Page 102 of The Flame King's Queen

Biddy’s movements are growing weaker. Her dress is soaked with blood and it drips from her fingers onto the floor.

“There are others you love, Dragon Witch. I will kill everyone who has dared cross me and continue my reign long after you have all turned to dust.”

The green light fades from Biddy’s eyes, and I’m finally able to move. I pick myself up off the floor and cross the room to her. The knife has fallen from her grasp. There are so many that I don’t know which of her wounds to bind first. With shaking hands, I use her torn sleeves to bandage her wrists.

Through my tears, I tell her, “It’s going to be okay. I’ll get help for you.”

But what help can I summon for wounds as terrible as these when the only healing witch I know is far to the east?

Biddy whispers a word that sounds like, “Car…Caraxmorenas.”

“What does that mean? Is it a spell? Is it a word that the warlocks can use?”

I remember the bead around my neck. I hold it and gasp the summoning charm that the warlocks taught me. There’s a great rush of wind that sends dust and dried herbs into the air, and when it clears, Masters Gaun, Simpkin, and Artor are coughing and waving their hands in front of their faces.

Master Gaun sees me through the dust. “Oh, my. The dust in here. Is that you, Queen Isa—”

I grasp Master Gauns robes and beseech him. “Help her, please. She’s dying.”

He turns to Biddy, and the color drains from his face. Master Artor coaxes me to my feet and draws me away from my crone while Gaun and Simpkin examine her. It only takes them a moment before they turn back to me with grave expressions.

Master Gaun takes my sticky, bloody hand. “I’m so sorry, Queen Isavelle. Mistress Hawthorne has passed on.”

I sink down before her to my knees and sob with my head in her lap. “It’s my fault. It’s all my fault. I should have known that it would target her. I should have protected her.”

“It was the lich, my queen?” Master Simpkin asks.

“It was here. It spoke with her lips, and it said… It said…” I sit up with a gasp. “It’s going to the castle now. It will attack Zabriel. Stesha. Zenevieve. You three must return to the capital at once and protect them until I get there.”

“We can’t, Queen Isavelle. We have not the power to travel instantly such vast distances. The summoning charm works only in one direction. Is this your village of Amriste?”

Zabriel could be in danger at this very moment. That thing could be hurting our child. I grasp a saucer and fill it with water, but I can find no ink. Blood from my fingers turns the water red, and though it breaks my heart to scry with my crone’s blood, I try it anyway. But to scry, I need a clear and calm mind, and I’m filled with too much turmoil to successfully contact my mate.

“It’s useless. I must leave, but before I go, Mistress Hawthorne said something before she died. I think she spoke the words or name of a spell. Caraxmorenas. Does that mean anything to you?”

Their blank faces make my heart sink. “I’m afraid not, Queen Isavelle, I’ve never heard…”

I run for the door. “My bodyguards are in the field below the village with their wyverns. Ask them to take you back to the castle and meet me there, for I must fly straight back home now.”

I call to Esmeral with my mind, and she’s with me in a moment. As we take to the skies, I hear cries of alarm from the wingrunners, no doubt wondering why I’m leaving without them. “Bring the warlocks,” I shout over my shoulder, hoping that Ashton or Fiala hear me.

As I fly east on Esmeral, I hunt through my mind for any way to vanquish the lich. The lead bottle is in my satchel, but even if I’d remembered to take it out at Biddy’s cottage, I don’t know any way to force that thing inside it. I wonder if I’m going to return to Lenhale only to witness the people I love and care about being forced to kill themselves while that thing laughs at me. The timing seems significant. Ravenna and Kane have left Lenhale. I went to Amriste. Was it waiting for the most powerful magic users in the country to leave the capital to begin its attack?

The flight back to the castle has never felt longer.

I picture vividly the lich invading the minds and bodies of innocent people and using them to slaughter unsuspecting victims. Forcing Stesha to hurt Zenevieve and Zabriel to—

I swallow a sob, remembering Sylvi asleep in her cradle the last time I saw her. Small and defenseless, and so fragile.

As I near Lenhale, I see smoke on the horizon. Panic seizes my heart, and Esmeral cries out in alarm. We’re still too far away to see what’s happening, but as we draw close I see the glow of fires in the city and smell the stench of acrid smoke. There are hundreds, even thousands, of tiny figures at the closed city gates, and flashes of evil green magic.

Bells are sounding the alarm. Soldiers are racing along the streets. But where is the dragon army? There should be dozens of dragons in the skies fighting off the attackers. Where is their commander and king, and why isn’t he leading them?

I can feel Esmeral’s panic for Scourge and her hatchlings, but she stays on course and flies straight to the castle instead of the dragongrounds. She drops me within a castle courtyard and then flies away.

Inside the castle, everyone is in turmoil and the stench of fear is in the air. People run this way and that way in panic or huddle in corners weeping. I always took it for granted that the people of Maledin understood instinctively what to do in a crisis, somehow better and smarter than humans. Now I realize that it was Zabriel’s leadership that gave people courage and instilled purpose, because now that he is absent, no one seems to know what to do.

I seize a castle guard by the arms. “Where’s King Zabriel?”

---