With Tyndall away, distracted by putting Fifth Kingdom beneath his thumb, I have an opportunity, and I won’t squander it.
I may not recognize the walls of this castle anymore, but it’s still mine.
I still have the same ambition I did when I was a little girl, before it became clear that I have no magic, before my father gave me to Tyndall, blinded by the gleam of his gold.
The gold doesn’t dazzle me, though. Not anymore.
Because my dream, my role, my due, it was always to rule Highbell.
No submitting
to a husband, no being shoved aside or treated like a coddled pushover. Tyndall Midas has put his hands on everything, glazing over my entire life.
And I let him. My father let him. This whole damn kingdom let him.
But I’m done.
I’m done sitting in a cushioned chair, embroidering silly handkerchiefs, eating sickly sweet cakes while the courtiers talk about which dress so-and-so wore, simply because they like hearing the sound of their own voices.
I’m done being the silent cold queen frozen in place.
Tyndall is gone, and for the first time since I’ve become queen, I can actually be a queen.
And I intend to.
I’ve worn a crown my entire life, but I’m finally going to wield it.
Chapter 2
AUREN
The wooden wheels of the carriage churn as much as my stomach.
Every rotation expels another memory to the forefront of my mind’s eye, an endless cycle that keeps circling and unloading, like vultures dropping forgotten carrion from the sky.
Death clings to me.
I wanted so badly to leave my cage. To be able to roam freely in Midas’s castle. My boredom and loneliness was a gaping yawn that I couldn’t speak past, couldn’t swallow down, couldn’t close off. My mouth kept widening, tongue flat, chest open, wishing and hoping for that deep breath to come into my lungs and set me free from the growing suffocation of my bars.
But now…
There’s blood on my hands, though no red stains my skin. But I feel it there, with every graze of my fingertip, like the truth is ingrained in the fortune lines across my palms.
My fault. Sail’s death, Rissa’s pain, Digby’s absence, all of them my fault.
I flick my gaze toward the cloud-covered sky, though I don’t really see the haze of white and gray. Instead, those relentless spinning memories keep falling behind my temples, landing at the backs of my eyes.
I see Digby riding off, his retreating form pressed between a sky of black and a ground of white. I see red flames crackling from the paws of the fire claws, the powder of snow flying up beneath the pirates’ ships like waves in a frozen sea. I see Rissa crying, Captain Fane poised over her, a belt in hand.
But mostly, I see Sail. I see his heart being pricked with the blade of the captain’s dagger like a finger on a spindle, his blood dripping out in threads of red, tied to the puddle on the ground.
I can still feel the scream that came out of me when his body slumped down, caught by my hands and the bitter arms of Death.
My throat is raw and sore, abused from the night that seemed to never end. First it wailed in shocked misery, and then it squeezed, closing out any hope of breath.
My throat clogged when the Red Raids strung up Sail’s body to the mast at the front of the ship, making an evil mockery of his name, suspending him up on a sail-less ship.
I’ll never forget the way his rigid body hung there, his unblinking blue eyes being pelted with wind and snow.