The Beauty of Darkness - Mary E. Pearson Page 0,105

visited the archives and for nothing more. Natiya and I couldn’t stay here long. It would draw attention. I had gone to the millpond cottage today to see if Kaden had shown, but there was still no sign of him. Cold fingers had gripped my spine. Please let him be all right.

I rested my head in my hands. With Natiya’s lack of success already discussed, the priest asked me how my day had gone. I answered with silence and reviewed the news in my head.

My father was ill with an unknown ailment brought on by the wickedness of Princess Arabella’s betrayal. No one had seen the queen since my father took ill, and in fact, the whole of the queen’s court had gone into seclusion, mourning the lost company of soldiers. I couldn’t even get to my aunt Bernette. The citadelle was guarded as if it held every last treasure on the continent. My brothers, whom I desperately needed to see, were away—along with the squads I had counted on for support. Pauline couldn’t be found. And Prince Walther was believed to have been killed by his treacherous sister’s hand.

I closed my eyes.

It was only my first day here.

I had been driven, ignoring obstacles, until the very things that drove me suddenly made me weak. I was tied to Civica in ways I had dismissed. Yes, I felt rage at the traitors in the cabinet, but there were still people here whom I cared about, and what they believed about me mattered—the village baker who always had a warm sample for me to taste; the Stable Master who taught me how to groom a horse; the soldiers who grinned when I beat them at cards. I cared what they believed about me. I remembered my first day in Sanctum Hall and the Komizar studying me from afar. Calculating. No one in the Morrighese cabinet ever knew me as well as he had. I saw his orchestrating hand in this.

I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes, refusing to give in to the desolation welling in me.

It is not over.

Father Maguire set a warm bowl of broth in front of me and I forced down a bite of bread with it. Walther was dead. I couldn’t change that, nor what people believed about me.

“Did you take care of the notices?” I asked.

He nodded. “All written and ready, but an official seal would help credibility.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“I have some hesitation about the message though. It’s risky. Maybe we—”

“It’s insurance. Just in case. It will buy me time.”

“But—”

“It’s the only announcement that will get guzzled faster than a free jug of ale.”

He sighed but nodded, and then I gave him another task. I asked him to inquire discreetly and see if any more scholars had gone missing.

I grabbed my cloak from the hook, examining Natiya’s needlework hidden on the inside lining. In the dim light of twilight, it would work. It might be a few days before my brothers returned from the City of Sacraments and could help me, but there was still work to be done.

* * *

The citadelle was a large sprawling structure. If the architecture of Venda was a dress pieced together with rags, then the architecture of Morrighan was a sturdy practical work dress of counted stitches and ample seams for expansion.

It had grown over the centuries, just as the kingdom had, but unlike the Sanctum, it had grown in a more orderly fashion. Four main wings radiated from the original grand hall at its center, and multiple towers and outbuildings had sprung up on the grounds around them. Connecting passages between wings and other structures made for a multitude of convenient corners and hallways for a young princess to slip from the clutches of her tutors. I was intimately familiar with every drape, closet, nook, and ledge in the citadelle in a way that only a child desperate for freedom can be. And then there were the secret passages no one was supposed to know about, dusty forgotten escapes built in darker times, but my prowling had led me to discover those too.

The Royal Scholar was well aware of my skills, but his traps to catch me had, for the most part, been pathetically weak. I saw them coming before a tutor lying in wait could grab my shoulder, before I tripped a silk thread strung with a warning bell, before any obstacle laid across my path could slow me down. If nothing