12. Chapter 12
Michaela
T he flame flickered as Dahlia touched the match to yet another candle’s wick.
“It looks like a cathedral in here.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Aren’t you two worried about starting a fire?” Another cloud of smoke hit my nose, earthy and pungent. I waved it away and frowned. “Are you almost done with that, Sadie?”
She raised the smoking bundle of sage overhead and waved it back and forth as though she was trying to get all the way to the rafters in my room. “You saw her. An evil spirit entered Esme’s body. Without ritual cleansing, any one of us could be next.” She pointed the smoldering sage at me. “You don’t know how to do this, so you’re practically a helpless lamb. You should be thanking me right now.”
Dahlia lit another candle on the nightstand. “And the flames frighten the Eonix away so they can’t possess your soul.” She blew out the match in her hand. “Plus, it’s pretty.”
Their superstitions got under my skin. Yes, I saw Esmerey. I couldn’t stop seeing Esmerey. Something had taken over her, yes, but I didn’t think it was an evil spirit. That bug bit her only a few minutes before she had the reaction. Why wasn’t anyone talking about that? The whole event, her sudden illness, the way she fell apart, it felt off, and yet everyone accepted it as if it was normal. This country and their irrational beliefs.
“Can’t you feel the energy changing?” Sadie spun once, smiling for the first time since she knocked on my door an hour ago. “It’s so much lighter in here.”
I wanted to disagree with her assessment. It didn’t feel much lighter, but it definitely felt ten degrees warmer with all the candles burning. As soon as they left, I planned to blow them all out and open the window. I would take windchill over burnt leaves. I needed to think. I wanted to put together everything that had happened. In my gut, I felt like this whole thing was… targeted. But who would attack Esme?
“Would you like me to set out a dress for you, Lady Michaela?” Dahlia abandoned her candles and started for the armoire. “You have your date in a couple of hours.”
The air instantly thickened with tension. Things were great with Sadie, as long as we avoided the topic of the prince we were both dating. She stalled. Smoke trailed in tendrils, rising upward with every passing silent second.
“Just the two of you?” Sadie couldn’t mask the pain in her voice. “What am I saying? There’s only two of us.” She snapped back to thinking and waved the sage again. “That will be lovely, won’t it?”
“We’re old friends.” Was I really trying to assuage my competition’s fears? “It’s not going to be romantic.”
She turned away. “Time will tell.”
Obviously, she had her own opinion.
I had so few friends in the country, I hated to lose even one. Words jammed in my throat as I tried to formulate something that would restore our friendship again. “Sadie, I—”
A knock at the chamber door cut me short. If they were coming to get me for the date, they were at least two hours early. Sighing, I apologized to Sadie and went to open the door.
“M’lady,” Bishop bowed the moment the door cracked open, “I come with a message from your belo—”
“Oh look, it’s Bishop.” I spoke loudly to drown out the rest of his sentence. Shooting him a hard stare that hopefully said: Shut up before they hear you, without any words. I opened the door wide and welcomed him inside. “Come on in, Bishop.”
“Thank you, Michaela.” He said my name like it was unnatural. “Why on earth are you talking like that? It’s not like…” He stepped over the threshold and, like the sun rising, realization dawned on him as soon as he saw Dahlia and Sadie. “Well now, it’s a regular slumber party, innit?” A crooked grin told me I didn’t want to read his thoughts. “Fancy a pillow fight, ladies? I can take the pictures for posterity’s sake.”
I cleared my throat. “You said something about a message?”
“Ah, yes.” He shook his head as if he needed to Etch A Sketch some mental picture away. With a flick of his wrist, he extended the envelope. “I bear bad news, I’m afraid. His Royal Highness won’t be able to join you tonight. The date has been cancelled.”
I stared at the envelope, disappointment sharp in my gut. “Really?”
“Oh, I’m so sorry for you.” Sadie frowned, but I sensed her relief. “I had the best time with him on our date. I really wanted that for you.”
If I opened my mouth, nothing good would come out… But honestly, did she have to twist the proverbial knife in my heart?
“I’m sure it’s in the note.” Bishop nudged my hand. “You should read it.”
Suspicion pricked my instincts. Last time Fitz sent a note, there were coded instructions to meet him in the passage. Maybe he’d done it again. I hooked my finger into the gap in the seal and popped it open. Sliding the card out, I read his words.
First right and straight on until the lantern light.
Midnight.
Once more, next to the embossed frog on the stationery, he’d drawn three horizontal lines to indicate the key to the secret passage. He wanted to meet me again, but I wasn’t sure what it meant.
“What does it say, Lady Michaela?” Dahlia pressed her lips together as if fighting back tears. “Was he called away on a matter of business? Or is he with the king?”
I shook my head. “The production crew, the schedule isn’t working out tonight so they’ve cancelled.”
That didn’t sit well with Sadie. “Surely, they’ve been promoting it. They wouldn’t stop on account of a few crew being gone.” She started my way, hand outstretched. “Let me see it. Maybe you misunderstood.”
Before she could take it, Bishop snatched it from my grasp. “Yes, let us see what it really says here.” He made a show of reading what looked like a full paragraph with the way he drew it out. Once finished with his act, he scoffed. “You thought you’d trick us, didn’t you, Miss Caldwell ?” He waved the card in the air as he turned away from me. “The real truth is much worse. Almost incriminating.”
Where was he going with this? Was Bishop going to rat me out?
He pointed at the row of candles that lined the windowsill, seemingly distracted for a moment. “Love this whole cathedral bit you have going on with this ambiance, by the way. Super macabre and just a little bit Poe. I expect a raven to land on the turret at any second and start in with the third stanza.”
Sadie’s stare bounced between Bishop and me, looking for answers before she blurted out. “What? What does it say?”
“Oh!” Bishop pretended as though he’d forgotten. “Merely that he had planned to send her home at the last choosing ceremony and Esmerey’s sickness interrupted his plans.” He let his hand with the card flop to the side, limp and uninvolved with the story. “Yes, they are friends, but friendship isn’t enough to carry a marriage.” Using his other hand, he cupped his mouth as though divulging a secret. “He should have learned that with Gwendolyn, yeah?”
“I don’t believe you.” Sadie took a couple steps in his direction. “Let me read it.”
Before she took another step, the card caught fire. Bishop’s lazy posture had brought it entirely too close to the candle’s flame. “Oh! Oh my!” He waved the card, but it only increased the flame. “What do I do?”
“Drop it!” Dahlia yelled. “Stomp on it.”
“Yes! Great idea!” Bishop agreed. “Put it out the window. Excellent!”
“No.” Sadie rushed forward, but he had already unfastened the latch. At the exact moment she took hold of his arm, Bishop released the flaming piece of paper from the third-story window. Though I couldn’t see it, I imagined the flitting card burning as it fell, leaving nothing more than embers as it landed on the new snow.
“There.” Bishop took hold of the window and pulled it shut. “All better.”
Dahlia and Sadie stared at him with gaping mouths, as if they couldn’t believe what he’d done.
“Well then, big day tomorrow.” He clapped his hands together, then nodded toward the door. “Everyone should get some sleep. Hate to have dark circles under the eyes when you’re named the victor, right, Sadie?”
“Lady Sadira,” Dahlia corrected him. “And it’s not bedtime yet. The sun hasn’t even set.”
“Yes, of course,” Bishop agreed with the slightest bow, ignoring her second point entirely. “I’ll escort you out.” It wasn’t a request. He was letting them know they had to leave. To drive the point home, I fell in step with him and helped usher them out the door.
“Goodnight, Michaela.” Sadie hesitated in the doorway. “I really am sorry about your date.”
This time I actually believed her, and it made the guilt over my secret that much worse.
“It’ll be okay. Thanks for…” I motioned to the room around me, “all this stuff. I feel so much safer.”
“Of course.” She gave a weak smile and slipped into the hall.
Bishop hovered in the doorway, obviously watching until they were out of sight. Leaning forward he said, “It rather smells like someone lit a pond on fire in here if you ask me. Toads and all.”
“That’s the sage.”
“I would stick to lavender, if I were you. Perhaps roses, a favorite of Leo’s.” His nose scrunched. “This is not what I consider the most romantic scent.”
Point taken. I probably needed a shower before my secret rendezvous to get all the cleansing sage smoke off of me.
“Thank you, Bishop.” I squeezed his hand. “For everything.” I hadn’t always appreciated his meddling in the past, but time and time again he’d saved me. No matter what happened with Fitz, I hoped my friendship with Bishop would continue.
“Just so you know,” he dropped his volume even further, “it wasn’t his idea to cancel.” Bishop squeezed my hand back. “It was hers .”
He left me with that. A cryptic message from Bishop to match the one I’d received from Fitz. The door clicked shut behind him. I started blowing out candles, happy I wouldn’t tick off Smokey Bear with a wildfire any time soon.
As I worked my way around the room, my thoughts reviewed what I knew. Obviously, Bishop meant the queen had put a halt on my date with Fitz. I didn’t know why it bothered me at this point. It sure didn’t surprise me.
She hated me.
She wanted me gone.
I was a threat to her carefully laid plans.
As close as I could tell, she would stop at nothing to get to the throne.
At nothing…
I held my breath as I stood over a candle, lost on a thread of thought that felt as fragile as a spider’s web. Earlier, when thinking about Esme, I’d considered the idea that she had been targeted.
Suddenly, that didn’t look so farfetched.
In fact, maybe the bug wasn’t what bit her.
Maybe she was affected by something else, and my brain had just assumed it was a bug.
Maybe the bug was just cover for the real threat.
And if that was true, wasn’t it equally possible that Esmerey was merely an accident?
After all, if the queen wanted to eliminate one person from the competition, it wouldn’t have been Esmerey.
It would have been me.