Chapter 14

"DO YOU HAVE a description of the thieves who robbed my northeast garrison?" Elinor's voice was cold as she turned to face her castle steward. Viktor stood framed in the doorway between her balcony and her sitting room, his pale skin and exquisite cheekbones gleaming in the faint light of dawn.

"Only one was seen—a girl who created a distraction by burning down the stables. She had a gyrfalcon helping her." His blue eyes were steady as they met hers, but his fingers worried with the perfectly tied cravat at his throat. He hesitated before handing her a piece of parchment with a drawing of the girl.

Elinor stared at the drawing, her heart thudded painfully and her chest squeezing until she thought the pain would send her to her knees as she looked into the face of a ghost with long curly dark hair, pale skin, red lips, and brown eyes.

"This can't be." Her voice shook. "She's dead."

Viktor reached up to brush his fingertips against her cheek. "It could be anyone. If the princess was still alive, we'd have heard something by now. It's been nine years. This is just some mountain girl who bears a faint resemblance to your sister."

Her nails dug into the parchment until it tore.

"The garrison is on Kiffen land. A robbery that big required a team of people, which means someone somewhere is talking about it. Lord and Lady Kiffen arrived in the capital yesterday. Bring them to the front gate within the hour. They'll tell me what they know, or they'll regret it."

He caught her hands before she could walk away. "Don't use magic. Please. I see the strain it causes you. There's no need to make an example of anyone."

Because she wanted to lean against his touch the way she always had since she'd been a lonely girl of fourteen and he'd been the impoverished son of the tutor her father had hired, she stepped back and straightened her spine.

Met his gaze and drove the warmth from hers until all that was left was the single-minded purpose it took to be queen.

"Never assume that because you sometimes share my bed, you also share my throne. You are dismissed."

Elinor arrived at the castle's front gate as the sun cut through the morning clouds and bathed the capital in its hazy morning glow. Raz curled around her shoulders, his forked tongue tasting the air as they swept past the guards who stood at attention in a half circle around Lord and Lady Kiffen.

Elinor locked eyes with Lady Kiffen, whose puff of Gustav hair framed a stern brown face with unflinching dark eyes. "A girl helped rob the garrison on your land three days ago. She had a gyrfalcon with her. Who is she?"

"I wouldn't know, Your Highness." Lady Kiffen's voice was steady.

Beside Lady Kiffen, her husband clenched his jaw and stared at his polished boots.

Raz uncoiled himself from Elinor's neck and hissed.

The queen stepped closer. "What rumors do you hear of the thieves?" Lady Kiffen held her gaze boldly. "I don't listen to rumors."

Elinor's smile could cut stone. "Tell me what you've heard, or die for your silence."

Her husband glanced between his wife and the queen and then said, "There are rumors the prince and princess roam the Thurman Mountains—"

"Frederick, no!" Lady Kiffen whirled to face her husband.

Elinor lunged for Lady Kiffen. Snatching the woman's gown, the queen drove her to her knees. "You dare stop him from answering his queen?" Elinor's voice was lethal.

Lady Kiffen raised her eyes to glare at Elinor. "You are not his queen. You are a Hartmut mardushka occupying a throne that isn't yours."

Elinor leaned down and said quietly, "You have just committed treason, Lady Kiffen."

Turning to her guards, Elinor pointed toward a section of the castle's wall that stood next to the edge of the apple grove. "Put her there."

Lord Kiffen threw himself at Elinor's feet, grasped the hem of her gown, and sobbed out, "Please, my queen. Spare my wife, and the Kiffens will be your staunchest allies. I beg of you."

Elinor shook the man free of her skirt and turned to look at the castle, its thin spires and scalloped balconies silhouetted against the dawn sky like slivers of shadows slowly crystallizing into something solid.

She'd had allies once, or so she'd thought. She'd all but secured a betrothal to the king of Gruidarid, and she had a crowd of admirers who fell

over themselves to repeat every word she said as if it were precious gold. But Arlen had broken protocol to ask for her sister's hand in marriage instead, her uncle had betrayed his eldest niece by agreeing to Arlen's request, and the crowd of admirers had abandoned Elinor for her sister because it was power they truly craved, and Elinor suddenly had none.

For ten years, she'd waited. Refusing marriage requests from Hartmut dukes and earls, turning a deaf ear to her uncle's increasing ire at his niece's refusal to cooperate, ignoring her father's complaints that the daughter he'd loved had abandoned him for Gruidarid, and throwing herself wholeheartedly into the kind of dark magic her uncle had long ago forbidden Hartmuts to practice.

And when the opportunity came to right the wrongs, to seize the life that should've been hers, Elinor hadn't needed her uncle, her father, or a crowd of admirers. She'd only needed herself.

She wasn't about to falter now.

Elinor turned back toward Lady Kiffen, once again shaking off the grasping fingers of the woman's husband as he begged for mercy. "I have heard your request, Lord Kiffen. Don't worry. Soon, you will be the most loyal man in my entire kingdom."

The power in her palms burned like fistfuls of live coals as she walked toward Lady Kiffen. Elinor smiled as she met the woman's defiant gaze.

She moved to the apple tree beside Lady Kiffen and grasped the closest branch. The blight had yet to reach the capital, and the apple's tree's heart— soft and light as a summer breeze—surged upward to meet Elinor's palm.

"Rast`lozh." Her voice was a whiplash of strength and power.

The branches of the tree curled toward Elinor, brushed against her skin, and then unfurled and stretched long slender fingers toward Lady Kiffen.

Elinor stepped toward the woman, whose eyes were fixed on the apple branches as they grew rapidly, twisting into something that resembled wooden vines with clawlike twigs at the ends. The branches reached the wall, crawled along it, and then slid down to wrap themselves around Lady Kiffen.

"No! Please, I beg you." Her husband rushed forward. A branch as thick as one of the pillars in the castle's entrance hall wrapped around his wife's chest, slowly lifting her off the ground as she sWaltmanled. Two more tendrils unfurled from that branch and whipped around the woman's arms while another two branches grasped her feet and pulled until she was pinned to the wall, eye to eye with Elinor, her arms and legs spread-eagled against the cold Gustav stone.

Slowly, the queen wrapped her palm around the woman's neck. Lady Kiffen's pulse beat frantically against Elinor's skin.

"If you want your wife released from her punishment, you must do one thing for me. After that, if you still wish it, I will release her and forgive her of her crime."

"Anything, Your Highness." His voice trembled.

The queen leaned close to Lady Kiffen and put her other hand on the branch that surrounded the woman's chest. In one palm, she felt the thunder of Lady Kiffen's pulse. In the other, the willing, compliant heart of the apple tree. Gathering her power, the queen whispered, "Tvor" and poured her intentions, her desires, into the word as the heat in her palms exploded into Lady Kiffen and the tree, wrapped around the heart of each, and then joined them as one.

The woman's back arced, and the cords of her neck stood out. She opened her mouth to scream, but choked instead. Her cheeks bulged, her eyes grew wide with panic, and for one long moment, she didn't breathe. But then, her jaw dropped open, wider than should be possible, and a perfectly formed apple slowly tumbled out of her mouth and into the queen's hand.

Elinor gave the apple to Lord Kiffen.

"Eat this," Elinor said. "And then if you want me to free your wife, I will. I swear it."

Lord Kiffen stared at the apple, its glossy red skin glowing in the morning sunlight. He raised his eyes to his wife's, but she was in the throes of pain again, her throat open in a silent scream as another luscious apple slowly emerged from her mouth and into the queen's hand.

Quickly, he raised the fruit to his mouth and bit deep. His teeth pierced the skin, but instead of crisp, sweet apple, the center was fermented, and thick black rot oozed onto his tongue. He didn't seem to notice. Instead, he chewed quickly, his eyes glazing over as he ate the apple, licking his fingers clean like a starving man afraid to leave a single bit of food behind.

Elinor had two more apples in her hands, and Lady Kiffen was already stretching her jaw wide to produce a third, when Lord Kiffen finished. He stared at his hands as if he couldn't understand where the apple had gone.

"Do you believe that traitors to your queen should be punished?" Elinor asked him.

"Oh yes, my queen." Black rot smeared his teeth and lips as he stared at Elinor.

"Frederick!" Lady Kiffen's voice was hoarse, and tears leaked from her eyes as she began choking on the next apple. Lord Kiffen never looked away from his queen.

"Do you have news of the girl's whereabouts?" Elinor asked.

Lord Kiffen shook his head. "I know only that some believe the mountain

girl with the gyrfalcon could be the princess, and the boy who is with her could be the prince. They are sometimes on our lands with a man who acts like their father, and there are those in our village who have dedicated themselves to protecting their location in case the rumors are true." He blinked as an idea occurred to him. "Your Highness, it pains me to confess that I have not questioned those traitors as I should have. I beg you to allow me to rectify that error."

Elinor's smile stretched wide enough to hurt as she leaned closer to the man. "Oh, I think I'll come along and question them myself."

Another apple fell from Lady Kiffen's mouth and smashed against the ground, spreading a circle of black rot that instantly destroyed every blade of grass it touched.

"And your wife?" Elinor asked as she took Lord Kiffen's arm. "Should I let her down and forgive her of her crimes against me?"

Lord Kiffen never even glanced at the woman pinned to wall. "Traitors must be punished, my queen."

"Indeed." Elinor stepped away from the wall, Lord Kiffen by her side. "Frederick?" The woman's voice shook, but Lord Kiffen didn't look back.

Elinor looked at one of her guards. "I'm traveling to Lord Kiffen's lands by the end of the day. Send for a coach and have my maid pack a trunk. And have someone gather several barrels of apples as she produces them. I'm going to need them."