The Queen's Secret (The Queen's Secret #2) - Melissa de la Cruz Page 0,76

queen has locked her secret door and is about to move into her husband’s bed. I am a lady of Montrice and devoted to Her Majesty. No one would believe me capable of such a thing. I am too soft and gentle, too good. You—you are a Renovian!”

Lady Marguerite leans over Lilac, knife poised, and in that split second Lilac’s right hand shoots up, grabbing the woman’s wrist. With a cry of surprise, Lady Marguerite tumbles forward, and they both roll to the floor. Cal leaps toward them and reaches for Marguerite. Although Lilac is still holding on, she clearly has little strength.

With an animalistic roar, Marguerite pushes Lilac off her. Lilac sails backward and hits the table, sliding onto the floor with a thud. In the blink of an eye, Marguerite is on her feet again. There’s no way she has such strength, Cal knows, circling her so she backs toward the door. Shapeshifters are much stronger than ordinary mortals. Is this the demon they have been hunting? Whoever is possessing Lady Marguerite’s form has an advantage over Cal. He wishes he still had the iron brazier he’d been using outside.

Lady Marguerite laughs and points the dagger at him. Cal has his sword, and in one fluid motion he grabs the poker from its resting place next to the fire. He lunges at her with the sword and swings the poker at her head, but even two weapons aren’t enough. With her dagger she parries both, quick and true, and when he tries again, she knocks the poker from his hand with such force it flies straight across the bed to the other side of the room.

“You should know better, Assassin,” she says. “You are no match for the power of the Aphrasian order. No Renovian is. You should never have refused me when I offered myself to you.”

Cal blinks. Marguerite’s face shifts—from a dull one to a wickedly flirtatious one—one that’s all too familiar. Duchess Girt! She escaped during the chaos of the duke’s unmasking, and returns now for revenge.

Cal takes aim with his sword, the clang of the weapons echoing through the room as they hit and dip. He reaches blindly for a taper stand and manages to swing it at her, gaining just enough time to leap over a chair and get a better position, away from the wall. But Lady Marguerite matches him at every turn, batting away the stand as though it were a twig. It hits Cal’s leg, and for a moment he loses his balance, staggering a few steps sideways. It’s all the shapeshifter needs to smash the sword from his hand. It crashes to the ground, and Lady Marguerite laughs with wild delight.

There’s a crack like thunder, and the oak door blasts open. Lady Marguerite turns to see, and the distraction is all that Cal needs. Quicker than a snake, he slides down to the floor, retrieves his sword, and plunges it into the shapeshifter’s chest.

Marguerite—once a witch who’d styled herself as Duchess Girt—slumps to the ground, blood pooling out of her.

“Good timing,” he tells Rhema, who’s standing at the door, her own sword drawn.

She grins. “I thought you might need some help.”

He grunts. His heartbeat is thudding in his ears, and he realizes that the low groan he can hear is coming from Lilac, who is trying to pull herself up from the floor.

“I was aiming for the heart,” he says. “But I’m not sure if it has one.”

“Cal . . .” Lilac’s voice sounds small and distant. “She . . . she drugged me. I only had enough energy for one attempt, and it failed miserably.”

Cal reaches a hand out to a trembling Lilac. “You’re all right.”

Lilac’s touch, so soft and familiar, makes Cal tremble as well. He wants to wrap her in his arms, but all he can do is prop her on the bed while Rhema pulls a blanket around her shoulders.

Cal is still holding Lilac’s hand, too overwhelmed to speak, or to let go. Tonight he almost lost her. What he wants to say now is that he loves her and will do anything to protect her.

But Rhema is there, and footsteps are thundering down the gallery outside—guards, no doubt, too late to be useful.

“It was the duchess,” he tells Lilac. “She’d found a new face.”

“Duchess Girt!” says Lilac. “And the duke? He must be here if she is.”

Cal nods grimly. The Duke of Girt was the latest face worn by the demon king Phras, but