Your Majesty.”
“Good morning. Could you send word to Iris that I will meet her in the dining room shortly?”
He drew his brows together briefly. “Captain Keane informed me I wasn’t to leave your side, Your Majesty.”
I put on a stern look as I stepped out into the corridor. “Did Captain Keane also inform you that you are to obey my direct orders?”
He hesitated for a moment then nodded.
“I wish you to take a message to my sister,” I said.
He didn’t move.
My look grew colder. “Do I need to repeat myself?”
He shook his head. “No, Your Majesty.”
“Good. Then both of you will find me in the dining room.” I hurried off down the corridor as fast as I could without breaking into a run.
I didn’t want anyone to see the true heir to the throne looking desperate as she darted around the castle. More thoughts clashed in my head. Grimelda planned to poison me, and no one would be around to help. She was poised to take the kingdom and no one but I knew about her plans. It was time to find my former Captain of the Guard and inform him his resignation was being denied.
But he wasn’t anywhere inside the castle, so I walked out toward the gate, trying to look as though I might be taking a morning stroll through the overgrown grounds. I caught sight of the apple tree out of the corner of my eye, and my stomach rolled, pushing bile up my throat. She’d tried to poison me with apples before—what would it be this time?
I grimaced as I raised my hand to hail the guard standing at the closed gates. He lumbered to one knee and bowed his head as soon as he saw me.
“Have you seen Captain Keane?” I asked.
He rose to his feet. “Yes, Your Majesty. He left at first light this morning. I watched him through the gates myself.”
The pain was physical, almost bending me double, and I clutched my arm across my stomach. “He…left?”
The guard reached out toward me. “Your Majesty, is something wrong?”
I tried to gather myself at the alarm in his voice, and straightened, forcing a smile onto my lips. “I’ve simply waited too long to sit down to my breakfast.” I waved a hand as casually as I could manage. “Thank you for doing your job so well.”
Then I turned and began to walk back to the castle, my steps slower as the view in front of me blurred with my tears. I tried to blink them away but they escaped and rolled down my cheeks.
Keane had left me.
I shook my head as despair tried to swallow me whole. There was no time for weakness nor regret. Riala had already set too many of her plans into motion and came closer to success each time she attacked me.
And without Keane, I would have to deal with it all on my own.
My guard and Iris should have been waiting for me in the dining room, but I had no time for that. What I was about to do was most improper, so it was better if I acted alone. I stole back into the castle through one of the small doors set into the base of a turret and climbed the winding staircase inside up to the east wing. That was where Grimelda—no, Riala—had said she’d arranged rooms for my suitors when we’d arrived.
I crept softly down the corridor. This one was even more barren than the one outside my room with simple stone floors and no wall hangings of any kind—except for another one of those dreadful mirrors.
I paused at each door, listening for signs of life and trying to identify which man might lay behind it. I moved on quickly after sounds of violent sneezing and snoring, and avoided the room I already knew to be Vasso’s.
The corridor outside one of the rooms smelled particularly fragrant, like woodland greenery in the rain and the scent of delicate flowers or herbs. I knocked on the door, but when no one answered I pushed down the handle and peered inside.
Danzin’s glasses lay on a small chest of drawers next to the bed, and the silent lump in the bed proclaimed him to still be asleep. I couldn’t linger half inside and half outside his room in case anyone spotted me, so I walked in and closed the door softly behind me.
The entire room smelled of herbs and crushed leaves, and he had a microscope set up on a