Chapter 23
CHAPTER 23
I n the palace’s stone garden, I pace back and forth, taking care to keep my expression serene and meditative and hiding my inner turmoil. Guards are watching my every move, and it won’t do for them to see the princess worried.
Nivene is late for our meeting, which is making my thoughts race. I arrived here exactly at noon like she asked, and she’s never late. The woman has a weird fetish for punctuality, but worse than that, something about her coded message, the brevity of it, the sharp, frantic strokes, suggested panic.
And now, my mind keeps conjuring horrifying images: Nivene, caught spying by Talan’s forces, already dragged into the dungeon, tied to a rack of some kind. Maybe she’s not far from where I’m standing, screaming out every secret. My stomach twists. What if she’s already dead? I glance at the shadows on a stone sundial. Half past noon already. Half an hour. She’s never this late.
“Nia!”
I whirl to see her running toward me, her red hair cascading over a green cloak. She’s smiling at me, but there’s something fake about her grin. I know her well enough to read the subtle tension in her face.
She joins me, breathless, “Sorry I’m late. I was in the market and didn’t notice the time. I bought us some nice apples for our morning walk.”
I accept a bright red apple from her and look over my shoulder to make sure the guards aren’t lingering too close. “What’s going on?” I whisper, taking care to keep my face expressionless.
She wraps an arm over my shoulders, resting her head against mine in what must look like an affectionate gesture. “I can’t get in touch with Meriadec,” she whispers. “No one knows where he is.”
A cold knot tightens in my stomach. “Maybe something happened, and he had to go into hiding.”
“Something definitely happened. He’s disappeared from the farm, but Meriadec would have left a message if it had been planned, and there’s nothing. He’s been worried lately with Talan closing in on them. And he thought they might have a mole within the resistance.”
I flinch at the thought. “If that’s true, we’re both fucked.”
She shakes her head. “Only Meriadec and Brados know who we are,” Nivene says, naming the owner of The Shadowed Thicket. “No one else within the resistance knows. Ever since we gave them the warning, they’ve stayed the fuck out of Brados’s tavern, but Talan might have worked out the connection at this point.”
“And what do you know about the mole?”
“Meriadec was investigating it before he disappeared,” Nivene says, “but he didn’t think that was related to Talan’s hunt. He also didn’t think the mole was working with the king.”
I frown. “Who, then?”
She takes a bite from her apple and glances back. “He thought Arwenna.”
I stare at the ground to hide my expression from those looking. “Well, fuck. Talan said she’s been missing lately, too. And Maertisa mentioned her name, that she was right about me.”
“If Arwenna has Meriadec, she probably took him to one of her father’s castles,” Nivene says. “The Marquis de Bosclair is one of the wealthiest men in the kingdom. A close ally of the other marquis, Talan’s cousin Lumos. I’m sure he’d love to get his hands on the resistance leader to protect his own position. And obviously, if there’s any chance to connect the rebels to you, they’ll take it.”
“She’s not at Val Sans Retour, but I’m not sure she would take him to any of his castles,” I say slowly. “That’s not her style.”
“Are you suddenly an expert on Arwenna’s style?” Nivene raises an eyebrow.
“Think about it. She tried to poison me and then tried to shoot me with an iron-tipped arrow. She did it herself. She didn’t go to Daddy for help. She’s impulsive and deranged but also ruthlessly independent.”
“Well, maybe the manor belonging to her mother, then,” Nivene says.
Dread ripples up my spine. “Nivene, if there’s a mole, you might be stepping into a trap.”
She takes another bite from her apple. “Well, I see no other option. We have to find Meriadec. And if Arwenna truly has him, we have to make sure she doesn’t torture the truth out of him.” Tossing her apple core toward the forest’s edge, she sighs. “I’ll update you as soon as I can.”
She walks away with a casual wave, looking carefree for the guards.
I glance at my uneaten apple, but I have no appetite for it.
Tension coils through my chest. I’m done waiting here.
I pivot and head back to the palace, my feet cold from tromping through the snow.
“Mordred,” I mutter, “if you’re watching, I need you to stay with me.”
I have no way to know if he’s actually watching, but I suspect my father listens to all my conversations with Nivene. And right now, I need someone who has eyes and ears everywhere.
I stride inside the palace, my guards following me at a respectable distance, and march through the halls to the king’s large library. Talan’s secret sanctuary doesn’t have what I’m looking for. As I step inside, the smell of leather-bound books wraps around me. Tall shelves crammed with old tomes stretch from the floor to the vaulted ceiling.
A beautiful white-haired librarian carries a stack of volumes up a spiral staircase. In the center of the library, three more librarians are furiously working at a long oak table illuminated by candlelight, their pens scratching over parchment. As I walk closer, they lift their eyes, and their pens go still.
“Your Highness. What a delightful surprise,” one of them stammers.
The three of them stand and bow, one of them spilling his black ink on the table in the process.
“Oh, don’t trouble yourselves,” I say with a small smile. “But I’m thinking of going on a hunting trip with the prince. Take his mind off the affairs of the state for a few days. Do you have a map of the lands around here?”
“Of course, Your Highness, but why not consult the prince himself on the matter?” the first librarian replies. “He knows all the best lands for hunting?—”
“I prefer it be a surprise.” I purse my lips in majestic displeasure, giving him a cold stare.
“Of course, of course! A map, you say?” He walks over to a nook stacked with parchments and retrieves one of them, then unrolls it on a small desk, revealing a gorgeous map. “These are the lands within a five-day ride from here.”
“Great.” I snatch the parchment, to his apparent horror. “Where can I study this in privacy?”
He leads me to another nook at the rear of the library. My guards remain by the door, boredom etched on their faces. As I sit at the table, I give the scribe a dark look, and he scuttles away. When he’s gone, I unroll the map and stare at it.
“Okay, Mordred,” I mutter. “You’ve been following Arwenna.” I know he was because he warned me about her poisonous cake. He must have heard her talk about a lot of things. “Is there a private location she’d take Meriadec to if she had him?” I whisper.
I wait, slowly starting to feel ridiculous. As far as I know, I’m talking to myself.
“Anywhere that pops to mind?” I continue desperately. “A summer house she bragged about? A place where she goes to have affairs? There must be something. If she has Meriadec, she will find out about me. They’ll kill me. You’ll never get your revenge on Auberon. And you’ll never see me again.”
I wait, burying my nails into the palms of my hand. Come on, Mordred. You must be listening. Come the fuck on…
A flutter. Mordred’s silver moth materializes, twirling in the air around me. It flaps around the map, its silver wing touching Val Sans Retour, then shifts and settles in a patch of green on the eastern edge of the map. Vorgium , the map says the forest is called, and it’s not far from the castle.
I exhale. The map’s scale is too large. The moth is covering an area that spans about twenty miles, and I need more details.
“Wait here,” I whisper to the moth. As I gently lift the map, the little silver spy flutters away and lands on a nearby shelf.
I walk over to the scribe and ask for a detailed map of the Vorgium Forest, and soon, I’m at the table again, inspecting the new map unrolled on the table.
I glance up at the moth. Where? I mouth.
The moth flutters around again, then lands on a section of the forest near the shore of a lake named Gorre.
“Here?” I whisper, pointing to it. “Are you sure?”
It lifts its wings once in assent, the closest way a metallic moth can come to a shrug, I suppose.
“Right,” I mutter.
Now I just need to lose my retinue of guards, get out through one of the gates alone, and ride all the way to Vorgium without a single person noticing.