Turning his back on her, he knelt in front of a small gold cabinet and opened the door to the remedies and potions Madame Jillian provided his mother. There were bottles of all sizes and colors on the top two shelves, but the bottom shelves were filled with black vials and bottle after glass bottle in the deepest of crimson red.
Quickly, he pulled all the black vials out of the cabinet and tucked them in a deep blue silk bag sitting on a chair nearby. His mother had always warned him to only take the remedy during an attack because too much exposure to the herbs would eventually render them ineffective for him. The idea of not being able to calm the curse when it grabbed hold had terrified him into drinking from the black vial only when it was absolutely necessary. He just hoped that there wouldn’t be much need for it in the days to come.
He tied the bag and headed out the door and back to his rooms only to find Lady Imogen standing outside it flanked by two guards outside his door.
“Lady Imogen,” he said, aware of the guards listening to his every word. “I didn’t expect to see you here. I know today has been long and difficult for you.”
“Today has been difficult for us all, Your Highness. I was hoping to talk to you about the Queen.” She glanced at the men flanking her. “Would you mind if we spoke in private?”
“Please, come in.” He let her pass, then shut the door behind them.
Imogen stood in the center of the room with her hair loose around her shoulders and her eyes wide with uncertainty. When the lock was turned she flew into his arms and buried her face in his chest. The feel of her body against his made everything else fade away.
Tilting her face up, he pressed his lips against hers and felt her shiver in response. He ran one hand down her hips then pulled her tight against him as he deepened the kiss. He wanted to curse the Gods when she stepped back and put a hand against his chest.
“No. The guards will be paying attention as to how long I talk with you and they report to Elder Cestrum. So I cannot stay. I just had to make sure you weren’t upset with me because of what happened in the Hall of Virtues. It was the only way to keep the Council of Elders from seizing control of the throne and hurting you in that very moment. I would have told you first, but there wasn’t time.”
“I’m glad you showed up when you did.”
“And your sister?” Imogen asked. “Is the Princess glad?”
“Carys is relieved that we aren’t spending tonight in the North Tower, but she did wonder why you had never mentioned the Book of Knowledge or that law before.”
“I never thought there was reason,” Imogen said. “Micah was alive. Your mother was strong. I never thought my vision meant that there would be a contest between you and your sister. Not until today when the Queen . . . Suddenly I knew why there had been no visions save the one since I came to the Palace of Winds. There can be no other visions until the path the kingdom will travel down is chosen. I will not be able to see what choices must be made until the winner of the Trials is decided. I know you love your sister, but Dreus, you must win.”
“Carys would make a good Queen,” he said, putting the bag with the vials on his desk.
“I know you believe that, my prince.” Imogen moved across the room and took his hands. “But there are two paths in front of the kingdom and only one of those leads to light. You are the light. You must not let your love for your sister cloud your judgment.”
Great. Another vision. Only this one pulled instead of repelled. Maybe because for the first time he wasn’t the cursed one.
“I will do my best to beat my sister at the Trials. That’s all I can do.” He kissed the back of Imogen’s hand, then turned it over and placed another kiss on her palm. But instead of the passion he’d hoped to ignite, worry flickered across Imogen’s face. She reached out and brushed his cheek with her fingertips and looked deep into his eyes.
Then she turned and hurried toward the door. She didn’t look back as she slipped outside, leaving him on edge. There was no sleeping in his current state. He needed to walk off the nervous energy.
He put the sack of black vials in his bedroom in a space behind the mirror that he’d created years ago. Then he went back into the hall. A guard at the end of the corridor turned and watched as Andreus strode to the stairs and headed up to the place he felt the most relaxed: the battlements.
“Prince Andreus!” Max almost ran smack into him as he barreled out of the door that led to the steps of the battlements. “I’ve been watching for you. People say the Queen went crazy and that you and the Princess might go crazy too and we’ll have to have a new King. That’s not true, is it? You’re not going crazy.”
“Much of today has made me feel as if I have,” Andreus joked. But Max was taking his hands in and out of his pockets and looking at him with a stricken expression.
“The Queen isn’t feeling well enough to take her place on the throne, but my sister and I are both fine.”
“That’s good. Not about the Queen. That’s the doom. So is what happened to the King and Prince Micah. I’m . . . sorry.”
Andreus swallowed down the grief those words reawakened. Today he’d heard the Council and lords and ladies from every corner of the kingdom say those words. Over and over. None of them had been as simple or sincere.
“I’m sorry, too, Max.” He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and looked up at the orb shining bright against the dark of the night. A windmill churned in the shadows to the right of it. Looking at the lights reminded him . . .
“Max.” He looked down at the boy. “I know you told someone about the test for my new design. You aren’t in trouble, but I have to know who you spoke with.”
Max kicked at the floor. “Nobody important, Prince Andreus. Honest. Just Madame Jillian when she was listening to me breathe. And some of the ladies who were bored and asked me to tell them a story. And some older boys. They said I didn’t really know you so I told them to prove I did.”
So everyone.
Andreus shook his head. Under the beating of the windmills, a pounding came from somewhere below.
“Come on,” he said to Max as he hurried across the battlements. He followed the sound as it grew louder, until he looked over the white stone wall onto the castle guards’ practice fields and saw the source of the pounding. Torches were scattered around the field, illuminating dozens of workmen and carts filled with wood planks. More carts arrived out of the darkness.
“What are they building?” Max asked.
“I’m not sure,” Andreus said as he studied the scene below. Far to the left of the field he spotted Elder Cestrum and Elder Jacobs huddled with the castle’s head carpenter.
When Max pointed to someone painting big wooden stumps yellow and blue, Andreus realized what he was looking at.
A game board—much like the ones his mother used when scoring the card games she and her ladies played. This one, however, only had two rows of holes.
Two rows.
Two colors.
Two players.
When his mother used the board, each point a player scored was inserted in the player’s line of holes. The person with the longest line of pegs in the board by the end of the game won.