The Shadow Queen (15 page)

I
T TOOK
K
OL
and his friends a little more than a day to fly back to Irina’s castle. They’d pushed themselves, stopping only twice to drink before rising into the sky again.

He had a heart covered in Lorelai’s blood. The princess had her magic-cloaking gloves on.

Irina would be fooled. Eldr would be saved.

He would still be alive.

Skies help him, he wanted to be alive.

When they arrived at the castle, they were quickly ushered into the same room where days ago he’d pledged himself into the queen’s service with an oath that would kill him if this trick didn’t work.

“Come to me, huntsman. Your friends may stay in the hall,” Irina said.

Irina stood at the far end of the table, waiting, her eyes gleaming, her mouth curved into a tiny smile.

He walked in slow, measured steps, bowed with perfect
etiquette, and then handed her the pouch. His hands were steady, but the dragon fire in his chest was blazing and the air in the room felt like it was closing in on him as Irina unknotted the rope that held the pouch closed.

She opened it, and the deer’s heart, coated with Lorelai’s blood, fell into her hands. For a moment, she closed her eyes, and white light blazed from her palm and into the heart. A slow smile spread over her face.

Her eyes snapped open. “Well done. It seems our little Lorelai was no match for you,
mardushka
or not.”

He took a cautious breath, the band of tension around his chest easing. It had worked. He was going to live, Eldr was going to be saved, and he owed the princess of Ravenspire a debt far greater than he would ever be able to repay.

He waited for Irina to lift the collar and send her magic into Eldr. Instead, she placed the heart on the table, wiped her hands clean on the pouch, and picked up her scrying mirror.

“Mirror, mirror, your depths I scry. Show me the princess Lorelai.” The queen stared at the opaque clouds that swirled across the mirror’s surface, her knuckles white as she gripped the mirror.

The hope that had flared within him, waned as Kol’s hearts slammed against his chest. His knees felt incapable of holding up as the mirror’s surface spun faster.

What if Lorelai had taken off her gloves? What if she’d been wrong about how the mirror found her?

What if he was about to die?

His chest burned with dragon’s fire as he fought to keep his expression calm. If he was going to die, he would face his fate
with courage befitting a king.

Moments passed, but the surface of the mirror remained unchanged. Irina gently placed the mirror on the table and picked up the heart again. Kol caught himself before he sagged against the table in relief.

The heart had passed its test. The mirror had been fooled. Eldr was about to be saved, and he was going to be alive to rule it.

“One last test.” She met his gaze as she sliced into the muscle with a sharp fingernail and withdrew a single drop of blood.

The relief that had filled him drained away, as she placed the drop of blood on her tongue. Lorelai had said nothing about a
mardushka’s
ability to read blood with her tongue. Maybe Lorelai didn’t know. Or maybe she’d hoped the queen would take a drop of the blood that covered the outside of the heart.

Irina rolled the blood across her tongue and looked at him, her smile sharp around the edges. “Do you know how I’ve stayed in power all these years in a kingdom full of people who’d love to see me lose my throne?”

He stared at her in silence, his knees shaking while he clenched his jaw and struggled to look composed.

“I’ve stayed in power because I always expect people to betray me.” She moved closer to him. “And because I expect betrayal, I’m always ready.”

Her smile became a shard of ice. “You are going to pay for your betrayal, huntsman.”

She slammed her hand into his chest, and his blood sizzled and churned with white-hot intensity. Before he could pull away, she threw back her head and yelled, “
Kaz`ja
. Take what is
human, and give me control over what remains.”

The magic in his blood rushed for his hearts as Trugg and Jyn leaped into the room and ran toward him.

He tried to wrench away from Irina, but then the pain hit—an unbearable burning that blistered his chest as if he’d swallowed fire itself. He clutched at his hearts as they beat louder, louder,
louder
until their frantic rhythm drowned out everything else.

Irina threw out her hand, and the stone floor beneath them shook. Pillars as wide as Trugg’s waist shot out of the floor, blocking Kol’s friends and creating a cage around Irina and Kol.

Pain was a fire-coated blade that kept stabbing Kol with every heartbeat. It stole his breath and turned his knees to water.

He fell to the floor, clawing at his chest, ripping at his shirt and his skin as if he could somehow let the magic out and stop the agony.

Trugg and Jyn threw themselves at the cage, but the pillars didn’t budge.

Irina sank to her knees beside him, one hand on the collar of bone and thistle she’d given him.

Kol doubled over and screamed as the fire inside him coalesced into a single, excruciating bolt of pain that felt like it was ripping him in two.

The queen leaned close to the collar and whispered something to it.

Kol shuddered. His hearts pounded.

And then her hand was against his chest, and her voice was rising above his as she repeated her incantor over and over again.

His friends threw themselves at the stone cage. Kol writhed on the floor as the collar shrank against his skin until it fit him
like he’d been born with it. Irina kept chanting, her palm pressed to his chest.

Then his human heart seemed to leap toward her hand, tearing free of its moorings with a sickening lurch that left Kol gasping for air.

Irina smiled, cold and vicious, as Kol’s human heart appeared in her hand, shimmered like a mirage for an instant, and then became solid.

The pain stopped, and in its place was an insatiable need to hurt, punish, hunt, and destroy.

Kol lay on the floor, shaking with the desperate need to shift. His muscles ached to stretch, his bones to re-form, but it was as if his human skin had become an iron cage that refused to allow his dragon out.

Irina reached beneath the table and pulled out a small gold box with a black stone set in the center of its lid. She placed his heart inside the box, sliced her palm with one long, polished nail, squeezed three drops of her own blood onto it, and then turned to him.

“What have . . . you . . . done to me?” His voice was raw from screaming. His tongue felt clumsy, his words foreign things he struggled to speak. Rage was the strength that got him to his feet.

She lifted the box, and he could hear his heart—his human heart—beating within its golden walls.

“I’ve made you the perfect predator.” Irina ran her fingers lightly over the stone on top of the box. “Now nothing stands between you and your dragon’s instinct. Just don’t try to shift. The collar won’t let you do anything more than use your talons.
I can’t be worried that my huntsman will become a dragon behind my back and try to destroy me. You’ll be able to track Lorelai and kill her easily enough in your human form. If she uses a harmful spell against you in self-defense, the magic in your collar will end her.”

He seethed, the dragon’s fire in his chest burning like an inferno, begging for release he couldn’t give.

She leaned close. “
I
command you now. Your dragon heart obeys mine. Hold up your end of the bargain, and I will be bound by our blood oath to hold up mine.” She placed the heart box on the table and for the first time seemed to notice the other Eldrians who had shifted and were trying to destroy the pillars with fire and the spikes on their tails.

Irina slammed her hand onto the tabletop and branches shot out of the wood, wrapped themselves around the Eldrians, and forced them away from the cage.

“He’s beyond your reach now. His collar is warded against all who have dual hearts. If you touch him, he’ll die. If you come too close to him,
you’ll
die. He is mine now.”

Trugg roared and strafed the branches that held him with fire.

Irina turned away. “I grow tired of you. Leave my castle. Stay away from my huntsman. If you come back, I will rip your hearts out, but unlike the king’s, I won’t keep yours safe.”

“Safe?” Kol had to force the word out. It was as if without his human heart, he was nothing but dragon—all instinct and violence with no spoken language. His memories—of his parents, of Brig, of everything he loved about Eldr—were slipping through his fingers like water, receding behind a thick gray
curtain that blocked him from everything that used to matter, leaving nothing to hold back the well of violent anger that had replaced his second heart. He grabbed for the memory of his mother’s laughter, for his sister’s smile, for anything that could give him a weapon to keep the rage at bay, but the images faded into darkness, and Kol was alone with the terrible beat of his dragon’s heart.

Irina flicked her fingers and the branches that held Jyn and Trugg wrenched them into the air and hurled them from the room. Turning to Viktor, who stood silently on the far side of the room, his mouth set in a tight line, she said, “I’ve seen the face of the man who is helping Lorelai. He was in my huntsman’s blood memories. Get me an artist. There’s something familiar about this man’s face. I want a name to go with it.”

Turning to Kol, she said, “Find the princess. Bring me her heart, and I will restore yours.”

He wanted to resist. To refuse to be her predator.

But the collar sent tiny shocks of power and pain into his skin, and his thoughts felt clumsy and far away. Irina waved a hand and the cage crumbled to dust.

“Go, huntsman.”

He went.

I
T TOOK FOUR
days for Lorelai and Gabril to reach the eastern edge of Duchess Waldina’s estate. They traveled hard, pushing themselves from dawn to dusk as they hiked through thick stands of dying evergreens, climbed rocky ravines, and hurried through meadows of rotting grass. The strain was showing as Gabril’s limp became more pronounced, the lines of pain that bracketed his mouth digging deep. Still, he refused to allow Lorelai to heal his leg, arguing that if the deer heart trick had failed, Irina could be coming after the princess herself. Lorelai needed all her energy just in case.

She stopped arguing with him on the second day. If his heart wouldn’t submit to hers, she’d be exhausted from the effort, and he was right: she needed all her energy.

Just in case.

The Waldina estate rose above another long meadow of brittle, yellow grass. Fences of weathered oak hemmed in the enormous property, and horses already wearing their winter
coats were scattered throughout the pastures, munching on piles of hay. Beyond the house, the village of Baumchen clung to the side of the first of three western mountains, but Lorelai had eyes only for the mansion at the end of the long cobblestoned road that bisected the meadow.

The mansion was enormous—an elegant monstrosity of marble columns, stone trim, scalloped shutters, and a hundred windowpanes gleaming in the afternoon sun. Multiple chimneys pierced the slanted roof, nestled between narrow gable windows, which were open to let in the fresh mountain air. Smoke rose from each chimney in thin ribbons of gray. The entire house was painted a bold yellow that reminded Lorelai of an egg yolk.

“We can’t exactly walk up to the front door and knock.” Gabril leaned against the fence that marked the border between the pastures and the forest they’d just hiked through.

“The horses look well fed.” Lorelai scanned the pastures and then stared at the village beyond. “I wonder if the Waldinas are feeding their peasants as well as their livestock.”

“I wonder where they’re getting the hay for the horses since the ground here is just as bad as it is in the east.”

“Being loyal to Irina must have a few benefits.” Lorelai studied the mansion, gauging its security. Its weaknesses. Gabril was right—she couldn’t just walk up to the front door and knock. Even if she gained entrance that way, the servants who opened the door would announce her to the duchess, giving the woman time to prepare herself.

No, what Lorelai needed here was the element of surprise.

And she’d just discovered her way inside the mansion.

“Wait out of sight in the trees. I’ll be back as soon as I can,
but don’t worry if it takes a while.”

“How are you getting in?” Gabril asked in a tone that really said “Do you have a way back out?”

“Through the open dormer windows.” Lorelai nodded toward the narrow gables whose windows were cracked open to let in the fresh mountain air. “I’ll find the duchess’s bedroom—”

“How?” His mouth was tight with worry.

“Trust me.” Lorelai shrugged off her pack and handed it to him. “Nothing is going to stop me from getting what I need. I’ll find the duchess’s bedroom and wait. When she retires for the night, she’ll get the surprise of her life.”

“Be careful.” He dropped her pack and pulled her against his chest. She leaned into him, his heartbeat a steady, comforting sound beneath her ear.

“You too.”

He laughed, but there was no mirth in it. “I’ll just be out here, worrying my fool head off while you take all the risk.”

“My kingdom, my battle, my risk.” She stood on tiptoes and kissed his cheek before turning back to face the mansion. “And save your worry for the duchess who aligned herself with Irina at the expense of Ravenspire. She’s going to need all the help she can get.”

Lorelai crept along the hedges and ducked behind trees as she made her way to the north wing of the mansion where the marked ostentation of the rest of the mansion was lacking and the windows were few and far between. The servants’ quarters, no doubt. Lorelai glanced around but saw no one outside the mansion. Sasha flew overhead, sweeping the grounds in wide circles.

Do you see anyone I need to worry about?
Lorelai asked as she sized up the wall she meant to scale.

Someone near the barn. Attack?

Lorelai craned her neck, but couldn’t see the barn from where she stood. Which meant the person couldn’t see her either.
Don’t attack. Once I’m inside, guard Gabril until I call for you.

Squirrels?

Yes, you can hunt some squirrels first, but be quick about it.

Share?
Sasha sent an image of dropping a few spare squirrels into Gabril’s lap.

Not squirrels. You can share a rabbit, but not squirrel.

Strange humans.

Lorelai rolled her eyes and then focused on the wall. She took a quick run at it, kicked off with her left foot, and scaled the wall in quick leaps. Holding on to the edge of the closest gable with one hand to avoid sliding off the steep roof, she hooked the fingers of her other hand around the open window and pulled until she could slide into the house.

She landed on a cot with a thin mattress, a thinner gray bedspread, and a lumpy pillow. A plain washbasin, an armoire that had seen better days, and a pair of scuffed work shoes needing a polish lined the wall beside the bed. Definitely servants’ quarters.

Quickly, Lorelai pulled the window back to its former position and then hurried to the door. She peered out into a narrow hall. Empty. Easing out of the room, she closed the door behind her and moved down the corridor toward the main house.

It took several minutes of walking corridors and checking rooms before she found what she was looking for. In a room of
polished wood floors and bookcases that stretched floor to ceiling, a maid was sweeping the hearth while behind the grate, a fire crackled.

Moving swiftly, Lorelai crept up behind the maid, pulling off her right-hand glove as she walked.

“Excuse me,” she said quietly when she was directly behind the girl. The maid whirled in surprise, and Lorelai laid her bare hand against the maid’s pale arm. “
Zna`uch
. Tell me what I want to know.”

The maid’s heart fluttered against the pull of Lorelai’s magic for a second, but then the girl’s eyes grew glassy, and she mumbled, “What do you want to know?”

“Show me where the duchess sleeps, but let no one see us.”

The maid turned obediently toward the door. Lorelai kept her hand on the maid’s arm as they went. The maid led her out of the library, down a staircase with iron railings, and through a hall covered in plush crimson rugs that looked expensive enough to have been woven in Akram. Every room they passed was empty, and a hush permeated the entire house.

“Where is everybody?” Lorelai asked softly as they rounded a corner and entered the west wing.

“Cook is in the kitchen finishing dinner. I couldn’t say where the butler or Mrs. Alban are.” The maid spoke in an eerie singsong tone that reminded Lorelai of the villagers in Nordenberg. Grief pricked her heart and ached in her throat at the thought of the place she’d lost Leo.

He would’ve loved this. Sneaking through a noble’s mansion, bespelling a maid, and waiting in duchess’s bedchambers to scare her into giving up what she knew of Irina—Leo would’ve been
in his element. He’d have agonized over a costume, while Lorelai was simply wearing the same thing she’d worn to trek across the mountains. He’d have insisted on code names in case they were caught and questioned. He’d have pretended to be an Akram noble or a broker from Balavata. He would’ve added
flair
, and he’d have done it perfectly while teasing Lorelai about her inability to ever be anything but her serious, straightforward self.

She’d give anything to hear him tease her again.

The gaping hole inside her that was Leo ached, a sharp pain that Lorelai felt in her bones. Her eyes stung, and the air in the opulent corridor they were walking through felt impossible to breathe.

“Who is Mrs. Alban?” she forced herself to ask through lips that trembled with grief.

“The housekeeper.”

“Where is the rest of the staff?”

“We’re all that is left. The rest were let go.”

Apparently, being loyal to Irina fed your horses but didn’t give you enough to keep a full staff employed. What were those jobless people doing for food this winter? Where were they living?

Lorelai’s jaw tightened, and the thread of determination that blazed within her refocused her grief into purpose. No one else in Ravenspire should die because of Irina’s irresponsible use of magic. Not if Lorelai could be stronger, faster, and better than the queen.

“Where is the duchess?” she asked as the maid’s footsteps slowed outside a pair of doors with rose trellises carved around its edges.

“In the dining room awaiting her dinner.”

The maid’s singsong voice was scraping Lorelai’s nerves raw. She stepped into a bedchamber decorated in brilliant blue, green, and yellow and turned to the girl.

“Go back to the library and sweep the hearth. Forget you ever saw me.”

Removing her hand from the girl’s arm, she shut the doors behind her as the maid turned back the way they’d come. A bank of windows on the western wall showed the sun disappearing over the edge of the mountain, leaving crimson streamers in its wake.

Lorelai settled into a chair in the corner beside the windows, the corner parallel to the door and therefore impossible to see until the duchess was already inside the room with the door shut, and waited.

Less than an hour later, the door swung open and Duchess Waldina entered the room. Her short, sturdy body was packed into a tightly corseted dress in the same brilliant blue as the curtains that framed her bedroom windows. Brown curls were piled atop her head, and her fingers were weighed down with jeweled rings. She shut the door, kicked her shoes off, and fumbled for the laces of her bodice.

Lorelai waited while the duchess unlaced her dress and heaved in a deep breath, and then she stood and said quietly, “If you scream for help, I will tear this mansion apart until nothing remains but the ground you built upon.”

The duchess whirled toward the corner and opened her mouth, but Lorelai was already moving.

“Eee—”

Lorelai’s gloved palm slammed over the woman’s open mouth, cutting off her cry. Magic sparked in her bare palm, and the woman’s brown eyes widened Lorelai lifted a hand wreathed in white light and held it close to the duchess’s face.

“I was very clear.” Lorelai’s voice was cold. “Scream, and I will bring this house down. You can see the magic in my hands. You’re aligned with my enemy. Do you really think I’ll hesitate to destroy everything you love?”

The woman shook her head in sharp, frantic movements that threatened to topple her tower of curls. For a moment, Lorelai was tempted to touch her with her bare palm and speak the same incantor she’d used on the maid, but according to news Gabril had gathered throughout the years from villagers on the duchess’s lands, Duchess Waldina had spent significant time in the castle as Irina’s guest. It was unlikely that Irina would allow someone to gain that much access to her without having put a spell or two in place to ensure her own safety. If Lorelai tried to overcome the spell, the duchess’s heart would fight hers, and the physical cost would be tremendous.

Besides, Irina needed to believe Kol had killed the princess. Lorelai wasn’t going to destroy that illusion until she was ready to launch an attack against the queen.

She met the duchess’s frightened gaze, and bared her teeth in a smile that made the woman tremble. Maybe she couldn’t use magic against the duchess herself, but the woman didn’t need to know that.

“I’m going to remove my hand, and we’re going to have a talk. You’re going to answer my questions honestly, or I will use my magic to compel you to do so.” Lorelai leaned close, her smile
still in place. “If I have to use magic on you, Irina will know we’ve talked. That would displease me, and it would certainly displease her. I’m sure you understand the consequences of displeasing Irina.”

The woman nodded again, her eyes darting around the room before returning to Lorelai. Slowly, the princess removed her hand and then gestured toward the bed.

“Sit down.”

“Who are you?” The duchess’s voice shook, and she rubbed her lips with her bejeweled fingers.

“We’ve met before, Duchess. Perhaps you remember? You gave me a bag of wintermint candy drops to keep me quiet while you curried favor with your new queen.”

The duchess blanched. “That’s impossible. You’re dead.”

“And yet here I stand.”

Duchess Waldina pressed her hands to her cheeks and then fluttered them in the air like gaudily dressed birds. “Such a shock! I’m overcome. Of course, the queen must be told. She’ll be so grateful to have part of the family she lost returned to her.”

“Irina knows.” Lorelai studied the woman’s eyes, searching for the truth. “Only last week she sent a huntsman to kill me.”

The woman’s hands wilted, falling limply into her lap, and her eyes became guarded. “If Irina is against you, there is nothing anyone can do.”

“Oh I think you can do a lot for me, Duchess. Let’s start with this. You know who I am and what I can do.”

“You’re the princess—”

“I’m a
mardushka
, and I am your true queen.” Lorelai’s voice was as unforgiving as the floor beneath her boots. “Irina is a
usurper who murdered my father and tried to murder his children.”

She clenched her fist as Leo’s face blazed across her memory, and her power sparked, wreathing her hand in brilliant white fire. The duchess shrank against her yellow bedspread as Lorelai locked gazes with her.

“I didn’t know. None of us . . . we had to take her word for it. We had to do whatever it took to survive.”

“And yet many of the nobles across Ravenspire quietly defied the queen. Paying a measure of their peasants’ taxes to alleviate the burden. Hiding those Irina’s spies would condemn to death. Doing their best to keep their people safe and refusing to give their loyalty to one who used her power like a bludgeon.” Lorelai took a step closer to the bed. “But not you, Duchess Waldina. You curried Irina’s favor at the expense of everyone else. And look what it got you. Your land is dying just like everyone else’s. You have a skeletal staff, and I’m sure if I go into the villages on your land, I’ll find people who are desperate and starving, who imagine breaking into this mansion with its tiny staff and stealing anything they might use to pay their way out of the kingdom. I’ll find people who curse your name and wish death or worse for you.”