Page 10

PART TWO

A crack like the earth is splitting in two sends me rocketing from my bed.

The stone walls of my chambers shudder around me. Mortar crumbles and falls like rain. Everything seems to be moving, and the noise sounds as though the world is ending.

I spin on my bare feet, my silky nightgown flaring around my legs. My wings vibrate in the air behind me and lift me from the floor for the briefest of moments.

“Skylar!” I shout, my gaze darting around the room.

I’m trying to find the source of the chaos I’ve woken to, but it’s not something that’s occurring inside. It’s coming from outside, shaking the castle right down to its foundations.

The candelabra swings wildly above me, the metals chains shaking like an angry ghost in the dungeons. Only one of the four candles that had been lit when I’d gone to sleep is still alight, and the flame flickers and dances as though caught in a storm .

The door bursts inward, and Skylar, my lady’s maid and best friend, rushes into the room.

“Princess Taelyn,” she cries. “What’s happening?”

She’s closely followed by the head of my guard, Balthorne. His near-white hair is down to his broad shoulders. He sees me standing there in my nightwear, and his pale blue eyes widen. He goes to turn his back, as though my modesty is the thing that’s important right now, then changes his mind.

Both stand with their arms outstretched to keep their balance. The floor seems to tilt and buck, and I swear I see the stone slabs moving.

On my left, books slide from the towering mahogany shelves and plummet to the floor. The covers open as they fall, cream pages fluttering.

Terror clutches my heart.

“Get into the bathtub, Princess Taelyn,” Balthorne shouts at me. “Lie down flat.”

I spin to face him. “How is that going to help?”

“If the ceiling comes down, you’ll be safer there.” He looks to Skylar. “You, too.”

Luckily, my bathtub is big enough for us both. Maybe some princesses would refuse to be in such proximity to their staff, but Skylar is more like a sister to me. I’d gladly give my life for hers.

On unsteady feet, we hurry into my adjoining bathroom.

Skylar climbs into the tub first, lifting her long skirts over the high rolltop edges and the solid cast iron sides, and then puts her arms out to help me.

It isn’t easy with everything shaking around us, but I manage to climb in and lie down with her.

We’re face to face, holding each other tight .

“What about you?” I ask Balthorne, twisting my head to look at him and having to shout to be heard over all the noise.

He ducks his head in a bow. “My job is to protect you.”

“From people or rabid dogs,” I cry. “Not this!”

The terrifying racket continues. It’s not only the ceiling I’m terrified of coming down. We’re several stories up, and if the building below us collapses, there will be little chance of survival. An old cast iron bathtub certainly won’t save us.

It feels as though hours have passed since I woke, though it must only be a matter of seconds, maybe barely even a minute.

I hadn’t thought it possible for things to get louder, but they do.

Skylar lets out a scream. It sounds as though the whole castle is coming down around our ears.

Skylar and I clutch at one another. Everything shakes and trembles, more mortar and pieces of rock fall around us.

My hair and skin and eyelashes are coated in dust. I inhale it into my lungs and cough.

Then, suddenly, everything goes quiet and still.

There are a few shifts of rubble, the distant sound of things collapsing. But it’s nothing like what we were in the middle of only moments before. It’s like the whole world is holding its breath, me included.

I find my voice. “I-Is it over?”

“I think so,” the head of my guard says.

Balthorne leans over the tub and puts out his hand to help me up. His wings are longer and thicker than mine, and they lift into the air and help to brace him as he helps us out of the tub. Balthorne is as traditionally Fae as they come, and one of my top members of court .

I take his hand, and he carefully helps me out. Then we both help Skylar up.

“Is everyone okay?” Balthorne asks, his tone deep and rumbly.

“I’m all right,” Skylar says.

I nod in agreement.

What damage has been done to Highdrift Castle?

From the amount of noise, I assume we won’t have gone unscathed.

What about the surrounding city and the homes there?

They’d have been built with far less support than the castle.

I hate to think of them razed to the ground, the poor people inside either dead or homeless.

I vow to ensure we do everything we can to help those who are left in a desolate situation.

Assuming our own stores have gone unharmed. I suddenly find myself worrying about the horses in the stables, and the chickens, and all the other animals we have. I hope none of them were harmed.

“We should go to the king,” I say to both Skylar and Balthorne. “Find out what we can do to help.”

But Balthorne doesn’t move. He’s standing at the arched window, a silhouette in the moonlight.

“Balthorne?” I say. “We should go.”

Still, he doesn’t move. He speaks without facing me.

“The King’s Tower has come down, Princess.”

I widen my eyes and shake my head in disbelief. “What? No.”

He finally steps out of the way, revealing the view beyond. “You can see for yourself. I’m so sorry.”

I run to the window, once more short of breath. My pulse races, and I’m dizzy and sick with shock.

I stare out, my heart in my throat .

Where the skybridge once linked the King’s Tower to the main part of the castle, created to keep armies out if the city were ever to be invaded, it now hangs in pieces down the castle wall.

The place where the King’s Tower once stood is now an empty space. Dust hasn’t yet settled, and the cloud is illuminated in the moonlight.

“The rot,” I manage to say.

The ground that had been beneath the tower has been swallowed, too. All that remains is a gaping hole.

My knees buckle, and I drop to the floor. I cover my mouth, but it doesn’t stop the wail of utter grief that rises through my chest and bursts from my lips. The sound is inhuman and comes right from the soul.

There is no possibility of any survivors. The tower hasn’t just fallen—it’s been swallowed by the very earth it stood upon.

I clutch my hand to my chest as though I’m trying to hold my heart in place, to prevent it from breaking. The King’s Tower is where my mother and stepfather, the king, reside. If it’s gone…

My brain can’t take the severity of what that might mean.

My mother and stepfather are dead.

“No, no, please no.”

I clutch my face in my hands and shake my head.

I’m barely aware of Skylar crouching on one side of me, and Balthorne the other, both trying to offer me comfort.

But how can anyone make me feel any better?

The King’s Tower is gone, my mother and stepfather crushed within it.

I think of how terrified they must have been, how their final moments would have been spent in utter terror.

I understand how frightened they’d have been because I felt that way myself only moments earlier, and that was with the floor remaining somewhat solid beneath my feet.

I picture the slabs falling away instead, dropping through the sky, the walls and ceiling, and us along with it.

Of falling and falling, and then finally agony.

Had my mother died instantly, or had she suffered? The thought only makes me sob harder.

“You’re in shock,” Balthorne says. “I’ll fetch you some sweet tea.”

“I think she’s going to need something stronger than sweet tea,” Skylar snaps. “I think we all are.”

Something else occurs to me. If the king and queen are both dead, and I am their only heir, then the kingdom is mine. Wailing on the floor is no place for the next queen of Highdrift.

I manage to nod. “Yes, something stronger. Please. I need it.”

Balthorne leaves my side long enough to retrieve a bottle of liquor from the cabinet. Distantly, I think to myself that it’s a sign of the carpenter’s excellent workmanship for the bottle not to have broken in all the chaos.

He pours me a shot glass of the liquor and hands it to me. I drink it down in one, the syrupy aniseed flavor coating my tongue, the alcohol burning my throat and warming me from the inside.

I motion to him. “Another.”

I catch him shooting Skylar a look, followed by her briefest of nods. They’re wise not to argue with me right now.

He hands me a second glass, and I take my time with this one. I’m still shaking all over, the drink vibrating in my hand. Tears continue to run down my face, but the alcohol seeps through my veins, offering me a layer of numbness that is much needed.

Pulling myself together is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but the people of Askos need me.

They’ll be looking toward the castle for guidance.

How far will the news of the monarchs’ deaths travel?

Will rulers of other lands consider us weakened and an easy conquest?

Or, if they hear the rot has made it as far as the city, will they decide it’s not worth their bother?

I put my hand out to Balthorne, and once more, my guard helps me to my feet. I go to the window to take in the destruction with fresh eyes.

I stare across the countryside of Askos, which lies beyond the city and castle of Highdrift.

The castle isn’t the only place that’s suffered.

Several fires have broken out, black smoke rising into the air.

People will have lost their homes. They’ll have nothing.

When news of the king’s death spreads, there will be days and weeks of mourning.

And everyone will want to know who is ruling them now.

I think of Prince Ruarok Loftborn, the king’s son.

I only met the man once, briefly, when my mother and I first arrived at the castle.

We’d shared a dance, but then a plot to have both me and my mother murdered had been revealed, and the prince had been banished from the castle and the surrounding lands and cast out into the wilderness.

He’s most likely dead now, and even if he isn’t, I’d have no idea how to find him.

If he is still alive somewhere, will word of his father’s death reach him?

It doesn’t feel right for a son not to know of his parent dying, though I’m fully aware of the difficult relationship the two of them had.

My stepfather and mother rarely spoke of the prince, and, when they did, it was from between pinched lips and clenched jaws.

I remember dancing with Ruarok in the Great Hall on the first day I’d arrived at the castle.

He’d certainly left an impression on me.

The atmosphere between us had been charged.

I’d been so conscious of the placement of his hand on my waist, the fingers of his other hand entwined with mine.

He’d stared into my eyes the entire time we’d spun across the dance floor. I remember forgetting to breathe.

I’d never seen anyone quite like him before.

His dark hair and eyes were so completely opposite to the natural paleness of the Fae.

I’d struggled to believe he could even be half Fae, but then there was no way the king would ever have allowed someone who wasn’t his natural born son to live in the castle.

Besides, he had the king’s birthmark behind his ear, so there was no question of his heritage.

I’d dreamed of him after he’d been sent away—dirty, heated dreams that I really shouldn’t have been having about my stepbrother. I’d blamed my age and hormones, conjuring something that never could have been.

Besides, Ruarok had wanted me dead. That was why he’d been banished. There was certainly no love lost. Maybe I’d entertained the idea of having a big brother, but he’d clearly never thought of me as being a younger sister. Plus, the dreams had nothing sibling-ish about them. Quite the opposite.

I’d been so young back then. My head had been in a whirl. I’d lost my father and my home and been whisked off to a new land and castle and introduced to a new stepfather.

It had all happened so fast.

Sometimes, I wondered if the king ever regretted banishing his only son.

I couldn’t imagine having a child and casting him into a life of such torture and misery.

But my mother often used it as a way of reassuring me as to how much the king loved us both—that he would choose us over his own flesh and blood.

I doubt I will ever become a mother. My child is the kingdom now, but I fear for its survival. If the rot is in the lands of Askos, as it clearly is, then how much longer will the city and the castle stand?

I close my eyes and knock back the remainder of my drink, and then spin on my heel.

“Princess,” Skylar says, “where are you going?”

I glance back over my shoulder. “To take command of the kingdom.”