Doran.
“How gracious of them both, indeed.” He forced his tone steady, threading boredom and disdain through every word, even as his heart hammered against his ribs. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, it has been a long night. I ought to get to bed.”
“Oh, I think you’ll want to come with us, Your Grace.”
“Will I?” he said flatly.
“It would be best,” rasped Benan at Doran’s side. He couldn’t seem to help himself, rolling up on the balls of his feet like a giant, menacing child.
Doran flicked an irritated hand at him, though his eyes never left Silas’s. His grin spread, a white slash in the sickly grey of his skin.
“Her Majesty has requested an audience.”
???
His first impression, as he stepped through the door with a sword at his back, was the bite of cold air. A hushed skittering all around him; the sound of a dozen sets of teeth, all chattering in unison.
The throne room was strewn with courtiers, scattered at the edges of the farthest wall, shrinking away from the throne at the other end. Some of them wore their bedrobes, many still in their dark blue mourning wear from Selma’s Parting Breath. Most of them seemed bewildered and half asleep, and those that didn’t—
They were terrified.
For just one moment, Silas could not imagine what Edward might have done to inspire such fear. Then his eyes snagged on two figures kneeling at the fore of the sparse crowd, their heads bowed; one shaggy and streaked with grey, the other bright as spun gold.
Edward and—
“Mareda?”
The princess glanced up from beneath her long sheet of golden hair, tear-rimmed eyes flicking from his to the throne, and back to the cold, tile floor. Her skirts pooled around her in a wide circle of overlapping silk, white as glittering snow. One of her knees was bent beneath her, the other leg jutting out awkwardly,still healing from her ordeal at the Tourney. Her crutch lay on the ground at her side.
“What—” Silas began, but he was cut off by a voice of sweetness and light.
“Your Grace.”
He whirled.
The stranger sat straight and regal, cold, white hands curled gently on the armrests of the ornate silver throne. She was dressed in an old-fashioned gown; a high collar of white lace, the fine material clinging to her skin with the same damp that flattened inky hair around a delicate face. Black streaks painted her cheeks, streaming down from her eyes as if she’d been sobbing—though she looked perfectly calm and content at present. She was strikingly beautiful, despite her dishevelled state. Imperious and otherworldly; marble-white skin and clever black eyes with a thick frame of lashes. The pulsing glow of the pendant around her neck lit her features in eerie blue light.
She smiled.
“I’ve beensolooking forward to meeting you.”
A moment passed as Silas stared up at her, unmoving, and those clever eyes flashed as they slid from his face to somewhere behind him.
“Oh dear,” she said, in that same sweet, even tone. “He does not speak?”
“Silas,” someone croaked. Edward.
Silas glanced over his shoulder at a man he no longer knew. The look Edward sent him was not remorseful, but nor was it victorious, or boasting. It was pleading. Frightened.
Bile burned in Silas’s throat.
“What have you done, Edward?”
