The Queen's Secret (The Queen's Secret #2) - Melissa de la Cruz Page 0,66

not Lilac’s apartments. He knows that mother and daughter are sharing a bed there, so any nighttime visit via the Queen’s Secret is out of the question. Lilac remains inside at all times, and Cal is afraid to ask if it’s true she is already with child. Who would he ask? Rhema is a good conveyer of castle intrigue, but she hasn’t mentioned the queen. Hansen appeared briefly at the audience in Lord Burley’s chambers, but Cal had already been dismissed, and there was nothing in Hansen’s blank, handsome face that indicated any happy tidings.

All that Cal heard Hansen say was “I say, you haven’t seen a dog collar lying around here anywhere, have you?”

In the evening, the dowager queen asks to see him, the message delivered by a page to Cal’s room off the stables. At last, he thinks. The chance to see Lilac. He doesn’t count the Small Council meeting, which was brief and unsatisfactory. He needs to see Lilac in person and alone—or almost alone, at least—to gauge her state of mind and her state of health. He bounds across the yard, a bitter wind biting at his face and hands, and up the main stairs to the royal apartments. Guards are posted at every door and landing, and so many tapers are lit, the usually gloomy gallery of paintings is as bright as a party scene.

When the doors are opened for him, he hears Queen Lilianna’s voice, talking to someone, and Cal’s heart gallops: It has to be Lilac. But a few steps in he sees the gray hair of the woman in the other chair, and recognizes her rounded shoulders and soft laugh. It’s Moriah, far from home, holding the dowager queen’s hand. Lilac is nowhere to be seen.

Moriah isn’t one for ceremony: She stands up to hug Cal and gives him a warm smile.

“How are you? How is Aunt Mesha?” he asks, and Queen Lilianna gestures for him to draw up a stool.

“She is well,” Moriah responds. She looks tired, he thinks, after what must have been a long, cold journey.

“I had no idea you were coming,” says Cal.

“Nobody did,” Moriah says. “The Guild helped me get here, then spirited me into the castle.”

“So much for Mont as a safe place,” Queen Lilianna says, one eyebrow raised.

“It’s good that you’re here.” Cal swallows his disappointment about Lilac’s absence. She may return at any moment. “You read my mind.”

“Actually, I read a letter, written in code—stitched, in fact—along the seam of a flour bag. It was sent to me by an old friend, a Guild member named Varya, who has visited Lilac here in the palace and was very concerned. Together they conjured up a vision in the fireplace—this fireplace, I believe. It was of a figure that Varya calls the Obsidian Monk, and she believes him to be present, in some form, here in the castle.”

“As your scribe here has been saying,” Queen Lilianna says, and Cal nods. It’s not that he doesn’t believe Daffran: He just can’t find any monks of any kind, obsidian or otherwise.

“It took a long time to reach me,” Moriah continues. “Varya was being careful. She suspected, perhaps, that an ordinary note would be intercepted. It arrived just after we had word of the palace burning in Serrone.”

She pauses to pat the queen’s hand and give her a sympathetic look.

“Mesha and I agreed that one of us should travel here right away. I have no idea if we can be of use.”

“What can be done?” the queen asks no one in particular, raising her eyes to the ceiling. “How can anyone help us?”

“Actually,” Cal says, drawing his stool closer to the two women. “Actually, I think this is the best possible thing that could have happened.”

“The burning of the castle?” The queen looks horrified.

“Moriah’s arrival,” he says. “A secret arrival, yes?”

“I came in the place of the woman who usually drives the potato cart. She’s another Guild member, and was able to summon up a spell that turned my eyes green like hers, just long enough to journey across the drawbridge and into the yard. Varya was waiting for me in the kitchen cellar, to take my place back on the cart. To the guards here, all older women are more or less interchangeable.”

“Moriah brought up my supper tray,” the queen tells him.

“The guards outside this door were about to change shifts,” Moriah says, her eyes twinkling with glee. “The new shift will have no idea how long I’ve