The Shadow Queen (11 page)

L
EO WAS GONE.

Three simple words that tore into the foundation of Lorelai’s life and left ruins in their wake.

Leo was gone.

Her best friend. Her greatest antagonist and staunchest ally. Her brother, who’d believed in her with every fiber of his being.

And whom she’d failed to protect.

She stumbled over the bumpy roots of a sugar maple and fell to her knees. The forest was too quiet, the world too vast, without Leo in it.

He was gone.

Something sharp and hot surged through Lorelai’s chest and seized her throat. She curled over her knees, dug her gloved fingers into the ground, and opened her mouth in a soundless wail as tears streamed down her face. Grief swelled within her, pressing against her skin until she thought she would burst from the strength of it. It stole her voice, her breath, and gave her agony instead.

She hadn’t saved him, and now he was gone.

Sobs shook her, and she let them take her. Let everything Leo meant to her cut her into pieces.

Gone.

Not gone . . .
taken
.

Slowly her tears dried, and the awful strength of the grief that consumed her gave way to one burning thought.

Lorelai hadn’t lost Leo.

Irina had taken him, just like she’d taken their father.

Just like she’d taken Ravenspire.

Without Irina, Lorelai and Leo would be happily arguing in the castle while her father ran his kingdom with a firm and steady hand.

Irina was to blame for the wreckage that surrounded Lorelai’s life. For the woman who’d killed her children to spare them starvation. For the mob of desperate peasants that had attacked the Eldrian king. For the death of Ravenspire.

For Leo.

It was time Irina paid the price for all she’d taken.

It was time Lorelai stepped out of the shadows and became the queen Ravenspire needed—the queen Leo and Gabril had always believed she could be.

She got to her feet, a hard, bright light of purpose burning in her heart. She was through hiding. Through robbing coaches and cautiously working her way up to someday confronting the queen.

She was a strategist. A planner. And she could be as daring as her brother when she had to be. Irina would rue the day she’d ever set foot in Ravenspire.

But first, no matter the cost, she was going to save the only family she had left.

She took off running east toward the distant campsite where Gabril lay dying.

Lorelai stumbled into their campsite at sunset the next day, her legs shaking, her body shivering since she’d lost her coat on a rooftop in Nordenberg, and her eyes burning from tears. Her boots crunched over dead leaves and brittle pine needles as she approached the tent where she’d left Gabril. It was dark. Silent.

Miserable heat spread from her chest to her throat, and she swallowed against the grief that thickened in her throat.

Was she too late?

Her heart aching, Lorelai lifted the tent flap quietly and braced herself for what she’d find.

It was empty.

She froze, and the ache of loss disappeared beneath a rush of heart-pounding fear. Where was he? Had someone taken him?

Lorelai dropped the tent flap and whirled to scan the area, trying hard to see a human-sized shape in the gathering dusk. Her hands shook as she called out, “Gabril? Are you here?”

There was no reply.

Sasha? Sasha!

For one agonizing moment, silence met Lorelai’s words. She was already moving, searching the ground beside the tent for any signs that could tell her where Gabril had gone.

Help. Hurry, hurry, hurry.
The cold, precise thoughts of her bird arrowed into Lorelai’s mind, and she wanted to cry in relief.

Where are you?
She sent back.

Sun.

Sun. Lorelai glanced at the quickly darkening sky and started
moving west, following the last trace of sunlight as it slowly disappeared from the mountain. She walked for several minutes before she heard a soft thump-thump of wings, and her gyrfalcon swooped through the trees and perched on her shoulder.

Where is he?
Lorelai asked as Sasha burrowed her face against Lorelai’s neck, her beak scraping against the princess’s skin.

Follow.
Sasha’s talons dug into Lorelai’s shoulder as the bird pushed into the air and flew southwest.

Lorelai ducked low-hanging branches and skirted clumps of withered underbrush as she struggled to keep up with Sasha. Her heart thundered in her ears, but it couldn’t drown out the terrible thought that Gabril might already be dead.

Her bird crested a small hill and disappeared over the other side. Lorelai raced forward, afraid she was going to lose sight of Sasha in the shifting shadows of the day’s twilight. She reached the top of the hill, and then skidded to a stop as she saw Gabril lying on his back, his eyes closed, his chest bare despite the frigid weather.

“Gabril.” She choked on his name as she ran to him and dropped to her knees. He was burning up with fever, she could feel it even through her gloves, but his teeth were chattering. His eyes remained closed, his breathing shaky and faint.

She looked at Sasha.
How did he get here?

Sasha cocked her head, her bright black eyes catching the first hint of starlight.
Walk. Run. See things.

What things?

Things not there.
An image of Gabril, wild-eyed and afraid, staggering from the tent, batting at the air as if fending off a foe, and then running in short, halting steps through the
forest accompanied Sasha’s words.

Lorelai put the image and the words together and came up with the truth—hallucinations brought on by his high fever.

“Please,” she whispered as she laid her head against his shoulder, wincing at the heat of his skin. “Don’t leave me. I have no one else.”

She had no one else. The truth of that statement hit hard, stealing her breath and sending a bright shaft of pain through her chest with every heartbeat.

Her parents were gone. Leo was gone. All she had was Gabril, the man who had protected her and taught her how to protect herself. Who loved her and believed in her and was ready to sacrifice himself for her.

Lorelai wished with everything in her that she could sacrifice herself for him instead.

“Ada?” Gabril’s voice was nothing but a wisp of sound floating past his lips.

She lifted her head and found him gazing at the sky, a look of longing on his face. She frowned. Who was Ada?

“It’s me,” she said softly. “Lorelai.”

He blinked, a slow, dragging motion as if he barely had the strength to keep his eyes open, and then slowly focused his gaze on her. His smile was full of love and pride and confidence, and it broke her heart.

“My . . . queen,” he whispered.

Lorelai couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe.

His queen, whom he’d sacrificed everything for. Whom he’d rescued, protected, and raised to be the kind of ruler Ravenspire needed.

His queen who hadn’t been able to stand up to Irina long enough to save her brother.

She wasn’t going to make that mistake twice.

“Lorelai.” His voice was nothing but a breath now. “Stronger . . . than you think. Love you,” he whispered, his eyes closing.

Lorelai stared at him, her mouth working, trying to form the words “I love you” in return, but her mind was racing. Only a miracle would save him now, but miracles didn’t happen in Ravenspire.

Miracles didn’t happen, but magic did.

Lorelai tore off her gloves with quick, vicious movements as Gabril’s chest rose sharply, his breathing quick and shallow.

She laid her bare hands against the fevered skin of his chest and immediately felt the heart of him—the core of implacable strength and resolve that fueled him—surge weakly against her palm. It was faint. He was almost gone.

She refused to let him go.

The risk of her touch triggering a latent spell and revealing Lorelai to Irina was a risk she was willing to take.

“Nakhgor.”
Her voice shook, and her fingertips began to itch. “Find the sickness in his blood.”

Gabril’s breath rattled in his throat, and he choked weakly.

“No!” She pressed her hands harder against his chest and felt the sting of magic surge down her veins to pool like lightning in her palms. “I forbid you to die. I forbid it!”

Gabril’s chest rose once more and then slowly deflated until there was nothing but a faint, irregular heartbeat slowly fading away.

“Gabril!” Her tears dried. Her hands stopped shaking. There
was nothing but the burn of magic and a fierce resolve to save him. “
Nakhgor.
Find the sickness in his blood.
Kaz`prin
. Bring it through me and into the ground instead.”

For a moment, her magic seemed to hover against Gabril’s skin, holding fast to the heart of him but refusing to obey Lorelai’s command and enter his body.

Unbidden, she saw a memory of Irina crouching beside Lorelai so she could look the child princess in the eye as she said, “You have to mean it. The heart knows if you are worthy to command it. Allow no doubt. No room for dissent. Speak what you want and mean it with your whole heart, and every other heart will obey yours.”

Lorelai glared down at Gabril’s chest and focused. She was a warrior. A survivor. She was everything Gabril had taught her to be.

She was his queen, and his heart would obey hers.

“Nakhgor. Kaz`prin.”
Her voice rose, filled with grief and power and fury.
“Nakhgor. Kaz`prin.”

His chest shuddered. His heart thumped once against her palm.

She threw back her head as the magic flooded her, as its heat pressed against her skin from the inside out until she thought she might explode from the pain and the freedom of it, and yelled,
“Nakhgor! Kaz`prin!”

Power burst from her palms, pierced Gabril’s chest, and surged into his body, a tide of white light that hurt Lorelai’s eyes when she stared at it in wonder.

The light rushed through Gabril’s veins, and then Lorelai could see his thoughts the way she could see Sasha’s. With Sasha,
Lorelai heard a few words and saw a simple image here and there. With Gabril, it was a flood of memories threaded through with words, sentences like ribbons weaving in and out of a moving canvas. She glimpsed the castle, her mother holding her father’s hand, a pretty woman with dark skin and two young boys on her hips, the cruel slant of Irina’s mouth as she screamed at Lorelai while standing in a pool of the king’s blood, and an old mountain woman whispering that if Lorelai wore her gloves, she would be safe from the queen. The images spun on in rapid succession, but the light had finished scouring Gabril’s blood and was returning to Lorelai bearing every bit of Gabril’s fever and sickness.

As the light surged back into Lorelai, she screamed in agony. Pain was a creature with teeth and talons that raked at her from within. It was heat and swelling and unbearable anguish. Her bones felt like they would dissolve. Like she would split wide open at the seams and come apart.

Gabril’s chest rose and fell in even measures. The arrow wound knit back together, the skin smooth and healthy. His eyes flew open as his princess sobbed in agony, her bare hands still pressed to his chest.

“Lorelai!” He grabbed her arms and sat up, but she couldn’t see him. Couldn’t hear him.

Nothing existed but the unending pain.

She’d told the magic to take the sickness from Gabril, bring it into her, and then send it into the ground.

Why wasn’t it going into the ground?

She gnashed her teeth and then bent double as her stomach clenched.

“No!” Gabril wrapped his arms around her and held her
against him. “Don’t touch the ground with your gloves off, Lorelai.”

Touch the ground.

Her fevered mind latched on to the words as the pain scraped her raw.

The magic was trapped inside her until she released it the same way she’d called it. By touching her palm to the heart of the thing she wanted.

Gabril was rocking her, whispering things she couldn’t hear. She struggled frantically, and he gentled his hold as if to help her get comfortable.

The moment he loosened his grip, Lorelai lunged forward, her breath a ragged sob in her chest, and slammed her open palm down onto the forest floor.

The light exploded out of her hand and plunged deep into the ground beneath the Falkrain Mountains. The pain receded, draining out of her and into the dirt as her magic ebbed. Exhaustion swamped her—a profound weariness that instantly sucked her down into the darkness of sleep as Gabril snatched her away from the ground and desperately tried to shove her gloves back on her hands.

He was too late.

Beneath the surface of the mountain, tendrils of Irina’s magic sent to spy on the outer reaches of her kingdom, wove a web under the land. The threads of Lorelai’s magic struck the web, and in a heartbeat, the princess’s location was on its way to the queen.

T
HE DREAM ALWAYS
began in the same place—on a snow-capped hill overlooking the road that cut through the Falkrain Mountains to join Ravenspire with Morcant. Irina’s legs were knee-deep in snow that crested the fur-topped edge of her boots as she stared at the Ravenspire carriage slowly making its way across the Morcant border, bringing her younger sister, Tatiyana, to their father’s funeral.

In the dream, Irina never opened her mouth. Never spoke the incantor that ripped the fir tree from its roots and sent it plummeting down onto Tatiyana’s ebony carriage. But even if her dreaming mind refused to reenact her sister’s death as it had truly happened, Irina couldn’t escape the truth.

The carriage crumpled beneath the weight of the tree. Her sister’s maid screamed for help. And in her dream, the snow around Irina turned to blood. She sank slowly, the blood an implacable force that demanded its due. When the blood coated her palms, hot and sticky, she felt the thunder of her sister’s
heartbeat pounding against the magic that had taken her life.

Flailing, Irina struggled to keep her palms away from the blood, but the moment she pulled her hands free of it, she sank like a stone. The blood surged over her mouth and nose and covered her head. She remained trapped, her sister’s heartbeat thundering against her ears.

“Irina, wake up. Please. Come back to me.” A familiar voice cut through the dream, dissolving her sister’s heartbeat, and Irina swam sluggishly through thick clouds of gray-black darkness. She was shackled to weariness with chains that felt like the residue of her magic. In her mind’s eye, the chains resembled writhing black snakes—like the snake that had killed Arlen and that she’d thought had killed his children too.

Her heart pounded, and she sucked in a breath as the pain hit—a sharp jolt of anguish that sliced through the darkness of her slumber and dragged her toward the surface.

The clouds shifted and swirled, the weariness tugged at her, and she began to sink again when she felt something new.

A brush of power at her fingertips. An itch of pain that began to burn.

Something was wrong.

Lorelai.

She tore through the heaviness by sheer willpower, and her eyes snapped open as the magic surged through her veins.

It took a moment to realize that she wasn’t in Nordenberg where she’d collapsed from the strain of the spell she’d used to catch the villagers who’d tried to run—she was lying on her own bed, propped up on pillows and covered in silk sheets.

How long ago had she been here? Had the girl who’d helped
to rob the garrison already been found?

Was it Lorelai?

Power stung her fingertips at the thought of the princess. Her hands twitched against the silk sheets, but the rest of her was still cocooned in weariness.

She blinked, her eyes feeling scoured with sand, and saw that the sky outside her window was a carpet of stars, that Raz was coiled at her feet, his golden eyes focused on her, and that Viktor was slumped in an armchair beside her bed, his fingertips pressed against his closed eyes, his clothing thoroughly rumpled.

She made a noise, and Viktor’s eyes flew open. He lunged to his feet, his blue eyes finding hers. His shirt was untucked, his collar hanging to one side, and his cravat missing entirely.

Raz slowly uncoiled himself and slithered up the sheets to nestle against Irina’s side.
Long sssleeep. Worry.

Viktor fell to his knees beside the bed and gathered Irina in his arms. Her head tipped against his shoulder, and he buried his face against the crook of her neck as he tightened his hold.

Her hands burned, and the certainty that something had happened filled her.

“I thought you were going to die.” His voice shook.

For a moment, his worry, his desperation, felt like love, and Irina let the warmth of it touch her. But then the burn of her magic surged through her veins, and she struggled to move her arms. To sit up.

Gently, he slid his arms beneath hers and lifted until she was propped against her pillows. She looked away from the searing intensity of his gaze as the magic spread down her arms and
warmed her hands. He sat down on the sheets beside her, placed a finger beneath her chin, and gently turned her face toward his.

“How are you?” he asked.

Maybe it was the unfettered devotion in his actions or the fact that he was the one person she’d never had to bespell to ensure his loyalty. Whatever the reason, Irina found herself saying, “I’m so tired.”

He ran a hand through her hair, tugging gently at the tangles he found. When he reached the base of her neck, he cupped it with his hand and squeezed the tension away.

“You overworked yourself,” he said quietly. “You always do. You act like if you delegate too much, the kingdom will fall to pieces.”

She smiled a little. “I have you to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

His eyes darkened. “The spell you did in Nordenberg . . . that was an enormous outpouring of energy, and it cost you so much.” His voice cracked, and he looked away as he drew a deep breath.

“I’m fine.”

“You are
not
fine. You keep using your magic as if there’s no cost demanded of you, but there is. There is and I can’t . . . you almost died, Irina. I almost lost you this time.” He was back to searing her with his gaze, and an uncomfortable sense of guilt heated her cheeks.

“That’s ridiculous.”

“How would you know? You’ve been unconscious for three days. Three days!” He pulled sharply at his already crooked collar as if it was choking him. “Your heartbeat was irregular. Your
breathing grew so shallow the second day, the physician told me to have the maids pull out the black crepe to make mourning bands for the staff.”

“Well, he was wrong. Remove him from his post and—”

“He wasn’t wrong.” The finality in his voice silenced her. “You expended so much energy and caught one boy. Was it worth almost dying?”

“I had to.” She found the strength to sit up straight and leaned toward Viktor until she could feel the warmth of him against her skin. “Viktor, I
had
to. The rest of the village was loyal to me. They were ready to help me find the mountain girl. But this boy ran. Why would he do that if he wasn’t going to warn her? If he didn’t think she was the princess? I’d lose her and have to start all over, and I
can’t
. If Lorelai is alive, I have to find her and destroy her before she tries to destroy me.”

Slowly, so slowly she could’ve moved away if she’d wanted to, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers. Her body swayed toward him, finding a home against his chest where she fit perfectly within the circle of his arms. Warmth that had nothing to do with the burn of magic rushed through her, sparkling like champagne in her veins, and she grabbed his mangled collar and pulled him closer.

He made a rough noise, tilted her head back, and kissed her with a desperation he only ever showed her when they were alone. Gone was the calm, unflappable Viktor who managed the castle’s affairs with a steady hand. In his place was a man full of fierce longing and need who kissed Irina like she was the air, and he was drowning.

For a few heartbeats, she let herself feel it. Let herself believe
it. This could be hers. All she had to do was say the word, and she wouldn’t be alone.

She wouldn’t be alone, but there would be a price for that. There was always a price. Her father, who loved her sister best, had taught her that. Her uncle, who crushed her dreams by breaking Morcantian protocol that stated the eldest daughter was to be married first and letting Arlen have Tatiyana for his bride instead of Irina, had reminded her. And Lorelai, the little princess with the power so like Irina’s own, had carved that lesson deep into Irina’s heart with the knife of utter betrayal.

She pulled away from Viktor.

He looked at her, the desperate longing still raw in his eyes, and said, “What do you need? Just tell me what you need.”

Her fingertips itched. Her palms burned. The memory of Lorelai’s betrayal obliterated the warmth she’d felt while kissing Viktor, and the awareness that tingled at the edge of her power rushed forward.

Lorelai.

“Bring me my mirror, please.”

The moment her palm touched the mirror’s surface, magic sparked from her fingertips and the swirling gray depths of the mirror began to move faster. Her hands shook, her skin clammy as she gave the command.

“Mirror, mirror, your depths I scry,” she said as power gathered in her palms and leaped toward the glass. “Show me the princess Lorelai.”

The white light of her magic spiraled into the swirling gray of the mirror, and suddenly there she was—lying on a blanket inside a tent, her eyes closed, a black man with his back to the
mirror bending over her, and an enormous gyrfalcon perched just inside the tent’s entrance. Her skin was as white as snow, her lips as red as blood, and her long hair as black as ebony.

“
Lorelai
,” the queen whispered. She looked up at Viktor, her voice shaking. “She’s alive.”