The Queen's Secret (The Queen's Secret #2) - Melissa de la Cruz Page 0,29

the floor. The Dowager Queen Lilianna is before him, and Cal drops to one knee, head bowed.

“Caledon Holt! Please, take a seat. The messenger from King Hansen arrived only late this afternoon, and he said you would not arrive until tomorrow at the earliest. We are glad to see you.”

“We might have overtaken him, Your Majesty, as I am familiar with the Renovian landscape,” Cal says, waiting until the queen settles herself into an ornate gold chair. He then sits down on another, and it’s so soft he wonders if it’s stuffed with goose feathers. “We had a good journey, a good ride. Myself and my two apprentices.”

“Good, good.” The queen sounds distracted. She is still a beauty, though of a more austere kind than her daughter. Her cheekbones are high and sharp, and her dark skin is luminous in the firelight. She still wears white, the color of mourning, though her husband has been dead for two decades. There’s something sad about her, Cal always thinks. Perhaps she’s lonely here in this sumptuous palace, her only daughter living in another kingdom.

“We’re at your disposal, ma’am,” Cal tells her, and the queen gestures to one of her ladies for what looks like a ragged piece of vellum.

“A letter,” she tells him, “arrived today from the guards at the obsidian mines around Baer Abbey. Holt, the timing of your arrival could not be more fortunate.”

Baer Abbey, the old Aphrasian stronghold. Cal braces himself for bad news.

“The guards report—in a very ill hand, I am sorry to say, barely readable—anyway, they report there have been some small but highly unusual events. Please read this yourself and see what you make of it.”

She hands him the letter, and Cal struggles to make sense of the scrawl.

There is talk of strange noises underground. The men say it is a deep whisper, far below the earth. Well underground, and they are afraid to return to the mine. Also disturbing us are flashes of black lightning in the sky. These occur every afternoon. None of us have seen anything like it. No one will work, and most have left to return to their homes.

“So now our Renovian miners have stopped removing the obsidian,” Queen Lilianna says, her voice weary. “They have grown too afraid, and who can blame them? I believe that a similar black lightning was observed in the sky in northern Montrice, when that unfortunate village was flooded. It strikes terror into the hearts of our workers. News spreads fast, as you can imagine.”

“Yes, Your Majesty. Even in a place like Renovia where roads are so few.” Cal surveys the letter and its inky scrawl. Word of any new supernatural activity at the abbey may mean that the Aphrasian order—or whatever is left of it—has returned to the place they began.

“They attack in Stavin, then in Montrice, and now here,” says the queen.

“Never in a town or city,” Cal observes. “Only villages or out-of-the-way places like the abbey ruins.”

“They risk discovery or interception in a larger settlement.”

“Indeed, ma’am. But perhaps they’re testing their strength before mounting a larger attack on a city.”

“Or a palace.” The queen raises her eyebrows. Sometimes she looks so much like Lilac. Cal wonders why the queen hasn’t mentioned her daughter at all or asked for any word of her health. Perhaps she’s making a point. Cal is the Chief Assassin, not an intimate of Queen Lilac’s. Officially, they have no private relationship at all. Queen Lilianna has always been a stickler for protocol, alert to appearances. She was the one who insisted on Lilac’s marriage to Hansen. Nothing is more important to her, Cal thinks, than restoring the primacy of the Dellafiore dynasty.

Not even her daughter’s happiness.

“We’ll rest overnight, ma’am, then be on our way.”

“There is no time to lose,” the queen agrees, and she stands, holding out a tapered, elegant hand for Cal to kiss. Still not a word breathed about her daughter.

Cal backs out of the room, and the large mahogany doors open as if by magic. This palace may be beautiful, but he can’t wait to get down to the stables, to Jander and Rhema, and tell them about the next—and dangerous—step of their mission.

Chapter Twelve

Lilac

Cal has been gone for just a few nights, and I can’t sleep, too restless and agitated to settle. In the fire tonight I saw a dancing vision, the flames shaping themselves into broken towers, like the silhouette of a ruined castle. At once I recognized it: not a castle, but