Capture the Crown (Gargoyle Queen #1) -Jennifer Estep Page 0,5

me out of my hiding spot, dragged me across the grass, and handed me off to Lady Xenia Rubin, a powerful ogre morph.

I still remembered the exact moment when Xenia’s arm had closed around my waist, tighter than a coldiron vise, and she had hoisted me into the air as though I weighed no more than a baby gargoyle. Maeven had blasted Xenia with her purple lightning, trying to stop our escape, but Xenia had kept going, and eventually, we had made it inside the palace.

From there, Alvis, who had been the Seven Spire royal jeweler at the time, had helped us escape through some old mining tunnels that ran underneath the palace, although it had taken us weeks to make it home to Andvari.

After the massacre, Andvari and Bellona had been on the brink of war—until Everleigh had exposed the Mortans’ plot, killed her treacherous cousin Vasilia, and taken the Bellonan throne for herself.

King Maximus was long dead, but Queen Maeven ruled now, so tensions between Andvari and Morta remain high to this day, and the two kingdoms were always little more than a whisper away from war.

But lately, those whispers had grown into much louder, far more ominous rumblings.

“Gemma?” Topacia asked, breaking into my dark thoughts. “What do you want me to do about the Mortans? If they knew you were here, especially one of the Morricone royals, then they would stop at nothing to kidnap you—or worse.”

Screams wailed in my mind again. I was well acquainted with how much worse things could get when dealing with the Morricones. Still, I forced myself to be logical. Acting on assumptions could easily get Topacia and me killed.

“There are always a few Mortans in Blauberg, given how close it is to the border,” I said. “After all, this is one of the few cities where trade between the two kingdoms is actually necessary and encouraged, due to the surrounding mountains and wilderness.”

“But what about your theory that the Morricones are plotting something?” Topacia asked. “At least, something more dastardly than usual?”

Over the past two months, through my network of sources, I’d learned of several disturbing incidents in Andvari, all of them close to the Mortan border. A caravan of merchants murdered by bandits. A cave-in at a small mine that had claimed the lives of several workers. A group of royal guards who’d been swept away by a violent thunderstorm and the resulting flash flood.

On their own, each tragedy had seemed like an unrelated incident, but when considered all together, they had roused my suspicions. So as part of my ambassador duties, I had spent the past few weeks visiting the site of every attack and mishap. Along with offering my condolences to the victims’ families, I’d discreetly conducted my own investigations, and I’d discovered one common thread between all the incidents—tearstone.

The merchant caravan, the mine, and the guards had all had hundreds of pounds of tearstone in their possession—ore that had never been recovered.

Tearstone was often used for jewelry and art, but it could also be crafted into weapons, like the dagger in my boot. My theory was that someone was stockpiling tearstone—someone in Morta, given that all the incidents had occurred within just a few miles of the border. Of course, the most likely suspects were the Morricones, specifically Queen Maeven, although a few Mortan noble families were also wealthy and powerful enough to make all that tearstone vanish without a trace.

As for what that person wanted with the ore, well, I doubted their plans included anything as benign as making necklaces or statues, given the dozens of people they’d already killed. My fear was that Maeven was going to somehow use the tearstone to try to assassinate my father and grandfather—again.

Several months after the Seven Spire massacre, the Bastard Brigade, a group of Morricone bastard-born royals, had tried to murder my father and had dosed my grandfather with amethyst-eye poison. Thanks to Queen Everleigh’s intervention, Father and Grandfather Heinrich had both survived, but just barely.

I had already lost Uncle Frederich to Maeven’s machinations, and she wasn’t going to take anyone else from me.

But I’d grown even more worried two weeks ago, when a forewoman named Clarissa had sent a letter to Glitnir, to Grandfather Heinrich, saying that several shipments of tearstone had disappeared from the Blauberg mine—much larger shipments than what had vanished so far.

Things went missing all the time in mines, since they were literally dark holes in the ground, so my grandfather and father hadn’t

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