“I wondered if you were coming back,” a familiar voice came from ahead, from where the glow from my skin hadn’t yet reached.
I recognized the voice, and for a moment, it sounded strangely like the one that should be trapped inside of me.
I was too tired to banter or play politics tonight, all I wanted was my bed. “I couldn’t very well stay at the party all night, could I?”
Queen Langdon stepped forward, her skin looking even more like weathered paper in the light I cast. “It didn’t look that way from my vantage point. You seemed to be . . . enjoying your company. I thought you might dance forever.”
I smiled, but it was small and sad. “No one dances forever,” I said, trying to brush past her. “Good night, Your Majesty.” But her fingers caught my arm, squeezing me tighter than should have been possible. My eyes shot up to meet hers. “What are you . . . ?” I squinted at her, frowning. “What do you want from me?”
Her lips pulled into a hard line as she appraised me, and I wondered what it was she was dissecting: my skin and its unnatural radiance? My pale hair and eyes? Or just an inexperienced girl playing the role of queen?
She just held me like that, watching me, peeling me apart and, I was certain, finding me lacking.
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.