“I thought there was a body,” she croaked. “When you died, there was a body.”
“So there was,” Mace replied behind her, making Kelsea jump. He had slipped silently into the room while they spoke, and now his large form emerged from the shadows to rest a hand on Elyssa’s shoulder.
“How did you get in here?” he asked.
“This place is full of secret passages. A trick I learned from you.”
“The body,” Kelsea demanded. “You said there was a body.”
“The Queen’s dead body,” Mace agreed, “lying in bed with a cut throat.”
“How?” Kelsea demanded.
Mace merely looked at her for a long moment.
“Ah, Lazarus, no. A double?”
“A perfect double, close enough to fool even the rest of the Guard.”
“Where did you find her?”
“Carroll found her. In the Gut, plying her trade.”
Kelsea stared at him, as though seeing a stranger.
“It was very clever of them, really,” Elyssa put in. “To think of it, and then find someone who looked so much like me. It was a shame she had to die, even if she was only a whore.”
Kelsea’s hand curled into a fist, but she held it back. The creature in the other armchair wasn’t worth it. But Mace . . .
“You did this, Lazarus?”
“I’m a Queen’s Guard, Lady. My first job is to protect the Queen.”
She glared at him, for his words had opened a wide gulf inside her. For the first time, she understood that there were two sides to that statement, one good and one dreadful. Mace, too, had a job to do, just as Kelsea did. Sometimes she thought she would do anything to bring her crumbling country back together, but there was a low beneath which she wouldn’t sink . . . wasn’t there?
“We had a new assassination attempt every day, Lady. Some of them astonishingly clever too, probably originating in Demesne. Carroll and I knew that sooner or later, someone would get past us. We couldn’t just sit and wait for it to happen.”
“And this was your solution?”
“Yes. That, or let the Queen die.”
“What about the kingdom you left behind? And to my uncle, of all people? What about them?”
“The safety of the Queen, Lady,” Mace replied inexorably. “All else is secondary.”
“Did you find a double for me too?”
“No, Lady. I knew you wouldn’t allow it.”
“Damn right, I wouldn’t!” she snapped. “I don’t know what kind of moral carnival you think we’re running, but—”
“You know me now, Lady. You didn’t know me twenty years ago. I was a different man then, not so far removed from the Creche.”
“Oh, he was!” Elyssa broke in, patting Kelsea’s hand before Kelsea could snatch it away. “Shouting and fighting and then sulking in the corner when he didn’t get his way. Carroll used to call him half wild, and he wasn’t wrong.”
Kelsea removed her hand from the arm of the chair, feeling sick. Despite the difference in age, her mother seemed younger than Kelsea, almost like a child . . . but Kelsea would not allow her to escape that way. Child or not, she owed answers.
“Why did you give me away?”
“I had no choice.” Elyssa’s eyes darted toward Mace, then away, a furtive movement. “You were in danger.”
“You’re lying.”
“Why do you want to talk about the past?” her mother pleaded. “The past was so ugly!”
“Ugly,” Kelsea murmured. Mace shot her a pleading glance, but she ignored him, disgusted. Was he really going to run interference for this woman, even now?
“Lazarus, leave us alone.”
“Lady—”
“Close the door behind you and wait outside.”
He stared at her for another long, anguished moment, and then left.
Kelsea turned back to her mother. Some part of her displeasure seemed to have finally broken through to Elyssa, who had begun to fidget in her chair and would not meet Kelsea’s eyes.
“You made all of them promise to keep the shipment from me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?” Kelsea heard her own voice rising in anger. “What possible purpose could that serve?”
“I thought I would be able to fix it,” her mother said quietly. “I thought it was a temporary solution, and soon we would think of something else, long before you came home. Mace is so smart, I thought surely he and Thorne—”
“Thorne, fix the shipment? What in holy hell are you talking about?”
“I wish you wouldn’t swear. It’s so ugly.”
That word again. If her mother had set out deliberately to anger Kelsea, she could not have chosen a better. What good was anything, after all, if not beautiful? Her mother’s mind seemed to Kelsea like a still, frozen pond; ideas might skate across it, but nothing would ever penetrate. Kelsea wanted accountability, wanted her mother to answer for her selfishness, her poor decisions, her crimes. But how did one demand accountability from such a frozen waste?
“I hoped you would never need to know,” her mother continued. “And it didn’t turn out so badly! We kept the peace for seventeen years!”