Page 35 of Desperately Yours

He left me with that. A cryptic message from Bishop to match the one I’d received from Fitz. The door clicked shut behind him. I started blowing out candles, happy I wouldn’t tick off Smokey Bear with a wildfire any time soon.

As I worked my way around the room, my thoughts reviewed what I knew. Obviously, Bishop meant the queen had put a halt on my date with Fitz. I didn’t know why it bothered me at this point. It sure didn’t surprise me.

She hated me.

She wanted me gone.

I was a threat to her carefully laid plans.

As close as I could tell, she would stop at nothing to get to the throne.

At nothing…

I held my breath as I stood over a candle, lost on a thread of thought that felt as fragile as a spider’s web. Earlier, when thinking about Esme, I’d considered the idea that she had been targeted.

Suddenly, that didn’t look so farfetched.

In fact, maybe the bug wasn’t what bit her.

Maybe she was affected by something else, and my brain had just assumed it was a bug.

Maybe the bug was just cover for the real threat.

And if that was true, wasn’t it equally possible that Esmerey was merely an accident?

After all, if the queen wanted to eliminate one person from the competition, it wouldn’t have been Esmerey.

It would have been me.

Michaela

When I was about fifteen, my mom started giving me dating advice. It ranged from the practical, liketrust men, but bring your wallet or you’ll be doing a lot of dishes, to the absurd, likenever trust a guy who chews gum or walks across the front lawn.I have to admit, most of it proved helpful. Even that lawn one ended up being a hard pass when it came to Justin Barker, but that had more to do with the way he honked to pick me up and then yelled, “Yo, babe! Come on!” The lawn walking was the least of his issues and likely a coincidence.

I stared at my outfit in the mirror and shook my head. In all my years of listening to Mom, she had never weighed in on what to do or what to wear when going on a secret date with a CrownPrince in the middle of the night.

Maybe it wasn’t exactly textbook dating material.

Leave it up to me to wreck the curve.

Black fleece-lined leggings and a thick cable sweater, paired with a heavy jacket that had a fake fur halo hood, and boots with wool socks had me hoping I looked like an adorable snow bunny… not the Abominable Snowman. Not that I had any idea where I was going or what we were doing. I planned to follow my suspicion and hope I knew him well enough to interpret his cryptic message.

That plan started with opening the passage. I’d done it so many times, it had become second nature to me. The bronze frog shifted, the latch popped, and I ducked inside. Not typical though was the electric lantern that waited for me. I pulled the doorway closed and fastened the interior latch, then picked up the lantern. Once more, the message was repeated.

First right and straight on until the lantern light.

Midnight.

But this time, the note was accompanied by a rock arrow in the dirt, displaying the direction I needed to travel. Knowing he wouldn’t want any trace, I kicked the arrow apart as I moved, erasing the evidence of our sneaky plan.

About thirty feet in, I saw another arrow in the dirt, but this one veered right. Once more, I destroyed it before I followed. I’d traveled this tunnel many times before and I’d never seen this side passage. Fitz had mentioned it before, but I’d always been more excited to see him than to explore the secret tunnels without him.

The tunnel dipped downward into a spiral staircase. I focused on the stairs and the railing, and not the dizzying drop that likely waited for me. The dank air felt different than the other tunnel to his chambers. More than once, I second-guessed myself, assuming I’d gone the wrong way. If not for the arrows, I wouldhave turned around, but if Fitz waited at the end, I would push through.

With the final stair, I stepped onto cobblestone. A breeze tousled my hair, but where was it coming from? If I was underground, as I assumed I was, there shouldn’t be any fresh air. I followed the rocky path, curiosity almost as high as my anxiety. If I was wrong, if I was following some unknown direction, I could be walking into a trap. My mind flashed back to thoughts of Esmerey’s fate. If someone planned that, what would stop them from planning something similar for me?

The path wound left and then right, a slight decline apparent, but nothing like the staircase that felt like it wouldn’t end. My lantern swung and illuminated the thick webs of spiders that lurked in the dark. Onyx shapes clung to the ceiling and on instinct I knew they were bats.

Oh, how I prayed they would stay asleep.

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