Larkin. Fear gripped Carys anew as she wondered whether Errik had gotten her friend to safety. If not, the guards would be talking about her capture, as would Andreus.
She could feel the guard following her with his eyes as she walked down the hallway to her brother’s door. No one answered when she knocked, and the door was locked. She shook the handle several times and banged on the door again, calling her brother’s name, wanting to warn him with one breath and desperate to find the bottles with the other.
When the door remained bolted, Carys pushed away and headed downstairs, asking guards she passed if the traitor had been captured. They all said no, which made Carys sag with relief as she slipped into her mother’s sitting room and found it blazing with light from every corner. Not a shadow remained. Maybe Oben thought the light would chase away the darkness the Queen was fighting the way it kept the Xhelozi from the walls.
“Your Highness, is there something I can do for you?” Oben asked as he hurried to greet her.
“I came to see my mother,” she lied.
“The potion Madame Jillian gave her has pushed her into a deep sleep.”
“I will only be a moment,” she assured him as she opened her mother’s bedroom door and quickly closed it behind her. Here there was darkness. Her mother lay on the bed with her eyes closed. Candles flickered on the far end of the room as Carys quietly knelt, opened her mother’s small cabinet, and reached inside.
“You won’t find them.”
Her mother hadn’t moved, but her eyes were now open. White orbs among the shadows, looking at her as she said in a singsong voice, “He was already here.” Her mother pointed her finger to the desk beneath the window and Carys bit back a scream as she saw the red glass bottles all lined up perfectly in a row as if waiting for her.
Taunting her.
Carys reached for calm as she walked to the bottles and knew what she would find even as she picked each one of them up and held it to the light.
Empty. Not a drop left.
She wiped her hand under her nose and hurried toward her mother’s cabinet even though she knew what she would see.
“I thought I could fix it.”
The cabinet was completely empty.
“He took them. Perhaps I should have stopped him, but I didn’t. I have stopped it for as long as I could. It is time and soon everyone will know. The winds will come from the mountains. The orb will break. The Xhelozi are calling. Can’t you hear them?”
“Mother. Please,” Carys said as disappointment sliced through her soul. Her mother was no better. Still, she begged, “I need your help. Imogen was part of the plot to kill Father and Micah. She has to be stopped. You have to help me stop her.”
“Nothing can be stopped. He thinks taking the bottles has stopped something, but he’s wrong. And now he’ll know. They’ll all know.”
“Know what, Mother?”
Her mother’s hair was wild, but her eyes were clear. Her face was dead calm as she looked into the shadows. “I wanted to protect your brother so I hid what I knew. But I was wrong.”
“This is about the Council and Imogen, Mother,” Carys snapped. “This isn’t about the curse.”
“Of course it is,” her mother whispered. “Only I got it wrong. I thought your brother’s sickness was the sign of the curse.”
“I told you . . .”
“But it is not.” Her mother stared her dead in the eyes. “The Tears of Midnight weren’t to control your pain. I couldn’t care less about your pain. I made you drink it to control the curse in you.”
Carys stepped back and grabbed the cabinet as she shook her head. “That’s not true, Mother. Andreus is the one who has the attacks.”
“Is it any wonder I believed those were the signs? But I was wrong and the Xhelozi are calling.” Her mother sighed, fluffed her pillow, and lay back down. Smiling, she pulled the silk covers over herself. “When you crack the orb of Eden, they will destroy us all.”
Mother was still crazy, Carys told herself as she watched the Queen close her eyes. Her expression was tranquil and she refused to speak or look at Carys again despite Carys’s attempts to rouse her.
The words were crazy. Carys wasn’t cursed. She had spent her entire life shielding her brother. She had been told it was her duty to see him unharmed. Two halves of the same whole—only she had been born normal while he was not.
“Did the Queen awaken, Your Highness?” Oben asked, but Carys pushed past him without answering and went out the door.
Cursed.
She shivered and wiped a line of sweat off her forehead as she walked quickly through the halls. Every guard she passed, every footstep she heard, made her speed her steps.
Cursed.
Was she?
Her father and brother were dead. Her mother was crazy. Her brother had turned against her. Larkin was hiding in the darkness below the castle in fear for her life. And soon she would begin to lose control of everything as the need for the red bottles kicked in.
Madame Jillian made the Tears of Midnight for the Queen. She could make more, but it took at least a week to distill the drink and the healer had delivered a batch to the Queen just days ago. Which meant there wouldn’t be any new Tears of Midnight ready for days.
Desperation clawed at Carys. She had to tell Andreus before Imogen made her next move. She had to get him to meet with her.
That’s when she remembered their plan and headed back to her rooms to write Andreus a note begging him to speak with her. Since Larkin was in the hidden room behind the tapestry of the nursery, Carys picked the battlements at dawn. No one would think twice about Andreus wandering the battlements that early and the sound of the windmills would conceal their conversation.
Her eyes were heavy and her back was sticky with sweat by the time she returned from sliding the note into the step she and Andreus had agreed on. The guard standing at her door stepped forward as she approached. “Excuse me for disturbing you, Princess,” the young guard said, looking at her shoulder instead of her eyes. “But one of the foreign dignitaries dropped by. He asked me to give you this.”
The guard held out his hand. In it was a red rose with parchment and a white ribbon wrapped around the stem.
“Thank you.” She started to turn away. Then looked back at the guard who had been her shadow for the last several days. “What is your name?” she asked.
“Graylem, Your Highness.” He raised his eyes up to hers.
“I believe I owe you a knife,” she explained, seeing as how she had no idea where the one she took from him was.
“That’s not necessary, Princess.”
“Necessary and right are not always the same thing.” She shivered. “I will make sure you get it as soon as possible.”
Turning, she went back into her room and threw the bolt. Now she could shiver and read the note on the flower without pretending she wasn’t sweating. With uncertain fingers, Carys untied the white ribbon and unfurled the small piece of parchment.