Page 35 of Make Me Bee-lieve

“Po, before the attack … Majordomo Elza and your fiancé were nowhere to be found in the banquet hall.”

Polina doesn’t say anything, continuing to stare ahead as she hugs her fuzzy knees tighter. After what feels like hours of waiting for a response, for anything at all, she murmurs, “You think they’re behind it.”

It’s not a question. I nod. “Yes. Yes, I do. All the red flags were there, Po.” When she stares at me, her eyebrow arched in a question, I say, “Warning signs. They weren’t acting normally.”

She lets out a scoff. “Trust me. That is how they act normally. Standoffish? Rude? Patronizing? Condescending, overly involved. Yes, Cal. That is how they act.”

I frown. “Okay. I get your point. But they’re still the two with a probable motive.”

“My majordomo has served the crown for a thousand years, Calvin,” Polina says with an eyeroll. “Why would she overthrow my rule now?”

A good question. And one I can’t answer, because I’ve only known about the bee fae for a whopping two days. In those two days, I’ve learned some of their traditions and politics, but not enough to go flinging accusations around. Still, the engineer in me knows there’s something there. Something we’re both missing, and all I want to do is figure out what.

I turn toward her on my side. She’s not going to like this question, but we just escaped near-death. I think we’re past comfort at this point. “Polina, tell me about your mother.”

Polina’s mouth falls open, and she pushes a strand of hair back behind her ear before looking away. “I don’t want to talk about my mother. Not now. Not while my kingdom is falling apart.”

“But this is precisely the time to talk about her. Because your kingdom is falling apart, and sometimes we need to look back in order to move forward.”

The fur on Polina’s shoulders stands on end, and she puts her chin down on the tops of her knees. “Fine. What do you want to know?”

“How did she die?” I ask.

She quirks an eyebrow again and lifts her shoulders. “I told you before. A bird … a bird ate her.”

Yes, she did tell me. But that was the end result, not the sequence of actions that led to her untimely demise. “And how did she end up getting eaten by a bird if she was supposed to remain in the hive? That is what the queen does, right? They stay inside the hive?”

“Yes…” Polina says slowly as suspicion flickers across her face. “Aunt Elza told me that it was an accident. That she was out on the balcony of her personal chambers and it dove down and gobbled her up.”

I nod. Okay, we’re starting to make progress here. “But you have wards. Do the wards block out predators, too?”

She nods. “Yes, of course. They repel birds, insects, mice, and other rodents.” Her eyes widen as realization sets in. “The wards were down when she was eaten.”

My throat tightens. It brings me no joy to see the pain flash across her face. To see how much reliving her mother’s death—no, her murder—is taking a toll on her.

“You think someone took the wards down?” she asks finally.

I shrug. “Maybe? Who has the power to remove the wards?”

Her rosy face goes pale as a sheet. “My … my majordomo is one. Yes, she can. I can. And so can a couple of my drones, hand selected by my mother, but they’re all dead now. It’s not something everyone in the colony can do.”

She goes quiet for a long moment, and I don’t say anything while she processes the information. Her gaze reaches mine, and she says, “Aunt Elza killed my mother. But why? Why would she do that?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know, Po. I’m sorry, sweetheart, but I can’t answer that for you. But it seems she also got your jackass of a fiancé involved.”

Polina crosses her arms in front of her chest. “Now he doesn’t surprise me. Not one bit. He has the most to lose.”

“Exactly,” I agree. “Aunt Elza probably offered him something too good to pass up.”

“We need to go back,” she says, and pushes herself up to stand. “We need to go back and help Ser Beatrix and Sylvie!”

I stand up beside Polina and pull her against my chest. Her heart pounds against mine like a hummingbird’s, and I press my lips to the top of her head, taking care not to irritate her antennae. “It’s too dangerous. We can’t go back. Not when the hive’s been taken over by the enemy.”

Polina lets out a deep sob against my chest, and I hold her until the sun lowers over the horizon in brilliant, oozy streaks of sienna and azure and the crickets begin their nightly serenade. We stand together like two lost souls out at sea, with nowhere to go and nowhere to hide. Not really. We can’t stay in the flower field forever, I know that. But there’s a part of me that wishes we could. Things here are peaceful. There’s no politics. No court. No coups. No fires at work to put out. Just this strange, compelling woman with the most beautiful pair of eyes I’ve ever seen.

And then there’s me. A scrawny, overachieving engineer with zero social life to speak of. What a literal princess could see in someone like me, I haven’t a clue. But when she looks up at me with those soft, enormous eyes of hers, my pulse quickens and my … oh no.

My palms are sweating. It doesn’t matter how much we’ve already done with one another. Our moment in the library, in the alcove back in the palace. I’m still just as anxious around her as the first time I saw her.

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