Felton scurried over to Queen Cordelia, who was standing in the center of the lawn. The queen was dressed in a scarlet gown trimmed with gold thread, and a gold crown studded with roses made of rubies circled her head. Despite the glints of gray in her golden hair, Cordelia was an impressive figure, with an imposing, authoritative air, as though she was somehow taller than everyone else, despite her petite size. I had thought her quite intimidating when I was a child. Now I just felt sorry for her.
For as much as I hated performing my so-called royal duties, Cordelia’s were a thousand times worse. All I had to do was smile, nod, and learn dances. The queen made decisions that impacted people throughout Bellona and beyond. Her choices determined who succeeded and who failed, who flourished and who floundered, who lived and who died, a burden far, far heavier on the heart than the weight of that crown on her head.
A fifty-something man wearing a short-sleeve scarlet tunic topped with a gold breastplate with a rising sun crest emblazoned over his heart stood three feet away from Cordelia. The crest and the feathered texture of the breastplate marked his importance and made him stand out from the other guards with their simpler armor. Captain Auster, the queen’s personal guard.
With his short gray hair, dark bronze skin, and brown eyes, Auster looked as stern as Cordelia did, especially given his lumpy, crooked nose, which had obviously been broken multiple times, despite the efforts of various bone masters to put it back into place. Unlike everyone else, Auster wasn’t laughing, talking, eating, or drinking. Instead, his sharp gaze scanned over everyone, and his hand rested on the sword hooked to his belt, ready to pull the blade free at a moment’s notice.
Lord Hans, the Andvarian ambassador, stood next to the queen. He was a handsome older man, with short gray hair, dark brown eyes, and ebony skin, and his fine gray jacket was covered with medals and ribbons, denoting his former service as an army general. He was telling some story and kept waving his hand to punctuate his loud, boisterous words. In his other hand, he held an empty plate and a fork, as though he had already had a piece of one of my pies. He must have enjoyed it, since only a few crumbs littered the plate.
Princess Madelena laughed at Hans’s story, as did her husband, Lord Durante, who had his arm draped protectively around her waist. Madelena wore a pink gown that highlighted her golden hair, gray-blue eyes, and the round curve of her stomach. She was six months pregnant and seemed to grow larger and more beautiful each day, while Durante’s green tunic accentuated his dark brown hair, eyes, and skin. Even though they had been married for more than two years, the couple was known for being thoroughly, disgustingly in love, and they spent more time sneaking adoring glances at each other than they did listening to the ambassador.
The final member of their group was Frederich, an Andvarian prince who was third in line for the throne. With his brown hair and blue eyes, he cut quite the dashing figure in his gray jacket, although it lacked the medals and ribbons that adorned Lord Hans’s garment.
A servant wandered by with a tray of champagne, and I grabbed a glass so I could see why Maeven had been making such a fuss about it. I started to take a sip, but a foul, sulfuric stench wafted up out of the fizzing bubbles. My nose crinkled. I’d never heard of champagne going bad, but this certainly had, although you wouldn’t know it from the way everyone else was guzzling it down. Perhaps it was just me. I tried again to take a sip, but I couldn’t ignore the disgusting aroma. I placed the glass on the servant’s tray and let him whisk it away. That’s when I realized that someone was staring at me.
Maeven.
Her blond hair was swept up into its usual bun, but she’d traded in her kitchen garb for a midnight-purple gown, along with amethyst chandelier earrings and a matching ring. She looked far more like a noble lady than she did a kitchen steward.
Maeven’s eyes locked with mine. Her face remained blank, and I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Then her gaze cut to the servant who had taken away my champagne. Perhaps she was wondering why I hadn’t drunk it. Another servant came up and whispered something in her ear, and she turned to answer him.
Servants were coming and going through the doors behind me, streaming by with trays of champagne, along with fresh fruit, crackers, and cheeses, so I moved out of their way and surveyed the rest of the crowd, many of whom were my cousins.
Queen Cordelia’s mother, Carnelia Blair, had been the oldest of nine siblings, including my grandmother Coralie, the third born and youngest sister. So all the children of those nine siblings were first cousins, including Queen Cordelia and Lady Leighton, my mother. That first generation of children had multiplied into many, many more, about fifty second cousins, including myself. That total crept up to about seventy-five cousins, if you counted all the bastard children. Currently, I was seventeenth in line for the throne. Soon to be eighteenth, after Madelena had her baby in a few months.
Genevieve, Owen, Bria, Finn . . .
Carmen, Sam, Fiona, Jasper . . .
My cousins were huddled in their usual cliques and keeping an eye on Cordelia, looking for the slightest opening to get some face time with her. Given the groups of people between us, I wouldn’t be able to get anywhere near the queen, much less talk to her about leaving Seven Spire.
I still needed to find someplace to put Alvis’s memory stone to record the luncheon, so I moved along the fringes of the crowd, searching for the spot with the best view where I could discreetly leave the stone.
Some of my younger cousins, including Gwendolyn, Logan, Lila, Devon, Rory, and Ian, waved and called out greetings as I passed them, which I returned. But for the most part, no one paid any attention to me as I roamed through the crowd. Which was fine, as it let me eavesdrop on all sorts of gossip, which I filed away for future use.
“. . . juggling three mistresses at once must be exhausting . . .”
“. . . can’t believe she had the gall to wear the same dress as me . . .”
“. . . Serilda Swanson’s come back to the capital. Her gladiator troupe moved into that new arena along the river last week. Their first show is tonight.”
My ears perked up at that last tidbit. A new gladiator troupe was always noteworthy, but this one was particularly interesting.
Serilda Swanson was a legend in Bellona. She used to be the queen’s personal guard, under the command of Captain Auster, but she’d gotten embroiled in some scandal that had led to her dismissal about fifteen years ago. But instead of slinking away quietly into the night, Serilda had fully embraced and even added to her scandal by taking several of the queen’s most trusted guards with her. She’d further thumbed her nose at Cordelia by using those same guards to start her own gladiator troupe. Now instead of protecting the queen, Serilda trained gladiators to entertain the masses and line her pockets with gold crowns. Everyone at the palace either applauded her ingenuity or hated her for it. Sometimes both.
Serilda had still been at Seven Spire when I’d first come here, so I had a few dim memories of her. What I mostly remembered was how many weapons she had always carried. She had once pulled them all out for me and laid them on the table in Alvis’s workshop like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. I paused, hoping that I might hear more about her, but the conversation moved on to another topic, so I moved on as well.
Everyone kept glancing from Queen Cordelia to the doors, as though they were expecting someone else important to arrive. That’s when I noticed who was missing—Vasilia.
Curious. I despised Vasilia, but she did her duty, the same as me, and it wasn’t like her to be one minute late. Perhaps she was going to skip the luncheon in protest. She hadn’t wanted Cordelia to meet with Lord Hans, and she certainly didn’t want to be engaged to Prince Frederich. But Vasilia was the crown princess, and it was her duty to do what was best for Bellona. That meant a permanent alliance with the Andvarians—one that would be bound by blood.
A royal marriage between Vasilia and Frederich would ensure that the two countries were united for years and generatio
ns to come, especially against the growing threat of the Mortans. Despite my hatred of her, I couldn’t blame Vasilia for wanting to choose her own husband. True, Madelena had a love match, but Durante came from the Floresian royal family, and their marriage had been politically motivated as much as anything else.
But I still had to find a spot for the memory stone, so I pushed those thoughts away, finished my circuit of the lawn, and headed over to the Andvarian table, stopping a few feet away from where Isobel was still dishing up pieces of pie. This table had the best view of the proceedings, so I pulled the black velvet bag out of my pocket, opened the drawstrings, and fished out the memory stone.
I set the stone on the table in front of a crystal vase full of blue snow pansies, then tapped my finger on it three times. The bits of blue, red, green, and purple shimmered in the milky surface, and the opal began glowing with a faint light, although you had to squint to see it, given the bright sunshine.
I had just slid the black velvet bag back into my pocket when a cane poked into my upper arm, hard enough to shove me forward and make me bump up against the table. I winced and resisted the urge to massage away the pain. That would only make her poke me again, even harder than before. I plastered a smile on my face and turned around.
A woman stood in front of me. She was a few inches taller than me, with golden amber eyes and shoulder-length, coppery red hair that curled around her face in loose waves. Her tailored dark green tunic and black leggings highlighted her strong, lithe body. She leaned on a silver cane, although she didn’t need it, despite the wrinkles that grooved into her sixty-something face. Her peony perfume washed over me, along with the faintest aroma of wet fur.
“Lady Xenia.” I bowed my head, then executed the perfect Bellonan curtsy before straightening back up.
Xenia stared at me—as did the snarling ogre face on her neck.
Morph marks always reminded me of tattoos, if tattoos could ever be moving, thinking, living things. The ogre face on Xenia’s neck was about the size of my palm. As I stared at it, the eyes on the face popped open, two bright slits of blinking liquid amber ink against Xenia’s bronze skin. The ogre’s eyes locked onto me, giving me a measuring look, as if it was thinking about how I might taste should it get hungry and want a snack before the luncheon started.
All morphs had some sort of tattoo—mark—on their bodies that showed what monster or creature they could shift into, but ogres were more powerful and far more frightening than most, with enough jagged teeth to give anyone nightmares. Xenia’s morph mark even had a coppery strand of hair that curled around the ogre’s face, just as the actual hair on her head did.
I didn’t know if the mark was part of Xenia, or if Xenia was part of the mark, and I wasn’t going to be stupid enough to ask. But I stared at the ogre, letting it know that I wasn’t afraid of it. I had been wounded by far worse things than ogres, and I had the scars on my heart to prove it.
The ogre blinked, and its lips drew back into what seemed like a smile, despite the razor-sharp teeth the expression revealed. It was by far the friendliest look the ogre had ever shown me in all the months that I’d been working with Lady Xenia. For some reason, it approved of me today. Fantastic.
“What is this nonsense about the Ungerian ambassador’s trip being canceled?” Xenia asked in a sharp tone.
Lady Xenia might instruct her students in the art of polite chitchat at her finishing school, but she didn’t engage in it herself. Isobel heard her too, and she eyed Xenia as she cut into the final pie.
I focused on Xenia again. “I don’t know why the trip has been canceled. Felton only told me about it a few minutes ago. How did you find out? He told me to tell you.”
She tapped her index finger on her silver cane, which was topped with an ogre head that bore an eerie resemblance to the morph mark on her neck. “I don’t need Felton to tell me what’s going on. I have my own sources.”
Of course she did. I had often wondered if Lady Xenia was a spy. People from every kingdom on this continent and the ones beyond were always coming and going from her school, and she always seemed to know about things the moment they happened, if not before.
“I’m sorry.” I tried to be diplomatic, since that’s what was expected. “I know you put a lot of time and effort into teaching me the Tanzen Freund—”
She snorted. “Perhaps it’s better that the ambassador’s trip was canceled. At least he won’t have to watch you stumble through the dance and embarrass yourself, as well as me.”
Xenia was never kind, but that was harsh, even for her. Anger surged through me, especially since her words weren’t true. At least, not anymore. Yes, I had floundered through the dance for weeks, but over the past month, I had slowly mastered it, and I had performed it perfectly during our practice session earlier this week. She hadn’t found a single reason to stab me with her cane. Not when it came to the dance, although she had still poked me a few times anyway, telling me not to get too confident.
“Well, perhaps if you had been a better teacher, and more interested in helping me learn the dance, rather than incessantly stabbing me with your bloody cane, I might not have stumbled so much.”
The words popped out of my mouth before I could stop them, and Isobel sucked in a startled breath, shocked by them, along with my icy tone. The polite thing, the proper thing, would have been to bow my head and apologize. But I lifted my chin and crossed my arms over my chest. I didn’t feel like bloody apologizing. Not when she had so casually dismissed all my hard work. Felton might be able to get away with that, but I didn’t answer to Lady Xenia.
She blinked at my words. So did the ogre on her neck. I’d never spoken so harshly to either one of them, but she recovered quickly. “I am an excellent teacher.”
“What is it you always say? Oh, yes. That a student is only as good as her teacher. So if there is any fault here, it lies with you, Lady Xenia.” I arched an eyebrow. “You overestimate your excellence.”
Her fingers clenched around the silver ogre head on her cane like she wanted to whip it up and brain me with it. But after a moment, her lips crept up into a begrudging smile, and the ogre on her neck grinned at me as well. “I underestimated you, Lady Everleigh. It seems like you actually have a bit of bite in you after all.”
She tipped her head at me, then stalked back into the crowd, stabbing her cane into the grass every few steps.
Now I blinked in surprise. “What just happened? Did she give me a . . . compliment?”
“I think so,” Isobel said. “Good for you, Evie, for standing up for yourself. You should do it more often.”
She walked over and handed me the final piece of pie. Then she returned to the end of the table, gathered up the empty tins, and stacked them on a platter to take back to the kitchen.
I was proud of myself too, and the pie was my reward. I inhaled, enjoying the sweet aroma of the fruit filling wafting up out of the still-warm dessert. It smelled even better now than it had this morning, and my stomach rumbled in anticipation.
I picked up the fork, ready to enjoy the fruits of my labor, when I felt a tug on my sleeve. I looked down to find a girl with brown braids and blue eyes standing in front of me. I had never seen her before, although her gray dress matched the ambassador’s tunic, telling me that she was part of the Andvarian contingent. Probably someone’s granddaughter, since she looked about twelve.
“Can I have a piece of pie?” she asked in a soft voice. “Please? It’s my favorite.”
This must be Gemma, the Andvarian king’s granddaughter. I glanced at Isobel, but she had stacked up all the pie tins, and there wasn’t a single crumb of crust left. My stomach grumbled in protest, and I sighed. I might have been bitchy to Xenia, but I would never be so rude to a visitor. Besides, the girl had said please . That made her more polite and far more worthy of my pie than anyone else here.
“Are you Gemma?”
Her eyes widened, surprised that I knew her name, but she nodded.
�
��Of course you can have my pie, sweetheart.”
I handed her my plate. A shy smile spread across her face, and she dropped into an awkward Bellonan curtsy. Polite, and she followed proper protocol. I liked her. I tilted my head in return, as was the custom, then winked at her.
Gemma giggled, then took the plate, sat down at a nearby table, and shoveled the dessert into her mouth.
If I couldn’t have any pie, I’d try another glass of champagne. Hopefully, this one wouldn’t smell as horrible as the first one had. I started to flag down one of the servants when the palace doors opened, and a woman strode outside. No trumpets blared, and no one announced her, but every eye still turned in her direction, and a hush fell over the lawn.
Vasilia had finally arrived.
Chapter Five
Princess Vasilia Victoria Summer Blair strode forward, then stopped in an open space on the lawn, so that everyone could properly admire her.
Vasilia was breathtakingly beautiful, even more so than Madelena. Her loose, wavy hair glimmered like gold as it cascaded past her shoulders, while her eyes were a light blue with the faintest tinge of gray, like the sky on a summer day. Understated makeup highlighted her delicate eyebrows, perfect cheekbones, and heart-shaped lips. Unlike Cordelia and Madelena in their gowns, Vasilia was dressed in her usual black boots and tight black leggings, along with a bright fuchsia tunic that featured her crest, a sword encircled by a wreath of laurels, stitched in gold thread over her heart. A gold tiara studded with pink diamonds, also shaped like laurels, gleamed on her head.
Vasilia was far more than just a pretty face. She was also one of the best warriors in Bellona and could cut down opponents twice her size with the sword and the dagger hanging off her black leather belt. She was equally good with other weapons, everything from bows to staffs to spears. And then there was her magic. Vasilia was a powerful magier, able to summon up lightning with a mere thought, and she was as deadly with it as she was with everything else.
Kill the Queen (Crown of Shards #1) Page 44