The Queen's Assassin (Queen's Secret #1) - Melissa de la Cruz Page 0,30

be set on fire easily, which might be useful for many reasons.

At night Cal wraps the remains of his blanket around his shoulders like a shawl and curls up in the corner with his knees against his chest to retain body warmth. Not ideal, but it works well enough. The smaller the blanket gets, the colder the nights feel, functioning as a sort of countdown. He decides that once he’s run out of blanket, it’s time to go.

He puts himself to sleep recalling tales from his childhood. His favorite was the one his father used to tell him about Omin of Oylahn, the origin of all magic, blessed by Mother Deia Herself. According to legend, Omin was the most powerful mage who ever lived, a master of both the physical and ethereal arts, and served the ancient Queen Alphonia during the time when Renovia was still a tiny, weak dominion of Avantine.

Nobody knows who Omin’s parents were—if they were even human. At that time, people still spoke of the fae folk, before their kind either went into hiding or became extinct. Omin was found as an infant in the woods, so some stories said the great mage simply sprang from the dirt itself, a creature too divine to be human and too human to be a spirit.

“Of course,” Cal’s father would say, “this is just a story, and stories are always a little bit true and a little bit false; we just don’t know which is which.”

Young Cal chose to combine them all and believe that Omin was both human and fae—a being part heaven and earth—and that version satisfied him.

He can still hear his father’s deep, melodic voice, recounting the same scenes over and over from memory. Omin was an unknown orphan, a nobody, and grew up to establish a mighty kingdom, to become a great monarch with a loving family, loyal liege lords and knights, adored by thousands. Cal closes his eyes in his prison cell and pretends he’s six years old, when life was simple, before he knew what the future held for him and before he was left adrift and alone in the world. Those days, his father would tuck him in under his mother’s faded quilt and Cal would listen to the story, picturing each heroic character as he drifted off to sleep.

He does this now and recalls the words he always heard last:

The lesson, my son, is that we alone, no matter how skilled or how smart or how rich, are but spokes, and cannot move the wheel alone; only together can we do that.

CHAPTER TEN

Shadow

BY MID-MORNING TOMORROW I’M SUPPOSED to be officially on my way to Violla Ruza in a carriage provided by the queen. Supposed to be.

I have my own plans for transportation, my own destination—the prison transport to Deersia. If only I were a boy, then maybe I’d have a better chance of carrying it out. Or if I could just get my hands on an official work order from the palace . . . If I think about the obstacles ahead, what seemed so promising at first will begin to feel close to impossible.

Missus Kingstone visits with two of the completed gowns for a final fitting, a regular day dress and one for my first evening at the palace. She’s had her whole team of apprentice seamstresses working around the clock this entire week. The rest, she tells me, will be delivered to the palace ahead of my arrival.

One of the gowns is pale pink and frothy, full of frills and lace and bunches of fabric, with round puffy short sleeves. “Stunning!” Missus Kingstone claps her hands with delight when I model it for her and my aunts.

I turn to the full-length looking glass she brought for the fitting. I look absurd. Like a feral cat forced into a wedding gown.

My aunts don’t look convinced either, but they play along. “Yes, stunning. Quite a sight indeed,” Aunt Mesha says, holding her hand to the side of her face. Aunt Moriah has a similar reaction: “I agree—can’t say I’ve ever seen anything like it.”

The other dress isn’t much better, but at least it doesn’t make me look like a bowl of strawberry mousse. I like the color, which is