Queen Mireille was here at Valgarde.
Fear impaled me, my muscles tightened, and I turned to Lilia. Had she… Could she… Was this all a setup?
“Lilia,” I began, my voice a low rasp. “Did you bring her here?”
CHAPTER 24
LILIA
The look on Hadrien’s face broke something in me.
It was the fractured, hollow expression of a man who’d been betrayed. Who recognized it from experience.
“No, Hadrien… I didn’t—” I started toward him. “I didn’t know.”
He couldn’t think I’d truly led her here. He couldn’t.
“She wouldn’t,” Genevieve said from the doorway, her voice firm.
“Never,” Victor added, stepping forward.
Their loyalty warmed me even as it failed to fix anything. Because the truth was sitting cold and leaden in my stomach, and I couldn’t argue my way around it no matter how many people stood beside me.
“I heard something in the woods on the way here.” I pressed my hand to my chest. “I thought it was my imagination. I thought…” My voice faltered. “If they were following me, I didn’t know. I swear it.”
The words came out, useless. Pathetic, almost. Because they didn’t change what had happened, and they didn’t change who was standing on the grounds. A chill prickled along the back of my neck and raised the fine hair on my arms.
“Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” Queen Mireille strode toward Valgarde as though it belonged to her, and her dark furs swept over cobblestones. Her pale eyes scanned over Valgarde’s walls as if taking inventory of her newest possession. Three soldiers followed close behind her, spreading into a loose arc at her back, their armor catching the gleam of moonlight. They moved with the quiet discipline of men who followed without question.
She cut past me without even a glance, as if I wasn’t even worth noticing. Typical. That’s how she treated all under her control. We were nothing to her, expendable, disposable. She continued toward Hadrien and stopped a few dozen feet away. Seething, he didn’t say a word, yet he exhaled sharply through his nostrils.
“It wasn’t difficult,” the queen added, continuing a conversation he clearly wanted no part of. Her voice sounded charming, as if she were pleased about a sunny day. “I have eyes everywhere. In the forest, the village.” A slight smile spread across her face, and it chilled me to the core. “It wasn’t hard to figure out where Little Red Riding Hood was going on her little trips to and from home.” She flipped a dismissive hand in my direction, as if shooing a fly, still not bothering to grant me even a cursory glance.
Ibrought her here.
Weight settled low in my gut, churning with devastation. This woman, the one who had stolen three years of free will from Hadrien’s life. Who had turned his soldiers to stone and forced him to look down on them each day, an endless taunt.I’d all but invited her here by coming back to Valgarde, and whoever her spies were figured out where I was going.
“And now I know…” She let the pause stretch, savoring it. “Your precious wards are as flimsy as paper.” She threw out a hand in a dismissive manner. “Pathetic.”
Hadrien must despise me. I’d all but escorted his worst nightmare to his door.
My heart pounded against my ribs. Slowly, I mustered enough courage to look over at him, terrified to see hatred burning in his eyes.
What I saw was worse.
I’d never seen him look that way. Not even in his fury, such as the first terrible night when he’d accused my mom and me as trespassing intruders. Any careful restraint he had was gone, leaving something stripped back and raw on his expression. His jaw was hardened and every line of his body was rigid with something so deep it had calcified into something colder than anger.
If he had been looking at me with that terrible expression, I might have crumpled. But his eyes honed in on the queen, the fierce hatred turning them from their usual gray to a devastating, brutal, icy silver.
“You don’t belong here.” His voice came out low, each word measured. “How dare you step foot on my land after what you’ve done?”
Queen Mireille tilted her head. Her expression flickered to one of slight amusement, as if she’d been awaiting this encounter for quite some time. She took a few steps forward, and her soldiers moved with her with the precision of men used to following orders.
“Three years cursed,” she said with a one-sided grin that didn’t reach her eyes, “and still as stubborn as stone.” She turned in a slow half-circle, her gaze traveling up the walls ofValgarde—along the ramparts, down to the stone figures on the ground, taking in every detail with an expression of cold satisfaction. “The poppy is almost completely stone, so you’re almost out of time, Hadrien.”
He stared at her, his eyes hard and determined. “How would you know?”
She released a bitter laugh. “It’s my spell.” She motioned around her. “Of course I’d know. I control everything around us.”
