“What do we do now?” Olive asks from where she’s huddled, wrapped in a blanket by the fire.
“You stay here, stay safe. But I’m going to find Emmett.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
From what we can see through the windows, a riot has begun outside the palace gates. Torches are burning, and hundreds are begging for an audience with the queen, shouting over each other, so it’s just a roar of outraged voices.
“I’m not letting you go alone,” Faith says. Marion lays her hand on Faith’s shoulder and nods. “If you’re going, we are too.”
“I’ll have you remember, I absolutely cannot stand to be left out,” Emmy says.
Olive sniffs back tears. “Oh, fine. Let’s go.”
“I can’t guarantee your safety,” I say, overwhelmed with emotion.
Faith pulls on her cloak. “No time for a speech. We get it. Come on.”
We circle along a path through Kensington Park that pops us out on a sleepy, moonlit lane off the high street, far from the riot at the gates.
“He said something about the Tower,” I explain. It’s what we overheard him talking about when we walked in.
The Tower of London is all the way on the other side of town. It will take us hours to walk there and we don’t have the time, so werisk hailing a hackney carriage. Still in my wedding dress, the other girls in their bridesmaid gowns, we don’t make an inconspicuous group, but we don’t have any other options.
Marion passes a thick stack of bills through the window to the driver. “The Tower, and a little extra if you keep this ride between us.”
The driver tips his cap.
The streets of London are quiet tonight, as if everyone who isn’t rioting at the gates of the palace have barricaded themselves inside their homes. The carriage is so crowded, Olive has to sit on my lap.
The hackney driver lets us out on the dark cobblestone streets in the shadow of the Tower of London. The smell of the Thames is thick and heady tonight.
Olive takes me by the hand. “Let’s go.”
At the gates is a yeoman guard with a bayonet in his hand. “No one in or out tonight,” he barks without looking at us.
I straighten to my full height and stare him down as best I can from six inches below him. “Do you know who I am?”
The guard’s gaze flicks down to me.
“I’m Queen Ivy, wife of King Bram. Please don’t waste my time with these theatrics.”
The guard pauses, and I sneer. “Are you going to make us wait all night? My husband will be hearing about this.”
After a moment the guard reaches for his thick metal keys, unlocks the gates, and waves us inside.
The Tower is dark and quiet. The only sound is that of the waves of the Thames crashing at Traitors’ Gate and the chattering of the ravens watching us from the eaves.
It’s as if we’re being surveilled by ghosts as we creep through the Tower.
We split up into two groups, Marion and Faith search one end, and Olive, Emmy, and I search the other. We meet back in the middle on Tower Green.
He’s not being held in the basement cells, nor in the queen’s apartments or the towers along the ramparts. There is only one place left to look.
“Emmett?” I whisper. The only answer is acaw-cawfrom a raven perched on the ancient turret.
The steep spiral steps to Wakefield Tower are lit with a single flickering torch.
“That’s hopeful,” Emmy says.
