Capture the Crown

by Jennifer Estep

  I craned my neck, peering into the room. A recital was taking place to amuse the nobles, but the angle was wrong, and I couldn’t see who was singing.

  Anaka hurried on, and I followed her.

  The girl glanced at me over her shoulder. “The princess’s chambers are up ahead—”

  She rounded a corner and plowed into a guard heading in the opposite direction. Anaka hit the man’s chest, bounced off, and stumbled back. She opened her mouth, as if to upbraid the guard for almost knocking her over, but then her eyes widened in recognition.

  Short black hair, hazel eyes, bronze skin, a heavily stubbled square jaw that jutted out over the rest of his thick, muscled body. Not just a mere guard, but Captain Wexel.

  Even though Leonidas and I had talked about Wexel earlier, I hadn’t given much thought as to where the captain might be. But of course he would be at the palace, and of course I would run into him.

  I froze, right alongside Anaka. If there was one person at Myrkvior who might immediately recognize me, then it was Wexel. Not as Princess Gemma, but rather as Miner Gemma, who’d watched him try to murder his own prince.

  “Watch where you’re going,” Wexel growled.

  Anaka shrank down like a tortoise pulling itself back into its protective shell to keep its head from being bitten off. “Sir! I’m so sorry!”

  Wexel opened his mouth to growl at her again, but then he noticed me. “Who are you?”

  Despite the danger, I lifted my chin, playing the part of an arrogant noble. “Lady Armina from Ravensrock. Who are you?”

  “Captain Wexel,” he boasted, his voice dripping with pride and arrogance. “I’m in charge of the royal guards, along with Crown Prince Milo’s personal security.”

  He dropped his hand to the sword dangling from his belt, puffed up his chest, and preened, as if his words should make me cower like Anaka was still doing.

  Part of me wanted to duck my head and slink away to avoid further scrutiny, but Lady Armina wouldn’t let Wexel just walk all over her, no matter whom he worked for. Still, I didn’t know the exact pecking order here, or how much power Wexel truly had, and I needed to err on the side of caution. So instead of dressing him down, I let out an indignant little sniff, as though I was unimpressed with his title.

  Wexel’s eyes narrowed, and his hand slid off his sword and clenched into a fist, as though he wanted to punch me. I didn’t think he would dare to strike a noble lady. At least, not with a servant standing here as a witness. But I still needed to tread carefully, so I schooled my features into a blank mask.

  Several seconds dragged by in tense silence. Wexel’s fist slowly relaxed, although anger kept glimmering in his eyes. He jerked his head at Anaka, giving her permission to leave.

  “This—this way, my lady,” she stammered.

  She started to sidle past Wexel, but he held out his hand, blocking her path, although he never took his suspicious gaze off me.

  “Have I seen you before?” he demanded.

  A cold finger of worry slid down my back, increasing that uncomfortable itch between my shoulder blades, but I shrugged. “Not unless you’ve been to Ravensrock. And I doubt you have, what with all your important duties here at the palace.”

  My words were innocent enough, but I didn’t bother to mask my venomous disdain. An angry red flush zipped up Wexel’s neck and stained his cheeks. Beside me, Anaka sucked in a breath and scrunched down, once again trying to make herself as small as possible.

  I should have kept my mouth shut, or at least made my tone more civil, but Princess Gemma had gotten the better of Spy Gemma, as she so often did when confronted with a cruel, arrogant bully. Still, I couldn’t back down now. Wexel would pounce on any sign of weakness, and the captain thinking me weak was far more dangerous than him simply hating me. You could still be wary of people that you despised. Wexel would abuse, torture, and kill anyone he considered weaker than himself.

  I kept staring at Wexel with that same blank expression. When he realized that I wasn’t going to give in, he focused on Anaka again, since she was the easier target.

  “Watch where you’re fucking going,” he snarled, then pushed past her, knocking the girl back into the wall.

  He pushed past me as well, but I tensed my legs, not giving him the satisfaction of moving. Wexel glared at me again, then strode down the hallway, rounded the corner, and vanished.

  I waited until his heavy, angry footsteps had faded away before I turned to Anaka. “Are you all right?”

  She eased away from the wall. “Yes, thank you.”

  The girl glanced around as if to make sure we were still alone before looking at me again. “I know that you’re new here, Lady Armina, but you don’t want to make an enemy out of Captain Wexel,” she said, her voice a low, warning whisper. “He controls many of the guards, and he only answers to Queen Maeven and Prince Milo. Wexel can make things . . . difficult for you.”

  “Difficult how?”

  Anaka shivered and hugged her arms around her chest. “You don’t want to know.”

  She shivered again, then beckoned me to follow her. I thought about skimming her thoughts, but she was right. I didn’t want to know. I could well imagine all the petty ways Wexel would torture those he considered beneath him. And if he remembered that he had seen me in Blauberg . . .

  Well, the captain would come for me, and he wouldn’t be so kind as to give me a quick, merciful death.

  * * *

  A few minutes later, Anaka stopped in front of some double doors. Instead of wood or glass, these doors were made entirely of liladorn vines that had twisted together into a thick, solid mass.

  “Princess Delmira is waiting inside.” Anaka bobbed her head and scuttled off.

  I rapped my knuckles on one of the vines, careful not to scratch my skin on the long black thorns. The vines quivered at my touch, almost as though they were unlocking themselves, and one of the doors creaked open. I stepped through to the other side.

  Unlike Leonidas’s cozy tower library, these chambers were far larger and all on one wide level, and the furnishings were much finer and far more feminine. Off to my right, a set of doors opened up into a room with a four-poster bed draped with panels of lilac silk and covered with mounds of pillows. Beyond the bed, more doors led to a bathroom patterned with lilac tile.

  Here in the first, main part of the chambers, cushioned settees clustered around a fireplace, while floor-to-ceiling shelves cluttered with books, maps, and jeweled figurines shaped like flowers, strixes, and caladriuses hugged the walls. An ebony writing desk was perched in one corner, and a window seat ran along the back wall, which was made of glass.

  But the most interesting thing was the long, wide ebony table situated in front of the window seat. An odd jumble of items covered the surface—swords, daggers, iron nails, potted herbs, glittering spheres of glass, a flute, a violin, sticks of colored chalks, even a few half-finished paintings.

  The objects were those that a magier would use to determine what, if any, magic a person had. Curious. Why would Delmira have a testing table in her chambers? She was in her mid-twenties. Her magic, whatever it was, should have revealed itself years ago.

  Besides the testing table, the other most eye-catching thing was the liladorn. The black vines adorned many of the palace’s corridors, but they were practically everywhere in here—snaking along the floor, twining in between the furniture, crawling up the walls, and even clinging to the ceiling like oddly shaped bats.

  Except for the odd abundance of liladorn, these chambers reminded me of my own rooms at Glitnir. Everything a princess could ever want was in here, and you could while away the hours without ever venturing out into the rest of the palace.

  After the Seven Spire massacre, I had spent days at a time in my rooms, curled up in bed, reading storybooks and trying to forget all the horrible things that had happened. I wondered how much time Delmira spent in here, and if she preferred to stay in her chambers rather than deal with her duplicitous
family and the poisonous palace politics. If so, the Morricone princess and I were far more alike than I’d realized.

  “Lady Armina! There you are!” Delmira’s light, lilting voice floated over to me, and she strode through another pair of doors that led into an enormous dressing room.

  She rushed over and clasped my hands, smiling as though we were the best of friends and not strangers who had just met this morning. I reached out, trying to skim her thoughts, but I couldn’t hear them. Not a single one. I also couldn’t feel her emotions, not even the faintest flicker of happiness, annoyance, or jealousy.

  Everything about the princess seemed . . . muffled, as though she were cocooned in soft, invisible armor from head to toe. Perhaps Delmira Morricone was more well protected—and powerful—than I’d suspected.

  Delmira frowned and dropped my hands. “Is something wrong?”

  “Not at all,” I lied. “I was just admiring your chambers. The books, the maps, the figurines. You seem to be quite the collector.”

  She let out a very unprincesslike snort. “That’s a nice way of saying that I love odd, broken things.”

  Just like me.

  This time, I did hear a whisper of her thoughts, although the words quickly vanished into the muffled silence that cloaked her.

  Another smile split her face. “Come! Let me give you a tour.”

  Delmira led me around the main room, sharing tidbits about all the items on display, except for those on the testing table. She avoided that area completely, and she didn’t so much as glance at those objects. Still, I managed to get close enough to eye the papers on the table, many of which featured dates, times, and numbers. Delmira seemed to be conducting experiments with the items, although none of them were going very well, given all the dark purple Xs that marred the papers.

  I thought back, trying to remember everything I had ever heard about Delmira Morricone. She was rumored to be a lightning magier, although I didn’t sense any magic rolling off her. Maeven’s power had been strong enough to make my fingertips tingle, but I didn’t get any sense of that from Delmira. Perhaps she was weak in her magic. A very dangerous thing to be, especially for a Morricone royal. Perhaps that was why she seemed to spend so much time in her chambers.

  Delmira headed over to a glass door in the back wall, and I followed her outside into a courtyard. No other doors or windows overlooked this courtyard, and I didn’t see another exit, just high stone walls topped with parapets and a few neighboring towers with steep, sloped roofs.

  And then there was the liladorn.

  Even more vines were clustered out here than in the princess’s chambers, and the tendrils had woven themselves through the flagstones and walls and even climbed the towers, winding all the way up to the tops of the black spikes and hanging there like thorn-crusted flags.

  I poked one of the vines with my finger. It sprang right back into place, even though the vine itself was as hard and solid as stone. Even stranger was the feeling I got from it, as though a presence was hidden somewhere among the many vines, and each thorn was a sharp black eye, silently watching and judging me.

  “Do you have liladorn in Ravensrock?” Delmira asked, noting my interest in the vines.

  I had no idea, so I gave her a vague answer. “Not nearly as much as you have here. It must be so beautiful when it blooms. I’ve heard the thorns transform into spikes of fragrant lilac.”

  “I’ve been told that as well, although I’ve never seen it. None of the liladorn in Myrkvior has bloomed in years. Not since I was a baby, according to my mother. Of course, the vines are beautiful all by themselves, but I would dearly love to see it bloom, just once,” she said, a wistful note in her voice.

  Delmira walked along one of the paths, carelessly trailing her fingers along the vines without scratching herself on the numerous thorns. At first, I thought she was using magic to push the thorns aside, but no power was rippling off her, and I realized that the vines were moving themselves. The tendrils were twisting, bending, and turning ever so slightly so that Delmira could slide her hand along their shiny black surfaces without getting injured, although she didn’t seem to notice the vines’ protective motions.

  “Most of the noble ladies don’t like my courtyard. They think it’s too dull and gloomy without any flowers, but it’s one of my favorite places,” Delmira said. “I like to come out here to think.”

  She sat down on the rim of a gray stone fountain in the middle of the courtyard. Liladorn ringed the rim, and the vines had snaked through the gurgling water, crawled up to and wrapped around the figure in the center—a woman with a caladrius perched on her shoulder and her head bowed over a book.

  I perched stiffly on the fountain rim beside Delmira. I eyed the liladorn vines that ran past my boots, but they remained still.

  A smile played across the princess’s lips. “Leonidas has never brought a woman home before.”

  The sudden change in topic startled me, and it took me a few seconds to pick up on what she was implying.

  I shook my head. “No. It’s not like that. Leonidas came to my rescue when those . . . bandits attacked and was kind enough to bring me here to recuperate. There’s nothing more between us.”

  “Mmm. Whatever you say.” Delmira’s smile widened, and her eyes sparkled with merriment.

  She obviously thought I was lying, but I didn’t correct her. Better for her to think I was besotted with Leonidas than spying on Milo.

  “Well, however you got here, I’m so glad you’ve come to Myrkvior. Leonidas spends far too much time alone, holed up in his dusty, cluttered library.” Her nose crinkled with comical distaste.

  I could have pointed out that her chambers were just as cluttered as her brother’s, and that she seemed to spend just as much time alone as he did, but I changed the topic instead. “What about your other brother, Milo? I hear he is engaged.”

  The more I learned about Milo, the better I could navigate the treacherous palace politics, and the sooner I could figure out what he was planning to do with the tearstone.

  Delmira’s smile vanished. “Yes, Milo has been engaged to Lady Corvina for a few months. She comes from a very old, powerful, wealthy noble family. The Dumonds. I’m sure you’ve heard of them.”

  “Of course.”

  In addition to the Morricones, my father and grandfather also paid close attention to other influential Mortan families, especially the Dumonds, who had almost as much magic, money, land, and men as the Morricones did. Over the years, various Dumonds had tried to wrest the throne away from Maeven, although none had been successful. Marrying Milo to a Dumond must be Maeven’s way of trying to appease the noble family while still making sure the throne stayed firmly in Morricone hands.

  “Does Milo spend much time at Myrkvior?” I asked. “Surely he has his own chambers here.”

  Delmira shrugged. “He has his own private workshop, of course, although he rarely lets anyone inside it. Milo used to spend far more time traveling, especially to some of the eastern kingdoms, but this year, he’s spent most of his time at Myrkvior.”

  A private workshop? That sounded promising, and it matched up with what Leonidas had told me earlier. I didn’t think Leonidas would lie about where Milo might be hiding the tearstone, but it didn’t hurt to confirm his claims.

  I opened my mouth to ask Delmira another question when a shadow fell over us, and a loud, harsh caw! rang out. Wings flapped, and a strix streaked down from the sky and landed in the courtyard.

  I tensed, thinking the strix might be here to attack me, but then I recognized the creature. Lyra. I relaxed a bit. She probably wouldn’t hurt me. Probably.

  Delmira laughed and held out her hand, and Lyra rubbed up against the princess’s fingers like an oversize house cat. Leonidas might be Lyra’s favorite human, but Delmira seemed to be a close second. Then the strix turned to me, quirking her head from side to side.

  “Go on,” Delmira encouraged. “Hold out your hand. Lyra won’t hurt you. She is Leonida
s’s strix, and the two of you met before. During the bandit attack, right?”

  Something about the way she said that made me think Delmira didn’t believe her brother’s lies about me, but I had no real reason to doubt her, other than my own paranoia.

  “Of course,” I murmured.

  Delmira was the princess here, not me, so I did as she asked. Lyra hopped over and rubbed her head against my outstretched hand. Laughter bubbled up out of my lips too, and I scratched her head right in between her eyes, the same spot where Grimley always liked to be petted—

  An idea popped into my mind, and I leaned closer to the strix and stared into her bright, shiny amethyst eyes. Lyra. I gently sent the thought to her. Will you help me? Please?

  The strix squawked and hopped back, clearly startled. I kept staring at her, and she eased closer to me again.

  What do you want? Her singsong voice filled my mind.

  Grimley, my gargoyle, is coming to Myrkvior. Can you find him and make sure he gets to the palace safely? I don’t want the other strixes to hurt him.

  Lyra let out a sound that was somewhere between a huff and a snort. Stupid rocks-for-brains gargoyle coming to my city. He’s going to get himself killed. The others will attack him the moment they see him.

  That was exactly what I was afraid of. I know you don’t like him, but please find Grimley and help him. I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to him because of me.

  The strix bobbed her head in what seemed like agreement. Lyra cawed again, then spread her wings and shot up into the sky. I watched until she vanished from sight, then turned back to Delmira, who was staring at me with a thoughtful expression.

  “Strixes are such beautiful creatures,” I said, trying to explain my seeming fascination with Lyra.

  “Yes, they are. I have often wished for one of my own.”

  “But don’t you ride strixes when you visit other cities in Morta?”

  Delmira shrugged. “Of course. But I’ve never bonded with any of the strixes the way Leo has with Lyra. I’ve always been a bit jealous of their connection, of their friendship.”