Page 37
Story: A War of Crowns
Chapter thirty-six
Olivia
O livia awoke as she always did—awash in fiery tongues of agony originating from her left leg. The Pain utterly consumed her; she drowned alone with her suffering.
But this was her life. She was used to it.
It just didn’t normally wake her up in the middle of the night.
Down in the bowels of the palace, surrounded by darkness, still Olivia knew it was the middle of the night. An odd ability to have, always knowing precisely the time of day. But it was hers.
A perfectly useful trick for impressing the kitchen maids and keeping track of the various comings and goings of the court alike.
She blinked away the last vestiges of sleep and tried to riddle out just what had woken her when she finally spied movement in the darkness. Someone was in her room.
Clearly, she was losing her touch .
One of her many hidden blades she wore at all times, even to bed, was in her hand before the intruder could make another move. Tossing back her blanket, she flung herself out of bed and at the shadow. She pressed her blade against the intruder’s throat.
The frightened yelp that exploded into the stale air of her workshop lured a frown to her lips. “Sal,” Olivia sighed. “What in the name of the Lady are you doing here?”
The street rat within her grasp trembled. Olivia was fairly certain he had just wet himself.
“I-I had important news for you, sir. Ma’am . The boss said it couldn’t wait. So I—”
Olivia thinned her lips and snatched the sealed scrap of paper from the boy’s hand. The seal was for her own peace of mind rather than to ensure Sal couldn’t read what was written there.
Sal couldn’t read.
“Very well.” Olivia limped toward her table in search of a candle. “Grab yourself some coins from the desk and get out of here before you’re caught.”
“Nobody catches me, ma’am,” the child boasted around the tremble still in his voice.
Olivia didn’t have the heart to correct him. She had caught him. Many a time.
Candle lit, Olivia hunched over the little flame and cracked open the seal on that latest report from one of her contacts strategically positioned throughout Elmoria. She had agents posted in all the major port cities. She wanted to be the first to know should the worst ever happen .
Unfolding the missive, Olivia skimmed the document. She recognized Bernard’s scrawl at once. He was her agent embedded within Arlund—the viscounty just south of Goldreach. The land owned by the queen’s Master of Ceremonies.
Usually, it would have taken her a few moments to decode such a letter, but Bernard hadn’t even bothered encoding this one. Olivia’s eyes frantically devoured the smudged words penned upon the page, trying to make sense of why her spy had broken protocol.
Her heart skipped a full beat as the gravity of the moment fully settled over her. The worst had finally happened.
“Get out of here,” Olivia snarled at Sal when she turned around to find the boy still loitering about, clearly entranced by the sight of all the strange odds and ends lining her shelves. “I said out!”
Sal scampered to comply and soon disappeared through the secret passageway hidden behind one of her many bookcases.
Olivia limped toward her shelves.
Her left leg screamed at her with every step. But she ignored the Pain as best she ever could while making for the cage holding her pet Elmorian harlequin viper, Minerva.
There were lots of misconceptions within the medical and alchemical communities when it came to harlequin vipers. Many recognized they were among the most poisonous snakes in all of Avirel. And Olivia wasn’t about to argue against that point.
She quite agreed.
But people failed to recognize harlequin viper venom was also among the most useful in the world. One could utilize it in the most interesting ways if they were clever enough…or perhaps mad enough. And had access to the antidote.
Luckily, Olivia met all three of those conditions.
“Hello, darling,” she cooed, fishing the viper out of her cage. She pinched her fingers just behind Minerva’s head to keep the snake from striking out until she was good and ready for it. “I need a little bit of help this morning.”
Olivia guided the thrashing viper down to her left leg, positioned Minerva’s head over her thigh, and let the angry beastie loose.
Fangs punched through her trouser leg and into the already aching flesh beneath, and a rush of liquid fire soon followed. Throwing back her head, Olivia let herself scream from the misery of it all.
No one could hear her down there at any rate—no one but the rats and the criminals lining the dungeon further below.
Neither party cared about her screams.
When she finally pried Minerva from her thigh, Olivia was left shaking. Her heart raced. Her breath rattled in shallow gasps. But she was alive . Strength coursed through her veins, racing on the tail end of that liquid fire.
“Thank you, darling,” she panted, gently depositing Minerva back in her cage.
She had anywhere between ten minutes and a half hour before her heart exploded.
With the letter tucked up her sleeve, feet shoved into her boots, and her bag of medical supplies tossed over her shoulder, Olivia hurried from her room. Her cane, she snatched on her way out the door as a reluctant afterthought.
That cane was the prettiest thing she owned—simple but pretty, and ultimately functional. Carved from ebonwood with a polished rat crouched atop for a handle, it seemed innocuous enough…until one realized it housed a slender rapier within its depths.
A gift from Her Majesty herself when she was still but a princess. A dangerous present to give to a commoner, since in Elmoria only nobles and knights could legally wield swords.
She hated using it, that cane. She was far too young to need a cane simply to walk. Even holding it made her feel like ol’ Percy hobbling about the palace.
But she needed it that morning to make it up the stairs, unmedicated as she was. She didn’t have time for her usual pain relief measures. She had a letter to deliver.
Normally, she would have gone the way of Sal—winding her way through the many hidden passages lining the walls of the palace. But those stairs were narrow and steep, and Olivia didn’t trust her body to navigate them safely that early morning.
No, she’d have to do things the proper way: stamping her way through the halls and climbing all the grand staircases toward Her Majesty’s chambers on the upper floors of the palace.
The hour was exceedingly late—or early, depending on how one wished to look at it. She didn’t expect to encounter another living soul until she reached the wing containing the queen’s apartments.
The Queensguard never slept .
But when she had only reached the first floor of the palace, she heard the thunder of bootsteps racing toward her down the shadowed hallway. Curiosity mingled with trepidation deep in her gut when she recognized the man flying through the corridor, making straight for her.
Sir Tristan Dacre.
“Mistress Olivia,” Sir Tristan gasped as he slid to a stop in front of her. “You must come with me at once.”
Olivia bit the inside of her cheek and ignored the ridiculous way her cheeks warmed at the knight’s sudden nearness. But the moment she stopped moving, the fire in her left leg roared back to life and chased away all other thoughts. She happily embraced that Pain rather than entertain whatever nonsensical notion she had been about to think.
Already, the effects of Minerva’s poison were taking hold of her heart; it hammered wildly within her chest.
“Why?” she snapped before asking the far more important question of, “What are you doing out of bed?” followed by, “Are you even supposed to be running?”
She scowled at the man. Whole weeks of her life she had wasted helping him get back on his feet and there he was, determined to undo all that hard work. They still didn’t fully understand just what had happened to him. Nor did they know what was causing the agonizing headaches he now had to endure on a weekly basis.
Within the dimness of the corridor, he looked terrible. Pale. Sick .
But rather than answer her latter questions, Sir Tristan set his jaw and whispered in response to the first, “It’s Her Majesty. ”
Olivia cocked her head to the side and narrowed her eyes.
Though there was no one about to hear them, Sir Tristan kept his voice quiet when he explained, “There’s been an assassination attempt—”
Seraphina.
Without thinking, Olivia broke into a dead sprint and left Sir Tristan standing there in the corridor. Her satchel jangled and thumped against her back as she ran, utilizing what precious moments with the viper poison she had left.
Running was no longer a luxury she could afford on a usual day. But with the venom, for once she had the strength needed to manage it.
She pressed her fingers against her left wrist as she flew down the corridors, keeping track of her wildly racing pulse.
With each step, her left leg burned. Her hip ached. The pain of trying to use that nearly useless limb for such exertion would eventually end up in her lower back. She knew this from experience.
But that would be a problem for future Olivia.
Present Olivia needed to see the queen.
An assassination attempt. Each of those words clawed at her, threatening to rip her racing heart straight from her chest with each swipe. Assassination attempts were her purview.
She should have known about such a thing. She should have been the first to know. She should have prevented it.
But she hadn’t. She didn’t.
Olivia shoved that thought aside as she ran. She’d have plenty of time to blame herself later .
When she finally arrived at Her Majesty’s private wing, Sir Tristan in hot pursuit, Olivia was greeted by the sight of nearly the entire Queensguard buzzing about outside those chambers.
She slowed only long enough for her own knightly escort to bark out a simple, “Make way,” before she continued on through the queen’s receiving chamber and sitting room, and finally into her bedchamber.
Relief washed over her when she saw Seraphina sitting at her table, pale yet alive, bundled up in a dressing gown with her usuru in her lap. Rogue lay on the floor at her feet.
Duke Percy, Duchess Edith, and the queen’s personal physician, Eugene Bonage the snake oil hawker himself, were already fussing over her as well. Sir Arkwright stood grimly by the door.
“What happened?” she asked the moment Sir Arkwright shut the door behind her, barring Sir Tristan from following her inside.
But that was for the best. He needed to rest.
And she needed to work.
“I’m fine,” Seraphina promised on a whisper, though she certainly didn’t look fine. “I was only scratched.”
“You shouldn’t have been scratched at all,” Duchess Edith snarled with all the protective energy of a mother usuru before she shot Olivia’s cane a glance. Thankfully, the queen’s godmother didn’t remark upon it or otherwise draw attention, though.
The duchess was always good at ignoring the things Olivia didn’t want to talk about. Aside from Tristan Dacre .
“What happened?” Olivia repeated through clenched teeth. Finally, Duke Percy and Sir Arkwright both looked her way. The former stood silent, though. Pale and silent.
He looked as if he had aged another twenty years in the span of a single moment.
It was the latter who finally answered her with a crisp, “An assassin entered the room by way of the balcony. He was dead before we arrived, dispatched by His Highness. Her Majesty is wounded, though not gravely. Physician Bonage assures us she will be fully healed within two weeks’ time.” After a pause, the knight added, "We left everything like we found it, so you could have the first look."
“His Highness?” Olivia repeated with a frown. “What was the prince doing here?”
“I stabbed him,” the queen murmured in a small voice, sending Olivia’s attention snapping back that way.
“You did?” she asked. A small trace of pride flared to life within her at the notion that Her Majesty had attacked her would-be assailant. Though Seraphina should have simply used the poison ring to incapacitate the man for further questioning.
But stabbing him had been the next best course of action.
Duchess Edith, her cheeks wan and tear-streaked, shook her head from her place sitting at the queen’s side. “You didn’t tell us you stabbed the assassin yourself.”
“No,” Seraphina softly corrected. “Not the assassin. I stabbed the Cr—the prince. I stabbed the prince.”
“What?” Olivia and Duke Percy asked in unison .
But then their shared curiosity diverged, blazing along separate paths of interest when Olivia herself asked, “Why was he not held for questioning?”
In contrast, Percy was more interested in asking, “Why was that man in your bedroom in the first place?”
No one seemed to have an answer for Duke Percy.
But Sir Arkwright frowned at her when he explained, “The man was bleeding all over the place, Mistress Olivia. And he had a dagger in his leg. We released him into the care of his own physician.”
Olivia frowned right back.
But when she suddenly realized she had lost track of her wildly careening pulse some moments ago, she turned her attention to the business of rifling through the medical bag slung over her shoulder. At the sound of clattering glass vials, Physician Bonage shot her a look over the rim of his spectacles. Olivia was all too happy to ignore the quack in favor of fishing out her tiny vial of harlequin viper antidote.
She quaffed it all in one go.
“He protected me,” Seraphina eventually murmured, though that assertion did little more than lure another frown onto Olivia’s lips. “He was the one who killed the assassin,” her friend reiterated.
Something about that was wrong , but Olivia couldn’t immediately riddle it out as all the usual Pain from her mangled left leg mingled with a sudden sense of vertigo. The antidote was working—a cool, albeit woozy reprieve from the fire of the viper venom .
She didn’t have time to pull out her mortar and pestle and grind up her usual buffet of pain-relieving herbs for the day. But she couldn’t think with her leg throbbing like that.
So Olivia compromised. She hobbled her way about the room with the use of her cane, inspecting the space with as much attention as she could spare, while fishing about in her satchel for a couple sprigs of dream petal and bitter root.
But a sudden thought nagged at her, stopping her in her tracks. “How’s your pain?” Olivia called back to Seraphina over her shoulder.
The question earned a fresh scowl from Physician Bonage. “I have already treated and dosed Her Majesty with all she needs,” the older man sneered.
But Olivia ignored him in favor of looking directly at the queen and waiting for her thoughts on the matter. Olivia wouldn’t trust Physician Bonage to extract a splinter. Not after some of the questionable tactics she'd witnessed him employ during the wasting sickness.
Seraphina offered some weak approximation of a smile and murmured, “It just stings a little, but I’m…” The queen winced. “…I’m fine.”
Olivia grunted, unconvinced.
But she went back to her hunt for clues all the same.
Blood spattered the once fine rugs framing the queen’s four-poster bed. She traced the spray of droplets from that point to the balcony and then back again, where the body of the would-be assassin still lay on the floor, covered by a sheet .
The very thought of crouching down to inspect the corpse sent her leg and hip to screaming all the more, but she swiftly stuffed the handful of raw herbs into her mouth and started chewing.
Sensing eyes on her, Olivia shot a look back toward the table, where she found Physician Bonage still watching her with palpable disapproval. She simply smiled back, though, like some demented cow as she chewed her pain-killing cud.
“There’s no glass,” Olivia observed aloud after she forced down the mouthful of herbs. When she earned for herself nothing more than a bewildered glance from Duke Percy in the wake of that proclamation, she thumped the end of her cane against the floor for emphasis and gestured about. “It doesn’t appear that the assassin broke in. He simply entered.”
An impressive feat, given how high up the queen’s room was.
It was Duchess Edith who gently questioned the queen, “Did you accidentally leave your balcony doors unlatched last night, Your Majesty?”
Seraphina’s answer was immediate, her denial of, “No, I would never,” particularly heated.
Olivia hummed aloud—a thoughtful sound—and slanted Duke Percy a look. When the elderly nobleman didn’t immediately return her glance, she increased her humming into an obnoxious, “ Hmm ,” until she finally garnered some attention for herself.
Percy took the hint. “Ah, yes. Right. Sir Arkwright,” the Lord Chancellor commanded the captain on Olivia’s behalf, “I want every servant who was within Her Majesty’s room yesterday rounded up for questioning. Send them to my chambers. No need to make a scene.”
“No one can know about this,” Seraphina insisted as she stroked her fingers against the winged serpent still resting in her lap. “ No one .”
“Of course, Your Majesty,” Duke Percy agreed without question.
Sir Arkwright gave his answer by snapping a quick salute before hurrying off to do the Lord Chancellor’s bidding.
Olivia herself offered no reply to her friend’s demand, though, given she was still too busy studying the mess that had been made of the other woman’s bedchamber.
She had missed it on her first pass, but now she saw clearly there was something on the floor just beneath the edge of the queen’s bed. When a brief prod with the end of her cane fully revealed just what that something was, though, Olivia let loose with a hiss of alarm.
Duke Percy was at her shoulder quicker than she would have thought possible for the older man. “What?” he softly questioned.
But Olivia ignored him for the moment and swiftly hobbled back to the corpse. Dropping to her knees, she gritted her teeth against the Pain the abrupt movement sent stabbing through the left side of her body.
“What is it?” Duke Percy continued to demand. He even crouched at her side with a groan and a crackling of joints she would have sympathized with if she hadn't been busy frantically twitching aside articles of the assassin’s clothing .
While the world finally faded about the edges into a pleasant haze as the full effects of the bitter root and dream petal took hold of her mind, Olivia searched the corpse’s wrists, his forearms, his neck, and finally his chest, all in silence until she was suddenly wrenched around by her shoulder to face Duke Percy.
The man gave her a brief shake and demanded a third time, “Tell me what in the blazes it is you’re looking for, Olivia.”
The bald fear roiling in Duke Percy’s eyes was a fear Olivia knew all too well. It was the same fear currently gripping her own heart.
Under her breath, she uttered a low instruction of, “Send the physician away and call for Father Perero. Immediately .”
For a few tense moments, Olivia worried Duke Percy might not obey. Not with his jaw clenched and a muscle ticking there with all of the Lord Chancellor’s usual stubbornness.
After those tense moments passed, though, the duke called out a command of, “Physician Bonage, you may go,” followed by what was no doubt the man’s attempts at being casual when he added, “Edith, why don’t we send for Father Perero while we’re at it?”
Olivia could nearly feel the question Duchess Edith wished to ask stirring in the space between them all. But blessedly, it was a question the queen’s godmother didn’t voice.
The moment those requested commands were divvied out, Duke Percy’s eyes hooked back upon her own. “Now, you will tell me what is going on, or so help me, Olivia—”
With a grunt, Olivia shifted her weight more to her right knee and raised her cane to poke the end of it toward Seraphina’s bed. More specifically, toward the dagger partially covered by a scrap of bloody cloth tucked beneath. “ That is a witchblade,” she whispered for the duke’s ears alone, earning a choked gasp from the man. “But this …”
She flopped the would-be assassin’s limp wrist at Percy, waving the dead man’s hand about. “…is neither a witch nor a Witchsworn. Which presents several burning questions, though the most pressing is, of course”—Olivia’s stomach churned in a way completely at odds with the bright shimmer of the room, the dream petal having painted the bloody and tense scene in a rosy glow—“if Her Majesty was struck with the blade.”
All the color drained from Duke Percy’s face with each word them. But it was that last sentence which sent the older man’s head shaking. “No,” he whispered. His eyes squeezed shut and his head bowed. “No, no, no, no .” When his head jerked back up, he quietly insisted, “You must be mistaken.”
How Olivia wished she were. She wanted nothing more in that moment than to be wrong, to be back in her bed, and for this all to be a bad dream.
But she wasn’t.
Expelling a shaky breath, Olivia fought to keep her voice level when she further advised, “Father Perero will need to Truth-Read Her Majesty for us to know exactly what happened here tonight.”
“A Truth-Reading?” Duke Percy sounded appalled. “But this makes no sense…”
Olivia slanted a look back toward the table on the opposite side of the room, where Duchess Edith and Seraphina seemed to still be in quiet conference. With their backs to the dead assassin, they were paying the two of them little mind.
Which was for the best.
Should the worst have truly happened, there was a chance the queen was no longer the queen, but simply a husk. A Witchsworn—a puppet being controlled by some unseen witch.
That thought wrenched at Olivia’s heart in ways that made her nearly retch all over the corpse in front of her. It was her job to guard her friend against the unseen dangers lurking in the shadows.
And yet there she knelt, faced with the evidence that she had failed that task in the worst possible way. What if the witchblade had struck Seraphina? What if she was gone?
Lost forever to the Underworld?
It wasn’t until Duke Percy rumbled a bewildered, “How in all of Avirel did a witchblade end up here ?” that Olivia blinked her way out of her spiraling thoughts. She suddenly remembered the whole reason she had been racing to find Her Majesty in the first place, before she had even known about the assassination attempt.
From within the depths of her sleeve, Olivia withdrew the report Sal had brought what must have been but fifteen minutes ago but felt like an entire lifetime at that point. Sitting back on her heels, she passed the folded missive to Duke Percy and waited.
It took the Lord Chancellor longer than she would have liked for him to fish a pair of spectacles from his doublet’s inner pocket and finally read the harrowing news written upon the page. But once he had, once he finally understood the severity of the situation at hand, the older man immediately fell into a deep and profound silence.
The sort of silence that was utterly deafening.
That silence lingered until Father Perero arrived a short time later, looking disheveled and worried in equal measure as he hurried into the room.
“Your Majesty, Your Grace.” The Shepherd greeted the queen and Duchess Edith first with a low bow before his tired eyes trailed across the room to where Olivia and Duke Percy were still crouched by the corpse. Immediately, the holy man took a step backward and asked, “What has happened?”
Rather than answer the Shepherd’s question, Duke Percy turned a hollow look toward the door and commanded the Queensguard posted just outside, “Bar the doors and let none enter. Do not enter yourselves, no matter what you may hear, until I give the order you may return. The fate of all Elmoria depends on you following my instructions exactly.”
After a moment of tense hesitation, the guards moved to comply, and the doors to the queen’s chambers slammed shut behind them.
Seraphina frowned when she looked between Father Perero, Duke Percy, and then Olivia where she still knelt beside the dead assassin. “Your Grace, what is hap—?” the queen asked.
But that question cut off mid-sentence when Duke Percy moved to stand behind Seraphina and seized her by the shoulders.
Chaos ensued .
“Percival, have you lost your mind ?” Duchess Edith demanded, her voice shrill. The elderly noblewoman jolted to her feet and shot her a look next while crying out, “Olivia, what is going on?”
Alyx hissed and wound herself up the length of Seraphina’s arm, hunting for the latest source of danger. Rogue leapt to his feet as well, clearly desperate to add his own voice to the growing noise; his deep barks were loud enough to rattle the windowpanes.
But it was Father Perero who looked the most taken aback by the sudden turn of events when he stepped forward and proclaimed, “Lord Chancellor, I demand you release the queen at once.”
Olivia answered the Shepherd on Duke Percy’s behalf with a quiet albeit firm, “No,” while she at last eased herself back to a standing position using her cane. The cane Seraphina had given her. The cane she had made special, just for her . “Father Perero, we need you to Truth-Read Her Majesty,” she explained, sneaking a glance Seraphina’s way.
“What?” came the Shepherd’s breathless reply.
The look of utter betrayal shining from within the depths of her best friend’s eyes was enough to render Olivia breathless herself.
“What is the meaning of this, Olivia?” Seraphina demanded of her directly. “Explain yourself.”
Behind the queen, Duke Percy wept openly as he tightened his grip on Seraphina’s shoulders.
Still standing amidst the chaos in the role of human shield, Duchess Edith stared at her for a moment before exclaiming, “Someone must explain what’s happening. Please. ”
But again, it was Father Perero who raised the largest complaint when he proclaimed, “A monarch of Elmoria has not been Truth-Read since the time of King Hamon V.” Setting his jaw, the Shepherd snapped a look between her and Duke Percy when he continued on with, “Whatever madness has taken hold of you both this morning, we can try to see righted. But I will not stand for Her Majesty to be treated this way. Lord Chancellor, I will say again and only once more: You will release her. At once.”
The lump in Olivia’s throat was thick. Heavy. But she swallowed it down as best she could as she avoided looking at her best friend. She couldn’t stand to meet Seraphina’s eyes now.
The hurt written there was too much for even her to bear.
Instead, Olivia kept her gaze locked onto Father Perero when she explained, “An attempt was made on Her Majesty’s life tonight. The assassin was wielding a witchblade.” A collective gasp threatened to suck all the air from the room. “There is no way for us to know if Her Majesty’s soul has been claimed by the Lady unless you Truth-Read her.”
“Seraphina…” Duchess Edith whispered. Tears slowly stained the elderly noblewoman’s cheeks to match those the Lord Chancellor had yet to stop shedding. “But…but how?” the queen’s godmother demanded of the room next. “ How did a witchblade end up here in Elmoria?”
Olivia answered that question with a grim declaration of, “Arath.”
When all eyes turned her way, she revealed, “I have just had a report from lower Arlund, near the border of Eiral. Ships flying the red dragon of Arath landed on our shores just last night and are now raiding along the coast.”
Eyes widened into a look of horror, Duchess Edith finally stumbled back to her seat. Her protests at an end, she slumped bonelessly into that chair.
A tense quiet blanketed the room once more, leaving Olivia standing in a numb silence and watching the way the scene rippled and gleamed about the edges.
But not even the dream petal could find something amusing for her to giggle over in that moment.
Her heart should have been breaking. She should have been unraveling at the seams, knowing that perhaps she had already lost her best friend.
But in that moment, she suddenly felt nothing at all. Her heart encased itself in a layer of protective ice as she listened to the only sister she had ever known break that silence between them with a nearly inaudible, “Father Perero…please.”
Still, Olivia was too much of a coward to glance back that way.
Right until the moment Seraphina whispered, “You must Truth-Read me.”
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37 (Reading here)
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45