Page 34 of To Ride the Wind

By the time she was finally released from the dress fitting, it was almost time for the evening meal. And after her experience the previous night, Gwen knew she wouldn’t be able to stay awake for any nighttime wanderings.

She had the secret master key that should let her out of her room, but the locked door wasn’t her primary hurdle. A key was no use to her if she couldn’t stay awake long enough to use it. And worse—if she made it out into the corridor and then fell asleep there, she would alert her mother to her possession of the key.

So Gwen endured a normal evening meal, even forcing herself to eat as usual, and when she grew sleepy, she went to bed. At least the mattress was soft on her bruises.

But the next morning she arrived at breakfast filled with determination. She wasn’t getting caught up in meaningless activities for another entire day.

On the threshold of the dining room, she paused, however. While they often had guests for the evening meal, having anyone but her mother at breakfast was unusual.

Count Oswin rose instantly to his feet on seeing her, bowing respectfully. “Good morning, Your Highness.”

He smiled and held out her usual chair, waiting for her to take a seat.

“I apologize for intruding on your remaining family time,” he said once she had begun her meal.

Gwen’s hand froze, the knife halfway to the butter. He knew about her mother’s plans?

She shot her mother a look and caught the strain around her eyes as she held her smile in place. The count definitely knew, but the queen didn’t like him mentioning it.

Count Oswin also glanced at the queen, hurrying into speech at sight of her expression. “Not that I mean to imply you’ll be losing each other, naturally. But it will be different to have someone else join the family.”

Seeing her mother relax, Gwen experienced again the familiar feeling that she was missing an underlying meaning in the words spoken around her. In the past, she’d allowed the sensation to wash over her, but now it sent energy crackling up her spine.

She could smell the secrets as clearly as she could smell breakfast. If only she could pluck them off the table as easily.

She forced herself to eat her toast, carefully chewing and swallowing each bite. But her ears were sharp, straining to catch any double meaning. The conversation had moved on to safer topics, however. The count and her mother discussed the weather and an upcoming picnic as if they were perfectly natural topics for a ruler to discuss with her most powerful advisor.

Gwen forced herself to drink her tea. This conversation couldn’t be the real reason he had joined them for breakfast. And from the way he kept stealing glances at her, it was easy to guess that he wanted her gone so he could move on to his true agenda.

As disappointing as that might be, it was for the best. She wanted to escape as much as the two of them must want her to disappear.

Swallowing the last of her meal, she stood. When she tried to think of an appropriate excuse for her abrupt departure, her mind went blank, so she settled for a half curtsy to her mother before hurrying out of the room.

Alone in the corridor, she could finally breathe. And the further she got from the dining room, the more she recognized the unexpected windfall in the count’s presence. Not only had her mother not given Gwen any tasks for the day, but she was likely to be occupied with Count Oswin for some time. The combination of those two things allowed Gwen to start her investigation somewhere she might actually find answers.

She forced her shoulders straight and her face into an expression of detached confidence as she approached her mother’s exclusive wing of the palace. The guard who was always stationed at the door gave her a curious look but didn’t stop her. Apparently the queen’s one family member was allowed into her domain.

Once past the guard, with a door shut safely between them, Gwen’s legs trembled slightly, but she couldn’t risk slowing down.

She considered the options open to her. She could search her mother’s office, but her instincts steered her away from there. Her mother sometimes mentioned having meetings there, and Gwen suspected anything the queen had hidden would be somewhere more private. Somewhere like her bedchamber. Not even Gwen was ever invited in there.

When she tried the handle, it didn’t turn. She had expected as much and come prepared.

Somewhat to her surprise, the master key turned in the lock. She’d feared her mother might have an individual lock for her own chamber.

Inside, she found a room that looked like a mirror image of her own, down to the location of the bed and coloring of the carpet and curtains. She frowned. The castle might have been austere, but what little decoration it had was tastefully diverse. She’d never seen two identically decorated rooms before.

The unexpected appearance of the room gave her a disconcerting feeling of familiarity and wrongness at the same time. She shook it off and began a methodical search.

It didn’t help that she didn’t know what she was searching for. It was ludicrous to think she might come across a paper titled My Evil Plans for my Daughter Gwendolyn, or A List of the Secret Things that Happen in the Mountain Palace at Night. But if she didn’t do something, she might spend another day shaking and crying by her bed.

Her mother’s possessions were as luxurious as you would expect from a queen, but it struck Gwen that they were oddly impersonal. Nothing in the room gave any real sense of the owner’s identity.

When she had examined each piece of furniture without finding anything of note, she turned her eyes to the walls. It would be just like her mother to have a hidden door in her bedchamber.

Her gaze lingered on a pair of closed, floor-length curtains. They would have been unremarkable except for the fact they were positioned on an internal wall.

Gwen pulled them open with a sweeping movement, gasping at what they revealed. Rather than a door as she had hoped, they concealed a large and striking portrait.

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