The queen was leaning on one of the armrests with her night-black gown draped over her slender, crossed legs. Besideher, Elora noted a blond-haired, blue-eyed young man. His golden, gleaming armor made him seem out of place in such a dark and dreary room, but he held himself with an air of authority, as if he belonged there more than any of them.
“I don’t believe we’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.” The queen’s saccharine voice echoed around the hall. She cocked her head to one side as she took in the sight of Elora. “I’m Queen Signe, and this is Prince Leighton, heir to the Irongate throne.”
The queen paused long enough that Elora realized she was expecting something from her in return. A response. A gesture. It had been so long since Elora had found herself back in a royal court, that it took her a moment to dust off the cobwebs to remember the expected decorum.
Stiffly, she bowed. “Pleased to meet you, your highnesses.” Her voice was so raspy, she almost didn’t recognize it.
“The pleasure is ours.” When Elora came back up, there was a hint of pride etched in the queen’s cracked porcelain smile. “Thank you to both of you for joining me this day?—”
“I wasn’t aware we had a choice,” is what Elora thought she heard the prince grumble, but from this distance, and with the crackling of torches beside her, it was difficult to say for certain.
If the queen was offended, she didn’t let it show.
“I’ve summoned you both to propose a truce. As you’re well aware, our lands have been…at odds for a number of years now. When Caelora fell, we inherited the title of enemy to the Ashen by default. They had been our allies, and we intended to aid and support them until King Everard could return to his throne. But I fear that has become increasingly unlikely.”
Something about the queen’s actions, the exaggerated shift of her tone and expressions, seemed fake to Elora. Perhaps it was just the dim lighting, or the fact that she wasn’t used to the mannerisms of Signe’s people, but whatever it was put Elora onedge. Made it difficult to focus on what the queen was saying, let alone to anticipate what she was leading up to—which certainly would be something dreadful if they had brought Elora all the way out of her dungeon.
A muscle ticked in the prince’s jaw. “Increasingly unlikelyhow?”
Queen Signe inhaled deeply, as if it brought her immense pain to relay whatever information she was about to share with them. “I’m afraid the Sky-Blessed have sent me a vision. King Everard will—he will fall by the year’s end. Our own King Ulfaskr as well.”
Elora tried to keep the equal amounts of shock and elation from her face. King Everard was the man who’d sentenced her in Caelora, while King Ulfaskr was once the reigning ruler of Irongate, and although Elora had no personal encounters with him, his reputation for cruelty preceded him.
If both of them fell, they would become the first of the cursed queens and kings to succumb to the dark magic that had spread across the kingdoms, as far as Elora knew.
She had a million questions but didn’t muster a single one. Silence had been trained into her.
“How will they fall?” Leighton growled, a vein in his forehead throbbing. This was his father they were talking about, King Ulfaskr, a man who’d been cursed into a beast and sequestered from his people ever since. Or at least, that was what Elora had overheard during her years of captivity here. “How will my father die?”
“It was unclear,” Queen Signe answered. “I only saw his corpse. It was dreadful. He was so broken and?—”
With hands firmly planted on his hips, Prince Leighton began pacing the dais. “But we can stop this. You said in your vision it would happen within the year, so we still have time.”
The queen looked upon him pityingly. “I’m afraid not. KingEverard has a year. Ulfaskr’s death came much sooner. Before the first hints of winter, I believe.”
When he reached the wall, Prince Leighton slammed a fist upon the stones. The curtains covering the floor-to-ceiling windows shook, a few slivers of moonlight seeping into the dark throne room.
The queen flinched out of the way of them, hissing at Leighton to be more careful.
Elora had heard about Queen Signe’s plight from some of the other prisoners as well, that she refused to leave the castle and step into the light of day for fear of the transformation it would wrought upon her. But Elora hadn’t believed them until just now. After all, that was unheard of with the curse that had befallen the kingdoms. All the other monarchs were true beasts with no human form, not something in between like Signe was.
Once the curtains resettled, the queen straightened her gown with the flat of her hands, sitting taller again.
“As I was saying, you have both been summoned here today because our people are in need of a truce. Two of the most powerful kingdoms of Grimtol will soon lose their reigning rulers, and that would leave us vulnerable to any attacks from Eynallore.”
In another life, Elora would’ve protested. The people of Eynallore—herpeople—weren’t malicious fighters and brutes. If anything, they’d been begging for peace for decades while the rest of Grimtol kept capturing and torturing them.
But Elora had been locked away for the last couple decades. There was no telling how much had changed, especially after the Cursed Night. Perhaps the people of Eynallore had grown desperate.
Leighton spun around from the wall, his flaxen locks springing around his pinched face. “What are you proposingthen?”
“A unification through marriage,” the queen said simply.
Elora almost fell over.
She didn’t understand. Or she had clearly misheard the queen. Because there was no way she could possibly be suggesting that Elora marry the gleaming prince of Irongate, not while she was standing before them in rags and covered in her own filth and grime.
“Are you mad?” Leighton bellowed, storming across the dais to the side of the throne. He gripped the armrest so tightly, his knuckles whitened as he towered over the queen and bellowed. “I can’t marry her! She’s tainted—an Ashen. One touch would kill me!”
