CERIDWEN LAUNCHES AHEAD,leading the way back through the rows of wine—and toward the scream. Thoughts leave me, giving way to instinct as I dash behind her.
Theron’s shout fades in the ageless silence of the cellar. The last time I heard him yell like that, we were in the throne room of the Abril palace, Angra standing over him, snapping his ribs one by one with the Decay—
Maybe some spark of memory lingers from my panic attack. Maybe Theron screaming in the darkness of Juli is too close to Theron screaming in the darkness of Angra’s palace. But as Ceridwen flies around a corner and slams to a halt, I spin past her, worry fading behind the focus that builds in my mind.
The stairwell opens two rows over, hazy light from the sconces on its wall filtering into the cellar. My eyes fix ona figure pressed against the left side of the wine shelves before us. It only takes one beat of recognition for me to know it’s him—the gold and green on his jacket—and I pin my body in front of Theron, instinct throbbing at how weaponless I am. Defenseless, again, forced to just watch as—
But there is no threat here.
I release my breath in short bursts, sweat pouring in freshly awoken rivers down my body with each passing second that I survey the shelves, the floor, even the ceiling.
Theron touches my shoulder and I immediately whirl, assessing him for injuries.
Blood gleams on his hand like a beacon, glistening and fresh, sending a sharp spasm of concern through me.
He shakes his head. “No, it’s not mine. When I realized you left, I came looking for you and . . .” His words scratch against a dry throat and he lifts his blood-covered hand to point at the mouth of this row, to a spot where neither Ceridwen’s lantern nor the staircase’s light reaches. “I tried to help him, but he was already dead.”
I face the end of the row, heart rate slowing, limbs unwinding.
It all feels like it’s happening at the edge of a dream—the Cordellan soldiers who rush down the staircase, holding lanterns that turn this dim cellar as bright as day, making every shadow slither away from the light. The relief that someone else heard Theron’s scream; someone else couldhave helped him if I hadn’t been here. Or if I had been, but failed, anyway.
All of it falls away when I drop to my knees next to the man. He isn’t Summerian—the light from the Cordellan lanterns flickers on his face, revealing hair that hangs in matted black tendrils around olive skin, curling over a brandedSon his left cheek. He looks with glassy hazel eyes at the rows of dusty wine bottles, unaware of the glistening blood wrapping around his throat in a gruesome collar. Heat wavers off his body, the warmth of fading life, and his blood hasn’t yet dried, gleaming in a vibrant ruby hue.
He’s only been dead for minutes.
I stand, hand to my mouth. He was murdered while we were down here. Anguish sticks to every muscle until my hand drops, useless. Where is he from? Autumn? No, his eyes are too light. Ventralli? Oh, please don’t let him be Ventrallan—Theron is half Ventrallan, and I don’t know what that would mean for him, seeing one of his mother’s countrymen reduced to this.
“My queen?” Garrigan tugs at my arm, trying to ease me away from the body.
I push past him, one of my hands in a fist, the other bearing down so hard on the key’s chain that the metal threatens to puncture my skin. Theron wipes the man’s blood off his hand with a rag, his soldiers asking him the same kinds of questions Garrigan quietly whispers to me: “Are you all right? Are you sure?”
I can’t bring myself to ask if the man is Ventrallan. If Theron hasn’t realized that, I don’t want to point it out. Maybe he didn’t see the man’s features in the dark. Maybe he won’t look, and he can just assume the victim is Summerian.
Not that that makes the death any less jarring.
Ceridwen is the only one who doesn’t seem to care about any of the living. She peeks around us, expression solemn with expected dread—until she sees the man’s face.
She staggers back, dropping her lantern, the metal cage bouncing at her feet.
“Princess?” I start, but she spins away, fighting for composure at the edge of the torches’ light. Does she know him? Or is she just upset by his death?
I look at him again. This isn’t the slave who helped her, and I sigh relief. But still—who was he?
“Well,thiscertainly puts a damper on the party.”
My shoulders tense and I glance back to see Simon at the end of this row, just beside the man’s body. Half a dozen courtiers circle him, none of them guards, most clutching goblets of wine and watching us as if we’re another act arranged for their entertainment.
Ceridwen stalks toward him, and I grab her arm before I can consider why. “You did this—” she snarls at her brother, but catches herself. Her gaze drops to my hand on her arm and she yanks away, toward the rows beyond.
Simon swaggers forward, his orange silk shirt catchingsheens of light, his conduit emitting a hazy scarlet glow as he swings his arm through the air in something like a dance. He stops just before me, eyes swimming in a sea of swollen veins and alcohol-induced redness.
“Winter queen,” he starts, dipping forward. “Why did you come to Summer, if not to partake in all we have to offer? Surely not for—” His eyes shift to the body and his air of drunkenness unfolds to reveal someone observant, calculating. Deadly.“This.”
It’s an act. He may be drunk, but he’s no less in control of his kingdom than Noam is of Cordell.
The realization sickens me even more. Because he’ll remember I vanished from his celebration; he’ll remember that Winter affronted Summer.
And he’ll remember that he found me, down here, in his wine cellar, with a dead body.
