Page 58 of A Crown of Tears and Treason (The Curse of Silver Secrets and Cruel Shadows #1)

Chapter

Fifty-Eight

EVIE

“ W hy is there a dead woman in my kitchen?” The longer I looked at the body laid down on the stone slab, the more my skin crawled.

She was me. She looked like me, at least.

Dressed in that golden dress she’d ripped off me, with the same mousy brown hair, and the short nails. A perfect replica.

She lay there, serene as my own face could never be, especially not after last night.

I gently ran my fingers over the gauze on my nose. In the cover of night, Master Sylvannis had spent long hours healing it, but the shape didn’t feel right yet. The split in my lower lip still smarted, but at least he’d managed to reattach the tooth I hadn’t known I’d dislocated while head-butting my attacker.

The kidnapper.

The killer that had turned into ash right above me.

“I want to mention I wasn’t the one to kill her,” Adara said, tone clipped. “She did it herself with some poisoned vial she had in her mouth once I figured out she was an impostor. Waste of good information.”

I pressed my hand around my neck. She was so similar to me, down to the little dip of my lower lip. The indent in my left ear from when it got snagged in a thorn bush and ripped. But her clavicle stuck out too much–just like it had before I’d come to Phoenix Peak.

“How did you realize she wasn’t me?” I croaked.

“Zorin wouldn’t budge, even after I’d convinced the snake to leave. I called you– her –” Adara narrowed her eyes at my replica. “–to calm him down. He tried to bite her.”

My dear, sweet Zorin. He’d tried to warn me. He hadn’t calmed down until he’d seen me again, safe and alive, after Zandyr had rescued me.

“She sounded like you.” Leesa stood in the corner, her beautiful face contorted with shock. Goose huddled next to her, still as a statue, as if he wanted to disappear from this reality, where his beloved kitchen had been invaded by a dead body. “It was like nothing had happened, I can’t remember a thing. You were there, Goose was talking, then I blinked and everything went on as normal.”

“She froze you with a spell and knocked me out with another.” I turned to Zandyr, who leaned against the wall. Covered in shadows, he was all lethal grace, looking at the imposter as if he wanted to kill her all over again for endangering me. “I couldn’t feel you.”

Even now, our connection was dampened, the barrest pulse of it in my mind. But it was slowly recovering, in tandem with my energy and power.

“I couldn’t either. The connection broke.” Zandyr clenched his jaw, barely leashed fury in his voice. “That’s how I knew something was wrong.”

“The Dragon arrived just as the imposter swallowed whatever poison did this to her.” Adara jutted her hand at the woman.

“We’ve sent Elysia a sample of her saliva,” Zandyr said. “If anyone can discover the poison, it’s her.”

“Let’s hope she can discover it in time,” I said.

“Your cousins are safe,” Zandyr said for what must’ve been the millionth time. “I raised the alarm as soon as you vanished.”

I nodded, but I couldn’t shake the apprehension. Whoever they were wanted all of us gone.

I dared a step closer to my replica. She was so still. This would have been me if Zandyr hadn’t come.

“What was that horrid place?” I whispered.

“The Defector Lands. The only area in all of Malhaven that’s more dangerous than the Bone Bridge lake,” Zandyr said. “Every creature and foul being that has no place in any Clan takes refuge there. Not even the Clan Council can tame it.”

“I’ve always refused to take my troops through there,” Adara said.

I understood why even the mighty Adara avoided that place. Whatever that creature in the river was…whatever pestilence had taken over the forest…Death. The place reeked of it.

I tore my gaze away from the imposter. I couldn’t look at my deadly reflection and not imagine my own cousins lying there on the slab. Instead, my eyes sought Zandyr’s for comfort.

“How did you find me?” I asked. Now that I wasn’t fighting for each breath, my mind could focus on important things–answers.

Zandyr clenched his jaw tighter; rage radiated off him. “The blood on your armor is mine. I couldn’t sense you, but the vials guided me.”

Thank the gods for the armor. Thank the gods for Zandyr.

“What now?” I asked when the silence turned too ugly. Only three candles flickered around us, Phoenix Peak quiet in the early hours.

“We need to find what’s causing this .” Adara yanked the bottom of the replica’s dress.

I gasped. Her toes had crumpled, a small mound of ash underneath her feet. Another fleck of her grayed and fell down.

Zandyr and I exchanged a weighted glance. Whatever had done this to her and the masked figures…”This doesn’t feel like normal magic.”

“It’s not.” Leesa shook her head. “It can’t be.”

“But it is.” Adara yanked the dress’ hem back down with a scowl. “She looks exactly like you.”

“Like how I used to look.” I gulped. “Before I came here.”

Zandyr kicked himself from the wall, coming to stand next to me. His right hand pressed protectively against the small of my back. The longer he looked at the body, the more fiery his touch became.

Adara studied her just as closely. Finally, she swore so hard, I could actually feel Goose blushing from the back.

“There are no paintings of me from after I turned five years-old,” I said.

There was only one explanation, and the answer hung in the tense silence.

“We’re either dealing with Serpents…” Zandyr began. “Or Protectorate.”

I opened my mouth to argue, I did. But Silas stood on the throne, my cousins were scattered all over the continent, and no Protectorate envoy had been sent for my wedding.

Even so, I didn’t want to believe it.

“A spy could have watched me closely after I came back to Aquila,” I said.

“They could have,” Zandyr said in a tone that suggested he didn’t believe that for a second. I didn’t believe it either. “A very talented Morgana member could have done this, under the right guidance. They needed to have access to some part of you from that time. Skin, sweat, blood–”

“Hair. Allie used to brush my hair every night.”

Adara’s mouth twisted. “I knew your cousins couldn’t be trusted.”

“Don’t,” I said in an unflinching tone. “My cousins are not to blame for this. They’re targets, just like me. Those masked attackers could have easily taken that brush after the wedding massacre and planned my kidnapping.”

Who even knew where that brush had ended up. In the wrong hands, apparently.

“We need to find out who wants us dead. And why .” That was the crux of it. Why? Why, why, why?

“Perhaps someone wants to rid Malhaven of Vegheara blood,” Adara said.

“They might. My attackers said they wanted our blood. There must be a reason for all of this. We are no threat right now. I certainly am not.” The assassin had said Allie’s spell made my blood dangerous, nothing else.

“Yet,” Adara said. “Think it’s a coincidence they stole you right before your wedding? You will be the most powerful queen in all of Malhaven.”

Yes. And once I became one, I would take my revenge. The assassins might have been dealt with, but someone else controlled them.

“We need to find out who sent those attackers. They were probably behind the wedding ambush as well,” Zandyr rumbled. “And discover what the underworld is making them turn to ash as soon as they’re struck.”

I nodded. “There’s something strange in them. Their blood…their blood was green. The Quoriliths–”

“The scrolls are gone,” Goose cried out all of sudden. All eyes turned to him as my stomach became leaden. He was shivering like a leaf. “I don’t know how they found them up in the beams, but I checked your room as soon as I came back and the satchel laid shredded on the floor…gone. They’re gone.”

Zandyr’s hold on me tightened, grounding me.

I closed my eyes, a hollow sensation taking root in me. I’d risked my life for nothing but a few scraps of information and symbols that couldn’t be deciphered. At least Goose had managed to transcribe one of them.

Adara took out her dagger and threw it against the wall, impaling it in the hair-thin grout between the stones. She breathed heavily, muscles rippling up her back.

Then she straightened, as if nothing had happened. “You should call off the wedding.”

“No,” Zandyr said calmly, even as I felt the maelstrom twisting inside him.

“We have been breached,” Adara said just as calmly. Two efficient warriors hashing it out, but there was an undercurrent brimming in each steady word.

“They could have informants on the inside. You’ve taken more spies to prison than I can count.”

Adara slashed a look his way as she retrieved her knife with her perfectly precise movements. “This is different.”

“Why?”

“Because you’ve charged me with her safety.” Adara pointed the dagger my way. “And they stole her from underneath my nose.”

“Adara, nobody blames you,” I said quickly. “This isn’t normal magic.”

“I don’t care. This shouldn’t have happened.” She grimaced at Zandyr. “Just like the wedding you have planned shouldn’t.”

“I am right here,” I said. “And I say we are getting married.”

“Adara, I respect your opinion,” Zandyr said. “But not in this. As Evie said, we are getting married tomorrow.”

Adara clenched her jaw. “Dragon, why are you in such a hurry to destroy–”

“You know why this cannot wait. One less danger to worry about. Tell me I’m wrong.”

Adara remained silent.

“Our borders are more guarded tomorrow than they have ever been. And I will not risk not feeling my wife again. Having her taken away again,” he said, voice slashing into a lethal edge that nobody, not even Adara, dared to argue against. The voice of a future king. “The ritual will bind us. Forever. She will be safer and that is all that matters. If Evie will have me.”

“Of course I do.” I laid my palm on his cheek. Zandyr closed his eyes, softening against my touch. “We have promised. I am yours and you are mine.”

Zandyr swallowed deeply. He took my hand in his and kissed the inside of it forcefully, closing his eyes, as if he wanted to imprint the touch into my very being.

“We will be,” he whispered against my skin.

“Adara, I appreciate your concern, I do. But whoever we’re facing will not decide my future.” I looked at the body behind us. “They have tried to steal me. Kill me. Frighten me. They have not succeeded. Now let them fear me as a queen.”