Page 65 of Starchaser
I feel as if my legs have been kicked out from underneath me. The tips of my ears heat, a lump rising in my throat. Mother has lied to me my whole life—I should have known she wouldn’t pick tonight to start telling the truth. To tell me anything. I realize, now, that it wouldn’t matter if I told her about the cure. She cares more about the Order—about the rebellion—than she’s ever cared about me. Even now, she’s only concerned with my ability to fulfill my duties.
Fine, I think. Let her keep her secrets, and I will keep my own. I didn’t need Mother when I defeated the Sylk that killed Owen, and I don’t need her to obtain the cure.
I move toward the exit, my steps nearly as heavy as my heart. Before I crouch to enter the tunnel, I turn to find her staring at the stuffed lion Killian left on one of the crates in the corner of the room, her expression nettled. “You can count on me,captain,” I say, but for the first time in my life, I hate that word. Hate that she’s my captain, rather than just my mother.
As I make my way down the dark tunnel, grief pierces my chest like a shard of ice, and I can’t help but wonder if, were Father here, he would have told me the truth.
I think of Owen and his promises that all would be revealed to me, if only I would join him. And some twisted part of me thinks, if he made me that offer tonight…
Would I take his hand?
As Charlie and Lewis escortme through the castle, my stomach twists and turns with every step we take down the spiraling staircase. Before, meeting Princess Leo was strictly a matter of identifying whether she could be possessed by the queen of the Underlings. Once I did that, Titus made it clear that what happens next is out of my hands. But after my conversation with Mother last night—afterDawnrenderrevealed the Order’s plans to form an alliance with the princess of Hellion—the pressure of striking up a friendship with Titus’s fiancée sits heavily on my chest, a crushing weight.
“Thank the Maker,” Eliza says as we approach the doors to the queen’s drawing room, where she waits alone. “I didn’t want to go in there unarmed.” She loops her arm through mine and winks at Lewis. “I’ll take it from here, boys.”
Lewis blushes, bowing slightly at the waist. “By all means.”
Eliza clears her throat, and the two guards posted at the doors announce our arrival to the women inside. I match Eliza’s stride as we enter the large, domed room, mimicking her upright posture as best I can. Floor-to-ceiling windows line the outer wall of the Queen’s Court, at least twenty feet tall, looking out over the place where the Western Sea meets the unknown expanse of ocean beyond. Sunlight glitters on the waves—water so blue it reminds me of Titus’s eyes.
I blush, glancing at the ceiling to avoid the looks from the other courtiers, their expressions ranging from curiosity to outright contempt. Above, an elaborate work of art decorates the domed surface, depicting winged figures scattered throughout a garden of white roses, covering their eyes with either their hands or their feathered appendages. In the center of the image, a woman kneels, clothed in white, at the foot of a king who appears to glow golden—his aura so bright it’s almost impossible to make out his frame or the crown of stars atop his head.
“Beautiful,” I murmur, allowing Eliza to guide me to our designated seats.
“Tragic,” Eliza whispers. “The woman who painted it, I mean.”
“What happened to her?” I whisper back, aware that Clemson and Davina, seated across the room from us, have begun to whisper, too, cutting their eyes at us as we take our place near the window.
“She was human,” Eliza tells me. “She’d been sold into service here when she was merely thirteen. The rumors say she and the king—who was still only a prince then—had been friends. He was the one who discovered her talent for art.” She glances atthe ceiling, her smile sad, and says, almost to herself, “Perhaps it would have been better if she’d had no talent at all.”
We’re approached by a young servant girl carrying a tray bearing two goblets of wine and a plate filled with tiny cakes. Eliza takes a goblet of wine but declines the cake, and though her smile appears genuine, her lip twitches as she shakes her head.
“You can leave them on the table. Thank you,” she says, and the girl grins slightly at the acknowledgment, placing the tray on the small table between us before scurrying away.
“So? What happened to the artist?” I ask, inspecting one of the cakes before taking a bite. Raspberry filling drips from the warm, vanilla sponge, plummeting toward my lap.
Lightning quick, Eliza’s hand darts out. She catches the drop of jam, almost as if she couldn’t stop herself.
“She disappeared,” Eliza says, wiping her hand on a crisp white linen napkin, staining it red. “Shortly after she painted this room. No one knows what happened to her, and she was never seen again.”
Disappeared. I think about my family—how easy it would be for the king and queen to make any one of them vanish from existence, as if they were never here at all.
I take another bite, this time careful to catch the crumbs with my other hand. “What was her name?”
“Mina,” says a clear, gentle voice.
I follow the beam of Eliza’s kind, welcoming smile to the right of my chair. There, clothed in a blue gown the color of the morning mist, Princess Leo stands, impossibly regal, like the living statue of a goddess.
Margaret mentioned that the queen rarely attended these gatherings, but that Leo often joined them, though she preferred to sitalone near the window, looking out over the city.The servants say she always looks sad, my sister told me this morning.She’s probably homesick.
I’m glad I no longer have a reason to be wary of her, because she might be the only person in this entire palace to whom I can truly relate.
“Mina Avery,” Leo says, turning her gaze to the sea. She’s so still that for a moment, it’s as if she reallyisa statue—a girl cut from marble, her eyes forever mesmerized by the waves and the far-off memory of what lies beyond. “I’m told the queen painted over most of her murals. But the king refused to let her paint over this one.”
“My,” Eliza says, taking a sip from her goblet, “you’ve learned quite a lot during your stay here.”
Leo’s lip quirks then, the ghost of a smirk. “The servants love to gossip almost as much as the nobility.”
Denying the help of one of the guards, Leo drags her chair from its lonely spot a few feet away to sit directly beside me.
