Protect the Prince (A Crown of Shards Novel)

by Jennifer Estep

  I didn’t respond, but happiness warmed my heart.

  Dahlia motioned to her guards, who were still trailing along behind us. They stopped and gestured for Paloma to do the same. My friend looked at me, but I nodded, telling her that it was okay.

  We had reached the center of the hedge maze—the gargoyle’s nose that I had spotted from my balcony yesterday. The area was far bigger than I’d realized and a garden unto itself. Trees and flower beds ringed much of the circular space, while black, gray, and white water lilies bobbed up and down on a pond off to the side. It reminded me of Serilda’s pond at the Black Swan compound, although no black swans were gliding across the water here.

  The centerpiece of this garden-within-a-garden was an enormous gazebo. Glossy ebony wood formed the floor and created a pretty lattice pattern in the low wall that circled much of the structure. Gleaming white marble columns studded with silver gargoyle faces with jeweled eyes supported the round, domed roof, which was also made of marble. White and gray diamonds arranged in the shape of water lilies glimmered on the ceiling, along with jet cattails, mirroring the real flowers and pond in the distance.

  Dahlia settled herself on one of the cushioned benches that jutted out from the wall and overlooked the pond. I also sat down, and we admired the picturesque scene, as well as the flashes of people moving back and forth along the paths in the distance.

  “This spot is called Gargoyle’s Heart,” Dahlia said, breaking the companionable quiet. “It’s rather infamous as a lovers’ rendezvous. Heinrich and I used to sneak out of the palace and meet at the gazebo when we were young. Lucas also brought Helene here. And now, here you are. Another noblewoman, a queen, who has caught my son’s eye.”

  My heart clenched at the thought of Sullivan and Helene, but I forced my jealousy aside. I had no claim on him—none at all.

  Dahlia turned to me, her face serious. “I don’t want my son’s heart to get crushed again. Lucas is very . . . particular about how things are, and even more so about how people treat him. I accepted my role at Glitnir long ago, but he’s never grown used to his, to being one of the king’s sons but not quite equal to the others. Not in the ways that such things matter at court. He learned his mistake the hard way with Helene, and it’s a mistake that I don’t want him to repeat with you, Everleigh.”

  I opened my mouth, but Dahlia waved her hand, cutting me off. The motion made the D embossed on the gold heart around her neck gleam in the sunlight.

  “I can see that Lucas cares about you and that you care about him,” she continued. “But you are a queen, and he is a bastard prince. We both know how sadly this story is going to end. Lucas already went through that heartbreak with Helene, and I don’t want him to go through it again. It would be worse with you. Because he knows that he can’t ever have you. Not like he had Helene. Not like he would have had Helene, if her father hadn’t interfered.”

  Every word she said was like a dagger twisting deeper into my heart, especially since they were all true.

  “I care about Sully a great deal. He’s been a good friend.” I drew in a breath. “But you’re right, and we both know that’s all he can ever be. He knows it too, which he has made perfectly clear.”

  Dahlia studied me, but she must have heard the reluctant agreement in my voice and seen the painful sincerity in my eyes. “Good. I’m glad that you and Lucas are both clear about what the future holds.”

  “And what do you think the future holds for him?”

  She reached up and toyed with her locket, sliding the heart back and forth on its gold chain. “Lucas has been touring with the gladiator troupe long enough. It’s time for him to come home to Glitnir permanently.” She bit her lip, as if she wasn’t sure that she should confide in me. “You’ve probably noticed that Heinrich is not . . . well. He just hasn’t been able to recover from Frederich’s death. Not that any parent could ever truly recover from losing a child, but his declining health troubles me.”

  “What about the bone masters?” I asked. “Haven’t they been able to help him?”

  “Unfortunately, a broken heart is one thing that magic simply cannot heal. I worry that Heinrich will be gone sooner rather than later, and I want Lucas to spend as much time with his father as possible. Surely, you understand how important family is, Everleigh. Especially since all of yours is gone.”

  Her green eyes bored into mine, and her words had far more bite than I’d expected, but she was right. I knew exactly how important it was to spend time with the people you loved before they were taken away. I didn’t want to stand in the way of Sullivan reconnecting with his father, especially since Heinrich was so ill.

  “I understand.”

  Dahlia smiled, reached over, and patted my hand. To my surprise, I sensed a small but steady current of power running through her body the second her fingers touched mine. As far as I knew, Dahlia wasn’t a magier or a master. Perhaps she was a mutt with a bit of enhanced strength or speed. But she removed her hand from mine before I could tell exactly what kind of magic she had.

  “Thank you for understanding, Everleigh,” she murmured. “Your kindness means more than you know.”

  I smiled back, but the expression slipped from my face the second she gazed at the pond again. She might appreciate my kindness, but I felt like my heart was one of the water lilies dancing on the surface of the pond. Only instead of currents, I had people twirling me this way and that, trying to force me to do what they wanted.

  I wondered who would win in the end—or if the currents, people, and agendas that went along with them would suck me under and drown me for good.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Dahlia excused herself, saying that she needed to check on something in the kitchen, but I got the sense that she’d delivered her message, warning me away from her son, and that she was giving me time to digest her words.

  Dahlia’s guards left with her, and Paloma stepped into the gazebo.

  “That looked intense,” she said.

  “How much did you hear?”

  She shrugged. “All of it.”

  I gave her a sour look.

  Paloma shrugged again and pointed at the ogre face on her neck. “Morphs have excellent hearing, remember?”

  I sighed. “Where are the others?”

  “Serilda and Cho are trying to figure out how the Mortans snuck into the palace last night. Sullivan is having breakfast with Heinrich and Dominic, and Xenia is doing the same with some noblewomen. But I think that’s just an excuse for her to gather gossip and spy on them.”

  “She does excel at that,” I murmured. “Well, if everyone else is busy, then I finally have time to get some answers about a few things.”

  “I think you mean we have time to get some answers,” Paloma said.

  I arched my eyebrow. “You’re not going to lock me in my room again?”

  “If I thought that it would do any good. But knowing you, you’d just find some way to escape.”

  “Probably. I am rather incorrigible that way.”

  Paloma sighed. “Now I know why Auster has so much gray hair. Keeping you safe is exhausting. I let you storm out of the dining hall last night, and you get attacked by Mortan assassins less than an hour later. It’s like you’re a magnet for trouble. I shudder to think what would happen if I left you alone in your chambers all day.”

  I grinned. “You have no idea.”

  Thanks to some helpful signs, we found our way out of the hedge maze and back inside the palace. I asked a servant for directions, and ten minutes later, Paloma and I climbed a set of stairs and stopped in front of a door.

  Blue, black, and silver pieces of stained glass joined together to create a lovely frosted forest scene on the door. My heart ached, and I traced my fingers over the colorful shards. This door looked just like the one that had fronted his workshop at Seven Spire before it had been destroyed during the massacre.

  I knocked and waited until a muffled voice growled at me to enter. I turned the knob a
nd stepped through to the other side, along with Paloma, who shut the door behind us.

  An enormous round room took up this level of the tower. Large, arching picture windows were set into the walls, letting in plenty of the late-morning sun, and several fluorestones embedded in the ceiling also blazed with light, further brightening the area.

  A long table covered with several pairs of tweezers, stacks of soft white polishing cloths, and other jeweler’s tools ran down the center of the room, while glass cabinets filled with precious metals and colorful gemstones hugged the walls. The workshop was eerily similar to the one he’d had at Seven Spire, right down to the metallic tang of magic that filled the room.

  My heart ached again. I’d missed this. I’d missed him.

  Alvis was sitting on a stool at the table and peering down through a magnifying glass at a white velvet work tray. Gemma was perched on a stool beside him, a pencil and a pad of paper in her hands, taking notes.

  Grimley was here too, snoozing in a sunspot next to one of the windows. Every soft snore that rumbled out of his mouth sounded like gravel crunching together, but the steady sound was oddly soothing.

  “Evie! I’m so glad you’re okay!” Gemma threw down her pencil and pad, hopped off her stool, ran around the table, and hugged me. “Uncle Lucas said that you were all right, but no one would let me come see you.”

  I hugged her back. “Of course I’m okay. It takes more than a few assassins and a little lightning to hurt me. You know that.”

  Gemma hugged me again, then drew back and started chewing on her lower lip. “Do you think it will happen again? The Seven Spire massacre. Do you think something like that will happen here? To my father?”

  The obvious worry in her voice and the fear in her blue eyes sliced into my body like a sword, cutting me to the bone. Sometimes I forgot that I wasn’t the only one who had lived through the massacre. Even though Gemma had survived, she had the same sort of scars on her heart as I did.

  I put my hand on her shoulder and gave it a firm, reassuring squeeze. “Nothing bad is going to happen to you or your father. Not as long as I’m here.”

  “Promise?” she whispered.

  I squeezed her shoulder again. “I promise. Now why don’t you introduce Paloma to Grimley? I need to talk to Alvis.”

  Paloma stepped forward, leaned down, and stuck out her hand to Gemma. The crown princess shook Paloma’s hand, staring at the ogre face on her neck. Paloma grimaced, not liking the silent scrutiny, and I could tell that she was mentally preparing herself for Gemma to say something nasty. Paloma’s father had kicked her out for being a morph, so she was sensitive about how other people saw her and especially the creature lurking inside her.

  “Your ogre is strong and pretty,” Gemma pronounced. “Just like you are.”

  Paloma’s grimace melted into a soft, hesitant smile. That was all the encouragement Gemma needed to grab Paloma’s hand and tug her over to Grimley. The two of them sat down on the floor next to the gargoyle, who grumbled and cracked open a bright, sapphire-blue eye, as if he didn’t want to wake up yet. But Gemma’s happy, excited chatter soon had him yawning and rolling over so that Gemma and Paloma could rub his belly.

  I sat down on the empty stool next to Alvis, then peered down through the magnifying glass so I could see what he was working on.

  A pendant lay on the white velvet tray. A flat piece of silver formed the base, which was common enough, but the design was truly stunning. Alvis had arranged small pieces of black jet so that they formed a gargoyle’s face, while tiny, midnight-blue shards of tearstone glittered as the creature’s eyes, nose, teeth, and horns. I glanced at Grimley. Not just any gargoyle’s face—his face.

  “A present for Gemma,” Alvis explained. “Although she doesn’t realize it yet.”

  “She’s a mind magier, isn’t she?”

  He blinked in surprise. “How did you know?”

  “She told me that she dreams about a Mortan boy. That she can see and even talk to him sometimes. Only mind magiers can do things like that. Plus, I can smell her magic. It’s not like anything I’ve ever sensed before.” I paused. “But she’s going to be very, very strong someday. I can tell that much.”

  Alvis let out a low, harsh laugh. “She’s already strong. She’s the only reason we made it out of Bellona alive.”

  I waited for him to explain, but he fell silent, so I focused on the gargoyle pendant again. “You used jet and tearstone, just like you did for Serilda’s swan pendant.”

  He nodded. “The jet will help block the thoughts that Gemma hears from other people’s minds, and the tearstone will help her work with and focus her own power.”

  “Who else knows about her magic?”

  Alvis shrugged. “It only manifested when we were fleeing from Seven Spire. I don’t think anyone else except Xenia and I know about it yet, and I want to keep it that way for as long as possible.”

  Mind magiers were very rare. Some historians claimed that only a few were born every generation, but perhaps that was for the best. Mind magiers could walk through dreams, see and talk to people over great distances, and even move objects with their minds. I was betting that Gemma would grow up to do all that and more—much, much more.

  “Well, the pendant is lovely, and I’m sure it will help her.” I tapped the work tray. “Although I thought that you didn’t believe in giving people presents.”

  A rueful grin curved Alvis’s lips at my teasing. “I don’t—except for my apprentices.”

  “So Gemma is your apprentice now?” I kept teasing him.

  He shrugged again. “She spends enough time in here. She might as well be useful. And she keeps asking me questions about everything. And I do mean everything.” Another, larger grin curved his lips. “She reminds me of another little girl I knew once upon a time.”

  I smiled at that, but his words reminded me of the real reason I’d come here—answers.

  So I pushed up my tunic sleeve and tapped my finger on my silver bracelet. “Why did you make this for me?” My hand fell to the sword and dagger strapped to my belt, and I tapped my finger on them as well. “And why did you make these weapons and give them to Serilda all those years ago?”

  Alvis’s bushy black eyebrows shot up. “That’s an awful lot of questions for this early in the day.”

  “An awful lot has happened since I last saw you at Seven Spire.”

  He tilted his head, ceding my point.

  “Did you know the massacre was going to happen?” I asked in a low voice only he could hear. “Are you some sort of time magier like Serilda? Is that why you made the bracelet and the weapons?”

  “No, I’m not a time magier.”

  “But?”

  “But I had my suspicions that Vasilia was up to something, although I never expected it to be anything as horrible as the massacre.”

  “So why give me the bracelet? Why that morning?”

  He frowned. “For weeks before the massacre, it was like all the stones of the palace were muttering to me. The floors, the walls, even the columns. It was like they could all sense what was coming. And not just them. I got the same impression from all the metal in the palace, especially the guards’ swords. I just felt this . . . pressure to finish the bracelet and give it to you as soon as possible. It’s just some quirk of magic I can’t explain.”

  I could believe that. Magic did all sorts of things we didn’t expect. That’s why it was, well, magic.

  “And the weapons? You made those years ago, long before Vasilia started planning the massacre. Why?”

  “I made the sword, the dagger, and the shield because of Serilda,” Alvis replied. “Because of her visions.”

  This time, I frowned. “She told you that Vasilia would one day be the cause of Cordelia’s death?”

  “Yes. Cordelia might not have believed Serilda, but I certainly did. I didn’t have to be a time magier or have visions to see that Vasilia was rotten to the core.”

  My eyes narrowed in
thought. “So that’s why you made the weapons out of tearstone. To specifically absorb and deflect Vasilia’s lightning.”

  “Yes. As well as any other magic they might come into contact with.” Alvis smiled at me again. “What I didn’t realize back then was that the person who would wield them would have her own way to deal with magic. Even Serilda couldn’t see that.”

  “Did you know about my immunity from the beginning? From the first day that Auster brought me to your workshop?”

  He shook his head. “No, but I couldn’t understand why the magic kept fading out of my jewelry designs, and after a few months, I realized that it happened only after you touched the pieces. That’s when I first started to suspect, although you were very good at hiding your power.”

  “Apparently, I still am. The Seven Spire nobles don’t realize that I’m immune to magic. They think that your bracelet and weapons are what protect me. I’m surprised no one’s tried to steal them yet.”

  Alvis’s face darkened. “They will, though.”

  I nodded. Whether you were rich or poor, noble or common, royal or not, someone always coveted what you had, even if they already had more than you. That was just the way the world worked, especially in the cutthroat arena of Seven Spire.

  “There’s something else I want to know,” I said, my voice dropping even lower. “Something that’s more important than everything else. Something that Maeven said right before Vasilia blasted me off the side of the palace with her lightning.”

  “What?” Alvis asked, although his hands curled around the edge of the table, as if he was bracing himself for the questions he knew were coming next.

  “Why does Maeven want me dead so badly?” I drew in a breath, then slowly let it out. “And what does it really mean to be a Winter queen?”

  Alvis stared at me, an unreadable expression on his face. For a moment, I thought that he wasn’t going to answer, but he finally spoke. “The Mortan royal family has hated the Blairs ever since Bryn Blair killed their king in one-on-one combat. I don’t know what upset the Mortans more: that Bryn, a lowly gladiator, bested their king, or that she united the people against Morta and formed her own kingdom of Bellona. Either way, she humiliated them and thwarted their plans. That’s when it all started. For every generation since then, the Mortans have been determined to destroy the Blairs. They see the Blairs and Bellona as the only things standing in their way of conquering the entire continent.”