Page 9

What’s the next step?

Talking to the Queen. If she wanted to go home, that had to come next.

So, Taly took a breath, clenched her fists at her sides, and then stepped into the clearing.

Inside, a woman stood in a circle of white stone. Her ebony hair fell down her back in waves, and the pale pink of her dress shimmered in the sun. She wore no crown, nor any jewelry except for the pendant at her neck. A crescent moon set inside an unbroken circle—the symbol for the Time Shard.

The woman’s face lit up when she caught sight of Taly still lingering at the edge of the clearing, and she rushed forward, arms extended. “Finally!” she exclaimed, beaming from ear to ear. “I was getting worried!”

Taly backpedaled, but the Queen caught her, pulling her into a bone-crushing hug.

The Lady Azura Raine was a giant of a woman—taller than Skye, maybe taller than Ivain—and even in heels, the top of Taly’s head barely grazed the woman’s chin. She kept her arms firmly at her sides, her body stiff. When the Queen took a merciful step back, her eyes flicked up and down in a way that made Taly feel as though she were being weighed and measured and somehow found lacking.

“Have you been eating well?” the Queen clucked with what seemed like genuine concern flashing behind those strange golden eyes. “You’re thinner than you were the last time you visited. I’m always telling you: good nutrition is important. It shouldn’t take youthreedaysto recover from a little aether depletion.”

The Queen squeezed her shoulders, and Taly squeaked, managing to wriggle away.Three days? She’d been asleep for three days? That couldn’t be right.

The Queen followed Taly’s retreat, still talking. “I’ve seen you in all manner of states, my dear—covered head to toe in blood, out of your mind from poison, and let’s not forget that wyvern you left splattered across my throne room. But you’ve never been so low on aether that you justcollapsed. I daresay, you had us all dreadfully worried. Especially when you wouldn’t wake up.”

Taly’s back hit one of the trellises. That would explain why she couldn’t remember anything, though it pained her to imagine collapsing right at the Queen’s feet. If this woman had wanted her dead, that would’ve been her chance.

A small comfort, she supposed.

The Queen abruptly grabbed Taly’s arm, looping it through her own. Taly was still too shocked to put up much of a fight as she was dragged from the clearing and into the hedges.

“Your Majesty,” Taly finally managed to say. “I think—”

The Queen let out a sharp bark of laughter. “Since when doyoucall meYour Majesty? It’s Azura. Or Az, if you feel so inclined. I keep forgetting this is your first time here, especially now that you look a little more like yourself.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Taly mumbled weakly. She didn’t understand any of this. Couldn’t figure out just how this woman thought she knew her.

“As for Vaughn,” the Queen went on, and it took Taly a moment to follow the rapid shift in subject, “he’s always been a bastard. Ever since hewas a child. And I know that’s a horrible thing to say about a child, but, in his case, it’s true. Your mother was the only one that could ever stand him for more than five minutes. Maybe that’s why he took her betrothal to your father so badly. Shards, I really thought he was going to make a scene at the wedding. We all did.”

Taly’s thoughts were a jumbled mess, and she could feel a dull ache setting in behind her eyes as the Queen flitted from story to story. Azura knew about Vaughn and seemed personally acquainted with both her mother and father? Taly hadn’t even been aware she still had a father. Her memories from before the fire were scattered at best. Little more than a tangle of half-remembered dreams already worn away by the passage of time.

They finally came to a small wooden and glass gazebo, and the Queen was still babbling—something about a blowfish, a bottle of tequila, and a top hat.

And Taly… well, she didn’t particularly care about the blowfish or just how it had found itself inside the bottle. She was still trying to figure out just what a “bacheloretteparty”was and why this was something her mother had wanted when she found herself being pushed to sit on a gnarled wooden bench. Azura took a seat across from her, arranging her skirts beneath a matching table before she began picking at a tower of brightly colored pastries. There were cookies laced with frosting, cakes stuffed with cream, candied fruits, pocket pies, and little dots of chocolate and caramel everywhere.

“And that’s when I said” —Azura paused to take a bite from a frothy cream puff— “Venny—he always hated it when I called him Venny. So I said,Venny, Breena is a quality woman. You’re never going to win her over with things like flowers or jewelry. If you want to woo her, get her the thing she really wants, the thing thatallwomenreallywant. A dagger—sharp but still small enough to be worn to a ball.”

Azura took another bite. “The gowns were so dreadfully tight back when your parents were courting. It was almost impossible to wear more than a few throwing knives beneath your skirts, never mind a decent short sword. Although, Breena... well, she was a creative one. I once saw her hide a rapier in a place where a rapier had no business being.” The Queen laughed, then paused, her expression sobering. “Is there something wrong?” She eyed Taly like there was, indeed, something wrong. “Why aren’t you eating? I’ve never known you to turn down sugarberry tart before.”

“I… um…” Taly reached for the piece of pink quartz around her neck, glad that Leto had let her keep it. Her mother’s necklace. She felt the familiar divot in the center as she rasped, “Sugarberries are fine.” More than fine. She loved sugarberries—had, on more than one occasion, forced Skye to escort her through the Seren Gate to the nearby town of Marin for the First Harvest Festival just so she could gorge on sugarberry confections.

But that begged the question: how did the Queen know that?

How did the Queen know her at all? Taly had never been inside the palace before, much less met the woman that used to sit on its throne.

“I’m confused,” Taly said, even though it felt like an understatement. She was more thanconfused. She had lost the thread of the conversation a long time ago—alongside her grip on reality. “Who is Venny? And how did you know my mother? How do you know Vaughn?”

Azura’s lips pursed, and she carefully set the half-eaten pastry in her hands on a delicate golden plate. “Oh, dear,” she murmured. “Oh, dear, dear, dear, dear, dear... You said you would know next to nothing when you got here, but I didn’t think it would be this bad.” Azura fixed her with a look. “Am I to understand that you don’t know who your parents are?”

Taly shook her head.

“Or why you’re here?”

Another shake of her head.