The Queen's Secret (The Queen's Secret #2) - Melissa de la Cruz Page 0,53

from Baer Abbey to investigate this fire.

The council believes this place is no longer safe for me. I can see no other choice but to return to the land of my birth. Please expect me in Mont within the week.

These are not the circumstances in which I imagined our reunion.

Your loving mother,

The Dowager Queen Lilianna

—II—

The White Against the Gray

Chapter Twenty-Two

Caledon

As long as he can remember, the white stone palace of Violla Ruza had towered over the rest of Serrone, its royal banner snapping in the wind. Now all Cal can see is smoke and charred remains, the famous turrets collapsed like children’s blocks. Jander, Rhema, and he approach the capital from the west. At every hamlet and village they pass, people stand outside in silent awe, gazing at the pall of smoke clouding Renovia’s most famous landmark. The palace has fallen.

The three of them ride in silence, mouths covered with cloths to keep the smoke at bay. What is there to say? Cal knows that something like a kitchen fire, or a knocked-over taper in a stable block, wouldn’t be enough to fell the entire complex. This is a work of arson, complex and well-planned, ensuring utter devastation.

Queen Lilianna spoke of this when they met just a week ago. The Aphrasians were growing bold again, she said, and though their recent targets had been small settlements, there was no reason to think they didn’t have larger prizes in mind.

Perhaps all the soldiers at Castle Mont made this kind of attack too difficult to execute in Montrice. So instead they’d struck at the heart of Renovia, the center of power for the Dellafiore dynasty. It was just luck that Lilac’s mother had survived. Many of the palace’s hundreds of other inhabitants were not so lucky, trapped in burning turrets or smoke-filled cellars.

As they near Serrone, all traffic is traveling in the opposite direction. The merchants and townspeople are leaving, their own homes destroyed or scorched, the air of the capital no longer fit to breathe. Cal passes wagon after wagon heaped with whatever the citizens of Serrone could salvage from their houses, stalls, and workshops. Some people sit or lie on the wagons, their burns bandaged. Almost everyone is coughing or wheezing, sad and afraid. Richer inhabitants rattle along in carriages, even though some of those carriages are scorched or missing doors or pieces of their roofs. The fire is an equalizer, Cal thinks, voracious and all-consuming. It doesn’t care if the houses it burns belong to a lord or a peasant, the mayor or the rag collector. Neither did whoever lit the fire—or fires. They wanted to destroy Serrone and its palace and its inhabitants. And its royal household, most of all.

Wintry rain begins to fall, ice cold, and at least, Cal thinks, that will tamp down whatever is left of the embers in the palace ruins. The fields that surround the capital are gray with ash and littered with debris. Their horses pick their way along the slippery cobbles of the roads up the hill, along streets that Cal can barely recognize. The market square is a jumble of collapsed roofs and rafters, the doors in any remaining building black with soot. The gleaming white capital now resembles a rotten tooth, black as the one they found underground at Baer Abbey.

The gates to the palace are melted and twisted, like jail bars bent by a giant. Cal signals to one soldier picking through rubble near the old guard’s box. A white cloth is tied around his arm, and at first Cal thinks it’s a bandage. But it’s tied over his sleeve, and that’s when Cal understands: It’s a makeshift version of a white mourning ribbon. The entire place is in mourning.

“Your captain?” Cal calls, and the man shakes his head.

“Missing, sir. Half of our number are gone. The sergeant left with Her Majesty, to escort her to safety.”

“To a manor house, yes?”

“On their way to Montrice now, sir. To her daughter, in the capital.”

“Who is leading the operation here?” Cal asks. The guard gazes up at him, his face gray with ash.

“You, sir. We’ve been waiting for you to get here.”

Cal mutters an oath under his breath. The name of Holt is still a potent one in these parts.

Jander and Rhema are still silent—expected for one, but not in character for the other. They must be overwhelmed by the sight of this devastation. Cal stays on his horse, so he can better survey things, but it’s hard