Page 26 of A Song of Ash and Moonlight

We—Gemma and I, and Ryder and Alastrina—had just finished telling the other families present about the sinkhole in the queen’s palace. In the wake of our words, the room fell into a heavy, fraught silence. I looked around the table, trying to read everyone’s expressions, my heart pounding. Talking about the sinkhole had taken me back to that horrible room in the palace; the memory of Yvaine’s sobs rang in my ears.

“Hold on a moment,” Lady Kaetha Nash said incredulously, pulling me back to myself. She was a formidable woman, tall and elegant, with a rich voice, smooth brown skin, and tremendous skill as a beholder, able to see through lies and disguises based in magic. My family had known hers for years, and Gemma and I had decided to invite her because of her wisdom, her level head, and her wicked sense of humor. But in that moment, she seemed cold, unfamiliar. Quietly furious.

“I must stop you there, Ryder,” she went on, “and ensure that I’m not in fact dreaming and have heard you rightly. You’re saying that some unknown force has opened a magical sinkhole inside the Citadel, that it’s been there for weeks and weeks, that the queen has been keeping this fact a secret and has only justnowtold you about it, and that she has tried to close it andfailed?”

Lady Kaetha’s voice rang through the dining hall. I tried not to flinch at the anger it held, which I had to admit was warranted, reminding myself that it was not a personal insult to Yvaine.

At least, I hoped it wasn’t. I hoped this week wouldn’t devolve into a long string of bitter tirades condemning the queen for her deception.

“That’s right, Lady Kaetha,” Ryder replied at once. “The Citadel has been compromised, and we don’t know why or how.”

Lady Kaetha looked around at all of us; at her wife, Leva, her scowling son, Ewan, and her stricken daughter, Elianor; at the plates of half-eaten food scattered across the huge table of blue-veined marble. Lady Leva shrugged helplessly and put her face in her hands.

I clutched the napkin in my lap and braced myself for whatever came next.

Lady Respa Barthel, pale hands steepled at her lips, drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “And you’ve brought us all here to tell us this why?”

“Because, like ours, your families are Anointed,” said Gemma, seated at the other end of the table between Lord Alaster and Ewan Nash. My wonderful sister spoke with a gentle but firm serenity I certainly didn’t possess at the moment. “The gods chose our ancestors to help the queen protect the realm. And right now, the realm needs protecting.”

“Protecting from what?” said Lady Respa, sounding more than a little irritated. “How can we know how to fight a thing we’ve not seen?The queen ought to invite us to the Citadel, allow every Anointed family to set eyes on this aberration for themselves.”

Across the table, Lady Leva raised her head and said thoughtfully, “Is it possible this sinkhole could be a simple magical abnormality? A phenomenon that will resolve itself naturally given time?”

“Of course,” answered Gareth, “but if that’s the case, the question becomes how long that resolution will take and what it will look like.”

“And how many people it might kill in the meantime,” Lord Alaster said over the rim of his wineglass, his cold blue eyes considering us all without blinking. “Those chimaera that escaped through it this past summer killed twenty-two people. Royal beguilers and royal guards. Loyal subjects of the queen.Twenty-two.And yet Her Majesty has not seen fit to explain to her people the real reason for their deaths. She has hidden that reason behind a cloak of secrecy and deception and ordered us to do the same. To lie for her.”

I couldn’t help but bristle at the tone of his voice. My determination to remain an impartial voice in these discussions vanished in an instant. “Yvaine wanted to avoid a panic,” I blurted out, “which for all we know could have drawn countless would-be heroes to the capital, brandishing their magic without thinking. Whatever power feeds the sinkhole is already volatile. At least, Lord Alaster, there have not been more deaths since those tragic twenty-two.”

“Not yet,” Lady Enid said quietly, sitting at her husband’s left hand. At this massive table, without the splendor of the Citadel to make her shine, she looked small and frail, even sad, a delicate shadow of her haler children.

Lord Alaster smiled at me. The unkindness of it sent a chill slithering down my back. “Yvaine, is it? Of course the queen’s pet would defend her without question.”

Father, sitting across from me and two chairs to my left, set his hands flat on the table and glared at his plate, clearly fighting againsthis rising temper. “You will not speak of my daughter that way,” he said, very low, deadly soft. It was the first thing he had uttered since we’d all sat down for supper.

Gemma looked at me frantically. I could have slapped myself for letting the queen’s given name slip. I wrestled for control of my anger, threw a hard look at my father.Don’t you dare, I thought, willing him to somehow hear it, to see my face and calm himself, no matter how awful it felt.

I said hastily, “You’re right, Lord Alaster, that I am inclined to defend the queen, but we are not here to argue about my friendship with her or about her wisdom in choosing to keep the sinkhole a secret. That decision lies in the past. What we are concerned with now is what’s to come. What does this sinkhole, this breach, mean in the context of the larger world?”

Ruddy-faced Gentar, the genial son of Lady Respa and her husband, Sesar, chewed thoughtfully on his roasted potatoes. “You think that whatever force created the sinkhole could be the same one creating trouble in the Middlemist?”

“We can’t be sure without further research,” Gareth replied, “but it’s a possibility we can’t discount. The timing suggests something more than coincidence. I’m going to propose to the queen that a team of scholars from the Committee of New and Emerging Magics join the royal beguilers at the sinkhole. They can study it with fresh eyes, and exchange information with similar scholarly research teams currently stationed in the Middlemist.”

Lady Respa raised her eyebrows. “From what you’ve said, it doesn’t sound like the queen will be amenable to such…interference.”

Gareth flashed her a charming smile and leaned forward on his elbows, his messy blond hair flopping over his brow. “I am determined to convince her.”

“You’re that confident in that smile of yours, Professor Fontaine?”

His grin widened. “It has never once let me down.”

The Nashes’ bashful daughter, Elianor, cleared her throat. Her cheeks flushed pink as she spoke. “Has there been word from Vauzanne about similar occurrences in the Crescent of Storms? Or from Aidurra about the Knotwood? Things like the Mistfires, the increased sightings of Olden trespassers?”

At once I thought of Talan, who was gods knew where at the moment, living in disguise and in hiding, investigating those very questions and never staying in one place long enough for Kilraith to find him—we hoped, we prayed. I glanced quickly at Gemma, aching for her, begging her silently to be brave, but of course she was, beautifully so. There was no trace of heartbreak on her face, nothing that gave away how at every moment she was half out of her mind with worry for Talan’s safety. She took a regal sip of her wine, her curls gleaming softly in the dim light. I wished I could have marched around the table and hugged her.

“So far the queen has not informed of us any such communications,” Ryder said.

“Though she hasn’t exactly been completely forthcoming about other things, has she?” mused Lady Enid, absently rubbing the rim of her largely untouched plate. “Perhaps we can’t trust that she isn’t keeping that information secret as well.”

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