Kill the Queen

by Jennifer Estep

  “Oh, yes,” Serilda drawled again. “I know all the Ungerian spies in Bellona. Still reporting to your cousin, the queen?”

  Xenia shrugged. “Only when I have something of interest to report.”

  Serilda stepped forward, her hand dropping to the sword belted to her waist. “If you’ve told anyone about us, if anyone knows that we’re here—”

  “You’ll do what?”

  Serilda gave her a thin smile. “I’ll carve that ogre out of your neck—before I slit your throat.”

  Xenia’s amber eyes glowed with a dangerous light, and she put her glass down and surged to her feet. I set my own glass down, scrambled up, and stepped in between them.

  “Enough.” I held my hands out. “That’s enough. We are all friends here. Not enemies.”

  Serilda and Xenia kept glaring at each other, but Serilda didn’t pull her sword, and Xenia didn’t morph.

  “Why don’t we all sit down, have a drink, and talk?” I suggested.

  “Yes,” Sullivan said in a cold voice. “Let’s talk. We can start with you telling us who you really are, highness, and especially how you got your hands on this.”

  He slapped the opal memory stone onto the table, hard enough to make the brandy slosh around in its decanter. Sullivan stepped back and crossed his arms over his chest. I had expected him to be angry, but not quite this angry. And the way he snarled out highness made it seem as though I had somehow hurt him, although I had no idea how I could have done that.

  “What Lucas is trying to say is that we would like an explanation, Everleigh,” Cho said in a calm, reasonable voice.

  “Evie,” I muttered. “My name is Evie.”

  Cho glanced at Serilda, and the two of them exchanged a look that I couldn’t decipher. “Very well . . . Evie.”

  Paloma touched my arm. “Tell us what happened. Please.”

  I flashed her a grateful smile, reached up, and squeezed her hand. She nodded back at me, and I faced the others again.

  “Cho’s right,” I said. “I owe you all an explanation. So sit down, and I’ll show you exactly what happened.”

  * * *

  Everyone sat down at the table. Xenia offered the others a glass of brandy, although Cho was the only one who accepted. Serilda glared at him, but Cho grinned back at her. Apparently, he loved spirits as much as he did desserts.

  Once we were all settled, I gestured at the memory stone and looked at Sullivan. “Did you watch it?”

  “No,” he growled. “I wanted to see what you had to say for yourself first.”

  I still had no idea why he was so angry, but everyone was waiting, so I angled the memory stone toward a space on the wall that was free of tapestries. I drew in a breath and let it out, bracing myself. Then I tapped on the memory stone three times and sat back in my chair.

  The opal started glowing with a pure white light, and the blue, red, green, and purple flecks in the surface glimmered as well. One by one, those flecks of color rose up out of the stone and hovered there like stars suspended in midair. Then they shot across the room and attached themselves to the wall. The colors grew larger, brighter, and sharper, and finally coalesced into one solid image, as though we were watching a moving painting.

  My face was the first thing that appeared.

  I was staring at the stone, making sure that it was recording. Then I stepped to the side, and the royal lawn appeared with its tables and clusters of people. I grimaced, knowing that it was only going to get worse.

  And it did.

  The memory stone had recorded everything from the time that I had turned it on, to Vasilia arriving at the luncheon, to her stabbing Prince Frederich, to her admitting to poisoning everyone and ordering the turncoat guards to attack. After that, the sounds, screams, and shrieks of the battle rang out. The very last image was of my hand closing over the stone.

  I leaned forward and tapped on the stone three more times, preserving the memories until the next time that someone wanted to view them. No one said a word for the better part of two minutes.

  Serilda turned to Xenia. “I’ll have that drink now.”

  Xenia poured everyone a glass of brandy, and we all sat there, sipping our drinks.

  “What happened after you put the memory stone in your bag?” Cho asked, breaking the silence.

  I gulped down the last of my brandy, then told them the rest of it. Helping Gemma and Xenia escape, fighting my way over to Cordelia, Vasilia stabbing the queen and blasting me over the wall. Waking up in the river, trudging back to the city, seeing the first gladiator show, sneaking into Sullivan’s house.

  When I finished, everyone fell silent again. Xenia, Paloma, and Cho gave me sympathetic looks. So did Sullivan, who seemed far less upset with me than before, although fresh pain filled his eyes at what had happened to the Andvarians. But Serilda glared at me, the peppery scent of her anger stronger than ever.

  “Who are Maeven and Nox?” Paloma asked. “Who do they really work for?”

  “Nox is a nephew to the Mortan king,” Xenia said. “As for Maeven, even my spies haven’t been able to find out who she really is, but if I had to guess, I would say that she’s a bastard royal, a sister to the king.”

  Serilda nodded, agreeing with her.

  “Why is that important?” I asked.

  “For years, there have been rumors that the Mortan royal family uses their bastard offspring to do their dirty work as spies, assassins, that sort of thing,” Xenia said. “That way, if any of them are ever caught, the royal family can deny having any involvement with their bastard relatives’ crimes. From what I’ve seen, Maeven fits that mold.”

  Once again, everyone fell silent, but Xenia looked at me, her lips puckered in thought.

  “There’s one thing that I still don’t understand,” she said. “Vasilia’s lightning is quite powerful. How did you survive a direct blast of it?”

  “Yes, highness,” Sullivan murmured. “Do tell.”

  I sighed. I had told them the rest of my secrets. What was one more? Besides, Paloma already knew, and the others would figure it out soon enough. “I’m immune to magic.”

  Everyone except Paloma stared at me with a blank expression. I sighed again, got to my feet, and went over to a fluorestone lamp sitting on the nightstand. I turned on the lamp. When the fluorestone flared to life, I wrapped my hand around the stand and let loose with my power. An instant later, the bright glow flickered, then vanished altogether.

  Xenia and Cho sucked in surprised breaths, while a thoughtful look crept over Sullivan’s face. Serilda kept staring at me with angry, narrowed eyes.

  “So that’s how you managed to save Paloma from the wormroot,” Sullivan said. “You used your immunity to neutralize the poison.”

  “Something like that.”

  “That’s also how she took away Emilie’s speed in the black-ring match,” Paloma added.

  “You throttled Emilie’s speed so you could kill her.” Cho looked at me as if he had never seen me before, as did the dragon on his neck. “That’s impressively ruthless.”

  My mouth twisted. “That’s what growing up in a pit of vipers will do to you.”

  Serilda drained the rest of her brandy, then got to her feet. She stared at the empty glass in her hand, then turned and threw it against the wall. The crystal shattered, and everyone jerked in surprise, except for Cho, who sighed, as if he knew what was coming next.

  Serilda stabbed her finger at me. “You stupid, reckless, foolish girl!” she snarled. “I should wring your bloody neck.”

  Anger surged through me that she was dismissively calling me girl yet again, and I shot to my own feet. “For what? For surviving?”

  Serilda stabbed her finger at the memory stone on the table. “For keeping that to yourself all this time.” Then she stabbed her finger at me again. “And especially for not telling me who you were.”

  I opened my mouth to snap back at her, but she cut me off.

  “Do you know what would have happened i
f you had been killed in the arena? Or if the magier had murdered you in the woods? Or if the Ungers had executed you? Bellona would have been lost. Everything would have been lost.” Serilda’s blue eyes burned with rage, her hands curled into fists, and her entire body shook with emotion. “I could see it. I could see how horrible, how hopeless, it would be for everyone.”

  Her obvious distress made me bite back my snarky retort. “What do you mean you could see it?”

  “Don’t you know? Serilda is a bit of a time magier,” Xenia murmured. “She gets visions of the future. Her visions were quite useful to Cordelia. At least, until the queen stopped listening to them.”

  Serilda’s jaw clenched, but she didn’t deny it.

  My mind spun around. Serilda, a time magier? But then I thought of how her silent scrutiny had always seemed more intense than anyone else’s, as though she was peering into my thoughts. And I remembered something that she had said to Cho the night of the queen’s vigil.

  I told Cordelia that this would happen. I told her. Over and over again. For years. But she didn’t listen to me.

  “You knew that the massacre was going to happen,” I whispered. “You saw it with your magic.”

  “No,” Serilda muttered. “I don’t see the future. Not really. I see possibilities, things that might happen. But magic or not, I always saw Vasilia for exactly what she was, ever since she was a little girl, and I always knew that she was going to be the cause of Cordelia’s death. As soon as Maeven and Nox showed up at Seven Spire, I knew that that day was fast approaching, and I warned Cordelia yet again. And this time, she finally listened to me.”

  But the truth is that killing you would be a mercy to all the people of Bellona and beyond. My only regret is that I waited too long to do it.

  This time, Cordelia’s voice whispered in my mind. She had said that to Vasilia during the massacre. I had wondered who the queen had hired to kill her own daughter, and now I knew.

  “You,” I whispered again. “You were the one that Cordelia was talking about. You were going to kill Vasilia.” My gaze cut from Serilda to Cho and back again. “That’s why you came back to Bellona after all these years. That’s why you built the Black Swan compound. So you could keep an eye on things at Seven Spire. Cordelia gave you the property as a down payment for assassinating Vasilia.”

  “Cordelia didn’t give me a damn thing. I bought that property fair and square. I’ve been preparing for Vasilia’s betrayal for a long, long time.” Serilda’s mouth twisted, as if she was thinking back over all those preparations, whatever they had been. Then she shook her head and focused on me again. “But yes, a few months before the massacre, Cordelia reached out to me, and Cho and I started making plans to assassinate Vasilia.”

  “And Vasilia somehow found out about it.”

  Serilda and Cho both nodded.

  So many things suddenly made sense, including why Vasilia had come to the arena the night of the black-ring match and why she had sent that weather magier to kill Serilda, Cho, and everyone else in the troupe. Vasilia had wanted to eliminate her would-be assassins before they could do their job.

  “Do you have any idea how long and hard Cho and I searched for news, for a hint, for the faintest whisper that someone had survived? And you were right under my nose the whole fucking time. I don’t know whether to admire your cleverness or strangle you for it.” Serilda let out another bitter laugh. “I could see everything but you, thanks to your damn immunity.”

  “Why didn’t you come to us like Cordelia told you to?” Cho asked. “We would have protected you.”

  “Everyone I had ever known had just been slaughtered,” I said. “All I knew about Serilda was that she was a disgraced guard. I didn’t know if I could trust her. I didn’t know if I could trust anyone.”

  Cho nodded, accepting my explanation, then looked at Serilda and raised his eyebrows, telling her to do the same. She huffed, but she let out a breath, and some of the anger and tension drained out of her body.

  “What did Cordelia say to you?” she asked in a low voice. “At the end?”

  “She said to tell you that she was sorry. About everything.”

  A ghost of a smile flickered across Serilda’s face, and her hand crept up to the sunburst scar at the corner of her right eye. And I realized that Cordelia must have given her that scar when Serilda had warned the queen about Vasilia all those years ago. Cordelia had had many rings fashioned with her rising-sun crest, and she was the only person who could have ever hit Serilda and lived to tell the tale.

  Serilda dropped her hand from her scar and shook her head again, as if clearing away the troubling thoughts of her past with the dead queen. “Well, Cordelia was right about one thing. We must begin your training immediately.”

  “Training for what?”

  “For the royal challenge,” she answered. “For when you fight Vasilia for the right to be queen.”

  My heart dropped, and my stomach clenched. I had known that she would want something like this, but I had still hoped to avoid it. “No. That was never my ambition. I have no interest in being queen. That’s not why I told you who I was.”

  “So what is your ambition?” Sullivan asked in a soft voice. “What is your heart’s desire, highness?”

  I forced myself to keep my face blank as I looked at him. “To leave Seven Spire for good. To restore my family’s estate in the mountains. To finally be free. From all the palace politics and infighting and backstabbing. From being the royal stand-in, the royal puppet. And most of all, from Vasilia and her cruelty.”

  Sympathy flickered in Sullivan’s gaze. “I can understand that.”

  “What did Vasilia do to you?” Paloma asked.

  “She pretended to be my friend, but as soon as she thought that I was of no use, she dropped me.” Somehow, I managed to keep the hurt out of my voice. “That was when I finally understood what being a royal, what being a Blair, really means.”

  “And what is that?” Serilda asked.

  “That I’m just a tool that other people want to use. Nothing more, nothing less.” I stared at her. “Just like you want to use me now.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want to use you, Everleigh—”

  “My name is Evie,” I snarled. “Not Everleigh. I will never be Everleigh again.”

  I wasn’t just talking about the names. Evie was strong and confident with a friend who truly cared about her. Everleigh had been and had none of those things.

  “All right, Evie,” Serilda said. “Let’s calm down and talk about this—”

  I stabbed my finger at her. “Don’t you dare play that cajoling game with me. I’ve been playing it for the last fifteen years, and I’m much, much better at it than you are. Besides, I heard you talking to Cho the night of the candlelight vigil. What was it you said? Oh, yes. That you wanted to find a Blair, any Blair. You didn’t care who.”

  Serilda’s lips pressed together, while Cho winced.

  “Of course you want to use me. You think that I can help you get back everything that you lost when you left Seven Spire.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Let me guess. You’ve already picked out your title. Personal advisor to the queen or something like that, right?”

  Serilda stepped forward, her hands clenching into fists and anger sparking in her eyes again. “I don’t care about bloody titles. I care about Bellona. And you can save people—your people—from being led into a pointless war by a treacherous bitch who only cares about herself.”

  Her words punched me in the gut, but I still tried to deny them.

  “Why? Because I’m some chosen one? Some special snowflake with a unique power that no one has ever seen before? Because I can take on Vasilia and the evil Mortan empire and win?” I let out a soft, bitter laugh. “You’re dreaming if you think I can do any of that. I was seventeenth in line for the throne. No one ever chose me for anything, except to be a target for their games.”

  “I don’t think that you can do it.” Serilda’s
voice was soft and serious. “I know that you can do all that and more.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re a Winter queen.”

  I threw my hands up in exasperation. “I don’t even know what that means. So what if I’m a Winter queen? It’s just some old fairy-tale rhyme.”

  Serilda and Cho exchanged a glance, although I couldn’t decipher its meaning.

  “It’s so much more than just an old fairy-tale rhyme,” Serilda said. “And you know exactly what it means because you’ve been acting like a Winter queen this whole time, since the moment the massacre started.”

  “What do you mean?”

  This time, Serilda was the one who threw up her hands. “I mean that you’ve been helping people this whole time. First, during the massacre, when you saved Gemma. Then, at the Black Swan, when you used your immunity to heal Paloma. When you volunteered to go after the weather magier who was trying to kill us. And then when you agreed to trade your life for the entire troupe’s and perform the Tanzen Freund. You’ve been helping people all along. And that is what a Winter queen really does, Evie.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that.

  Cho cleared his throat and got to his feet. “What Serilda is trying to say is that now you have a chance to help everyone. All the people in Bellona and Andvari who are caught up in Vasilia’s plot. All the innocent people who are going to war for no reason. All the innocent men and women who are going to die if you don’t do something about it.”

  His words made me think of the miners I had seen when we’d left Svalin. Of the guards cracking whips and forcing the workers into the carts. Those were just some of the people Vasilia had already hurt, and her war with Andvari would devastate the citizens of both kingdoms and beyond.

  Unless I stopped her.

  Over the last few months, I had learned how to stand up for myself. Even more than that, I had enjoyed it. I had enjoyed carving out my place in the troupe, becoming a gladiator, and showing everyone that I was a force to be reckoned with. And now I had a chance to stand up for all of Bellona, for everyone that Vasilia could potentially hurt, the way that she had hurt me for so many years.