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The last words of her final entry raced through my mind. Lady Vi had died attempting to kill the king. And I had healed him from the injury he’d earned in that attempt. If I had let him die, this would have all been over. If only I had known.

And now it made sense why there were so many restrictions. No outside correspondence. Constantly accompanied. Shifting halls. Threats of death if his secrets were ever revealed.

It was the king’s command, and that of a madman.

I got up and put the journal into the belly of the hearth. It was evidence now, an accomplice to what I knew I had to do. Besides, there was no benefit in keeping those horrifying words about Beric around any longer.

Beric. He didn’t seem to have been privy to Vi’s plan. Perhaps he was also ignorant of the breadth of the secrets kept—even if he had kept his fair share from me. Still, I longed for him to come knocking on my door. To stay with me, to help me make sense of all this new information. Help me decide what to do about it.

I heard the king’s voice and froze, waiting. Next time he spoke louder, and yet it still sounded like a calm, ghostly command through the wall.

“Muse.”

A single word. One I’d reluctantly come to accept as a nickname, because the king called me nothing else. Saw me as nothing else.

I shuddered. I considered finding my way to Beric’s room instead, labyrinth or no. But the king had already called me twice, God forbid anything should happen to me if I made him wait any longer. Not after what happened yesterday, and the day before. Not now that I knew the truth.

I got up slowly and opened the door to the dark, narrow hall, each step feeling like walking toward death.

The king sat on his bed, facing my door as I had faced his. His white shirt was untucked and wrinkled and covered in what I could smell was sweat, even from where I stood. It only emphasized how sickly pale his skin was, bluish veins crawling up his arms.

He looked as miserable as the first day I met him.

“You wanted to see me, sire?” I said, if only to move this interaction forward. To escape as soon as I could.

“Look at you.…” The king let out a heavy sigh, one I imagined only someone as ancient as he could contain. “You don’t even know what you’ve done wrong.”

My breath felt trapped in my chest, my lungs burning. “What I’ve done?” I managed.

“Katarine. Where is she?”

“I-I believe her body is being prepared at the abbey.”

“Prepared for what?”

Do you not recall when you murdered your own queen? I wanted to scream at him, but it felt as if I was on a knife’s edge. Fear gripped my heart, and I longed for Beric beside me. He would know what to do. He would know what to say to tame this … monster.

I took a breath. “For burial, Your Majesty.”

“And yet you can’t tell us what you’ve done wrong.”

I felt my hands trembling and folded them at my stomach to better control them. “Please tell me so I may correct my error—”

“Lazy, ineffectual girl!” he snapped, and I winced as his voice echoed off the stone walls. He glared at me, as if a simple look would cure me of my apparent stupidity, but I still couldn’t understand what he meant and wasn’t sure he would let me live if I asked him to explain again. Thankfully he put me out of misery when he said, “Why haven’t you brought her back yet?”

This was a bad dream. It had to be. Brought on by a rotten sleep draught, by forgetting to say my prayers. The king wasn’t truly asking me to do the impossible, was he?

“Brought her back?”

“Katarine is still dead,” he replied, shoving himself up from his bed. I took a few steps back to put more space between us. “You’re supposed to be a knight. Our knight, meaning the best there is. Beric swore to us you were competent.”

“But knights are not necromancers, sire,” I said, wishing the king wasn’t so paranoid as to not allow a guard outside of his door. Not to allow a witness. A safety. “And necromancers are a fantasy.”

“You are here to uphold our rule. If you cannot correct one misstep, then what good are you to the crown?”

“Misstep?” I gasped in disbelief, anger building in my gut. “Y-you … you killed her.”

“Did we not just admit to regretting it? We have humbled ourselves enough for one day.” He waved at me like shooing at a fly. “In two hundred years, Kat is the best queen we’ve had, so we will be needing her to return. Go, now. Send her to us when you’re finished.”