“Stop complaining, Brook. Queen Neva did it for everyone’s good.” Aron reached for her arm, forcing her to halt as an old woman crossed the path in front of them.
Aron nodded at the stooped woman, and she smiled back at him, a wide, toothless grin.
Brook rolled her eyes, ignoring the geriatric flirtation. “How is it in my best interest to be weaponless? I’m completely defenseless. How is that in Charlie’s best interest?”
She watched as two stray dogs fought over a scrap of meat on the ground, near a pile of rotting garbage. They were growling at each other, their hackles raised and their teeth bared. If it had been a sword there, lying on the cobbled pavers, rather than a piece of rancid meat, Brooklynn would have joined the fray.
“Defenseless? You?” Aron laughed, drawing the attention of several people around them. “You’re the least defenseless person I know. Besides, you’re forgetting that everyone at the summit is unarmed, not just you. That’s why it’s in Charlie’s best interest.”
Brook had to bite back her smile. She liked that Aron didn’t consider her helpless.
If only she didn’t feel helpless at the moment.
It wasn’t just that they’d had to forfeit their weapons when they’d arrived at Queen Neva’s palace, although that had definitely stung. Brook had complained louder than any of her soldiers, but it hadn’t stopped her from surrendering both firearms and blades from her personal arsenal. Despite her grumblings, though, she understood the need for the security precaution: the fewer weapons available, the less likely someone could be harmed.
Namely, one of the monarchs in attendance.
More specifically, at least as far as Brooklynn was concerned, Charlie.
And after what had happened that first night they’d camped, Brook trusted no one. Not even her own men. It was a sickening feeling, and one she wasn’t accustomed to.
She had handpicked that soldier—Caden Evans—just as she had all of them. She was responsible for every last woman and man in her army. So to find Evans like that, his throat ripped apart, mauled by an attacker out in the rocky hills of the Scablands, made her blood boil.
The trick hadn’t fooled her, of course. She’d seen right through the shoddy attempt to make it look as if an animal had savaged her soldier. She wasn’t stupid.
Unarmed, yes. Stupid, never.
The killer had made a grievous mistake. He—or she—had overlooked the other injury, the stab wound in Caden’s gut. It was sloppy and amateurish, and made Brook realize that whomever she was up against wasn’t as experienced as he or she thought they were.
Yet here they were, two days later and she still didn’t know who that person was.
But she was sure of one thing.
That whoever was responsible for her soldier’s death was here with them, in Caldera.
And Brook had every intention of finding the killer.
xv
When Vannova, Queen Neva’s palace, finally came into view, my breath caught in the back of my throat. Not because Vannova was the storybook palace little girls imagined as they poured tea for their dollies and sang nursery rhymes.
It was the opposite, in fact. Stark and harsh, a daunting fortress of towers and turrets and spires, all dusted in ice and rising above a thick layer of frozen fog that made it appear as if it was the only thing that existed on the entire snowbound isle. As if the palace itself were crafted from the great glacier that rose from the water.
Clearly, we were no longer in the Scablands, no longer in Ludania at all. We hadn’t been since midafternoon, shortly after we’d first boarded the ferry, the massive passenger transport that bridged the arctic waters between the mainland and the glistening, frost-covered island. Yet even before leaving my country, the landscape had begun to change dramatically, becoming more and more wintry. Harsher. And infinitely more treacherous.
Snow had started falling continuously sometime late yesterday, while we’d been riding. It had made the footing perilous in spots, and the sound of horse hooves grating against the icy rocks filled the air. I’d almost been relieved when the frozen waters had finally come into view, when we’d bid Floss and his riders good-bye, offering assurances that they would be rewarded for delivering us safely.
Promises we meant to keep.
But as we rode the ferry, we realized that travel by boat was nearly as dangerous. The nose of the barge carved its way through a thick sheet of ice that crusted the water’s surface. I worried that we’d reach a point where the vessel could become incapacitated in the frozen waters.
“Will you miss them?” I had asked Avonlea when we’d stood at the back of the ship, watching the shoreline disappear.
Avonlea had clutched the ragged wool throw around her thin shoulders. “No.”
I’d tried to imagine what it must be like for her, to live a life without family. “Are you lonely, Avonlea?”
She’d cocked her head, just enough so she could look at me. “How could I be lonely?” she’d asked. “I’m here with you.”
“No . . . that’s . . .” My voice trailed away. How could I explain it to her? How could I make her miss something she’d never had. “I’m glad you agreed to come with me,” I’d said instead.
At that, Avonlea grinned, enthusiasm rippling the skin at the corners of her eyes. “I’m so glad you asked me, Your Majest—Charlie.” She’d corrected herself, remembering my insistence that she call me by my first name.