The Delegate's Demise (The Queen's Blade Book 5) by D.K. Holmberg

Author:D.K. Holmberg [Holmberg, D.K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ASH Publishing
Published: 2024-05-21T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

My mind churned as I made my way back to the palace. I didn’t like what I had been thinking, nor the possibility that somebody in the palace—Dorian in particular—could be involved in what I suspected, but I didn’t have any reason to fault that logic.

Proving it was going to be the hard part, I knew. Somehow I was going to have to get some evidence, and moreover, I was going to have to stop him.

I thought about all the things that we had encountered in the city since I had been here. I thought of all the ways in which I had been serving, trying to help the Queen, and all the danger that had been involved. And knowing that Waleith had betrayed the Queen had left me thinking that it was all tied to him. But that had not been the case. Maybe Waleith had been a part of it, but he had just been one aspect. So now I had to find a way to prove something that very few people would believe.

And I had to use my allies to do so.

I knew where I was going to start.

When I reached the palace, I paused, once again seeing the Empyrean soldiers there. Even their presence had a different connotation now that I had my suspicions of Dorian. And all this time, I should have been questioning him, and the Empyrean, and the fact that he had been slowly accumulating power. And it would have been an easy thing for him to do so, especially because once the Queen passed—and now that every magical remedy was failing, it was only a matter of time before she passed—it would be easy for somebody like Dorian to step in, to use grief to fool people into believing that he was working on behalf of the Crown and Busal.

And he had brought in Ardem.

He wouldn’t have been able to do that with the Queen still capable.

I hated this. I was not equipped for this. I was never going to be a spy.

I was a soldier.

But no. Not any longer. That was a difficult thought, especially because part of me still identified as a soldier. But now I was the Queen’s Blade. I was different from the man I had been when I had left home and begun to find myself. And even now, I wasn’t sure what that meant for me, but I was not only that person.

I was more.

The Empyrean soldiers looked as if they wanted to stop me.

I glowered at them, more irritation surging within me than there had been the last time I had come here.

“I’m just coming to visit the Queen’s physicker,” I said. “And I might stop in and see the fabricator. Or perhaps I’ll see the Queen.”

“The Queen isn’t available,” the man on the left said.

He was a stocky man, somewhat muscular. More pertinent, however, was the hint of fabricated power that emanated from him. From both of them, in fact. I hadn’t paid that much mind to it, partly because there was always an undercurrent of power around the palace.

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