Palace of Silver (The Nissera Chronicles #3) - Hannah West Page 0,31

natural,” Hesper said. “Her servants told me she does not eat her food, and when she must eat for appearance’s sake, she vomits. She is obsessed with infantilizing the princess and dresses her like a child. She ended our academic lessons and reduced me from tutor to maid. She wants to smother the princess’s growth in every way.”

Navara swallowed hard and released my hand to trail a finger along her throat. “I wore my mother’s ruby necklace when I sat for the painting. It was foolish, but I wanted to defy her in some small way. When the queen saw it, she tore it off…and ate it.”

“Ate it?” I half laughed through my growing despair. “I’ve never heard of such a thing! Do you have any proof to support these bizarre accusations?”

“Do your own instincts not offer proof enough?” Hesper asked. “Does the testimony of the Princess of Perispos not hold weight?”

“She’s probably already destroyed the sealed scroll,” Navara said. “Without you, without elicromancers, there is no hope for us. You have to believe us.”

I massaged my temples, buying time to think. My relationship with Ambrosine was fractured beyond repair, but Perennia believed she could change. If I confronted Ambrosine with false accusations, the sister I truly cared for might never speak to me again.

But if I didn’t confront her, and the claims were true…

“Invite Ambrosine here,” Hesper said after a moment, as though inspiration had struck. “She cannot cross the threshold of the edifice. It’s a sacred place, and she is unholy.”

“It’s true,” Navara added. “It’s why we asked to meet you here.”

The princess paced to the other side of the edifice, bending to set her candle on the floor and dig her fingernails into a crevice between two tiles. She dislodged one and set it aside. “It’s why we’ve used it as a hiding place for the paintings and statues we were able to salvage when she ordered the guards to burn them.”

She pried away another tile. Hesper hurried to help. By the time I joined them, I was looking down into a cellar of artworks that had been hastily wrapped in flour sacks.

“This is part of the scene from the main corridor on the first floor,” Navara said, handing me a chipped portion of a fresco that depicted a human reaching up toward one of the Holies while in the grip of a shadow creature, a Fallen whose face and body must have belonged to another damaged shard. “And this is the only portrait of my mother we were able to save. The queen even toppled the statue of her in the rose garden.” Navara uncovered the top half of a large canvas. Though the candle flame didn’t offer much light, I could tell in the low gleam that the king’s first wife had been a great beauty.

“She ordered your mother’s portrait burned?” I asked, wondering what I would do without the glorious renderings of Mother and Father that graced the halls of our home. Would their images slowly slip from my memory like plucked flowers shedding their petals?

“All of it,” Hesper answered. “Everything reminiscent of our queen whose presence brought warmth and light to these grounds before the impostor brought her darkness.”

“What about the foyer ceiling?” I asked. “Perennia said it’s a mural of the Holies.”

“She was about to destroy it too, until she heard you were coming,” Navara replied. “She couldn’t undo the damage and desecration, but she could make you think my father still had some say in what happened under his roof.”

Could this be true, or was the princess enlisting the help of her favorite tutor to purge the palace of unwelcome change? To paint Ambrosine’s unabashed self-centeredness as something darker?

But then I remembered Mercer’s prophecy.

“Please, Your Majesty,” Navara begged, dropping to one knee in front of me. “I was nothing but welcoming, yet she despised me the moment we met. I don’t want her to think of my beauty as a threat. I don’t care about my beauty at all. I’ll show you.”

With wide eyes asking permission, she reached for the dagger I’d belted at my waist. My muscles stiffened, alert as she slid the sharp blade from its sheath, but I let her proceed. She gathered a handful of gorgeous hair and sawed until a flood of black tresses fell to the floor, some of them wistfully riding the wind into the cellar of sacred items. She grabbed another thick handful.

“Let me,” I said softly. She turned over the blade and