There was that surprise again, then he grinned as they started down the hallway. “You’re such a comfort.”
~
It took a little while to find the right meeting room. Cameron, naturally, joked that she had gotten lost, but the truth was that Elena could barely keep track of her mother’s schedule. The queen met with at least eight different committees or various community leaders on any given day—sometimes she marveled at how a kingdom this small could have so much bureaucracy—and would often hold the meetings in whatever space happened to be available.
Finally, she found the room she needed, pressing her ear to the door to gauge what point of the meeting they were at. “Small talk. Either the meeting is taking forever to get started, or it’s already ended and no one’s smart enough to move on with their day. Either way, it turns out we might actually be doing my mother a favor.” Besides, if she waited for a rare moment of privacy with her mother, she’d risk being asked questions she didn’t want to answer.
She laid her hand on the door handle, glancing over at him. “If anyone in there looks like a former military man, try not to meet their eyes. We’re familiar enough with each other here that most of them have run out of people who haven’t heard their stories. You’re a new enough face they might actually chase you down.”
He simply raised an eyebrow at her, amused again. “It’s very hard for me to tell right now if you’re being serious.”
She shrugged, fighting the temptation to smile. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
As she opened the door, eight different pairs of eyes swung around to focus on her. From the way they were sitting it seemed like the meeting hadn’t started yet, unfortunately, and even an unexpected visitor served as a distraction from the boredom of waiting.
Elena shoulders tensed, a movement subtle enough that no one ever seemed to notice. “Forgive me for the intrusion, Mother, but I wanted to introduce my new personal guard.” She stepped aside so he could be seen. “Cameron Merrick, the commander’s son. He’ll be taking over the position temporarily while the commander’s leg heals.”
Most of the people at the table expressed some form of polite interest in the news—from the look of them, this was apparently the Harvest Celebration committee—but her mother pressed her lips together. “He and I discussed the matter. Quite briefly, unfortunately.”
Elena recognized the wariness in her mother’s eyes, as familiar to her as the long, white-blond hair tightly bound in a knot at the nape of the queen’s neck. She was her mother’s daughter in several ways, and could pick up on the unspoken implication that her mother still had several unanswered questions.
Thankfully, she wouldn’t press the matter here. “You know how concerned he’s been ever since he injured his leg.” Elena kept her voice light, but decided not to risk her camouflage smile. Her mother used one too often herself not to be able to identify it.
Cameron, who had stepped forward to stand next to her, cleared his throat. “My mother is actually the one who asked me to come,” he specified, head ducked slightly to make him look even younger than his twenty-one years. “Honestly, I’m not a hundred percent sure Dad even knew she asked me. She just wanted him to stop worrying.”
It was a bald-faced lie—the Merricks talked more than any two people Elena had ever met—but relief smoothed her mother’s expression back out. “There’s nothing to worry about, then.” She smiled briefly, a real one, and Elena was overcome with the highly dangerous impulse to go over and hug her mother.
If she did, however, there was a very good chance that her mother would burst into silent tears—it had happened, once—and then she would start and there would be no stopping either of them.
Instead, she tried her own smile before giving everyone else at the table a dignified nod of acknowledgement. “Ladies, gentlemen, I apologize for interrupting the meeting.”
“No need to apologize, Your Highness.” Duke Halton—a booming man who enjoyed the distinction of being the kingdom’s only duke—waved away the apology. “Even if you hadn’t made an appearance, we can’t get started until Bishop shows up. Man’s got his head buried in his numbers again.”
“We sent a page to fetch him, but it’s entirely possible he’s gotten lost as well.” This was from Ruth Hatarni, who held a great deal of unofficial power among the kingdom’s guilds. “If you would be a dear and stop by his office, it would be a great help in moving things along.”
“I’m sure he’ll be here shortly,” her mother said calmly, taking a little too much care to keep any warmth from showing in her voice. It had been a habit of hers, these last few months, and some of the servants started to wonder whether the queen and her trusted right hand had suffered a falling out. Elena, however, knew that it really meant quite the opposite. “Given how much he does for all of us, I think we can spare him a few more minutes.”
“If I see him, I will let him know,” Elena said. Then, careful not to spark any more casual conversation that might pin her there any longer, she quickly slipped out of the room.
Cameron, thankfully, was right behind her, and shut the door with an expression that suggested he’d thought of something unpleasant. “How many of those meetings do you get stuck in during an average day?” He hesitated, as if bracing himself for the worst. “Also, I didn’t see anyone else in there with guards, including your mother. What’s the protocol for where your guard has to be standing during these things, and do you know of any tricks my dad used to keep from falling asleep in the middle of them?”
Elena kept them both moving down the corridor, torn between relief that Alan hadn’t gone into this much detail with him and dreading the fact that she was going to have to. Cameron was in the habit of asking questions, and if she tried to stonewall him she suspected he’d just go out and find the answers on his own. “Don’t worry—you’ll be spared the subtle tortures of committee meetings. I don’t attend any of them.”
He was far enough behind her that she couldn’t see his expression, but the sound he made was pure relief. “So how’d you pull that off? Is your mom being nice, or did you somehow manage to talk your way out of it?”
She hunted for the simplest lie. “She’s just being nice.”
Behind her, Cameron abruptly stopped moving. Elena took a few more steps down the hallway, trying to tell herself that the pause had nothing to do with the conversation, then gave up and turned around to face him. “What?”He narrowed his eyes at her, the seriousness of a professional guard mixing with a fundamental stubbornness that kept cropping up at the most annoyingly unpredictable moments. “If you don’t want to talk about something, tell me it’s none of my business. Tell me to shut up. Don’t say anything at all. I don’t care.” His voice was almost angry. “But don’t try to shut me up by saying what you think I want to hear. If I’m supposed to be protecting you, I can’t spend half my time trying to figure out when you’re lying to me.”
She stared at him, eyes wide, then it was her turn to glare. “What makes you think I’m going to give you any special consideration?” she snapped. “I lie to everyone.”
He gave a disbelieving snort. “I doubt that. You’re not good enough at it.”
“People want me to lie to them, you idiot.” She might not be able to stop herself from getting angry, but she flatly refused to show it. “The fact that I never tell people what I’m really feeling is the kindest thing I could possibly do for them, especially when they’re stupid enough to ask. The people who want to be kind to me are smart enough not to.”
Cameron just watched her. “So everything’s off limits, basically,” he said, the humor gone from his voice.
Elena lifted her chin, unnerved by how much she’d suddenly unloaded on him. “Yes.” She smoothed an uncertain hand down the front of her dress. “But you’re also right. I’ll try to confine my responses to ‘no comment’ rather than a lie of some kind.”
Elena turned to look in the direction they’d been heading, trying to remember. “Bishop’s office,” she decided, leaping for the first coherent sounding answer. “I said we’d see if he’d left for the meeting yet.”
“And then?”
She turned back to look at him, wary at the ultra-even tone he’d adopted. Somehow, he seemed even more unpredictable like this. “I’m not sure yet.”
He gestured ahead of them. “Then you’d better lead the way.”
Chapter 4
Justifiable Lightning Strikes
It was easier this way.
Firmly reminding himself of that fact, Cam dutifully followed Elena down the hall to Bishop’s office. The elf had apparently left already, and when the princess turned down another corner Cam didn’t ask where they were going next. He’d put in enough grunt time on sentry detail—stand there, look forbidding, learn how to embrace boredom—that he could probably make it through the next month without speaking more than eight words to the woman he was supposed to be guarding. Clearly, she would prefer it that way, and if she could keep from lying to him he could certainly do without the small talk. It wasn’t like he could do anything about the curse, anyway.
Cam narrowed his eyes at the back of Elena’s head, trying to figure out what was bothering him about all this. He was sure his dad expected him to do more than play shadow, but from what his parents had said, Nigel sounded more like a pest than a serious threat. Even if he had been, Cam was no better with a sword than either of his older siblings, and yet for some reason his dad had still wanted him on the job.
He wasn’t even exactly sure what the real job was. The biggest threat against Elena was obviously the curse, but Robbie was the closest thing the family had to a magic expert. If this was some insane scheme to get the princess a friend—what a nightmare that would be—he hoped they would have at least tried to throw twelve-year-old Gabby at her first. What was Cam supposed to do that no one else could?
He hated trying to figure out what his father was thinking.
“Wait here,” Elena ordered, stopping in front of one of the castle’s seemingly endless doorways. The faint chemical smell emanating from the other side suggested the room was hiding something considerably more interesting than a meeting. “I’ll only be a few minutes.”
He was fine with following rules. Dictates, however, were a different matter. “I don’t think so.” He stepped forward before she could argue and grasped the door handle. “A good guard always enters a room before the person he’s protecting.”
Cam opened the door just as Elena was drawing breath for a response, moving into a room that was almost pitch black. He waited for his eyes to adjust, and when there was absolutely no improvement, he became suspicious. Then there was a faint crackling sound, only a little bit louder than the bubbling, and he yanked Elena behind him as he lunged for the wall.
An instant later, a bolt of lightning shot out of the darkness and sizzled as it left a burn spot on the wooden door.
“This is why I wanted you to wait outside,” Elena snapped, hitting him on the arm as she stepped away from him. “Braeth doesn’t like strangers.”
There was a deep, foreboding voice from the darkness “Oh, I have little trouble with them.” The words had an odd echoing quality, suggesting they were being made without the benefit of actual vocal cords. “It’s a poor sorcerer who hasn’t learned to work around a charred corpse or two.”
The darkness thinned, just a little, and Cam could just barely make out a hooded figure on the other side of the room. From the little Cameron knew about wraiths, they didn’t actually need to stay in the shadows, but it definitely upped the drama factor. “I bet you really annoy the housekeeping staff.”
Braeth—at least, it better be the Braeth Elena had mentioned—chuckled again. “Oh, I do approve of this one.” When Elena made a disgusted noise and pushed passed Cam, the darkness thinned a little more as the wraith floated toward her. “Though if you were hoping to put your potential suitor through a trial by fire, I would be pleased to make him bleed a little.”
The princess made a choking sound, presumably at the word “suitor” rather than “bleed,” but Cam had grown up with older siblings. “Pleased to meet you, sir. My name is Cameron Merrick, and Elena and I are very much in love.” As he gave his voice the extra drama such a ridiculous statement required, he could practically feel Elena’s temper climb a few more notches. He fought a grin. “It means so much to me that you could sense the emotion we have for each other.”
This time, Braeth gave in to a full laugh. “Oh, you are an entertaining creature.” Cam could make out just a hint of a skeletal face in the shadows beneath the cowl. Braeth’s bony fingers peeked out of the edge of his sleeve as he motioned toward Elena.“I suspect young Elena is already considering what portion of the cellar to bury your corpse in.”
Cam glanced over at the princess, deciding he could squeeze in one more joke before his life would be genuinely at risk—from Elena, not the wraith. Surprisingly, he felt comfortable around Braeth already.“If she kills me, she’d have to deal with my mother.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Elena’s hand twitch in that same way it had before. Though he couldn’t be sure of the specific meaning behind the gesture, it looked remarkably like a woman fighting the urge to toss a spell at his head. He gave her an “Oh, really?” look, making it clear he’d seen the aborted gesture. Her jaw tightened, eyes sliding away from his.
When he turned back to Braeth, the wraith was watching them both. Nothing of his face was visible, and Cam realized how much he usually relied on reading people’s expressions. “As entertaining as that was, we have other matters to attend to,” the wraith said, the humor that had been in his voice now completely absent. “Did you come seeking wisdom or death from me?”
Elena hesitated, then folded her arms tightly across her chest. “I think the curse is coming early.”
Braeth went utterly still, even shutting off the wind effect that made his cloak perpetually rustle. “If it did,” he said, “You would already be unconscious. Sleep curses are designed to take effect as soon as the target date or scenario is achieved. The one your aunt constructed is very definitive.”
Cam saw Elena flinch a little on the last word, but she lifted her chin. “Well, it’s becoming less definitive. I collapsed for thirty seconds in town a few days ago, and in the hallway for more than a minute about an hour ago. I dropped in mid-sentence, without reason.”
Braeth was silent as she finished speaking, then lifted a hand towards a row of bookshelves against an opposite wall. One of the books floated up off a shelf and headed for the wraith, opening in front of him and hovering there obligingly while the pages turned. “If this was an intentional feature of the curse, there will be a specific pattern to the incidents. Only fools think it possible to generate true chaos.”
Elena sighed, her entire body drooping a little. “So you’re saying I need to wait for more incidents so I can see what the pattern is. Because there will be a pattern, and this is just a nasty little feature of the curse we somehow haven’t found until now.” The fire that had been in her voice was gone, and she sounded tired and sad enough that Cam felt an uncomfortable twinge inside his chest. He liked her smiling, and he was used to her ice queen routine, but this, this was just wrong.
Braeth didn’t say anything as he slowly returned the book to its place on the shelf. “I fear so,” he said finally, sounding oddly regretful despite the echo in his voice. “We focused on the inherent structure of the curse, not flourishes such as these. Whatever this proves to be, it is likely nothing more than cosmetic.”
“This feels a little more than that,
Braeth.” The edge was back in her voice. Cam tried hard to pretend he wasn’t relieved to hear it. “After we find the pattern, will there be any way to get rid of this particular flourish? She’s getting the rest of my life—she shouldn’t be able to mess with the last few months I have left.”
The cowl nodded. “I cannot imagine it will be too difficult, once we understand the structure of the alteration. I will consult my books.” He slid towards Elena, lifting a hand to brush almost but not quite along the top of her hair. The fine hairs fluttered, caught in the same invisible wind that he used on his cloak. “There is little need to ask if you’ve consulted with your mother about this.”
“No.” Elena closed her eyes, looking tired again. Cam was sure she’d completely forgotten he was in the room. “No one’s going to. There’s no reason to break her heart any more than it already has been.”
Braeth let out a long, rattling breath. “You know full well I do not share the secrets given into my possession.” His bony fingers moved near her face, once again almost but not quite touching her. Then he floated away again. “You must be careful until we resolve the matter, however. Keeping your secret is useless if she sees a collapse with her own eyes, and the queen is a skilled enough sorceress that she would undoubtedly detect any attempt on my part to wipe her memory.”
Cam’s brain registered all the possibilities in the last couple of words, and he turned to Elena with a steely look. “If you were thinking about it, don’t.”
Elena had jumped a little when he’d started speaking—he’d been right about her forgetting.Her face shifted from confused to appalled to annoyed in a matter of seconds. “Why would I bother going through the effort of wiping your memory? You already know everything useful there is to know about the curse, and I’m certainly not going to let you get the opportunity to find out anything else I want kept secret.” She huffed out a breath. “Besides, it speaks poorly of you that you immediately assumed a threat from a casual conversation.”
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