Page 54 of A Promise of Lies (Shadows of the Tenebris Court #3)

53

Kat

W hen Bastian returned to our suite, his face was ashen. I supposed he didn’t want to resume our argument. I couldn’t blame him. At least I was about to go and meet Ari and Rose in the atelier—that would give us both some space.

Then Bastian walked out of our bedroom with a bag, and my stomach lurched. “What’s that for? Are you… leaving?”

Me? Forever? I bit my tongue on those pathetic additions.

“Braea needs me to attend to some business outside of the city. Faolán’s coming too. We’ll be gone overnight, since it’s the new moon and we won’t make it back before the Wild Hunt ride, but there’s an inn we can stay in. We’ll be safe.” His stiff smile didn’t meet his eyes. Not even remotely.

They were haunted by something else.

Something was very wrong. I crossed the carpet to him, but it still felt like a vast distance separated us. “Bastian? What’s wrong? Tell me. Please .” I went to cup his cheek, needing to reach out and let him know whatever was troubling him, I was here to face it with him.

He caught my wrist, grip unyielding. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” I couldn’t keep the frustration from my tone at being treated like the stranger I’d been to him last year. “I just wanted?—”

“Don’t ask me to choose between you and my queen.” His chest heaved and this wild look entered his eyes, like the Wild Hunt’s hellhounds were on his heels.

“I didn’t…” But then the meaning behind his words hit me with all the blunt force of a battering ram. “Because you’ll choose her.”

“I must choose her.” The words burst from him as he threw my wrist from his grasp. “The Night Queen’s Shadow should have no doubts. I have done awful things at her command. I have commanded others to do awful things in service of her. Tell me, Kat, who is meant to choose? The Bastard of Tenebris who killed his father for her? Or Bastian Marwood, who loves you beyond reason?”

I couldn’t answer. Seeing him like this tore at me. Even when his being split in two, he was not this divided.

He raked his hands through his hair. “If you’d asked me a year ago, I’d have told you I couldn’t even entertain any other option when weighed against her. But now… Now, answering terrifies me more than I can describe.”

I managed to breathe out my question: “Why?”

“Because if I choose you, it will mean the past fifteen years of my life, killing my father, becoming this… it will all have been for nothing. Choosing would destroy everything.” His eyes widened and he clamped his mouth shut as though he’d made a terrible confession, then charged out of our suite.

“Bastian, wait! It’s…” But the door slammed behind him.

He had wavered. His voice had cracked.

I’d broken him.

He’d poured so much into Braea and her rule. Fissures in her were fissures in the bedrock of his very existence. He’d always paved over them, no doubt helped by smooth words from her—maybe even reminders of all she’d done for him.

But I’d picked and picked and she’d done something , and now we’d torn him in two.

When I got to Ariadne’s atelier, Rose knew right away that something was wrong, even though I didn’t say a word. With Faolán and Bastian both gone, she suggested she could stay over and keep me company. I could’ve cried with gratitude.

Just as we were getting her settled into what had once been my bedroom, a message arrived from Sepher asking me to meet him in the gardens.

Nerves fluttered through me. When Bastian had thrown the queen’s note on the fire, I might have… rescued it. It sat in my pocket now, edges singed, the ash a guilty secret that I was sure marked me.

I’d asked Sepher to give me his brother’s letters. If the queen’s writing didn’t match the one I’d found in Cyrus’s drawer, I would drop it. After seeing the state Bastian was in this morning, it felt cruel to raise it even if the writing was the same.

That was a problem for future Kat.

I had a king to meet in the gardens, and this time the thought of it didn’t fill me with dread.

Sepher sat on the bench near the Great Trees, scenting the late afternoon air. A box waited on the seat next to him, and I had to force myself not to hurry over. It looked a lot like the boxes that had been in Cyrus’s room of curiosities.

“You’re cutting it close to sunset, aren’t you?” I gestured at the darkening sky. “You’ve got, what? Half an hour?”

“Forty-five minutes,” he grumbled. “I’ve learned to be a very precise timekeeper, thanks to my new affliction.”

“Most wouldn’t call kinghood an affliction.”

Chin raised, he smirked. “I’m not most.”

I didn’t bother to hide my eye roll.

“This is for you.” He placed his hand on the box. “Don’t open it. At least, not around me.” He shuddered, tail swishing. The whole movement put me in mind of a sabrecat shaking off flies.

I narrowed my eyes. “Why? Is it trapped?”

“ No . Just letters and… that mirror.”

I contained my reaction, but it spiked in my veins. A pulse of energy. I had mentioned it to them like it was merely a pretty trinket. I didn’t want to raise questions of its importance. They would lead too close to Bastian’s true identity. “A mirror? Such a generous gift, Your Majesty .”

“The damn thing gave me the creeps. Normally I like mirrors, but this one doesn’t show me myself.” He wrinkled his nose as though that was the worst betrayal. “It feels like I’m being watched. Besides, there are ravens and moths on the frame, so I thought it was more suited to Dusk than Dawn, so here you go.” He slid the box towards me. “Now, I have forty-two minutes left of my day, and I intend to spend them with my wife. Enjoy your evening.” With that, he sauntered off.

Once he was gone, I hurried to my suite with the box. Rose emerged from the bathroom as I arrived, panting. “What’s this?” She eased into one of the armchairs as I placed the box on the table and threw it open.

“You remember the letter I found in Cyrus’s office?” As one of Bastian’s most trusted operatives and friends, she knew the contents of many of my reports, including that one. Besides, Faolán wasn’t the best at keeping secrets from his wife. “I think it should be in here.”

Sure enough, inside was the bundle of letters from Sura, the mirror, a handful of other notes and messages, and, right at the bottom, the letter that had been caught in his desk drawer.

First, I opened that and one of the letters from Sura.

Seeing them side-by-side, it was clear right away they hadn’t been written by the same hand. The loops and sizing were similar, like they’d learned to write in the same place, but the co-conspirator’s writing was free and relaxed and Sura’s had a stiff formality to it. And the lower case E s were completely different—Sura wrote hers in a single loop, whereas the co-conspirator created a C , then cut through it with a horizontal line, creating something that looked like a curved upper case E .

Sura wasn’t the one who’d planted the idea of killing his way to the throne.

“Is that the one?”

I smoothed the letter on the table so she could see and pointed out the differences in the handwriting. “And this is from the queen.” Swallowing, I pulled the message from my pocket and set it down.

Smooth, relaxed writing. That same odd E .

“It matches,” I breathed, almost afraid to speak any louder. “Doesn’t it?” I pushed it towards her with a wide-eyed look. “Tell me I’m wrong, because I’m not sure I want to be right.” It was one thing having suspicions about the queen disliking me and not always acting in her people’s best interests, but this? Actively encouraging Cyrus to stage the attack on the palace that had killed so many? Bastian was already broken. What would evidence of his queen’s treachery do to him?

Brow furrowed, lips flat, Rose looked from the letter to the singed message and back again. She gulped and nodded. “That’s it then, isn’t it? Evidence that she hasn’t been working for the good of the realm but… against it?”

“ For herself.”

She looked away, rubbing her stomach like the idea made her feel sick. “You think that’s why she didn’t do more for shapechangers when Cyrus was targeting them? So he would look worse and worse, and she would look reasonable and benevolent in comparison?”

“Let people get desperate enough that they’re begging her to do something— anything —and she could pull out the Crown of Ashes, place it atop her head, rule day and night, and she would look like she’d done it all to save Elfhame.”

Between the freckles, Rose’s usually pale skin went pure white. “We need to tell Bastian. As soon as they get back.”

I winced and sagged against the chair. “I’m not sure what good that will do. I’ve already tried to talk to him about Her Majesty. He has a lot of excuses for her.”

She fidgeted in the silence, poking through the box and pulling out the mirror. “Sepher gave you this? Does he think a gift will make up for manipulating you into killing his brother for him?”

I snorted. “He’s going to owe me for that for a long, long time. The mirror was Nyx’s. I think it’s the one she used to contact Ba?—”

Shit. Rose didn’t know about Bastian’s parentage. I cleared my throat. “Contact her unseelie lover. If we can work out how to use it, he could be an ally against Braea, and even if he can’t, maybe he knows something about the Crown’s location. That book I took from Dawn suggests it’s in the Underworld.”

Rose snatched her hands away, leaving the mirror on the table. “So not only do we have to worry about a Crown that could end the Sleep and mustn’t fall into the wrong hands, but there’s also a mirror that gives a direct link to the Underworld? Great. That’s just great. Let’s not use it.”

During my time in Elfhame, I’d learned the reason the unseelie were so feared. They blamed the seelie and anyone allied with them for their banishment to the Underworld.

“What if it’s our only option?” I peered at it, trying different angles, but there was only darkness within its silvery surface. Even if it didn’t help with the Crown, I might be able to introduce Bastian to his father. That alone was worth the risk.

“Hello?” I called into it.

“But I thought you didn’t want the queen to have the Crown. We can just leave it where it is.”

I leant over the mirror, eyes straining for any change in its surface. “Nyx’s child has need of your help.”

Was that a ripple or were my eyes playing tricks on me? I didn’t dare blink even though my eyes burned.

“What do you mean, Nyx’s?—?”

A thundering knock shook the door, making us jump.

I clutched my chest. There was nothing in the mirror. “Did you invite Ari?”

Frowning, she shook her head. “And she wouldn’t knock like that.”

An unpleasant sensation prickled between my shoulder blades. Something was wrong. Most of the knocks at our door were messages for Bastian, usually from the queen. But she’d sent him away.

I made contact with my magic, letting it tingle over my skin without quite raising any poison, then opened the door.

The head of the Queensguard, Cavall, stood there at attention, black armour gleaming, face pale and strained. “Her Majesty wishes to speak to you.”

Her Majesty? Had the sun set already? I glanced into the living room, but the only thing visible out the windows was a thick fog. “I hadn’t realised the time.” My stomach clenched though, almost as bad as when I wore iron. She was the last person I wanted to be around.

“Come on then.” Rose stepped forward, as if to leave with me, but they raised their hand.

“Everyone else in the palace is to stay in their rooms on pain of death.”

“On pain of death?” I chuckled. “That sounds a bit dramatic.”

Their expression grew even tighter. “ On pain of death . Even guards have been ordered to return to their barracks.”

Beyond them, the hall was empty. Usually Bastian had at least one guard on the door. That sensation of wrongness grew, a dagger’s tip between my shoulder blades now.

“Well,” I said brightly, like everything was fine, “I’ll be back soon.”

Rose caught my arm as I went to leave and bent to my ear. “I don’t like this. There’s a ill scent on the air, Kat. Something dank.”

I nodded, but there was nothing I could do about it. With the Wild Hunt abroad, we couldn’t get a message to Bastian and Faolán—or anyone else outside the palace. We were on our own. “I’ll be careful.”

With that, I followed Cavall into the empty corridors. The quiet pressed on me, making my footsteps too loud. We rounded corners and went down a staircase—not going to the queen’s suite, then. “Where are we?—?”

That was when I saw it.

Nestled into an alcove at the bottom of the stairs—a spot that usually housed a guard. Black and shiny and huge.

A Horror.