Page 68 of A War of Crowns

In an instant, Nerina Reef fell away, and Aldric was back in Drakmor. In Falwood. In his father’s study. Watching King Warwick strike his name from the House Hargrave family tree.

“Be gone from me, monster. You’re no longer welcome here.”

The feel of hands gripping his shoulders pulled Aldric back to the present. The hot sun. The still breeze. The cry of his usuru.

“We need to find you shade,” Calix snarled while he and Kyn bodily tugged him along, away from the crowd now swarming the arena. “That’s a nasty cut you’ve got.”

The queen was gone. But her accusation chased him all the way from the tourney grounds into what cool relief the jungles of Nerina Reef provided.

Monster.

Chapter twenty

Edmund

Edmund sighed and glanced out the front flap of his pavilion again.

They were late.

“Mother, if you are not ready by the time I finish this sentence, Iwillgo ahead without you,” he warned.

“You wouldn’t dare,” the dowager queen called from behind a canvas partition painted with a mural of misty mountains silhouetted against a starry sky. It was pretty.

Elmoria had outdone itself.

And now Edmund was about to lose his opportunity to outdo himselfby making a grand entrance into the ball. There was a fine line between being fashionably late and simply beinglate, and he was certainly flirting withthat boundary.

“Tryme,” he muttered under his breath before the muffled thump of his mother’s high-heeled shoes heralded her approach. He turned to watch her maneuver her way across the uneven ground with the help of two maids.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you not even going to compliment my outfit? I raised you better than that, darling.”

Edmund sucked in a breath and cataloged the dowager queen’s chosen attire with a dutiful head-to-toe glance. They were a matched set in the colors of House Hargrave, down to their jewelry. Save for where his mother had a teardrop-cut gem swaying from each earlobe, he had merely the one stud pierced through his right.

Politely, she was even wearing the emerald necklace the Queen of Elmoria had gifted her earlier that morning.

“Stunning. Beautiful. Utter perfection,” Edmund declared and offered her his arm. “Now, let us be off before we lose any more light and stumble into a pit.”

The dowager queen widened her eyes. “Did Her Majesty not send someone to fetch us? A carriage? A cart, even?”

“A carriage?” Edmund echoed with a short laugh. He tugged his mother along, out of the pavilion and into the growing twilight. Their shared entourage fanned around them. “Mother, we’re onNerina Reef. But perhaps I could find a wheelbarrow and cart you to the ball myself?”

When his mother answered with a mere sniff, he brushed aside her current mood and continued on.

Locating the pavilion that was to be the ballroom for the evening was an easy enough task. It glittered withso many lanterns, Edmund couldn’t help but hesitate just outside while he calculated the probability of the entire thing catching fire.

But when he looked past the pavilion’s entryway and laid eyes on the Queen of Elmoria in all her glory, the matter was decided for him. He stepped onto the sapphire-and-gold rug leading the way into the ballroom and breezed inside.

“Try not to break too many hearts, Mother,” Edmund bid in an aside after leaving her near the refreshment table.

Crystal-studded gauze draped the canvas walls; within the glow of the lanterns, each gossamer panel flared with all the beauty of pure starlight. Wooden planks composed the floor. A company of musicians sat in a corner of the room, playing a lively tune to which the masses danced. All save the queen herself.

No doubt she had been waiting for him.

Orshe was still sulking over how his idiotic brother nearly beat her champion to death just that afternoon. It was a miracle the man had lived. But of course Aldric would spoil his fun by placing the Queen of Elmoria in a foul mood from the start. He had hoped she would begin the evening with a smile on her lips.

It would make his vengeance all the more sweet when he ripped said smile away.

Around him, the room rippled. Every courtier he passed paused in their merriment to offer him a bow or a curtsy.

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