10. My Edge Was on Edge
10. MY EDGE WAS ON EDGE
ELOWYN
With how fond the queen was of her pointless, opulent parties, I’d guessed she would extend the conversation-over-morning-drinks affair into a pompous brunch—drag out the start of the first event so the sycophants mingling around the great salon would have better opportunity to blow even more smoke up her ass.
But the queen appeared downright eager to get started. Excitement danced across her face, pushing her painted lips into a wide smile.
Never in my entire life had I been more wary of a smile.
The unease that had gripped me pretty much since I first met the damn woman simmered in my gut, ready to boil over. Already, the awfulness of Rush’s violation from the night before, coupled with the two murders this morning mere feet from where I slept, had my nerves strung uncomfortably tight. I’d been trying to relax the tension in my shoulders but kept discovering them clenched. Add in my concern for my friends in the Sorumbra, Saffron out of my care until the Nuptialis Probatio was over, and my likely insurmountable duty to save not just an entire kingdom but dragonkind as well, and I was majorly on edge .
By sunshine, my edge was on edge .
After the queen pointed that frighteningly delighted smile at me a few times, I was ready to jump out of my skin, and if not, to murder everyone in this entire salon save Rush, Azariah, and Octavia. I discovered my fingers inching toward the blade tucked inside my bustier before I noticed and stilled them.
Truly, more than I’d ever wished for anything, I longed to scoop up everyone I cared about and escape this horrible palace forever. I wanted never to hear mention of Embermere again. Never to imagine what the queen’s vicious brutality might conjure up next. And never to see my father again when the man couldn’t bother himself to lift a single languid finger to help a damn thing, not even his daughter.
Azariah cleared his throat another time in a soft whinny, drawing my attention back to him. The unisus was jerking his large head to and fro more often than necessary. Magnificent, he most definitely was, but he wasn’t all that subtle. The jumpiness of those big eyes of his told me he wanted to never again lay eyes on the queen as much as I did.
After a quick glance at her that wasn’t as furtive as I suspected he’d intended, he announced, “During the duration of this first event of the Nuptialis Probatio, you will be isolated from each other as well as from Drake Rush Vega. Because the event will test the knowledge you already possess, you are not to be influenced or aided by anyone else.”
As I had perhaps a hundred times already today, I glanced toward Rush. With the queen in the room, he’d abandoned his seat and stood facing her. Though I willed him to meet my stare, urging him to remember our connection until my desire felt strong enough to touch him, he kept his focus trained only on her. Since discovering that he’d forgotten our time together, disappointment had become a constant companion. And yet it surged so intently that I had to tamp it down anew.
My mate stood mere paces away from me, but I may as well have still been in the Sorumbra for how distant he felt. He’d clung to me in despair a few short hours ago, what seemed like entire ages now, his touch a brittle, phantom recollection.
“You’ll enter one of five rooms to take your turn,” Azariah was saying. “When you’ve finished your test and you emerge, you’re not to discuss it with anyone else. Her Majesty does not want the results of the test corrupted.”
I’ll just bet she didn’t…
No one else could possibly be buying this fair and impartial queen bullshit, could they?
A scan of the other contestants revealed only that they wouldn’t meet my eye either. Even Octavia kept her attention forward though she had to have felt my stare on her face. While I’d been looking at Rush, she’d carved out a few extra feet between us.
I couldn’t decide. Was she as na?ve as I believed she was? As Rush did? Why, then, did her actions seem inconsistent? One minute she was willing to appear friendly with me in the open, the next unwilling to be associated with me.
“While you wait for everyone else to finish,” Azariah continued, “you may enjoy an exhibit Her Majesty has generously set up for you in the Silver Salon of Rarities and Curiosities.”
Several of the competitors gasped and hummed appreciatively. A smattering of applause followed. The queen’s smile tipped upward, and I decided definitively that smiles were the most frightening of all her looks. I preferred murder on her face to this. At least murder I knew how to respond to.
“When every contestant has finished, you’ll be summoned back here, where Her Majesty will announce your point totals along with the winner of the event.”
A wave of enthusiastic chatter circled my fellow competitors.
“Whoever wins will be one step closer to becoming the next crown princess, and wife to Drake Rush Vega,” Azariah added with a smidgen of coyness to his voice that I instantly held against him. “Subject to Her Majesty’s approval, of course.”
“Of course,” parroted Natania, crown princess of suck-ups, sweet as syrup .
“During the test, you may use every tool and speck of knowledge at your disposal,” Azariah said. “Remember, contestants, fortune honors the courageous. However, if you find yourself unable to complete the test, be it due to injury, cowardice, or imminent death, you may call out for mercy to Her Majesty and someone will come retrieve you. You will, of course, be disqualified from the Nuptialis Probatio. You may, however, leave with your life.”
What kind of holy hellballs fucked-up test would this be?
“Is there anything else you wish me to add, Your Majestic Majesty?”
Majestic Majesty . I couldn’t even try to hold back that eyeroll. No one noticed as the queen smiled demurely and magnanimously—I bit down on an incredulous snort—first at the unisus, then out at her audience.
“No, Azariah, nothing more for now.”
She glanced at Rush, then at the nineteen females who weren’t me. Her gaze slid across their rapt faces beneath their brightly colored, towering hair, skipping over me as if I weren’t even there.
“This is your opportunity to prove to me that you’re worthy of becoming heir to my crown, so don’t waste it. The rule of Embermere requires a vast array of skills and talents. This is your chance to show me yours. Show me what you’re made of. To rule is to have grit and perseverance and the sheer nerve to do what is required. Sometimes, you won’t like what you have to do. But you’ll have to do it regardless. The well-being of the kingdom and its fae is all that matters.”
Again, she gazed upon her audience as if I weren’t there at all.
After a beatific nod that incongruously seemed at home on the same person who had no reservation about ordering heads separated from the bodies of her subjects, in a serene yet strong voice, she said, “May your ancestors cheer you on from the Etherlands, and may you draw first blood.”
“Draw first blood?” I muttered to myself as the others thanked her for her benevolence or some other dragonshit. What level of fuckery was I about to walk into? I yearned for my throwing knives as if they were missing limbs.
Apparently hearing me over the gratitude of the others, Octavia took another few steps away, positioning herself closer to the other competitors than to me. When my brow arched at her in question, she looked pointedly in the opposite direction.
What of our “promises” to each other? We’d made them only minutes before.
Now Rush and I were the only ones to stand apart from the others.
Alone.
At the mercy of a smiling psycho in a crown.
“Begin,” she called out.
Five doorways limned by a silver light materialized behind her, halfway between her throne and the back wall of the great salon. They floated a few inches from the floor.
A communal awed murmur swept the room, and I was astounded to discover myself contributing to it. In Nightguard, I’d never dreamed of this kind of magic.
Creeping, winding, silver vines demarcated the thresholds. Bright silver flowers that seemed a cross between roses and lilies bloomed along the vines, free of thorns. They seemed to shine from every part, as if light were illuminating them from all sides at once. It was so bright, I had to squint against the glare to discern the details.
The doorways the vines marked, however, were so dark that no light reached them, or if it did, the darkness swallowed it right up. The brightest bright beside the darkest dark, in stark juxtaposition to each other—what a fitting entrance to the queen’s first test. On the exterior, she appeared so beautiful, but her insides were as dark as the entrances beckoning us forward.
“Who is brave enough to go first?” Azariah asked in a deep rumble that reminded me of a bray when it was usually all too easy to forget he wasn’t a man.
For several long moments, no one answered. The doorways were strange and oddly mesmerizing. But the queen was still behind them. That depth of darkness seemed precisely the kind that could swallow up a person’s essence and never return it—not even to the Etherlands or Igneuslands.
When the queen leaned to one side of her throne and tsked , Natania hurried to say, “I will go, Your Majesty.”
The queen’s smile was once more delighted as she pointed it at her favorite princess hopeful. “Natania, why am I not surprised you’re the bravest among them?”
Even though I realized I was rising to the queen’s bait that I was reacting to the suggestion that Natania was better than me, that she was more deserving of Rush than I was, I couldn’t stop myself.
“I’ll go,” I said.
The queen’s smile remained, but it froze atop her blood-red lips, brittle and glaringly fake. “Wonderful,” she eked out.
Finally, she met my stare. I refused to look away from it, even as three more females volunteered.
That’s right, bitch. I’m not afraid of you . I willed my thoughts to scroll across my expression, and for her not to sense the lie among them.
I didn’t want to fear the queen, surely I didn’t. Zako’s voice surged through my memories, unbidden, to remind me, Fear is a lethal weakness. You must banish fear from your thoughts at all costs.
But whenever I looked at her, I saw not just the woman but her power and cruelty. How easily she could end every person and creature I’d grown to love. How easily she could steal away my mate and our connection, so wonderful I’d never dared dream it could happen to me.
The more I gained and the more I loved, the more fear and faith warred within me. The more fleeting moments of faith became, the more I feared faith might not be enough to lead me—us—to banish the darkness from the Mirror World.
Fear shook me to my core as I marched through the throng of females, allowing them to step aside and make way for me. I didn’t even glance at Rush. I didn’t need any more reminders of all I might lose, or all I’d already lost.
With my eyes narrowed on the center doorway and its beckoning, terrifying darkness, I didn’t wait for anyone or anything before I stepped through, and left the world I knew behind.