“I should come with—” I started.
“Nonsense,” the queen said, cutting me off. “Stay and enjoy the feast. I will take care of your sister, and she will be as good as new within an hour’s time.”
The queen bustled off with my sister latched to her arm. I frowned, watching the shuffle of Nellie’s feet, the hunch of her shoulders. Her cheeks were a vivid pink, and just before she walked through the Great Hall’s open door, she shot a quick glance over her shoulder, met my eyes, and winked.
I swore.
“Don’t worry,” Toryn said, sitting on the bench with a frown. “My mother is…well, you’ve seen how she is. But despite all that, she is a good healer. Nellie will be fine.”
“Yes, she will be fine.” I pressed my lips together and scanned the crowd. A few fae had stopped their raucous meal to watch the queen pass by with my sister, but they’d all returned to their food and drinks now. Most were deep in conversation, swapping adventurous tales or trading the latest gossip. Still, I had spent a long time around fae, and there was one thing you never did: speak in their presence aboutanythingyou didn’t want them to overhear.
I stood. “I’m feeling a little funny myself. Toryn, can you help me back to my room, please?”
“Tessa, what’s wrong?” Kalen was on his feet within an instant, his body poised to strike down anyone who so much as looked at me wrong.
Caedmon stayed right where he was, but I heard his grumble. Something about the king and his bloody marriage bond.
“Ah…” I trailed off. If I lied, any fae paying attention would be able to scent it. How had Nellie managed to fool the queen? I thought through what she’d said and realized Nellie had never actuallysaidshe was ill at all. She’d only implied it by asking questions. Smart girl. “If Nellie is ill, then I will have likely caught whatever it is as well, don’t you think?”
“Are you feeling unwell? You haven’t coughed,” Kalen said.
“I’m feeling like I want to leave the Great Hall.”
Toryn frowned, but then gently took my arm and steered me away from the table. “All right. Come on. I’ll get you back to your room.”
Kalen followed, but Caedmon remained in his chair, along with Fenella.
She glanced up as we passed. “I think you can manage without me. I’ll stay here and enjoy my meal, not that anyone asked what I want.” To punctuate her statement, she grabbed a roasted chicken leg and took a big bite of it. Juice dripped down her cheek as she flashed us a wicked smile.
After Toryn and Kalen—fussing over me like idiots—practically carried me into the corridor, I smacked their hands and extracted myself from them both. “I’m fine. I don’t have a sickness. Nellie doesn’t, either. She did that to draw your mother away from the feast. I’m guessing it’s to give us a chance to search her quarters for the entrance to the tunnels.”
Toryn lifted a brow. “Nellie can’t lie. Neither can you.”
Frowning, Kalen took a step toward me. “Love, are you sure you’re not feverish and—”
“I amfine,” I repeated. “Now come on. We likely don’t have long before she returns to the feast, and she’ll wonder where we’ve gone.”
Kalen wrapped his arm around me as the three of us took off down the corridor, Toryn leading the way to the queen’s rooms. “You scared me half to death, you know. I thought there was something wrong with you both, and we’d have no idea how to fix you. I wish you’d told the rest of us what you’d planned.”
“We didn’t plan a damn thing,” I whispered, even as our boots tapped loudly against the stone floor. I didn’t want to risk our words reaching any fae who might be in one of the rooms we passed by. “Nellie cooked this whole thing up all by herself, and then she winked at me just before she left the Great Hall. I had to improvise.”
Kalen chuckled. “Nellie is far more like you than you led me to believe.”
“That doesnotsound like a compliment.”
He merely chuckled again.
We reached the queen’s quarters without incident. She lived inside the Keep—the central tower surrounded by a second fortified wall, not just to protect her from enemy attackers but from the storms as well. The tower itself was a small, squat thing, as sturdy as a tower could be, I supposed. Moss blanketed the stone stairwell we descended until we reached the floor where she lived deep inside the earth. There were no windows here, no gorgeous views of the city and fields that lay beyond. Queen Tatiana preferred to live in a tomb.
“This isn’t what I expected,” I said as Toryn pulled a keyring from his pocket and unlocked the door. “Where’d you get that?”
He smiled. “The guards were distracted today while everyone was clearing up after the storm. I managed to slip this off one of them when they weren’t paying attention. I knew eventually we’d try to get inside this room. I just didn’t know Nellie had decided to take matters into her own hands so that we could do it so soon.”
Toryn twisted the brass knob, and the door swung open in front of us, revealing a room overflowing with tropical plants and flowers in at least a dozen different colors. They topped tables that were crammed against the walls, they sat on bookshelves and the arms of sofas, and they stood in clusters on the floor. I went to a nearby flower. Its luminescent petals glowed green, and the scent of saltwater seemed to pour over me.
“This is incredible. How are they alive in here?” I lifted my hand to feel the glossy leaves. When my finger brushed a petal, the green turned black, like a coating of dust had consumed it. I sucked in a sharp breath and yanked my hand back. “Fuck.”
In my haste to pull away, I stumbled on a root that seemed to grow out of the floor, and I had to catch myself on the wall to keep from falling. The wall was covered in ivy. As soon as my fingers touched the leaves, the dust consumed them, too, leaving behind a dead smudge. Tears in my eyes, I pulled my hand away.
