Chapter Twenty-Five #2
Derran dragged the blanket over himself and arranged it badly, still lying on the floor, one arm over his eyes now as though that might shut out the whole evening. His voice came out short and exhausted.
“Zuri. Again. Took Ina’s shape. In my bedchamber.”
Karai’s eyes widened.
Ina gasped. “You didn’t...?”
She did not finish. She did not need to ask the question for the rest to be clear. You didn’t bed her, did you?
Derran made a sound that was half-groan and half-surrender. “Not exactly.”
Karai scoffed loudly and rolled his eyes for good measure.
At that, Derran’s arm came off his face furiously. “Shut up, Karai. You’re the one who took off her hood.”
Karai’s nostrils flared. For a heartbeat Ina thought the room was about to tip from crisis back into wounded male pride and become unbearable. Then, because he was Karai, he reined it in. His face closed over again with the kind of cold control that admitted the blow had landed where it should.
He did not answer.
Ina stepped between them before the silence could become unbearable.
“She won’t stop until she breaks us all apart,” she said quickly, the words tumbling out one over the other.
“That much is clear. She wants revenge on Karai, yes, but we’ve all thwarted her plans in some way and I’m sure she wants revenge on the rest of us too. But I know now – that’s not all she wants.”
The two princes looked at her.
“She wants power,” Ina said. “She wants to rule the fairy kingdom.”
That had their full attention. Derran sat up straighter despite himself. Karai’s gaze hardened, though there was no surprise in it.
Ina told them what she had asked the stone head and what it had answered.
“Nine chambers guard a treasure here. Sixth and eighth require diamonds clear. A power greater than a fairy queen’s. The kingdom’s crown by wishful means.”
She had spent the whole flight back to the burrow court turning those words over and over.
Now that she said them aloud, they sounded no less strange.
Only more dangerous. “I think,” she said, “that there is something in the furthest chamber of that cavern that can give her enough power to rule the fairy kingdom. And she needed two of the diamonds to reach it.”
Derran nodded slowly. “That fits well enough.”
Karai, however, frowned. “It doesn’t fit at all.”
Ina turned to him. “No? Why?”
He let go of the chair where he had been half leaning and began to pace once across the open space by the table. Not fast. Thinking.
“Zuri always wanted to be queen,” he said.
“That part is true. She wanted Queen Emthil’s throne. She wanted to be known by every fairy in the kingdom. She wanted it with a hunger that had no sense in it. But it still doesn’t explain the necklace.”
He looked up. “There are diamonds everywhere in the burrow court. In old walls. In chandeliers. In ceremonial floors no one has walked on in a century. She could have scratched one out of a palace wall with a knife and no one would have noticed for months.
Why would she go through the trouble of stealing Jassie’s necklace and drawing every court’s attention to herself? Why would she bother trying to destroy the diamond with Lugo’s heart?”
Ina opened her mouth, then paused. “Maybe she doesn’t want there to be rulers of each court if she’s queen?” she said. “Maybe stealing the necklace and killing Lugo serves that. Maybe that’s why she tried…” she glanced at Derran and changed what she meant to say, “Why she was in the sky court.”
Karai shook his head immediately.
Derran did too, slower but just as certain.
“That wouldn’t make sense. We’ve always had princes or princesses at each court even with a fairy queen. The throne doesn’t erase them. And they would give the queen more power. More authority. A central ruler supported by each of the courts, not a fragmented kingdom.”
Karai nodded in agreement. Then, halfway through the motion, he stopped.
His whole face changed. Dramatically. Like a light had suddenly gone on behind it.
“Of course,” he whispered.
Ina stared at him. “Of course what?”
He looked at her, but his eyes were not quite seeing the room now. They were back in the cavern with the riddle and the stone head and some piece he had dismissed then because he lacked the rest of it.
“The first riddle from the monolith,” he said. “The last line. ‘And a master to which she bows.’”
Derran said nothing yet, but the line between his brows deepened.
“I ignored it,” Karai went on. “Because of the urgency of finding her and because it did not make sense at the time. But...” He stopped, then began again with greater force. “Someone had to help her get free of the stone prison. I know it. She could not have broken out by herself.”
Ina felt the thought gather whole between them. “Her master now,” she said.
Derran, following at once, added, “She would owe her liberator something.”
Karai nodded, the certainty solidifying in his eyes. “A position. Power. Perhaps a court. A prince’s place beside a queen’s rise.” He looked at them both. “There is someone else in this.”
Ina’s stomach tightened. “We have to figure out who. Someone in the marsh court?” she asked, though the answer had already begun forming in her mind.
“It has to be,” Derran said. “Someone who wants to take Lugo and Jassie’s throne.”
Ina met his eyes. They were thinking of the same face. The same poised bow. The same hidden sneer. The same woman they had all seen and watched, though perhaps not closely enough.
“Achlys,” Ina whispered.
Derran nodded.
Karai did too, grim now and wholly awake despite the long night and longer day behind them. “We need to get to the marsh court before she harms them, necklace or not.”
No one spoke further. There was no point.
The path ahead had narrowed too much for discussion.
Derran got to his feet and accepted, with very little dignity and no complaint, a more suitable set of clothes than the blanket barely holding on to him now.
Karai checked the contents of his belt and bag.
Ina snatched up her own velvet satchel again, which seemed by now to belong more to her hand than to any shelf.
Then the three of them left the library at speed, heading once more for the marsh court and the court’s advisor they had long known was capable of evil, yet had convinced themselves they ought not suspect.