Page 70 of The Kingdom Cursed By Iron

“If we consult the scrolls?—"

“Unnatural,” someone hisses at me, though I don’t see who it is. A few of the High Fae start to close in around me.

A strong hand grabs my arm, pulling me away from the group.

“Come with me,” Halima grunts, marching me away. She hauls me silently through the corridors towards Ruskin’s rooms, and I can tell she’s more annoyed than usual.

“Thank you,” I say quietly.

“For what?” she snaps.

“For saving me from a bunch of High Fae.”

She grunts. “I wouldn’t have needed to if you’d had the sense to keep your distance. Jorna’s been stoking their superstitions all week. The last thing we need is for you to go putting yourself in the middle of that.”

“Are things really that bad?”

“They won’t say it in public, but behind closed doors…” She shakes her head. “I’ve not seen this place so uprooted since the High Queen was attacked.”

“But what else can we do? We had the miners excavating—” I stumble, thinking about the fates of the ones who hadn’t made it out. “—we’re training me so I can try to stop it, and today was the day we were supposed to reinstate Queen Evanthe so she could restore balance, but she didn’t pass the stone’s trial and?—”

Halima jerks her head towards me.

“You mean she tried and failed?”

I try to order the events in my head, but everything happened so suddenly. “I mean, she started, and I think that’s when the iron attack came. Around the same time that the stone sort of…rejected her, I guess.”

Halima’s expression sours even further. “So we still don’t know if that will help us at all.”

“At least there’s still a chance,” I say. “She can try again.”

“Which is all very well, but we can’t tell the court about it. It’s no surprise they think the royals are doing nothing. The longer the attacks go on the harder it will be to explain why she’s not using her High Queen powers to help.”

I consider how angry the High Fae would be knowing they’ve been deceived about their true monarch all these years. Probably somewhere around as angry as I’ve been learning all the things Ruskin has held back from me, and I’m not even half as vicious as them.

We find Ruskin standing over a seated Evanthe in one of his drawing rooms. She doesn’t look good, her eyes circles of darkness in a pallid face, and I’m immediately glad that I suggested Ruskin come looking for her.

Halima bows to her, then rounds on Ruskin.

“You need to tell the court something. Anything. Your silence is only encouraging them to come up with their own theories—and you won’t like them,” she says, her eyes falling on me.

“Do you doubt that I can handle the court?” Ruskin says, standing straighter.

Tension hangs there in the air as they eye up each other. I shift uncomfortably, and my movement seems to break the spell. Halima just huffs out a sigh and backs out of the room, looking like every step costs her effort. I turn to see Evanthe staring after her, a curious expression on her tired face.

“I don’t understand it,” she mutters, almost to herself. “It should’ve worked. Why didn’t it work?”

Ruskin goes to her side. “You’ve been through a lot since you last took the trials. I shouldn’t have rushed you.”

Evanthe shakes her head, pressing a hand to her temple like she has a headache. I think of the woman who looked so determined at the stone earlier today and I’m disturbed by how much of that confidence is now missing.

“No. That isn’t it. It’s like the stone was resisting me.” She looks up at Ruskin as if a thought occurs to her. “Could this be part of Cebba’s curse? Could magic like that have turned the stone against me?”

“I don’t know why the stone is behaving like it is,” Ruskin says. “But I’m sure the iron is playing a part. The timing of the attack today was no coincidence. Perhaps the curse is trying to stop us reinstating you, or maybe the stone senses that the balance of the kingdom is upset and is trying to protect itself.”

“Why would the stone need to protect itself from me? I’m supposed to be High Queen.” Her voice is so sad, so frustrated, that my heart goes out to her. It can’t be easy, waking up to find your world turned upside down.

“We’ll find a way to fix this,” Ruskin says, striding across the room to gaze out the window. I can tell he’s thinking, turning things around to try to make sense of them. “Right now, you should rest.”

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