I glance from the guard to the queen. “She’s not hurt,” I call to her. “She just ate some sweetcakes. I didn’t—I didn’t know who she was.”
The queen stares back at me, and it feels like she’s studying every fiber of my being, judging me by measure.
I remember standing with Jax in the bakery, when we discussed the first note. How the palace and the royal family felt so far off.
It’s just one note, I remember thinking.
As I stare across the yard at the queen, as I feel her daughter’s shaking breath in my ear, I realize it’s about more than one note.
I don’t know what Alek did, or where the king is, or what Jax was able to do.
But I know what I’ve done. And I don’t know if I can undo it.
“I can bring her to you,” I call.
The guard looks to someone else: a superior officer. The woman nods.
I don’t waste time. As I stride across the distance between us, I feel as though a thousand eyes are on me.
“Mama is mad,” Sinna whispers in my ear.
“She’s not mad at you,” I whisper back.
When I reach the queen, I discover details I couldn’t see from the bakery door. Her cheek and jaw are shadowed with dark bruises, and asplit on her lip has scabbed over. Long red hair is roped into a braid, but tendrils have escaped to frame her face. Blood speckles her clothes, including one long streak on her sleeve. Her eyes are like steel.
“Mama,” Sinna says lightly, without letting go of my neck, “this is Lady Callyn. She gave me sweetcakes.”
There are so many guards surrounding us. I’m afraid to let go of the little girl—and also afraid to keep standing here. But the queen’s eyes are on mine, and she’s in worse shape than I am. If she can stand here stoically, so can I.
“Are you unwell?” I say quickly. “Are you—”
“I am being held against my will.”
“I didn’t know you were here,” I say. “I didn’t—I didn’t know—”
“You must know something,” the queen says, her voice dangerously quiet, “or they would not have brought us here.”
Heat rushes to my cheeks. “I had no idea,” I whisper, and my voice breaks. “I only held messages for Lord Alek and Lady Karyl. He never—theynever—I thought—”
I don’t know how to finish that sentence. I’m not sure how to tell the injured woman in front of me that I thought they might be plotting against her husband, the king.
I don’t know how to tell her that I might have been helping them.
“I didn’t know what I thought,” I finish.
She says nothing to that. “Sinna,” she says softly, then raises her arms.
The little girl goes to her mother, clinging to her neck the way she did to mine.
“The woman you know as ‘Lady Karyl’ is a traitor,” the queen says firmly. Loudly. “Lord Alek may be as well.”
One of the guards snorts. “The king is the traitor. Get back in the barn.”
She glares at him. “Youare the traitors.”
He lifts his crossbow. “I don’t have to kill you to make you regret that—”
“No.” My heart is pounding, but I step in front of him. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but please. Just stop.” I don’t know what kind of person would point a crossbow at a mother holding her child, much less the queen.
