“My Queen,” she says. “Astrid.” Her voice is full of compassion. “I’m going to leave you.”
Gwen inclines her head and Astrid mutters a quiet thanks. Jessa clicks the door shut behind her. The interruption has an almost soporific effect on her mother, and she sits down heavily in the desk chair. Astrid perches on the edge of her bed, Bastet jumping up to sit on her lap. His purrs ripple through her, easing the ache in her chest.
“It was a simple spell in the end,” her mum says, voice low, “though it took us a long time to figure it out. We knew nothing about the heir—whether there evenwasan heir, how they identified, how old they were—we thought about a locator spell but—”
“But you need something of the person to find them, I know,” Astrid interrupts.
“Exactly,” her mum replies. “We’d no idea where to begin looking for the child, but the Stone City seemed the best place to start and it wasn’t long before Veronica got a lead. Some rumor about an old consort of the king’s who had disappeared from the castle after it was discovered she was pregnant. We thought if we could find this woman, we could find the heir, but we had no such luck—there was no trace of either of them in the city, and our search of the kingdom was proving futile.” She pushes a loose strand of hair from her face. “At that point, I thought we’d failed, but Veronica—she had one final idea. Said if we couldn’t find the heir, then we’d let them come to us. A triggering spell, a very potent one,” her mum explains when she notes Astrid’s confusion, “cast around the perimeter of the Stone City. Every duel, hundreds of thousands of people from around Vatra flock here, and Veronica thought the heir might do the same. And thank the Stars she did.”
Astrid stares at her mother. They found her through sheer dumb luck. “When? When did you actually realize she was here?”
Gwen grips the edge of the chair. “The spell was triggered six weeks ago.”
“Six weeks!” Weeks in which Astrid has been coming to terms with her certain death. “You should have told me.”
“We only confirmed it a few days ago,” her mum continues. “When we tested her blood.”
“How? How in the name of Nyx did you get her blood? How did you even know it washer?”
“That was Veronica again.” Her mum smiles faintly. “The triggering spell led us to the source, but as she’d traveled in with a troupe, we weren’t sure which one of them it was.” She twists her arm ring. “But money talks, Astrid. The troupe leader had an inkling about the girl’s past, and wasn’t shy about telling us.” There’s a hint of disdain in her mother’s tone. “The fact she’s a blade juggler made it easy to get her blood. We planted an Ulven in the crowd, he threw in a blade, and she helpfully threw it back. All it took after that was a simple spell, and another small fortune in Grele to convince the troupe leader to help bring her in.”
Astrid shakes her head, reeling from every revelation. “None of this changes the fact you should have told me.”
“I didn’t want to tell you in case it all came to nothing.”
Astrid slumps. What would she have done if she’d known? Stopped her mother? A part of her is glad she didn’t know, glad she didn’t have a chance to talk her mother out of it and be all morally superior.
Her mum comes to sit beside her and takes her hand, pulling it into her lap. A nauseating thrill goes through Astrid, a tingling, foreign sensation. She’s going to win this duel. She’s going to beat the Vatrans and claim guardianship of the Heart. She will duel, and she will live.
“I’ll be queen,” she murmurs, and her mum strokes her face, a gentle smile on her lips. Astrid will be able to help her people. She’ll stop the Blight. No one will ever be in Jessa’s position ever again, no one else will have to grieve their families.
The greater good, she thinks.This is for the greater good.
She turns to her mother and smiles back, despite everything. It might make her a terrible person for the gladness she feels, but one of the heirs has to die. And it’s not going to be her.
12Skylar
Skylar hates the feeling of Axel standing next to her. His presence is oppressive, and there is nothing remotely kind or reassuring on his harsh, angular face. Not that sheneedskindness from any of them—but she suspects there isn’t a trace of sympathy there that she could use to her advantage.
It turns out the Custodian is a person—a thin, short man with a wiry mustache—who has brought in a yellowing scroll, glancing nervously around as he moves to the high table on the dais. Skylar knows what this must be—though her bodyguard is keeping her several paces away from it.
This is the Covenant. The binding contract between Arturea and Vatra, the thing that history teaches them stopped the war over the Heart that had killed hundreds of thousands on both sides.
“Well, Custodian?” the king demands. “Can you shed any light on this predicament?” He hasn’t looked at Skylar since the witches left, presumably to keep their princess safe after the show of dragon power. The remnants of Tommen have not been cleared away, though none of them seem to glance that way. Maybe they’re used to this kind of thing. Maybe the dragons decimate guards all the time.
“Yes, ah…” The Custodian wipes a bead of sweat from his forehead as he unrolls the scroll on the table, then places a quill and bottle of ink next to it. All three royals look down at it. Skylar notices, for the first time, that there are a few people who seem to be guarding the queen in particular. They aren’t Dreki—they don’t have the fire brand and are wearing cloaks rather than armor—but they do hold themselves in that way people with power do. Her personal guard, maybe?Which would make sense, Skylar supposes. From what she knows of the queen, she has the least useful power—a Discerner, but a weak one, only grade one or two.
“Well,” the Custodian is saying now. “This, ah…” But apparently he has no words. The queen’s face drains of color as she stares at something on the scroll that Skylar can’t see. The king clenches his hands into fists at his sides. Only Zryan’s face remains impassive.
“His name was there.” The queen’s voice is high, on the verge of panicked. “It’s been written there since his naming day.”
Skylar edges forward, but Axel’s grip is a vise around her bicep. “I will break your arm,” he mutters, “if you take one more step.”
She tries to wrench free, but he holds firm. She wants to use the same retort she had with Aldric:I’d like to see you try.But somehow, she’s not really sure she does want to see this man, with the cold eyes and sharp-edged face, try to hurt her.
She looks away instead, feeling the fragment of blade between her wrists. And with the shift in everyone’s positions, she can see what she couldn’t before. At the bottom of the Covenant, there are two lines, side by side, spaces above for signatures. On the right is a scrawl she can barely make out—but from the letters she can see, she thinks she knows what the name says.
Astrid Nachstern.The witch princess.
