Finally, we reached the Fort’s official road, and climbed it to the entrance of the castle itself. Its large iron doors stood open, but the portcullis blocked the way. My guards shouted for it to be raised, and someone inside must have heard, because it shuddered up, the chains shrieking.
I looked down at the city. The winding streets, the jagged roofs, the old Minster tower reaching past them all. The palace was a sea of green in the chaos. I could still see the lantern lights in the garden, shining with determination even in the dawn. The palace itself was all tall windows and stone columns, unchanged by the horrors it had seen.
“Come, Your Majesty,” one of the guards said. He had a gentler face than the others, with a tightly cropped gray beard and concerned black eyes. “We should not linger here.”
I glanced again at my father and Naomi. Their boat was already halfway across the river. They were as safe as they could be. I would see them again inside.
I’d never been inside the Fort before, and from the smell of it, no one else alive had, either. It stank of must and neglect, a chill hanging in the air. The walls pressed in on either side, free of adornment, supporting the ceiling fifteen feet up.
My guards led me down the corridor. We passed almost nobody. Some maids were hurrying from room to room, but few even glanced at us. None of them paused to bow or curtsy.
They led me to a tightly spiraling staircase in the far corner of the Fort. There were no lamps, and no windows, so one of the guards seized a lantern to light the way. We climbed, to the second floor, and the third.
A door opened on the fourth floor, and someone barreled out, slamming into me.
They were tall, even taller than me, well built. My nose slammed against their collarbone, and they flinched back, feet stumbling on the steps they had just descended. I yelped, more in surprise than pain, and Dagny leaped out of my arms.
It was William Fitzroy. I swayed from the impact, staring at his face. His blue eyes were bloodshot, and his golden-blond hair was spattered with a dark substance that might have been blood. But he was alive. Another survivor. I hadn’t even thought of Fitzroy since I left the palace, hadn’t even considered the possibility of his death, but relief rushed through me when I looked at him now. He was kind of an idiot, but he didn’t deserve to die. He, at least, was here. Solid and breathing and blinking at me in confusion.
“I am sorry,” he said, with a distracted shake of his head. His grief was like a physical presence in the air, painful to breathe in. “Excuse me.” He stepped around us and hurried on. I stared after him, unwilling to look away until he was out of sight.
He had survived. Someone, at least, was left.
I scooped Dagny up again and nodded for my escort to continue.
The guards led me to the top floor of the Fort, where the royal apartments were kept ready for times of crisis. No one was watching the entrance when we arrived, but one of the guards peeled off to stand there, while the other led me inside and through to a large room clearly intended for the queen’s use. Embroidered red cushions had been piled on the four-poster bed, and a thick rug covered the otherwise bare floor. A harp stood against one wall—the queen had loved music—and I could see many unworn dresses through the open door of the wardrobe, each worth more than a year’s income to most people in the kingdom. Pots of color had been lined up on her dresser, along with a brush and jewels. Even in an emergency, the queen would look her best.
“Do you have everything you need, Your Majesty?” The guard hovered by the door. He looked rather eager to leave. Of course. He couldn’t leave my presence without permission.
“Naomi,” I said quickly. “Will she be coming here, too?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it again. He looked nervous. “These are the royal apartments, Your Majesty. Everyone who comes to the Fort will be given accommodation, but only you can stay here. For your own safety. Is there anything else you need?”
“No.” My voice cracked on the word. “No, thank you.”
“Then I will leave you to rest, if that pleases Your Majesty. It has been a long night.”
I nodded, and, with a bow, he stepped out of the room and closed the door.
But I was in the wrong place, I realized, as the lock clicked. The monarch should have been in the king’s room, not the queen’s.
So much for asserting my place. I was as out of the way here as I would have been in my lab. But perhaps that was the point. It suggested respect, without putting me in the most obvious place for another attack.
I dropped Dagny onto the bed. She kneaded the sheets, her claws snagging on the silk.
A diadem rested on the dresser. Diamonds glinted in the dim light. I picked it up, careful to avoid touching the jewels, and slid it onto my head. It perched there, looking gaudy in the reflection against my black hair.
Queen. I was queen.
My reflection didn’t seem to believe me. Who would? I didn’t look like a queen. Ruling in Epria meant being as glamorous and luxurious and beautiful as possible. If you dripped with gold, if you were spoiled and selfish, if you looked like a fitting idol at the center of the court’s intricate dances . . . then, you could be queen. I just looked like a gangly child, dressed up in my mother’s jewels. I looked ridiculous.
And not the good kind of ridiculous, the one that everyone in court adored. Weak. Laughable. But what did it matter, I thought, as I tossed the diadem back on the dresser. Everyone was dead, weren’t they? What court did I have left to lead?
I hoped Naomi was all right.
Queens probably had servants to help them undress, but no one would be coming now. I stretched my arms around my back, reaching for the laces, but I couldn’t grasp them, so I kicked off my shoes, washed my face in the basin by the window, and sank onto the sheets. My arms fell around Dagny, and she snuggled close.
I buried my face in her fur and let her rhythmic purring soothe me to sleep.
FOUR
I AWOKE TO SHARP KNOCKING ON THE DOOR. I SAT UP, shoving my tangled hair away from my face. My eyes felt sticky, and a dull ache pounded at the back of my head. I hadn’t slept nearly enough.
“Freya?” It was my father. “Are you all right?”
I tried to step out of bed, and stumbled. I was still wearing that ridiculous dress from the banquet, with its thirty-six layers of skirt and sleeves up to my ears. It had become twisted while I slept, and I fell as I tried to right it, my elbow slamming against the floor. I bit back a cry, tears stinging my eyes.
“Freya?”
“Yes,” I gasped. “I’m all right. What’s happened?”
The lock clicked, and my father stepped inside. “Did you sleep well?”
He could not honestly be asking me that. I had slept, but it had been a strange sort of half sleep, always on the verge of waking.
“What’s happened?” I said again instead, standing up as my father closed the door with the guards on the other side. “Have you found who was responsible?”
“Not yet. But we will.”
“Do you know how many . . .” I couldn’t finish the question. It was too awful, and it wasn’t even what I really wanted to ask. I wanted to know if another heir had been found. Someone to rule before me.
“We don’t have a count. Over four hundred, at least. It will take days before we know for certain. But that can’t be our priority now. We must act quickly.”
“To catch the killers?”
“To have you crowned. We cannot allow the kingdom to remain without a monarch any longer than absolutely necessary. It makes it too easy for someone to challenge you.”
“But what about the funerals?” There would need to be so many. “And the investigation?”
“Not as pressing as your coronation. The dead will remain dead, no matter if we delay. We cannot say the same for your throne. If you take some of the old queen’s things, we can have you crowned tomorrow.”
“But—” It would be an insult to dress up in finery now, while everyone els
e was dead. “It’s too soon.”
“It isn’t soon enough. You are vulnerable, Freya, as long as you are not the anointed queen. Once we have you crowned, in front of everybody, people will hesitate before they hurt you. Until then . . . we cannot risk it, Freya.”
I raked my hands through my tangled hair. “What happened last night? What—what did you see?”
“It was very sudden.” He looked away, eyes focused on the embroidery of my bed hangings, as though they might provide the answer. “After the last course of the feast. People—some people began to complain of stomach pains. Then—” He swallowed and dragged his gaze back to me. “I will spare you the details of what proceeded.”
“Don’t spare me the details. I want to know.” I needed to know, needed to understand. People were dead, and if I could understand that, if I could really know . . .
“You do not want to know. They will remain dead either way. You have one concern now, Freya. Be queen. You will have a whole council of people to investigate these murders. You need to focus on your own safety now.”
But a council of people weren’t me. Someone had killed many of the most influential and well-protected people in the kingdom. They’d succeeded, even though simply mentioning the idea would have led to their arrest. They were dangerous people, dangerous and clever. I needed to know who they were. I needed to know how they had done it, why they had done it. And I couldn’t trust anyone else to find out the truth on my behalf.
“What about Naomi’s brother?” I said. “Did you find him?”
He sighed. “I don’t know what happened to him. If he was at the banquet, then—it is unlikely he survived.”
“But it’s possible.”
“Yes, Freya, it is possible. For now, Naomi has been given accommodation in the Fort, and our protection, as well. But I have been working all day to take care of the details for you. Other people’s brothers . . . right now, they cannot be my concern.”
“But it’s my concern. Naomi is my best friend.”
“I know you want it to be,” he said sadly. “But you can only deal with so many things, Freya. You have to focus on staying alive and holding on to the throne. Her brother is either dead or alive. We can’t change that.” He shook his head, and then straightened, as though shedding his grief. “We need to get started. We’ll have to fit you for a coronation gown, and I will go over the protocol with you.”
The rest of the evening passed in a blur. My father returned with four seamstresses in tow. They carried Queen Martha’s coronation dress between them, but one glance told me that it would never, never fit.
It took longer to convince them. They squeezed me into it, urging me to breathe in more, as though that might make my shoulders less broad. When they’d finally forced the dress into place, unfastened but on, they fussed with the buttons and the hem, politely avoiding saying what was obvious to everyone. The dress was several inches too short. It strained around the waist and across the shoulders, while the chest gaped. Short of adding a patchwork of new cloth, even the Forgotten themselves wouldn’t be able to make it fit.
“The problem,” one of the seamstresses said, as she stepped back to survey the damage, “is that the dress is rather old-fashioned. It is twenty years old, after all, and it was never intended to crown a monarch. It might be best if we salvage from Queen Martha’s dresses and make something new for our new queen.”
My father frowned, but his impatience couldn’t change the fact that the dress wasn’t going to fit. “Could you have it complete by tomorrow?”
“We must, mustn’t we?” the seamstress said. “We will work through the night.”
“Then see it is done.”
They freed me from the dress, and then they measured me, talking a mile a minute as they went, about regal colors that would suit me, about how many jewels were suitable for such a somber yet important coronation. When their talked lulled, my father threw etiquette at me—as an unwelcome newcomer in court, he had made sure to learn every rule for every situation, and it was coming in handy now. I repeated the instructions in my head, but they jumbled together, nothing quite making sense.
Tomorrow, I would be on display for all the grieving kingdom to see.
The seamstresses left to begin their work, but my father remained, running over the coronation rules again and again, making me walk around the room with a regal air, correcting my posture, correcting my gaze, correcting everything about me.
Was he remembering, as I was, all the times I’d skipped my etiquette lessons, how I’d sulked and shouted and fought until he gave up on courtly elocution and dancing classes? Maybe if I’d gone to those lessons, actually tried, instead of assuming it was all useless to me, when I planned to go as far away from this court as I could . . . maybe then, this would have been different.
The seamstresses returned in the middle of the night for a fitting. The new dress didn’t exactly calm my nerves. Jewels weighed it down, although only half of them had been added, and the mass of them made it even harder to breathe.
By the time morning came, I was dizzy with tiredness and fear. But the preparations weren’t over. It took two hours for the four seamstresses to dress me, even helped by an apparent army of maids. They sewed me into the dress as they went. Jewels were stitched into the cloth, hung around my neck, studded on my shoes, and draped around my waist.
And still my father reminded me of all the things I must not do. The most important one, the one he repeated over and over, was that I must not speak. Not one single word, beyond the ritual itself.
I had to wonder: Was that tradition, or was that rule only for me?
The Minster reached taller than a castle, its bell tower hidden by the clouds. Every inch of its stone exterior was covered by intricate carvings and gargoyles, and when its bells rang, the sound echoed through the entire city like singing. It was a building crafted by the divine Forgotten, before they left this kingdom behind.
Rickben, the peacemaker. Elandra, the fierce. Garret, the trickster. Valanthe, the just. They had ruled Epria when it used to be better, but abandoned it in disgust at the kingdom’s growing corruption. Now only a few relics remained, miracles of architecture and engineering, a reminder of how great the kingdom had once been and could be again.
It always sounded like nonsense to me. We had no records, no real proof of their existence, just a bunch of old buildings and a collection of legends. Everyone knew the names of at least twenty of the Forgotten, but even these were just tradition. As far as I was concerned, the Forgotten were just an excuse. People saw things they couldn’t even dream of creating, and decided that they must be divine.
I kept my eyes on the Minster now, staring at one of the grimacing male faces above the doorway. Crowds had gathered on either side of the path, but I couldn’t let myself look at them, couldn’t let the fear take hold. All I had to do was walk.
My legs shook underneath my skirts, but I did not fall.
The inside of the Minster had always amazed me. We were rarely allowed inside—once a year for the midwinter celebration, once a generation for a coronation—and every time we were, I spent more time staring at the ceiling than I did listening to the words of the priest. I glanced up again now, taking in the carvings and paintings sixty feet above me. How? I wondered, every time I saw them. How had anyone climbed so high to paint?
The people inside rose. I fixed my eyes on the altar at the far end of the Minster—miles away, surely, from where I now stood. The rear pews were crammed with the commoners invited to see my coronation—the merchants, the bankers, the lawyers, the doctors. All here for a glimpse of this unknown queen.
They had already judged me, I was sure. The moment I stepped through the door, they had decided what sort of queen I would be.
The front half of the Minster was almost empty. I should have expected it, should have known, but my stomach still dropped when I saw empty pew after empty pew. These boxes were designed to fit at least five hundred nobles. Less
than twenty stood there now—the remnants of the court, or at least those willing to see me crowned. It was possible, possible, that some of them had decided not to attend. Possible, but unlikely. None of them would want to miss this.
I glanced at the back of their heads—who were they? I didn’t know most of them well enough to tell from a quick look at their hair, but I recognized Naomi. Her black hair was in a simple bun at the back of her head, strands falling loose. Her brother was not beside her.
My stomach dropped, and I dragged my gaze away. I had to concentrate. I couldn’t think about . . . I couldn’t get distracted. I focused on the steps ahead of me, the platform, the gold throne, and the chanting priest.
Somehow, I reached the dais, and the hours of practice clicked. My knees hit stone as I knelt for the priest’s blessing. I bowed my head as he dabbed oil on my forehead. I sat on the throne as someone handed me the ceremonial scepter and orb, as a red sable cloak was placed over my shoulders, as the priest stepped behind me and balanced a crown on my head. The ritual flowed past, like someone else was moving my body, and I was just watching, too.
“All kneel before Queen Freya, first of her name, ruler of Epria. Long may she reign!”
The priest stepped back, and the crowd fell to their knees.
“Long may she reign!”
I let myself glance at the nobles before me. My eyes went straight to Naomi, and she gave me a gentle smile. But she was alone.
Maybe Jacob was ill. Maybe he was shunning me. Something. It didn’t mean he was—her brother wasn’t dead.
My father knelt with a group of men and women I vaguely recognized—some of the king’s old advisers, I thought. Torsten Wolff knelt by another pew, and Fitzroy. A smattering of people.
This couldn’t be everyone who had survived. It couldn’t be. The others must have simply stayed away, unwilling to see me crowned queen. That was all.
Don’t lie to yourself, I thought, anger rising out of nowhere. No one else was left.
The priest quietly cleared his throat. It was nearly over. All I had to do was leave, and lead the court out of the Minster. Just one more thing. I stood, and the priest lifted my cloak so it did not snag on the throne before spreading it out behind me.
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