“You looked a bit chilled,” Leonidas murmured. “That should keep you warm.”
He was right. Even with the fire, the library was still cool and drafty, and the coat was surprisingly warm, soft, and lightweight. I drew in a breath. The garment also smelled like honeysuckle, like him, which both pleased and annoyed me.
“Thank you,” I muttered.
“Let’s take a walk. There is so much more of the palace for you to see.” His voice wasn’t particularly loud, but I once again got the impression he was saying the words for someone else’s benefit, instead of mine.
Leonidas held his arm out to me again. I stared at it—at him—still trying to determine his motives. Just because he hadn’t killed me yet didn’t mean that he didn’t have some awful death in mind for me later. But I wasn’t going to get any answers by standing here, so I threaded my arm through his again.
He opened the library doors with a wave of his hand, and we stepped back out into the hallway. A servant was standing a few feet away, ostensibly dusting a table, although she kept sneaking glances at us. Leonidas walked right on by the old woman as if he didn’t even see her, much less realize that she was spying on him.
The prince led me through several corridors. The servant trailed after us, but Leonidas finally lost her by climbing up some steps, quickly walking along a hallway to a different set of steps, going down them, and doubling back the way we’d just come.
We didn’t pass any more servants, spies, or anyone else. These corridors were sparsely furnished, with only a few tables and chairs, and it was still quite chilly in this section of the palace, despite the fires burning in the libraries and other common rooms. I shivered, grateful for the warmth of the borrowed coat.
“Are you sure we’re actually in Myrkvior?” I sniped as we stepped into yet another deserted corridor. “Or did the queen banish you to the wing that was the farthest away from hers?”
“Something like that,” he replied. “I learned at a very young age that it was safer for me, as a bastard prince, to be as far away from the legitimate Morricone royals as possible.”
“But surely that changed after—” I bit back the rest of my words.
“After my mother killed King Maximus, her own brother, and took the throne for herself? And my uncle Nox killed Mercer, the legitimate crown prince?” Leonidas laughed, although the sound was brimming with bitterness. “Oh, yes. Things did change after that. But not for the better. Not for everyone.”
Not for me.
He didn’t say the words aloud, or even think them in his mind, but they still resonated in the air between us. A tiny needle of sympathy pricked my heart. Being a royal was never easy, not even for Princess Gemma with her pampered Glitzma persona and supposedly charmed, carefree life. I’d seen the toll being a bastard prince had taken on my uncle, Lucas Sullivan, and I could imagine how much worse it would have been for Leonidas—and Maeven too.
After she had murdered Maximus during the Regalia Games roughly sixteen years ago, several of the legitimate Morricone royals had tried to take the throne from the bastard queen. Maeven had killed everyone who had openly challenged her, but the ones who were smart enough to submit to her rule supposedly despised the queen. So did many of the wealthier nobles who’d wanted the crown for themselves, and I’d heard more than one rumor about assassination attempts, both against Maeven and her children.
More needles of sympathy pricked my heart. Leonidas’s daily life at Myrkvior was probably more fraught with danger than mine had ever been on any of my spy missions. Except for this one, of course.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That things have been . . . difficult for you.”
He nodded, accepting my condolences, although he didn’t look at me.
We walked in silence, moving through the hallways before stepping through some glass doors and emerging onto a third-floor balcony. Leonidas led me over to the shadows that were pooled around a column, and I peered over the railing. Instead of some interior section of the palace, this balcony overlooked an enormous open-air courtyard with an archway that led out into the city of Majesta beyond.
“And this,” Leonidas said, sweeping his hand out wide, “is the true heart of the Morricones.”
In the courtyard below, butchers, bakers, and other merchants manned wooden carts and stalls, hawking everything from cuts of meat to loaves of bread to bolts of cloth, while shoppers meandered along, admiring all the goods. Servants, guards, nobles, commoners. Men, women, children. People of all shapes, sizes, and stations moved through the busy marketplace, and a hundred conversations buzzed in my ears. My gargoyle pendant grew warm against my chest, but we were high enough above the crowd that people’s thoughts were soft whispers that didn’t overwhelm me.
The pendant heating up against my skin reminded me that Leonidas had to have seen it, along with the gargoyle crest embedded in the dagger still hidden in my right boot. And yet, he hadn’t said anything about either one of them. His lack of interest made me even more suspicious about what he truly wanted from me.
“What do you think of Myrkvior?” Leonidas asked, pride rippling through his voice.
“It’s wonderful,” I said, and meant it.
He glanced around, as if making sure we were still alone and hidden in the shadows. Then he turned to me, his face serious. “I know that Mortans don’t have the best reputation, especially in Andvari and Bellona, but we really are just people who are trying to do our jobs and support our families and live our lives in peace.”
Peace was most definitely not the word that came to my mind when thinking about Mortans. As a child, I had often pictured the Morricone royals holed up in creepy candlelit chambers, gleefully cackling as they plotted the destruction of my family, along with their other enemies.
But Leonidas was right—the people below were going about the business of running their kingdom just like Andvarians, Bellonans, and everyone else did. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. About seeing the Mortans as actual people instead of nameless, faceless enemies who wanted me and my family dead. It was a bit disconcerting, to say the least.
“I wanted you to see this,” Leonidas continued. “Before you go.”
My eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Go where? To the palace dungeon?”
Leonidas’s face crinkled with confusion. “Home, of course. I would never throw you in the dungeon. Especially not after you saved my life.”
He seemed sincere, but he had also seemed sincere in the woods when we were children, right before he had handed me over to a turncoat guard.
“Rescuing me from the mine was one thing. You owed me for saving you from Wexel. But why bring me here?”
He shrugged. “The best healers in Morta are in Myrkvior, and you were still more dead than alive, even after getting partially healed in the mine.”
“So you brought me, an Andvarian spy, to the Mortan royal palace, and now you’re going to let me go? Just like that?” I didn’t bother to keep the suspicion out of my voice.
“Just like that.”
“Well, I suppose I should take you up on your offer—before your brother murders you.”
Leonidas’s face remained smooth, although his body tensed, just a bit. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I snorted. “Oh, please. You overheard the same thought that I did when we were walking through the palace earlier. Is Milo really plotting to kill you?”
He didn’t respond, but his lips pressed into a tight, unhappy line.
“Well, if you won’t answer my questions, then I’ll just have to assume that the rumors are true.”
“What rumors?” Leonidas asked in a guarded tone.
“Crown Prince Milo Morricone is quite the legend in Andvari,” I drawled. “Not only is he rumored to be an extremely powerful lightning magier, but he is also said to be exceedingly smart, cruel, and ruthless. Many Mortan nobles and merchants who have visited Glitnir whisper that everyone at Myrkvior is afraid of Milo, including Queen
Maeven and the other Morricone royals. Which would include you.”
This time, Leonidas snorted. “I am not afraid of Milo.”
“But your brother is dangerous, and he does want to kill you.”
A humorless smile curved his lips. “Milo wouldn’t be a Morricone otherwise.”
My mind whirred, trying to make sense of this new information. Suddenly, I saw everything that had happened in Blauberg in a new light. “Your brother has already tried to kill you, through Wexel. The captain works for Milo, doesn’t he?”
Leonidas didn’t confirm my suspicion, but I didn’t need him to. Delmira had been thrilled to see him in the rotunda earlier, and Maeven had seemed fond enough of her second son. Neither one of them appeared to have any murderous intentions toward Leonidas, which left Milo as the most likely suspect.
Leonidas’s lips puckered, as though he had bitten into something sour. “My brother has always been . . . ambitious.”
Ambitious? That was a polite way of saying that Milo was just as greedy, vicious, and ruthless as the Morricone kings and queens who had come before him.
Milo had long objected to the tenuous peace and trade treaties that Queen Maeven had struck and maintained with the other kingdoms, but the crown prince seemed to have a special hatred for Andvari. I wasn’t sure why he despised my kingdom so much, other than all the old prejudices that Mortans and Andvarians had against each other. The two kingdoms and their respective peoples had never gotten along, much like strixes and gargoyles were more apt to fight whenever they saw each other, instead of simply letting each other be.
“Given the articles he’s published in the penny papers, everyone knows that Milo wants to restore Morta to what he views as its glory days,” I said. “Back when King Maximus almost succeeded in getting Andvari and Bellona to go to war against each other.”
Back when your mother orchestrated my uncle’s murder. The thought whispered through my mind, but I shoved it down, lest he overhear it with his magic.
Leonidas shook his head. “Milo is much more aggressive and volatile than Maximus ever was. He doesn’t want to sit back and watch a war between two other kingdoms. Milo wants to be the one who starts the war.”
I reared back in surprise. There had long been rumors that Milo wanted to attack the other kingdoms, but I hadn’t thought him bold—or stupid—enough to actually do it. Not given how Grandfather Heinrich, Father, and Rhea had bolstered the Andvarian army and our other defenses over the last sixteen years, and the treaties that guaranteed Bellona, Unger, and the other kingdoms would come to our aid if Morta ever did attack Andvari.
And there was one other large, glaring problem with Milo wanting to start a war—he was still just the crown prince. Maeven was the queen, which meant that she commanded the Mortan army and its legions of soldiers. Not Milo.
Not until Maeven was no longer queen.
Understanding punched into my stomach. “You think your brother is going to try to depose your mother.”
Leonidas’s lips puckered again. “Mother is one of the few things holding Milo back from his . . . ambitions.”
Ambitions? What he really meant was rage and slaughter, and we both knew it.
Leonidas leaned a shoulder against the column, as if suddenly weary. A liladorn vine had twined around the stone, and he idly rubbed his thumb over it. The vine undulated beneath his finger, like a cat arching into a welcome back scratch, although he didn’t seem to notice the motion.
He dropped his hand from the vine and looked at me again. “Yes, I do think Milo has . . . plans for my mother.”
A sea of emotions roiled through me. Worry, concern, disgust—and more than a little malicious glee. As a child, I had often dreamed of killing Maeven, of stabbing a dagger straight into her heart, just as Vasilia Blair had done to Uncle Frederich during the Seven Spire massacre. I still fantasized about it sometimes, especially when I snapped out of one of my ghosting visions, shaking and sweating from all the horrible memories my magic had dredged up.
“But my mother can take care of herself,” Leonidas continued. “My main concern right now is the tearstone that’s been stolen from your mine.”
My mind kept whirring, putting the rest of the puzzle pieces together. “So Milo is the one stealing and stockpiling Andvarian tearstone. Why? What is he planning to do with it?”
“I don’t know.”
I huffed in disbelief and crossed my arms over my chest.
Leonidas shook his head. “Doubt me if you want, but I don’t know my brother’s exact plans. I wasn’t even sure that he was the one buying the tearstone. Not until Wexel tried to kill me in Blauberg. That’s when I knew the rumors were true.”
“What rumors?” This time, I had to ask the question.
He stared out over the marketplace, but his eyes dimmed, as though he was peering at something in his own mind instead of at the people shopping below. “That Milo is having the tearstone brought to his personal workshop. That he’s been experimenting, trying to turn it into some sort of weapon.” He paused, and his voice dropped even lower. “One that he wants to use against Andvari and the other kingdoms.”
So my suspicion about the tearstone being turned into weapons was correct, although I’d mistakenly thought it was Maeven’s scheme, instead of Milo’s plot. Still, Leonidas’s revelations increased my worry and dread.
The Morricones were famed tinkerers who experimented with magic, blood, creatures, and more. Years ago, King Maximus had created a powder of crushed tearstone and amethyst-eye poison that helped him absorb magic by drinking strix blood. If what Leonidas said was true and Milo was even worse than his uncle . . . Well, I didn’t even want to imagine what sorts of horrors the crown prince had created in his workshop.
“Milo knows that I don’t agree with his ambitions,” Leonidas continued. “But he has a lot of support among the nobles and others in the palace.”
Once again, he was hinting at the truth without actually delivering the full, heavy weight of it.
“You mean that your brother has people watching your every move and reporting back to him, like that old woman who followed us earlier. And that he’ll see you coming if you try to thwart him.”
“Yes. Milo has spies everywhere, and he is well protected.”
“So that’s why you were in Blauberg,” I said. “You couldn’t find out what Milo was up to here at Myrkvior, so you decided to attack the problem from the other end. To track down where the tearstone was coming from and see if you could pick up any clues there.”
“Yes. But instead of clues, I found you.”
His low, deep voice rasped against my skin, and something flared in his eyes, making them burn bright and hot. The emotion vanished before I could put a proper name to it, but his intense expression made my stomach clench. My arms were still crossed over my chest, and my fingers dug into my elbows, as if that would shield me from whatever he was thinking, as well as from my own treacherous attraction to him.
“But my feud with my brother is none of your concern,” Leonidas said. “It will end the way such things always do between Morricones.”
“And how is that?”
“With one of us killing the other.”
His cold, matter-of-fact tone sent a shiver down my spine. We might both be mind magiers, might both be royals, but in some ways, we were as different as night and day, especially when it came to our families. I would die to protect Father, Grandfather Heinrich, Rhea, Grimley, Topacia, Alvis, Xenia, Uncle Lucas, and Aunt Evie. Leonidas would probably have to murder his own brother just to make it to the end of the year.
He dug into his coat pocket, pulled out a purple velvet pouch, and tossed it over to me. I caught it, and the tink-tink-tink of coins filled the air.
“There’s more than enough money in there for you to travel back to Blauberg.” Leonidas gestured at the courtyard below. “All you have to do is slip out of the marketplace. No one will stop you.”
I hefted the bag in my hand, even as I
weighed options in my mind. He was right. I could go down to the marketplace, walk out through the open gates, and disappear into the city. From there, I could take a train back to the Mortan-Andvarian border, then call out to Grimley and have him fly me back over the Spire Mountains to Blauberg.
Or I could stay here and spy on the Morricones.
Despite everything I’d learned, I still had no idea what Milo planned to do with the thousands of pounds of tearstone that he’d stolen. If he was making a new weapon, like Leonidas had suggested, then I needed to find out as much about it as possible. Milo had already orchestrated the deaths of dozens of Andvarians. What kind of future queen would I be if I didn’t do everything in my power to keep him from murdering even more of my people?
Back in Blauberg, I’d joked to Topacia and Grimley that this mission was an adventure. But it was turning out to be a necessity, one that just might make the difference between Andvari falling to Morta or emerging intact from this growing conflict.
And then there was the not-so-simple matter of my own pride. I hadn’t saved myself in Blauberg, which rankled me as badly as a burr under a horse’s saddle. I hadn’t been clever enough to figure out that Conley was planning to kill me, and I hadn’t been strong enough, either physically or in my magic, to keep him and his men from getting the better of me. As much as I hated to admit it, the only reason I was still alive was because Leonidas had rescued me.
Well, now I had a chance to potentially save everyone in Andvari, and I wasn’t going to let my people, my family, or myself down. I was not going to be a bloody failure. Not again. Not like I’d been in the mine, and especially not like I’d been during the Seven Spire massacre.
“Where, exactly, is Ravensrock?”
“It’s a small city in northern Morta.” Confusion filled Leonidas’s face. “Why do you ask?”
“Lady Armina should know where her hometown is.”
His eyebrows shot up. “You can’t possibly want to stay here.”
“Why not? I’m an Andvarian spy, and you’ve paved the way for me to skulk around Myrkvior to my heart’s content. I would be remiss if I didn’t take advantage of such a golden opportunity.”
Capture the Crown Page 16