Chapter 6: The Queen Has Noticed Us Both

Morning, in Valmere, comes the color of weak wine. It found Elowen standing at the tower window with her hair still damp and her borrowed blanket clutched at her throat, watching the torches burn down in the courtyard. The thread between her wrist and the envoy's pulsed, gentle now, like a cat that has decided to stay. Then the door opened, from the outside, and six palace guards in white tabards stood waiting.

They were not rough. That was the unsettling part. They bowed, actually bowed, and a captain with a weathered face said, "Her Majesty requests the pleasure of your company at breakfast." The envoy, mask restored, offered Elowen his arm with an expression she could not read through the silver. "Breakfast," he muttered. "The Queen's breakfasts have ended careers."

The Queen received them in a glass conservatory full of winter roses, seated at a small table laid for three. She was older than Elowen remembered, and more alive; her eyes moved over the pair of them with the unhurried pleasure of a woman reading a favorite book. "Sit," she said. "Eat something. You both look as though you have been up all night, which of course you have." She glanced at the gold thread and smiled. "My grandmother's charm. I wondered who still remembered it."

Elowen's tea went cold in her hands. The Queen poured a little more into the envoy's cup, unhurried. "I dismissed you, Elowen, because you were too close to the Chancellor's kitchens, and I needed the court to believe I was afraid of what you knew. I needed whoever poisoned him to grow careless. You have been bait for three years, my dear. A very beautiful and very stubborn bait." She turned her gaze on the envoy. "And you, sir, were sent by my sister, were you not, to find out whether I was the poisoner."

The mask did not move. But the thread between the two prisoners trembled, and Elowen felt his shock arrive in her own chest like a dropped stone. "I did not know the Queen would be so well informed," he said at last, with admirable evenness. "I will answer whatever she asks." "I know you will," said the Queen. "Because I have a proposal. The poisoner is still in this palace, and the two of you, now bound by a charm that cannot be unmade except by one who wishes you both well, are the only people in Valmere I can trust."

She slid a sealed letter across the table, the wax still warm, stamped with a sigil that Elowen did not recognize and the envoy, visibly, did. "This will open the door you are both afraid of," said the Queen. "But I would not read it together, if I were you. Not yet. Some secrets are meant to be learned alone, and some are meant to be learned a breath apart, with a thread between you that does not let you lie."

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