The Essence (31 page)

And then she said them, the words that nearly undid me. “I know who you are.”

At first I thought I’d misheard her, and certainly I’d misinterpreted her meaning.

I swallowed, and I tried to draw away from her. But she held me, harder even than before.

That feeling was back, that sick and sinking sensation that she was inside my head, that she knew things she shouldn’t—
couldn’t
. Sabara felt it too, and she unfurled inside me when she should have been hiding.

She knows nothing,
she promised me.

Queen Langdon’s lips pulled back, nearly resembling a sneer. If it had been dark—if I hadn’t illuminated the shadows—I might not even have recognized it.

But I did.

I heard her too. “I knew it.” And there was so much triumph, mixed with so much vehemence, in that single phrase that I stumbled backward. Yet still she held on to me.

Her face loomed closer, almost to mine, her teeth bared like an animal’s as her fingernails dug into my arms like claws. “I knew it was you. I knew you were in there.” But she was no longer talking to me—Charlaina, Queen of Ludania. She was talking to Sabara.

Her breath was bitter, vitriolic, and panic made me struggle to break free. It no longer mattered that she was an old woman and a queen. She terrified me. It didn’t even matter that she was hurting me. She knew my secrets, and that was far worse than anything I could imagine.

My heel caught in the hem of my dress and I heard the thin fabric tear, but I stumbled, losing my balance. I fell backward and she fell too. We landed, her on top of me, in a heap, and before I could even think clearly, I was shoving her off of me, trying to break free from her grasp.

It was far easier to free myself from her than from Sabara.

Sabara who came with me as I scrambled backward.

But Queen Langdon was fast for an old woman, and she got to her feet as quickly as I did.

“Leave me alone,” I said to her in the same way I had to Niko. “You don’t know anything.”

Her answering smile made my stomach drop. “Oh, but I do. And I won’t be the only one. You,” she said, reaching for my wrist and dragging me in the direction of the party. “You will answer to the summit.”

I can handle this. I can take care of her,
Sabara uttered, making my heart sick.
Let me take care of you, Charlaina
.

I closed my eyes, my resolve faltering.

And that was all it took.

I felt my hand lift. I tried to put it down; I wasn’t even sure what I was doing—what
she
was doing—but it remained raised. And then my fingers curled, balling into a fist.

The electricity that shot through my body was like nothing I’d ever felt before, terrifying and exhilarating and humbling all at once.

It was like watching through a pinhole as my body did things I didn’t understand, my voice echoing inside my head, as I screamed at Sabara to
Stop! Stop! Please, stop!

But she didn’t, and I saw—not felt—Queen Langdon’s fingers uncurl from my wrist as her entire body seized. As her eyes widened with shock.

As her windpipe was crushed from the inside.

And she had no way to stop it. At that moment, she was as helpless in the face of Sabara’s whims as I was.

She reached for her neck, trying to undo what was being done to her. She flailed, and would have gasped, if only she could have.

But to gasp there had to be air.

And then I watched helplessly as she fell, her lips turning blue . . . and then white. And she stopped thrashing. Stopped moving at all.

I continued to scream at Sabara, straining against her invisible hold on me as well, yet all the while I heard her . . .

Laughing.

Niko found me there, crouched over Queen Langdon’s body.

“Charlai—Your Majesty,” he corrected himself, even though the matter of my name seemed foolish now. “What happened?” Unlike me, he was checking the queen, feeling for a heartbeat, putting his cheek above her mouth to find her breath.

But I could have told him: It was too late.

He glanced up at me, understanding reaching his eyes, and he let her limp hand drop to the floor.

“What happened?” he asked again, this time more gently as he spoke to Sabara.

I shook my head, tears clouding my vision. “I . . . she . . . It happened so fast. . . .” I wiped my face, trying to clear my thoughts.

But it was Sabara who cleared them for me.
She had to be stopped, Charlaina. We couldn’t let her tell anyone.

“We?” I uttered out loud, my voice broken. I didn’t care that Niko was watching, or that I sounded insane. “
We
didn’t do anything.
You
did.”

She didn’t try to explain, or to convince me she was right. She simply repeated,
She had to be stopped
.

I didn’t think she was wrong, but I couldn’t agree with her methods. I stared at my hands—hands that had just betrayed me—and wondered how I could possibly agree with her.

She’d just killed a queen.

She’d just
used me
to kill Queen Langdon.

“It’s okay,” Niko pledged, gripping my shoulders fiercely as he stared into my unblinking eyes. “I’ll handle this. I’ll take care of things here. The important thing is to get you out of here.” He ran his hand through his already rumpled hair and then reached for the top button of his shirt and tore it open. “Go to your room and stay there. Don’t come out till morning. By then, I’ll have everything under control.”

I shook my head. What did he mean,
under control
?

“Go!” he insisted, grabbing my arms and shaking me once. The fire in his eyes left no room for argument, and I wasn’t sure whether to be horrified or relieved. “In the morning, we’ll make an excuse to get you out of here. We need to get you away from here and back to Ludania. You’ll be safer there.”

“But . . . what if I’m not?” I thought about everything that had happened, the threats on my life and the soldiers who’d been killed trying to protect me. “What if I’m not safe anywhere?”

I was too keyed up to sleep, but I somehow managed to stay still beneath the covers, mostly because I was afraid. Afraid to move, afraid even to breathe.

I worried that Sabara would come back. Or worse, that someone else would come for me, breaking down the doors to my bedchamber to capture me and drag me away. Take me to the dungeons.

Where monsters like me belonged.

Aron had gone to the soldiers’ quarters to meet with the others as soon as I’d come back. If he’d have argued, or even have asked to stay, I would’ve let him, that’s how frightened I was of myself. Instead it was just me and Brook now.

She slept her drunken sleep, never waking. Barely stirring.

Eventually Max came in too, but I remained motionless. I wasn’t ready to face him, not after what I’d done. Yet even with him sleeping on the floor, I could sense his presence like my own heartbeat. I could feel each breath he took calling to me.

I’d missed him, and I ached knowing that he was so close. That I could have him if I’d only allow myself.

xviii

“Charlie.” The voice was irritating and I rolled away from it, trying to wrap myself back in the darkness. But it came again, annoying and insistent. “Charlie, wake up!”

I groaned, throwing my arm across my face. “Go away, Brook. Can’t you find someone else to bother?”

The bed jostled, and I knew she’d plopped on it beside me. “I could, but I need you. Something’s happened.”

Alarm shot through me as I realized she could be talking about me. That I could be the
something
she meant.

I turned back toward her, trying to look interested rather than guilty. “What is it?”

She dropped down, so she was right at my face. I didn’t tell her that her breath was flammable, that I could still smell the alcohol lingering from the night before. This hardly seemed the time. “Queen Langdon died.” She whispered the words, her voice sounding ominous, maybe even accusatory—although I’d probably imagined that last part.

“What happened to her?” I asked, rubbing the grit from my eyes. I glanced down, only mildly aware that I was less . . .
glowy
this morning. “Who do they suspect?”

“Suspect? What are you talking about? She was a million years old.” Brook laughed, even though this was hardly a laughing matter. “She died in her sleep. But everyone’s talking about it. Some of the other queens are already preparing to leave. Queen Hestia claims it’s bad form to continue the summit under the circumstances. Empress Filis just said: ‘When a party’s over, it’s over. And this party’s over.’

“They’re both planning to be on the next ferry.”

I nodded, unsure what she expected me to say. All I could focus on were the words
died in her sleep.
I wondered what Niko had done. I wondered if he’d known a back way into her chamber too, if that was how he’d staged her death.

Shame choked me and I clambered to get upright, where the air felt less offensive, less critical.

“Where’s Max?” I asked, only just realizing he wasn’t here with us. Brook, too, looked as if she’d been up for a while. She was dressed and her hair was pulled back from her clean-scrubbed face.

“He and Claude are with Aron and Sebastian, making preparations. We’re leaving too,” she added, her brows raised as if she expected me to challenge the notion.

Again, I nodded. It was the right thing to do, to get back to Ludania. To sort things out at home—and with myself—before trying to negotiate such tricky matters as foreign policies and trade. Clearly I wasn’t ready.

Clearly I couldn’t yet manage Sabara.

Being on the ferry again stirred up a new kind of discomfort.

I didn’t like having Max and Niko together like this. We were too close—the three of us. Four, if you counted Sabara, and she definitely counted herself. She reminded me without words that Niko was still the most important thing to her by forcing my mind to wander, filling my head with all kinds of unwanted thoughts of him. My cheeks burned whenever he glanced my way.

Max, on the other hand, remained by my side and reminded me that I was still me. My reactions to him weren’t re-creations of someone else’s emotions. They were mine and mine alone.

I leaned into him, watching as tiny snowflakes flitted down from the cold, dead sky above. The flakes were too small to do anything but melt as they landed on our cheeks and eyelashes and hair. But the flurries were lovely, as if we were trapped inside our very own snow globe and someone had shaken up our world.

Shaken. That was an apt description.

“Do you regret coming?” Max asked as I stared absently at the swirling white flakes.

I smiled wearily. “I missed you. I miss my parents and Angelina.” It wasn’t an answer, but I didn’t have a better one yet. I needed time to process all that had happened.

I’d hoped to make a quick—and unnoticeable—escape from Vannova, but Neva had come to see us off.

“Be safe, darling,” she’d said as she made a show of watching while my soldiers were rearmed and Brook took inventory of their returned weapons. The elegant queen had leaned closer to me then, the warm skin of her cheek brushing against mine. “I don’t know what happened,” she whispered against my ear, making my blood run cold and filling me with apprehension so cutting I’d shivered. “I knew she was aged, but I’d expected her to at least survive the summit,” she’d said.