A Court Bright and Broken (Age of Fae #1)

22. Missing

Chapter 22

Missing

S tellon

The sky was barely showing color when a loud knock startled me awake.

I sprang from the sofa where I’d spent several uncomfortable hours cramped and contorted in fitful sleep and staggered to the door in the adjoining sitting room.

The servants would never dare wake me in such a manner unless the palace was on fire. As I smelled no smoke, there had to be some other sort of emergency.

Glancing back over my shoulder at the small lump under my bed covers in the next room, I slid aside the bolt and opened the door a crack.

“What is it? What’s going on?” I asked the guards waiting outside.

“Lady Wyn is missing, Your Highness,” one of them, Ser Keane, answered.

“What?”

Ser Quillen, the other knight assigned to guard her, held up a delicate pearl-and-crystal-covered shoe—unmistakably one of the unique pair Wyn had worn to the ball.

“This was found on the lawn, Your Highness.”

“After it was brought to us, we entered her room to see if she was all right,” he said. “She was gone. We knew you’d want to be notified.”

For a moment, all I could do was stare at him, my mind in a daze. Then I snapped out of it, a burning sense of urgency filling my veins and removing the last traces of sleep inertia.

“Give me a moment to dress.” I closed the door again and hurried to my wardrobe, pulling on some clothes, then went back to the sleeping chamber.

Raewyn hadn’t even stirred at the sound of our voices. She was truly exhausted.

I went to my writing desk and pulled out a clean sheet of paper. Taking my quill in hand, I wrote her a note in case she woke before I could return.

Thank the Grand Star she was literate.

I hope you slept well. I’ll return soon. Stay here and do not open the door for anyone. – S

Leaving the note on the pillow beside her, I took the key from its hook just inside the doorway and left my suite, locking the door behind me.

Then I turned to the guards. “Where exactly was the shoe found?”

“Not far from the castle wall, Your Highness,” Keane answered. “Practically beneath her window.”

My hand rose to my temple where a rapid pulse throbbed. “And she was not in her suite? Or perhaps down in the breakfast room?”

“No, Your Highness. She is nowhere to be found in the palace,” he said. “All her belongings are gone as well. We questioned the guards who found the shoe. They said none of the patrols saw her last night. No one has seen her this morning either, inside or outside the palace.”

“What could have happened?” I asked, mainly of myself. “Kidnapping?”

It was impossible to believe my newly betrothed had decided to leave on her own without a word.

“No one entered through the door—we were on watch all night. Someone would have had to climb to her room from the outside, unlock the window, and climb back down—carrying her—all without anyone hearing or seeing a thing,” Quillen said.

His expression was doubtful.

“What do you think happened then?” I asked him.

“There’s more, Your Highness,” he said in a grim tone. “Not far from the shoe, some vials were found. They contained poison. Auspex Pavan says it contains fireweed.”

The breath caught in my throat, and a tingling sensation spread over my skin. Fireweed was the most toxic substance in the realm, second only to iron in its danger to Elves.

“That’s an Earthwife’s weapon of choice,” I said. “Lady Wyn certainly wasn’t one of those.”

Quillen went on. “Nevertheless, all indications are that the lady climbed down on her own.”

“Why would she do that on the night of our betrothal?”

And why would Lady Wyn have vials of poison?

“It makes no sense,” I said.

The two guards shared a furtive glance, clearly reluctant to speculate.

Just then Pharis rounded the corner, coming from the hallway where his suite was located. When he spotted us congregating in the hall, his brows lifted in surprise.

“What’s this then? An early meeting of the High Council?” he quipped as he approached us.

When no one laughed, his jovial expression fell. “What’s happened?”

I filled him in on what the guards had told me.

“What do you know? The rose had thorns,” he quipped, obviously assuming the poison belonged to Lady Wyn.

“We don’t know that. As far as I’m concerned, she’s the victim here,” I said.

His expression turned vicious. “She was clearly an assassin working for the Earthwives. Four vials, four members of the royal family. This proves what I was saying last night, Stellon. I tried to warn you.”

“ Or the poison belonged to the kidnapper,” I argued. “Who was also an assassin.”

It seemed less plausible when I said it aloud. But what else could it be?

“As my betrothed, Wyn was almost a royal. Perhaps the villain targeted her before moving on to the rest of us and was interrupted somehow,” I suggested.

“Then why wasn’t her body found?” Pharis asked. “Why isn’t she dead?”

“Oh gods.” It hadn’t even occurred to me that Lady Wyn might have been killed. I clutched my stomach, the thought of that sweet lady lying dead somewhere making me physically ill.

“She might be. She might still yet be found.”

Ser Quillen shook his head. “Every inch of the palace and grounds has been scoured. If there was a body, hers or otherwise, we would have found it.”

I couldn’t believe we were actually discussing searching for the murdered corpse of my lovely fiancée.

Or the idea that the woman I’d fallen so hard and fast for could be so cold and calculating, that she might have actually come here last night to kill me, not to marry me.

Both scenarios seemed impossible.

“There has to be some other explanation,” I insisted. “If Lady Wyn were an assassin, why didn’t she do the deed? She had plenty of opportunity—with you and me both.”

I looked at Pharis, who shrugged. “Maybe it was too public. Maybe she was biding her time until she was certain she could do it and still escape.”

“And so she escaped without doing it?” I challenged. “No. It doesn’t make sense.”

“In a way, it does,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

He rubbed his jaw. “Well, I have to admit I never thought she was capable of an assassination plot, or I never would have allowed you to be alone with her for the moments you were. But I know she’s a liar.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“She admitted as much,” he said. “When we danced, I questioned whether she could truly be one of Lord Elardis’ daughters—I mean, you’ve seen the man. She confessed she was not, that she was lower Fae and had come here under false pretenses.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this last night?” I didn’t care about the social rank part, but the lying concerned me.

“I tried ,” he growled.

“Unfortunately I believed her when she said she’d just wanted to experience the ball. I thought she was an opportunist, not a threat,” Pharis said.

“And she said you gave her the invitation,” he added. “Based on your reaction to her, I believed it.”

“It’s not true. I’d never seen her before you introduced us,” I said.

“Before you snatched her away and monopolized her attention, you mean,” he said.

Really? He was bitter about it even after deciding she’d come here to kill us all?

The whole thing seemed preposterous, but the fact was, someone had brought lethal poison inside the castle gates. And Wyn wasn’t here to defend herself.

It was possible Pharis had saved my life by rudely interrupting our kiss out near the seawall.

“She fooled us both, I suppose,” I said.

Turning to the guards, I asked, “And no one saw anything out of the ordinary last night? No one else on the palace grounds without leave to be here?”

“Nothing that unusual. There are always a few human interlopers during the ball,” Keane said. “Several were turned away at the gates. An old woman was found inside the palace near the kitchens, and later, a young woman was seen running across the lawn. Both were taken to the dungeon.”

“A young woman?” Pharis asked, an alert look on his face. “And you’re sure it wasn’t Wyn?”

“She was human, Your Highness,” Keane told him.

“We should go question the women,” Pharis said. “Both of them.”

My neck tensed, and my nerves prickled, beginning a low simmer.

“I’ll handle that,” I told him.

I already knew who the young woman was, and I didn’t want anyone else going down to the dungeon and finding out that she had ‘disappeared’ as well.

It wouldn’t bode well for Raewyn to get tangled up in this mess.

In fact, it struck me that this development might very well interfere with my plans to send her home in secret today.

Shaded stars.

“I think you should go speak to Father,” I said to Pharis. “Advise him it would be wise to increase security around the palace and on our family.”

My brother rolled his eyes. “Oh, I’ll advise him. And then he’ll send for you to get your take on it. The next time the king listens to me will be the first time.”

“Still, he needs to be informed,” I said. “If he hasn’t heard already. He might not have. As you know, he likes to sleep in the night after a ball. I’m sure the servants and guards are afraid to wake him—for any reason.”

“I know how they feel,” Pharis muttered. “Maybe I’ll let Mareth do it. She can bring along a grizzly bear or a crocodile for protection—or at least for more pleasant company.”

“He’ll be glad you’ve told him,” I assured my brother. “I’d do it but he’ll probably want to send someone with lie-detecting glamour to Altum to find out if Lord Elardis knew of a plot—and want you to go along.”

“You mean he’ll be on the warpath and want to send one of his two favorite weapons.” Pharis sneered.

The hurt in his tone was a reminder that despite last night, we were in this together, two of the three pillars that struggled to persevere under our father’s heavy hand.

Lowering my head and making my tone penitent, I placed a hand on my brother’s shoulder.

“Perhaps you were right all along, and Lord Elardis sent someone to eliminate us so he could have a shot at the throne. It’s possible she intended to do it and changed her mind—or she was just thwarted in her plans. Either way, we need answers.”

“I should have listened to you,” I acquiesced. “You may have prevented me from being poisoned last night.”

The corner of Pharis’ mouth quirked up. “Apology accepted. Well, I’m off to wake the king with bad news. Wish me luck.”

He departed, and I went back into my suite, ordering the guards to keep me informed of any new developments.

Later, I would go to the dungeon and question the old woman who’d been imprisoned there. It wasn’t likely to lead to anything, but I’d leave no stone unturned in solving this mystery.

Right now though, I had to make sure Raewyn didn’t wander out into the hallway and right into a hornet’s nest. I also needed time to think and come up with some sort of plan to keep her safe.

She was an innocent human in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And those poor souls usually wound up dead.