“On whose orders? A Drake?”
He gulped.
“Where are they now?”
His eyes darted, and a finger pointed shakily in the direction of the throne room.
Nova tapped the base of her fan with her fist just hard enough to drive it a severing distance into his throat, and then stepped over him to check on Lain.
“You hurt?” she asked him, pointing at the blood on his robe.
“I—no, it’s not mine,” he replied, breathless.
“Good. Stay in the library. Lock the doors. Have you seen Yemi?”
“I assumed she was with you.”
Nova stalked off toward the throne room and the sounds of roaring and clashing metal. All of this was her own fault. She hadn’t been thorough enough in her search for the rebels. And now Yemi was alone. She might never have made it inside. It would have been nothing for them to launch her over the garden cliffs.
Cutter came barreling out of a storeroom with his spear swinging. She counted eight, ten, more attackers who seemed to converge on him. It made sense. He was a giant wall of a person, the physical and metaphorical embodiment of the shield of the crown. And if they were bothering with him, it meant they hadn’t found Yemi yet.
Nova whistled to announce her arrival and joined the fray.
“You’re here? Where’s the queen?” Cutter roared over the cracking and squelching of bodies.
She couldn’t bring herself to say she didn’t know. Not to him.
“You must go find—”
“After,” she told him.
• YEMI •
The corridor was empty but for the dust being shaken from the ceiling by thundering footsteps. Distorted rectangles of moonlight splashed a stone mural of old kings and older gods along the long wall. Yemi moved quickly to the secret door to the east wing on the far end. Shadows moved in the flickering light beneath it, and she could hear moaned pleas for mercy, voices familiar and yet foreign in their desperation.
She opened it slowly and stepped into the darkness behind it, careful to shield herself from the harried murderers and mutineers darting up the hallway. A royal guard lay slumped against the wall near her mother’s bedroom, the rise and fall of his chest increasingly quick and erratic. A man with a bloody dagger drawn exited the roompanting and skidded to a halt in the pool of guard’s blood he pretended to ignore. Another rebel approached him at a furious pace. Yemi was sweating as she inched out of the shadows, her body low and coiled so tightly she thought she might seize with cramps.
“Where is she?” he asked.
“Not here,” said the man with the dagger.
“Yes I am,” she growled as she thrust her spear in through the base of his skull and jerked it out before he started his descent to the ground.
“You.” She pointed at the other one with her spear. “Where is your master? I’d like a word.”
“The… the Bear Queen?” he stammered, backing away on his heels.
Yemi had forgotten she was wearing her mother’s mask. “Yes, if you’d prefer, it was she who killed you. What are you? Not a soldier, not with that stance. Did the Drakes send a baker’s boy to kill a queen?”
A darkness came over him, and he stopped backing away as if imbued with some confidence that it was not the Bear Queen, only his target. He tugged the pistol off his hip and moved to aim it at her chest when Yemi whacked him hard on the trigger finger—sending the bullet sideways into the wall—and then along the jaw, the sharp metal of the spear tip carving a slash in his throat deep enough to rupture an artery.
He stumbled aside, hands grasping frantically at his throat. Yemi kicked the pistol down the hall to where he’d bleed out before he was able to reload and kept moving. A quick trip through the adjoining hall to her own room found a handful of household staff dead or dying. Enna sat on the floor, clutching an abdominal wound, and looked up at her with glazed eyes as Yemi peeked into Nova’s room. It was dark and empty.
“Enna.” Yemi knelt in front of her, propping the spear against the wall as she felt Enna’s face. As if it would do her any good.
“What happened to you?” Yemi asked calmly.
“We heard something. Like an explosion. Came out. He was there.”Enna sneered in the direction of a fallen man, half his body obscured by the door to Yemi’s room. “He shot.” She twitched, raising a pistol with a limp hand. “I shot.”
