Page 60 of Grave Flowers
“Come! They need everyone!”
I jumped to my feet and ran through my chambers to the door. I threw it open and looked out. No one was there, but more panicked voices filled the palace. I followed the commotion. It grew the farther I went, until I joined a stream of people heading in one direction. We went up a flight of stairs and down a wing I’d never been before.
Everyone assembled at the very end. The nobility stood uselessly about while the servants moved this way and that, trying to be helpful. The theater troupe looked terrified but also thrilled. A guard wasposted. He kept everyone back from two elaborate doors, one of which was splintered open.
I spotted Yorick in the milieu and hurried to him. “What’s happened?”
“It’s Queen Gertrude. They broke her door because she was inside alone. Prince Lambert is in the chambers with the physician now.”
“Is she ill?” I asked. She’d been fine only a few hours ago at the party.
“Dead, I think. Apparently, she was screaming … and then she stopped screaming. Never a good sign.”
Dead? Queen Gertrude? My mind whirled. Aeric swept into the hall. Unlike everyone else, he wasn’t in nightclothes. He wore the same attire he had at the party, and his hair had the windswept quality of someone who’d been outdoors and up high. He halted. His eyes moved around the hall, flitting over me before landing on the guard posted outside his mother’s chambers. Thick fear engulfed me, but he didn’t seem to see me or anyone else. For a few moments, he didn’t move, he only stared, as though wishing to forestall the inevitable. Then, reluctance emanating from his every movement, like a man condemned, he walked to the guard.
The guard whispered in his ear. I saw Aeric’s suspicion come true. Anguish filled his face, the sort that you witness only in the exact moment of pain, when there hasn’t been any time to process it or apply any thought to it—the sort of moment when you feel it in the way you would being stabbed. Raw shock, raw pain, raw grief, with nothing to cut against it or save you from it. I almost looked away. The moment was too painful to watch … if it was real. I’d long suspected Aeric was a masterful actor. If Queen Gertrude was dead, Aeric was the most likely culprit, even as he stood there with reddening eyes.
“This wasn’t you, was it?” Yorick whispered to me.
“What?”
“You know … all your murder and mayhem.”
“No, it wasn’t,” I said. Aeric entered Queen Gertrude’s chamber. I had to gain entry as well. “I must go.”
I approached. The guard raised his hand to stop me, but realizing I was Aeric’s betrothed, let me by. I rushed into the chamber. My stomach twisted, threatening to fill my throat with nausea.
Queen Gertrude lay on the ground. She was pale, all color drained. The caverns of her eyes and mouth seemed to float against the whiteness. She stared sightlessly. Even though there wasn’t any life left in her, her face contorted with terror, as though she’d been poured into a mold of fright.
“My love!” Prince Lambert cried. Spittle flung from his lips. He knelt over her. “My love! No! Don’t leave.”
A physician knelt on her other side, his brow furrowed in confusion. The queen was dead … but she bore no wounds. I thought for certain I’d find her stabbed or strangled. Perhaps she’d been poisoned? But even then, poisons left traces: foaming at the mouth, skin turning blue, vomiting. I glanced at her nails. Moonrain, the most discreet of all poisons, still left crescents on the fingernails. She had none. Aside from her terrified expression, Queen Gertrude was completely untouched.
Numbly, I scanned the chambers. She must’ve retreated against the wall and turned away from her attacker because nail scratches slashed the paneling. It was as though she’d been so frightened, she’d tried to claw her way out. What had happened?
I turned back to where she lay, confounded and horrified. I’d thought Queen Gertrude and Prince Lambert were the true powers in Acus, but here she lay, dead.
The physician took her pulse and examined her as the head of the guard moved about the chambers, making certain no one hid in the wardrobe or under the bed. He went from window to window. Every single one was locked, and none of the panes were broken.
“Do you think it was an assassin?” a younger guard asked.
The head of the guard shook his head, wearing the same confusion that the physician did. “If it was, they managed to come and go without a trace.”
I returned my attention to Aeric. He stood back from Prince Lambert, staring down at his mother. His shoulders were slumped, and his head tilted forward, a picture of defeat. The fear captured in Queen Gertrude’s face was alive in me. Aeric appeared defeated, but perhaps this was a moment of triumph. Perhaps it had begun. He’d confirmed his enemies and started killing them—us—off, one by one in secret. Suddenly, for the first time ever, I wished Father was present so he might protect me. He was my only true ally and still a long way off. Until he arrived, I was isolated and vulnerable to the forces around me, and those forces were rising as the wedding drew near.
Aeric knelt on the other side of the queen. At first, I couldn’t comprehend the emotions on his face, so subsumed as I was by terror. Fingers shaking, Aeric took Queen Gertrude’s hand and held it. His eyes reddened more. He swallowed several times. A vague, odd familiarity reached me. I remembered how Yorick had talked about losing his mother. I could see Yorick’s pain in Aeric’s pain, one old and past, one new and present, but both the same. How strange, though, to know it might all be an act. Yet I could believe it. I’d witnessed Inessa practice trembling and weeping. She’d always smirked afterward, even as tears still stained her cheeks.
Aeric’s eyes met mine. Immediately, I shrank against the wall, and he leaned back on his heels. Pain pressed up against his features, as irrepressible as mist against a windowpane. Abruptly, he broke my gaze, rose, and stalked farther into the chamber.
He was a solitary figure. No one came near him.
He was truly alone, as was I.
Chapter
SEVENTEEN
Morn brought uncertainty.
