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Chapter twenty-five

A Brief Castle Break-In

U ncle Koll gently shifted the dirt beneath the edges of the gate. Arms of soil wrapped around the base, lifting the structure up until the hooks of the hinges slipped out of their holds. The shadows caught the door silently, and together they set it aside so we could sneak into the garden.

The world darkened hazily as the Shade returned the gate and obscured us in inky clouds. My steps were unsteady on the broken tiles of the garden path. But as it was not yet dawn, the grounds were quietly lit by the clouded moon, and we slipped silently toward the castle doors.

I paused with my hand on a cracked fruit tree and looked at the animal menagerie around me. All the pangolins and wolves scuffled around my feet; the bats circled above us.

“Won’t we stand out?”

The Shade looked about. With a tip of his head, he commanded the pangolin and honey badger to stay by the gate with one of the bats, which immediately flew up and hung from the tallest peak of the arch. “These can stand guard.” He instructed most of the wolves to stay in the courtyard, while the dark one with bright yellow eyes came with us .

The dried skeletons of fruit trees around us reached toward an ashy sky with craggy black arms. They were as dry and desiccated as the desolate forests I’d scavenged while searching for a cure for the queen. Pots stood dried and empty. Dead stalks of plants and flowers, caked with ash and black slime, folded onto the cracked soil below. In a hundred steps, we would reach the back door.

Another explosion boomed in the distance.

“I’m glad the prince is having a good time at the manor.” Uncle Koll scratched his beard as he slunk behind a dry wall of shrubbery. “It’s convenient that he’s out of the castle today.”

The Shade chuckled darkly. “I may or may not have sent a threatening letter.”

I put my fingers to my forehead. “You don’t have to antagonize him all the time, do you?”

The Shade’s smile turned as feral as the wolf’s. “No, but I do enjoy it.”

The black wolf slunk forward between us, its claws clattering on the stone tiles below. We froze as one of the guards looked up toward the mountain above us. Then as he turned away, we rushed ahead and ducked under the arching doorway.

Uncle Koll jostled the door. “Locked.”

A sliver of shadow brushed past me, weaving its way through my fingers before threading into the lock and snapping it open with a click.

“You would have been so handy when I was a hungry little girl trying to sneak into the kitchens,” I muttered as I led the way inside, pausing as we entered the small gardener’s room strewn with abandoned shovels, rakes, and aprons draped with dust and spiderwebs. The gardeners had long since given up on landscaping, scraping by with the vegetables and fruits grown inside the solarium .

I turned down the servants’ passage. The castle was eerily quiet. Down the hallway, I could hear the gentle clatter of early morning breadmaking. My heart ached at the thought of Chef. The Shade reached over and squeezed my hand, his eyes curious and kind. I squeezed back before entering the servants’ quarters.

We snuck past rooms whose inhabitants still snored the night away, slipped through the narrow threshold, and crept up the far steps. I patted the pack on my side. The clinking glass reassured me that the potions were still there—the bottles of hope. I paused beside a closed door, a hallway entrance to my father’s workstation.

I looked at the Shade. “Can we try to see her?”

His eyes unfocused, I assumed checking in with the other animals. “Everything seems quiet. The guards haven’t altered their course. But if we need to go, we go quickly.”

I carefully leaped and hugged him, being sure not to clank the potions much. I led away from the door to my father’s room and toward the back passages of the royal suites. We came to the final stair, and I put my ear against the door at the top. No sound came from the other side. The queen’s attendants would join her in a couple of hours as the sun began to rise, but they usually left the queen alone through the night since she got the most rest in the early morning hours.

I felt a squeeze in my chest—nervousness—but this feeling wasn’t mine. I looked back at the Shade. His fist pulsed, tapping on the side of his leg, and his jaw muscles feathered as he clenched them. I reached toward him, but he brushed my hand away.

Unduly hurt, I turned toward Uncle Koll, who looked paler than before. One hand was on his chest as the other fussed with his shirt sleeve. He glanced over at me, dismissing the question in my eyes with a shake of his head. My eyebrows furrowed with confusion, but I opened the door with a click. I peered in, listening for trouble. The smell hit me first—much worse than I remembered. The room was saturated in that sick, sour, rotten smell that came with the queen’s sickness. Uncle Koll’s breath shuddered. Nothing else in her room stirred.

I approached her bedside. Her thin frame looked more skeletal on the bed than when I’d last seen her; her eyes were sunken, her face resembling an empty skull. The pillows were fluffed, and the blanket tucked in around her. She looked more like a child than a queen. One of the potions I had sent was half drunk on the bedside table. It had kept her alive, but only just.

The words breathed out of me in a whisper, an ache unable to be restrained. “Oh, Your Majesty.”

Her eyes fluttered. I held my breath, torn between hoping she would awaken, and terrified of disturbing her. Slowly, her lids lifted, and she regarded my face. Her green eyes fixed on mine, sharp and clear. I stepped into the thin moonlight that streaked across her bedding so she could see me better.

“Aelia?” Her dry voice croaked. The Shade inhaled sharply. I stepped toward her and grasped her hand. “Your Majesty, I’m sorry to wake you.”

“You left the castle in uproar.” The queen swallowed hard, and I offered her a sip of water from her bedside table. “Everyone is certain you are dead. Leon won’t tell me what’s going on. The seers all left the castle and have been sending messages by pigeon. Where did you go, my dear? I’ve been so worried.”

I smiled at her. “I’m not dead, thankfully. And in fact, I have been very busy.” I turned and brought my bag to my lap. “We brought you some new potions.” I stacked them at her bedside. “I think they’ll be stronger. We were able to come up with some changes in the ingredients, and I think…” I glanced up at her face and stopped short. Her ey es were wide and frozen on the Shade behind me. She had become as still as death, although her chest still moved with each breath.

The queen’s gaze flickered to Uncle Koll. “What—”

“Oh, don’t worry, Your Majesty. They came with me. They’ve been helping. The Shade…he’s…” I paused my babbling—the words stuck in my throat as I watched tears well up in her eyes. “Your Majesty, don’t cry. You’re safe.” I reached for a handkerchief to dab at her cheeks.

“Koll.” The queen’s whisper was ragged. Koll? I twisted to look back at him.

“Gemmie.” Uncle Koll said, his voice stripped and raw. Queen Gemaline Aura Grace often went by Queen of Grace, but no one called her Gemmie. Uncle Koll’s cheeks glimmered with his own tears.

“Sha…ade,” the queen stuttered, turning to study him. The Shade nodded, his eyes soft and glassy, his Adam’s apple bobbing. His hands were folded in front of him, his thumb rubbing the other. What in all the lands was happening?

Uncle Koll pushed past me and cupped her face with his hand. The queen gave a small sob. His thumbs brushed her cheek, and he reached back to me for a potion.

“Gemmie, can you drink this?” The queen smiled a bit, and Uncle Koll brought the potion to her lips. “Just a bit more, my dear.”

The queen coughed as she swallowed the potion before smiling brightly. Even the darkness of the room lifted at the sight. “It’s good to see you.”

Her frail hand drifted past me and toward the Shade. One beat. Two. Then the menace of our nation, the embodiment of Death, stumbled forward to take her hand. “My queen.”

“My son.”

My gasp was too loud for the quiet room. I studied his face as his emotions flitted through me, affection and pain, betrayal and…love. He swallowed again. My mind whirled. The Shade was the queen’s son. She wasn’t crying because she was afraid. She was crying because… I stepped back, giving them their space. I was so confused—the stories said that the Shade had caused her sickness, that his shadows were there the day she fell ill.

He turned his head slightly, his green eyes glowing in the cast of the moonlight. “ Of course, I was here that day. And every day before that when I could sneak in as she was worsening. I was that boy you played with, Aelia.” His eyes closed in a picture of anguish. “But I was too young, and I couldn’t stop the sickness. And Father blamed me.” His hand squeezed around his mother’s small frail fingers. “Even though it was the mining—and the effect the mines had on the earth—that had made her unwell in the first place.”

“But how could you leave her?” I whispered, too overwhelmed to remember to project my thoughts. The Shade’s pain lanced through me, and I felt instant regret—I didn’t mean it so harshly. The queen glanced between us, then fixed back on the Shade.

“Did you—?”

“No.” He looked away. “Not fully.”

She nodded and regarded me again. “Why not?”

The Shade just shook his head.

“Aelia, come here.” Her command was a whisper but lost no power in its quietness.

She attempted to sit but collapsed back against the pillows, fixing me with her gaze. “No matter what happens, Aelia, you must know that he didn’t do this to me.” She wheezed. “He could never. And Aelia, no matter what, no matter what you think you know or what you have been shown before, now you must trust yourself when it matters most. ”

“Trust myself?” I repeated, confused at why that would matter at a time like this. At her insistent stare, I agreed. “Okay.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise, Your Majesty.”

The queen released a long sad sigh. “I am so tired of being tired.”

Uncle Koll set his hand on the bedding over leg. “These new potions should help, Gemmie They helped me.”

If the Shade was her son, then Uncle Koll…Uncle Koll was her brother.

“Mother, I have a gift.” The Shade reached into his pocket and withdrew the box with the four lights. “The instructions are inside.”

The queen held the glowing glass up toward her face. “My son, this is remarkable. How did you make this?”

The Shade blossomed with pride. “It was actually Aelia who inspired me when we—”

“ The prince. The prince!” A small voice burst into our minds. “ He’s not at the manor. He’s there! He’s coming. I’m—” Jamison cut off the connection with a squeak. He was nearby? But where?

The Shade stiffened, his eyes deadly and worried when they met mine. The Shade bent down to kiss his mother’s cheek. “I’m sorry, we must go. Leon is here. I’ll finish the story another time.”

The queen smiled weakly. “Come back soon, my dears. And Aelia, don’t forget.” The Shade still held her hand, his body tightened like a string on a bow.

“Shade,” Uncle Koll warned. “We must go.”

He whirled and stalked across the room. “Look at what he let her become.” I gave a fleeting curtsy to the queen and tripped after him.

“My son. Family is still family.” The queen’s voice croaked and stopped the Shade mid-step. His fists pulsed. Around him, the floor broke into fractals of shadow, the tiles seeming to smoke as the Shade started again, every step leaving a hazy footprint. Waves of icy shadows poured off his shoulders, and his eyes blackened. My heart ached with emotions that weren’t mine. Grief. Regret. Guilt. Anger. The last one boiled the strongest.

I set my hand upon his arm. Glancing at his contorted face. “Shade, let’s go home.”

He blinked once, though the billowing darkness still shrouded him. His voice crackled like walking over thin ice, desperate for a lifeline. “Say it again.”

I slipped my hand into his. “Let’s go home.”

A pulse of anger. “But the prince. The king. They are doing this to her.”

“They will be here tomorrow. And the next day. We aren’t finished yet. The potion will help her while we fix the rest.”

He turned to me and pressed his palm against the mark on my neck. Waves of his agony flooded through me. Violent pain ripped through us. I turned into his touch, begging him to feel what it could be: Comfort. Safety. Hope. His thoughts were a torrent.

“We have done what we came to do,” Uncle Koll murmured behind us.

His nostrils flared again as the trumpet sounded from the entrance. He nodded, then took my hand. Aelia first. “Get us out of here.”