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“Ready.” He reached into his pocket.
A hand caught his arm. “Good evening my friend, and…Odette is it?” Rothbart tensed at Kilron’s smooth voice.
Before he could respond, Kilron hooked a metal link over Rothbart’s arm. With a curse, he jerked away, but the damage was already done.
Kilron’s face was healed and recovered from Rothbart’s attack. But that didn’t change the vindictive anger that glowed in the other man’s eyes. Whatever friendship they once had was long forgotten.
“Take this off, Kilron.”
“What is it?” Odette asked, giving the newcomer a wary look.
He cast the sorcerer his own deathly glare. Trying to take off the metal link would only cut off the circulation in his own arm. “He has blocked my magic.”
Rothbart was helpless.
“Come, honored guests.” A sneering grin spread across Kilron’s lips. “The queen will see you now.”
Chapter 23
Rothbart
Rothbart and Odette moved through the crowd, Kilron at their back.
The damn iron brace on his arm kept Rothbart from accessing his powers and Kilron had ordered Odette to walk at the head of their procession, so it wasn’t as if she could remove it as they walked. Besides, they were headed right where they wanted to go, so it would be best not to make a scene.
Rothbart’s heart raced, and he wanted to sprint for the door, but he let Odette set the pace. He needed to be where Zoya was, but also a deep anxiety choked him, and he almost didn’t want to see what was on the other side.
They approached Torsten and the guard.
The prince paused in his pacing when he saw Odette. He glanced between her and the door, his brow scrunched.
“Odette? What—”
“It wasn’t me,” she said to him. “The woman you brought to the dance was someone pretending to be me.” She glanced back at Rothbart and Kilron. “We’ll talk about this later.”
A spike of fury shot through Rothbart. Did she really think she could still salvage this situation to get out of the swan curse? And yet, she might have leveraged her story to abandon Rothbart entirely. She seemed determined to accompany him to the room with the queen.
His anger cooled into gratitude.
They moved past a startled and confused Torsten and approached the entrance to the room that housed his sister.
“The queen wishes to speak with these two,” Kilron announced.
“Mask off,” the guard said.
Rothbart complied, letting it fall to the floor.
The guard nodded. “You may enter.”
Kilron ushered them inside. With a flick of his wrist, the door clicked shut, leaving Torsten and the guards behind in the hall.
Queen Emiranda faced them sitting at a large ornate desk, hands calmly settled atop each other. A bottle of some sort of wine rested on the desk with two glasses, one filled and the other three-fourths full.
And in the chair across from the queen was the slumped, dark-haired figure of a girl. The anxiety in Rothbart’s throat turned to bile. Knees shaking, he stumbled over to the chair. Kilron must have stripped her of her disguise because she no longer looked like Odette. Zoya’s head sat tipped back, her eyes closed, skin ashen.
Rothbart grabbed her face between trembling fingers. “No, Zoya. NO! Wake up.” he shook his sister but her head just lolled to the side. He spun toward the queen, panic pounding in his chest, his eyes burning. “What have you done?”
She gave him the most innocent look. “Why Rothbart, you must understand, I had no clue. I received this bottle from an anonymous benefactor and once your poor sister took a drink, she passed out and hasn’t awoken since. I fear it may be poisoned.”
