“Why her?” Killian whispered. Events slowly caught up in his mind. His eyes misted as he looked at the body of the woman he’d once loved.
“I replaced her enchanted knife with a normal blade, knowing she would likely not know the difference. I exchanged her liquids for others. Did you notice an unusual taste in the spirit? Something like peppermint? I had to find something green on short notice.”
Killian remembered the strange taste in the firebrand. “But why?”
“Many reasons. You’re going to have to get used to this now. It’s a hard lesson, and I’m so sorry it had to come at this difficult time, from one you once loved. The only friends you can count on are those you know as well as you know yourself.”
Killian thought of Ella.
He returned his gaze to Carla’s body and then looked at his mother. He needed to be strong now, more than at any other time of his life.
Killian drew in a deep breath before speaking.
“Altura’s in trouble,” he said. “I’m going to help.”
22
Amber somehow managed to drink too much at dinner with Grigori Orlov and Sergei Rugar. Her head started spinning, and pleading fatigue, she had to leave the meal before the dessert course was served. It was unlike her; she thought she’d only had two glasses of wine.
She barely made it back to her chambers, collapsing fully clothed in her bed. The throbbing in her head filled her consciousness with dizzying lights, though her eyes were closed, and her mouth was dry, as if she’d spent a week in the desert.
Finally sleep took her, yet that night she had terrible nightmares. Her sleeping awareness told her someone was in her bedchamber, moving around, and Amber was completely and utterly helpless. She fought to wake herself, imagining her fingernails pressing into her palms and legs twitching, but knowing she made no movement. What was happening?
The nightmares finally went away, and Amber once more fell into darkness and the blessed unconsciousness of normal sleep. As light filtered in through the wooden slats of the window and touched Amber’s eyelids, she began to dream again; this time there was a hand, shaking her roughly.
Amber opened her eyes. It wasn’t a dream.
Her tongue was thick and her mind foggy.
“What . . . ?”
“Get up,” a voice said.
Amber struggled to make sense of what was happening. A palace guard pinched her shoulder painfully as he shook her. Looking past the guard Amber saw Lord Marshal Sergei Rugar rummaging around in her drawers. He upended her undergarments onto the floor before moving onto the next.
Amber tried to pull herself up and fend the soldier away but could only manage a weak movement. “What are you doing?” she gasped.
Several other palace guards in orange tabards stood watching Amber. She felt a terrible violation; this was her bedchamber, a place for her alone. She was the wife of the high lord of Altura!
“Let go of me!” She managed to sit up and push the soldier’s clawing hands away.
“Aha!” Sergei said triumphantly. He held up a pendant on a silver chain.
Amber’s heart finally began to pump, filling her lethargic limbs with much needed blood. She tried to stand, to make some sense of what was happening, but the guards pushed her back down to the bed, looming over her with menace.
“High lord approaching!”
The palace guards straightened, drawing back and saluting as High Lord Grigori stormed into the room.
“Well?” the high lord demanded.
“It’s the child’s necklace.” Sergei displayed the pendant.
“Dear Lord of the Earth,” the high lord breathed. He rounded on Amber. “Where is she? What have you done with her?”
Amber once more tried to rise from the bed—she still wore last night’s clothes and had slept on top of the blankets—but the palace guards again stepped forward and held her back, pressing down on her shoulders, keeping her seated.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Amber gasped. “I don’t even know what’s happening!”
“There’s more,” said Sergei. He held up a piece of paper. “High Lord, I think you should see this.”
Grigori snatched the note from Sergei and scanned it swiftly. Red splotches came to his cheeks as he read.
“Your ploy will not succeed,” the high lord said. He crumpled the note and threw it at Amber.
Amber struggled to make sense of events. She must have been drugged. Her mind was still clouded—she could barely think.
“I don’t know what you think I did!” Amber protested.
She picked up the crumpled piece of paper off the bed, recognizing the paper as her own. As she reformed the note, she felt her breath quicken. She’d been writing letters to Miro, and the handwriting matched her own, but this message was faked.