The Queen's Secret by Melissa de la Cruz

Author:Melissa de la Cruz [de la Cruz, Melissa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2021-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-One

Lilac

Nobody wants to go near the shredded and broken body of the dead black horse. What remains of its corpse lies in pieces, strewn around the square, as though the body were attacked by a thousand knives. The dark tornado that was once my white horse has disappeared. No one saw where it went. Maybe it dissipated in the chilly air, an apparition. An obsidian cloud.

I’m shaking, struggling to pick a strand of horse hair from my mouth. The dais where we’ve been sitting is dusted with these black strands, thick and tasting of dust and death. Hansen stares at me as if I were some terrifying stranger. There’s a glob of horse blood on the white froth of lace at his throat, and when I reach over to brush it away, the blood smears the fabric.

“I had nothing to do with this,” I say to him in a low voice, and take his hand. He doesn’t resist. I wonder whether he’s scared of me now. I have no idea what we do next, what happens next, how we make sense of everything.

The Duke of Auvigne looms behind Hansen, his face thunderous. I refuse to let him blame me for any of this. He was the one who brought the horse onto the castle grounds. I refuse to let him have the first—or last—word.

“Auvigne, where did you get this horse?”

“I . . . I . . . ,” he splutters. “It was brought to my home by a traveling horse dealer. My marshal and the farrier were impressed with the horse and wanted us to keep it, but then His Majesty needed something for you . . .”

He looks at Hansen, his mouth open, unable to finish his thought. Hansen is speechless. Perhaps both the duke and the king are starting to realize how implicated they are in today’s events. How they’ve been used by the darkest forces of magic and have allowed them to infiltrate the castle.

And now around us there are angry and confused people—courtiers, guards, the citizens of Mont. Men, women, and children—terrified by what they’ve witnessed and terrified because the black magic that killed other Montricians in the north has exploded into the capital city. Once again, it involves me.

Some have fled, but there are still thousands of people in the streets. They’ve come for a day of pleasure, and instead they’ve been confronted with something bloody and mystifying. A crowd this scared and unstable might riot. I feel the glare of eyes on me, the hostility of a people who’ve never warmed to me, people who want answers for the violence they’ve seen. Perhaps they see this as a show of power—of black magic—by an unloved queen.

“We must return to the castle,” I say to Hansen. “We need the guards around us—a double guard. We need the utmost protection right now. Do you understand?”

Hansen says nothing. He and the duke are both useless. Lord Burley is slumped in his seat again, weeping as though he were under personal attack.

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