Page 17 of A Song of Ash and Moonlight

“I don’t understand this,” Alastrina said, her voice tight and impatient. “Some mad citizen obtained a trick knife laced with fae elixir and decided to assassinate an Ashbourne in front of hundreds of people?”

“The blade was meant for me,” Ryder corrected her.

I glanced up at him right as he looked at me. Our eyes locked; heat crawled up my cheeks. I couldn’t read his face, but I was certain he was thinking the same thing as me. What would it be like now between us? He, the target; me, his savior.

Embarrassed, I turned away.

“A similarly unthinkable situation” came the low, gravelly voice of Lord Alaster Bask, who stood unmoving in his sharp black suit, hands behind his back. “Someone meant to murder my son, here inthe Citadel.” His gaze slid to Yvaine. “I thought, Your Majesty, that there were protective measures in place here powerful enough to prevent such occurrences.”

“A reasonable assumption, my dear,” added Lady Enid coolly. She glowered beside him, gorgeous and cold, carved out of porcelain and dipped in ink.

Captain Vara strode forward. “It isn’t your place to criticize the queen, my lord, especially in her own home.”

Lord Alaster raised an eyebrow. “What a funny thing to say. I would think, as an Anointed subject of the queen, that it is in fact my duty to criticize and question. The gods favored my ancestors too, after all. We were chosen to protect the realm. And if the magic the queen has used to safeguard the heart of our capital is faulty, it is my responsibility to find out why.” There was a pause. “I am reminded,” he added, “of the incident this past summer, when chimaeric beasts invaded the castle through means that have still not been divulged by the Royal Conclave. There seems to be a pattern emerging.”

My blood ran cold as I remembered that day. Five monstrous chimaera had raged through the palace halls. Gareth, Gemma, Talan, and I had tried to flee, only to be waylaid in this very ballroom by one of the beasts—a ferocious, muscled creature with a reptilian aspect, deadly razor claws, a tail like a whip. It had nearly killed me, and would have, had Ryder not thrown himself between us and shot the thing.

The memory reassured me. A life for a life. We were even. I no longer owed him anything. The thought gave me courage to speak.

“You forget to mention the night of the midsummer ball, Lord Alaster,” I said, though my throat burned with each word, “when Alastrina assumed a glamour to deceive my father into believing she was my mother. When your son then assaulted my father on theballroom floor, right there in front of everyone. If there is a failure in the Citadel’s ward magic, then your children are guilty of taking advantage of it just as my attacker did tonight.”

An uncomfortable silence fell; I could feel Ryder watching me but refused to meet his eyes. Instead I looked to my father, certain he would be grateful for my defense. But he was sitting on a nearby chair, leaning heavily forward, elbows on his knees. And when he raised his gaze to mine, I saw, before he could mask it, a flash of something miserable on his face: guilt and self-loathing and fear. He was utterly shaken.

Understanding pricked me like thorns.

I knew nothing about the cackling madman, but he’d been easily overwhelmed by the royal guard and had done nothing to defend himself. His method of attack had been convoluted, even a little silly. He’d said it himself:It was only a joke!This was not a person capable of overpowering the queen’s wards on his own.

But an Anointed lord with friends in the Upper Army and a thirst for revenge? That man certainly could have devised a way.

Father must have seen the realization on my face. His own clouded over, went blank; he lifted his chin, ever so slightly defiant, as if daring me to say something.

I felt sick. Of course I wouldn’t say anything, not here. And that glint in his eye told me that if I did, he’d be able to deflect the accusation. He wouldn’t have done whatever he’d done without a way to avoid being punished for it.

The guards at the door parted to make way for a man wearing fine black robes hemmed with gold and a tasseled velvet hat. His brown skin gleamed, and his beard was neat and white. His name was Thirsk, one of the queen’s closest advisers and a member of the Royal Conclave. He went straight to Yvaine and bowed, then bent to whisper something in her ear.

Yvaine nodded, touched his arm, and then looked solemnly at Alaster Bask.

“You are not wrong to express such concern, Lord Alaster,” she said. “In fact, the gods would be grateful for it. Such accountability is what they intended. I will sit in conference with you in the morning, hear all of your grievances, and, I hope, set your mind at ease. For now, Thirsk has prepared rooms for you and your party—and yours as well, Lord Gideon—so you can rest and recover in the wake of this alarming incident.”

Lady Enid raised her eyebrows and opened her mouth as if to protest, but Yvaine spoke over her, and I felt a slight wave of power push over us, a breeze with a will. Lady Enid fell silent.

“My staff will escort you upstairs for the night when you are ready and attend to your every need,” Yvaine continued. “In the meantime, I wonder if your children would remain with me for a moment so I can thank each of them personally for the speech they worked so hard to prepare? They did so at my request, after all.”

No one could have argued; the air hummed gently with magic. Nothing too coercive, merely a firm encouragement. It was enough to send Lord Alaster, Lady Enid, and my father docilely into the care of their guard escorts. Only once did Lord Alaster look back, tight-lipped, furious. He knew it was the queen’s magic at his back, shepherding him away, but what could he do about it? Nothing, if he didn’t want to lose his slight righteous advantage.

Father, on the other hand, left us without even a glance over his shoulder or a word of comfort. He’d be relieved, I knew, to no longer have to look at me and be faced with the enormity of what he’d done, how close he’d come to watching me die.

Gareth gently released me and stood. He and Illaria made to leave us, but Yvaine said smoothly, “Professor Fontaine, if you would remain here, please,” which stopped him in his tracks. Illaria glancedat him curiously before the stoic guards led her out of the antechamber. Soon we were alone: Gareth, my sister and I, the Bask siblings, the queen, and her adviser.

It was then that I noticed the sweat on Thirsk’s brow, near his hairline.

Yvaine turned to face all of us, her expression suddenly grave and hard. “Come with me, quickly,” she said. “There’s something you need to see.”

***

The sinkhole swirled like a knot of storm clouds, only instead of roiling across the sky, they churned within a circular chasm cut jaggedly into the floor.

It was as if some great fist had punched through this once-lovely expanse of ivory-and-coral tile, here in the third subbasement of the Citadel, where a forest of marble columns supported the vast ceilings and where artifacts and relics of ages past were stored, some in labeled crates, some displayed on pedestals of jade and pink granite. And what the fist had left behind was a doorway to some other place, a world of storms with inky black clouds. In the mess of darkness, distant lightning flashed; a constant rumble of thunder shook the floor.

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