When Ellina was little, she found a baby bird in the grass. She remembered its ugly pink body, its bony head. She had scooped the feeble creature into her hands and tried to set it back into its nest. Farah caught her at it and laughed.Can you not see that the bird is dead? What do you think that will fix?
Perhaps the bird had tumbled out of the nest on its own. Perhaps it had been pushed. Ellina—so young then, a fledgling herself—had not understood. She plucked at the bird’s limp body. She climbed the tree and set it back with its brothers, who peeped and cried. The next day, she found all the baby birds on the ground. This time, she knew what had happened.
You seemed so enthralled by one dead bird, Farah had told Ellina, smiling just as she had in the stone gardens.I thought, what about six?
Ellina understood the courtiers’ fear. She knew how it felt to be set in her sister’s sights. If it came to choosing sides, the palace elves would side with the queen—a choice made obvious each time they saw Ellina and found a reason to look away. Ellina could not blame them for it. This was what she told herself.
Yet the cold hall felt suddenly colder.
She quickened her pace. Late afternoon sunlight blazed through the windows, cutting hard squares into the walls and floor. Soon the sky would melt into pink and gold, then dusk. Ellina knew that Livila was likely growing anxious, wondering when her mistress would return so that she could finish her duties and retreat to her quarters before dark. Most palace elves were like this these days: nervous around dinnertime, even more so at dusk. Farah had used Ermese’s blindness to make her message clear. No one, except the guards and conjurors, were to wander the halls after dark.
What Ellina had not stopped to consider, until that moment, waswhy.
She came to a stop at the top of a stairwell, ran a hand along the smooth balustrade. Ellina had assumed that Farah’s curfew was a simple show of power, a way to force her subjects into submission. Better than that, it provided an opportunity to publicly punish those who disobeyed her. Farah’s curfew translated into a simple command: obey.
Except, that could not be the whole of it. Because there was Raffan, in the dining hall of Ellina’s mind, and Youvan, with his angry questions, and the blinded servant’s lies, choked to silence.
What were you doing,Youvan had asked,snooping around the palace after dark?
What did you see, down in the palace crypts?
Ellina gripped the railing. She felt it again: the silvery flash of her thoughts. The way an idea seemed to shimmer—bright, cold—on the edge of her consciousness.
The sun continued its descent. Its golden rays beamed. But there was time still before dark. Time enough, Ellina thought, for a quick diversion.
???
The entryway to the crypts looked like most other palace entryways. There was a short, wide door fashioned from grey stone, two brass knobs, two decorative lock plates, a wall sconce set to either side. What was not like most entryways was the solitary guard stationed before those doors and the sword—unsheathed, blade down—that he held in his grasp.
Ellina continued forward even as the guard ordered, “Halt.” His face was half-concealed by a helm, his chest shelled under a studded cuirass, the sigil of a raven between twin flames emblazoned onto the metal. This too was unusual. Palace guards did not often wear full battle armor, not within the city, and certainly not indoors.
“Halt, in the name of the queen,” said the guard again. Ellina was close enough now that she could see his eyes narrow under the shadow of his helm. “What business do you have here?”
The tip of the guard’s sword was propped on the floor, his hands folded over its pommel, his weight settled forward. It was a lazy posture. Overconfident. An enemy could easily unbalance him in a stance like that, which meant that either this guard was inexperienced and did not know it, or he did not consider Ellina an enemy.
“Well?” the guard prompted.
Ellina lifted her gaze. “I wish to visit my mother’s crypt.”
“I have orders. The crypts are closed.”
It was no less than Ellina had expected. She feigned surprise. “But why?”
“That is none of your concern.”
“I should think, as the queen’s right hand, that I would be party to such knowledge.”
“You wouldthink.”
Ellina cooled. So it would be like that, then.
The guard readjusted his grip. “Your mother is not down there anyway.”
This time Ellina’s surprise was real. “What do you mean?”
“Her body was taken to the city of Lorin. She will be buried beside her sister.”
The news settled like a stone dropped into a river: down and down. Ellina kept her eyes clear, her expression empty, but inside she was swirling.
