The Queen's Secret (The Queen's Secret #2) - Melissa de la Cruz Page 0,60

physician, ambles over to tend to Rhema’s injured leg, admiring Jander’s healing work in the field. She lies on the ground with her bad leg propped on a hay bale, Cal holding a taper close to light the physician’s work.

“It’s good to have you back, Chief Assassin,” Martyn says, reapplying a poultice to Rhema’s wound. “As soon as you left, the castle seemed to fall into chaos. The queen’s own priest was poisoned in a most unusual case that still confounds us.”

“What?” Cal is aghast. “Has the culprit been found?”

Martyn shakes his head. “Perhaps you could visit the chapel sometime, to see if you can make sense of the scant evidence the guards have assembled?”

The court physician explains the manner in which Father Juniper’s body was found, and the presence of a chalky obsidian-like substance around the priest’s mouth.

“Have there been any more sightings of a dark monk?” Cal asks, and the physician shrugs.

“The scribe remains adamant, but there is no other testimony or evidence to support his claims.”

“Apart from the priest’s murder,” Rhema points out, flinching every time the physician prods her leg. It’s red and raw where the beast clawed her, and bruised from her calf to her thigh. A shapeshifter did that, Cal thinks, an Aphrasian monk transformed into a dangerous creature. Some of them can turn into animals; some of them can even turn others into animals. The same may have happened here in Mont. But that would mean there were Aphrasians inside the castle.

“The tower is well-guarded,” Martyn says, clearly puzzled. “The mystery remains unsolved. And then, of course, there was the flagrant example of black magic at the Winter Races. Unsettling.”

The physician is master of the understatement. Another shapeshifter? Cal wonders. But at the Winter Races it was a horse that was bewitched or possessed, a horse that transformed into a creature of destruction. The Aphrasians’ dark magic seems to have grown in power and ferocity.

“We’re back now,” Rhema says, sounding confident. “We’ll work out what’s going on.”

Jander moves quietly about the stable, tending to the horses and listening rather than speaking. Rhema, with her all feistiness and feral instincts, has reminded Cal over and over again of Lilac, when she was still Shadow. Rhema is no substitute for Lilac, but one thing she has over Lilac: She’s in charge of her own destiny. Lilac lost that power the moment she accepted her royal role in life, and married Hansen. Cal has no idea if the two of them have slept together yet, but it seems more than likely.

In the morning, snow falls again, coating the castle yard in a fresh white sheen. Cal joins the captain of the guard in the queen’s chapel, another calm white space, and just as cold as the yard outside.

“Glad you’re back,” the captain says, echoing the physician’s sentiments. “I would have traveled north myself by now, but I can’t leave the castle without a safe pair of hands in charge. There’s no sense to anything that’s happening now. I prefer an enemy you can see, not one that appears and then disappears into thin air.”

In the chapel, any traces of the killer are gone by now: Too many people have picked through everything. There’s no scent either, because the small high window has been opened to blow away the stench of death. All Cal can smell is the minerality of the stone and the wax of the tapers. The bench where the queen always sat, the captain tells him, has been removed. Lilac is a ghost here, just as much as the murdered Father Juniper.

The captain walks back with him toward the stable block. Cal prefers to sleep there, in a small room with a wooden pallet, rather than in some paneled apartment among the courtiers. He likes to be free to move, and ready to leave at any moment.

“We need an increased guard here at the castle,” Cal tells the captain, voice lowered so the throng in the yard can’t hear. “We cannot have a repeat of what happened in Serrone.”

“Recruitment is an impossible task,” the captain mutters, his head close to Cal’s. “We’ve had numerous defections as well. Ever since the Winter Races and what people saw, or told other people they saw. Our country folk are a superstitious lot.”

“Are there enough guards here to protect Their Majesties?” Cal asks.

The captain stops to cough, almost bending double with the effort of it. He’s not a well man, Cal has heard, and he knows that Montrice