The Essence (23 page)

Neva hadn’t lied when she’d said she’d sent up clothing, and not just for me, but for Brook, too. Even Zafir had something to change into.

I had no idea how she’d guessed our sizes, or whose clothes we actually wore, but it felt like heaven to strip out of my dirty riding gear and slip into something clean and soft. Something that didn’t smell like horses and sweat.

The only thing better would have been a bath, but I knew there’d be time for that after we filled our stomachs.

We ate in almost total silence, just the three of us: Brook, Zafir, and me.

I didn’t eat slowly, as a queen probably should. Instead I couldn’t chew fast enough, and I practically shoveled the food into my mouth. Food that hadn’t just been hunted and skinned. The meat—whatever it was—was perfectly sauced and seasoned and was probably the best dish I’d ever eaten. It had only been a few days, but it felt more like a lifetime since I hadn’t had to choke down something scavenged or moldering.

Brook was still mad about having to share my sleeping quarters, about not being housed in the gatehouse just outside of the palace with her soldiers. It was where all the visiting queens’ soldiers were bunking.

Soldiers, especially off-duty ones, could be loud and raucous
and lewd, and Brooklynn worried she was missing out on the party they were surely having without her. I think she was even more upset that Aron had been allowed to stay with them, bunking with
her
men, while she was stuck here. With me.

Still, I hadn’t changed my mind. I didn’t want to be alone, and Zafir wasn’t exactly the kind of company I had in mind.

Besides, there were things we needed to discuss.

Things I couldn’t keep putting off, despite her irascible mood.

I stilled at the thought, my breath gathering in the base of my throat. “Brook,” I whispered. “We need to figure this thing out. We need to find out who was responsible for killing your soldier, because whoever he is . . .” My voice drifted away as the rest of my words got caught. I couldn’t say them:
Whoever he is also wants to kill me.

Zafir glanced up then, too, momentarily forgetting the food in front of him. “She’s right. Until we know who the traitor is, Queen Charlaina’s not safe. No one is.”

Brook swallowed what was left in her mouth, and her expression changed. She no longer glared at me across the table. Now she looked determined. “I know,” she answered gravely. “And when I find him, we won’t need the gallows. I’ll kill him myself.”

I didn’t recognize the language right away—it was one I hadn’t heard in ages. But I knew, even from the depths of my dream, it was long dead.

Just like the girl I saw reflected back at me from the looking glass.

Now she was gone.

Not that I’d minded her body, I realized, gazing into her shining green eyes, so unlike the ones I’d been born with. Even if the copper-haired beauty hadn’t been next in line for the throne, men would’ve fallen at her feet.

At my feet,
I corrected, a small smile tracing my lips.

But there was only one man I cared about. Only one who made my heart race and my skin tingle.

I turned my attention to the girls who attended me, their voices buzzing all around me as they fussed and fastened and pinned and smoothed, preparing me for the feast.

“Out!”
I insisted in that strange foreign tongue, and felt a twinge of satisfaction at their skittishness as they jumped away from me, scattering like a flock of startled birds. When I saw their gazes flitting nervously to one another as if to question my command, I raised my voice.
“
Now!”
I barked the thick, guttural word, making certain they knew I was serious.

I waited until the door clicked behind every last one of them, until I was sure I was alone at last, and then I turned back to the mirror once more.

I was flawless. Right down to the fresh flowers woven into my long, copper tresses. I would make the perfect attendant to my eldest sister on her wedding day, the day she’d take a king to rule at her side. The day she’d start trying for an heir to take her place upon the throne.

To displace me in line.

If only she’d been the one to say the words instead of the girl in whose body I now resided. If only I’d been able to trick the new queen into taking my Essence instead of her younger sister.

Then I wouldn’t be in this predicament.

Then the queen wouldn’t have to die today.

I took a breath and turned toward my bedchamber, not even the second-best quarters in the palace. Definitely not fit for a princess who was second in line.

But I’d requested these rooms for a reason.

I moved aside a heavy table, and beneath that, a thick, cumbersome rug. When I finished, I was winded, but I was staring down at the small, planked door cut into the very floor itself.

I lifted the iron rung and pulled, and then vanished down into the black stairwell.

When I reached the chamber door at the other end of the passageway—my destination—I tapped softy, a sound so faint it could easily have been made by rats scratching against the floorboards.

When I heard the answering knock, I smiled to myself. All was clear.

I slid the door open and stepped out from the shadows into a corridor. Yet even before I was out from behind the heavy door, I heard his voice—just as rough and grating as my own had been.
“You look beautiful,”
he said in that same long-dead dialect, and even though I’d just thought that very thing while looking at myself in the mirror, I almost couldn’t breathe when he told me so.

Shyly, I stepped forward, just as he held out the gleaming silver blade to me.

It was heavier than I’d expected, and sharper, too. I turned it over in my hand, watching as light reflected from the edge, glinting back at me.
“I won’t need it,”
I said.

“Take it anyway,”
he insisted, his fingers reaching up to caress my cheek, making fire lick through my veins.
“Just in case.”

And then I lifted my eyes to his . . .

. . . and gasped.

For too long, I couldn’t find my breath. The air was trapped somewhere between my lungs and my throat, stuck on a lump I couldn’t manage to swallow. I blinked hard in the darkness, my skin barely lit at all, and I guessed that was the reason Sabara’s hold on me had grown.

And now I was too far away from Angelina to ask for her help.

Instead I waited, my fist clutched against my chest, wondering why this was happening, wondering if Sabara knew what I’d just witnessed.

I wondered, too, if any of it was real at all.

When, finally, I inhaled sharply, my gaze shot over to Brooklynn. I was relieved to find she was still asleep beside me, her breathing even. She, at least, wasn’t gasping or suffocating within the confines of her own body.

She wasn’t terrorized by dreams that didn’t belong to her.

I wished I could sleep half as soundly.

I sat up slowly, carefully, quietly. It was strange to be in this room now, knowing what I knew. Seeing what I’d seen.

It was definitely the same place, the same room from my dream. And unless Sabara was playing some sort of trick on me, she’d unwittingly revealed a part of her past she’d probably hoped would have remained long dead and buried.

Yet here we were, the two of us, under the roof of the palace where she’d taken the body of one girl, and violently killed another.

All in an effort to remain on a throne—any throne—forever.

I moved to the place I’d seen in my dream, to where the opening in the floor should be. Unlike in the dream, where a table blocked the way, there was only the rug there now.

I reached for a corner and tugged.

It barely moved, and I tugged it again, this time harder.

The rug scraped across the floor, and I cringed, looking again at Brooklynn. She was still asleep. I pulled again and again, and it moved in increments. It was heavier than it looked, and I made slow progress. My heart was pounding when the corner of the trapdoor finally came into view.

I collapsed onto my knees, peeling back the corner of the rug to reveal the rest of the opening.

I reached for it.

My chest ached with hope as I lifted the recessed rung. It squeaked, and I wondered how long it had been since someone had used this passage.

But despite the rusty handle, the door pulled open with a sigh.

Cold air rushed up from the duct below, hostile and unwelcoming. I shivered but took a step inside anyway.

The first few steps were easy; I found my footing by the light coming from the bedchamber behind me. But as I left the stairs and entered the tunnel beyond, my steps grew more hesitant.

The only light remaining came from me, and it was barely enough to see in. There was only the cold, and a vague recollection that I’d been there before. . . . A memory that wasn’t my own.

I counted my steps, not knowing how far it was, but finding that focusing on such a mundane task made the notion of being down here—alone—less unnerving. When I stopped, it was almost on instinct. I wasn’t sure why, exactly, but I felt like this was the place. That I’d gone as far as I needed to go.

I reached out blindly and felt the walls around me.

It was there: the door.

My chest wall could barely contain my beating heart as I pressed my ear up against it. There wasn’t a single noise coming from the other side as I reached for the handle. My breath caught in my chest for an entirely different reason now.

Nothing happened. The door was locked.

I wasn’t sure what to do next, so I did what Sabara had done, I tapped on it and waited.

After a moment, I started to feel foolish, realizing that I was chasing ghosts. That what I’d seen couldn’t have been possible, despite finding the hatch. Despite navigating through the passageway.

It had been yet another illusion, something Sabara had meant for me to see.

I wrapped my arms around myself, wondering if I should simply go back.

That was when I heard it, the whisper-soft knocking that came from the other side. Just like in the dream. Only this time, I wasn’t the one opening the door.

Inside of me, Sabara awakened, and I could feel that this was what she’d wanted all along. I was a pawn in a children’s game, manipulated by a master.

But when I saw him, the reaction was my own. I gasped for the second time.

It was him.

He wore the same face he had in my dream.

The same face he wore in this very moment—decades, maybe centuries later—as if nothing had changed.

Niko Bartolo.

We stood there for moment, and then several more, just staring at each other. I panted, the cold air making my chest ache. His eyes conquered me.

I wanted to say something, to tell him that I knew who he was . . . and what he’d done. What
they’d
done.