“She doesn’t need them. No one in their right mind comes here.” Rían shifted the curved dagger and slid it across his palm. With blood welling from the wound, he squeezed his fist, letting it drip into the black lock keeping the gates closed. There was a soft click followed by a rusty groan as the lock fell away and the gates slowly opened.
Rían passed beneath without issue, but when I tried, I hit an invisible barrier.“The old crow is so feckin’ paranoid,” he muttered.
Paranoid for good reason. I had a weapon capable of killing her.
A weapon capable of killing me as well.
I’d assured Rían the dagger was for defensive purposes only. If the Queen came for me, I needed a way to fight her.
And since there was a chance it would still work, he’d agreed.
A small chance was better than none at all.
Rían took my hand, crossing the barren stretch of earth and stone to the stairs.
What must it have been like for Rían to grow up in this place, surrounded by death and darkness? A lonely little boy accustomed to skulls and human bones rising from the ground and drifting away like ships on the sea.
Looking at the entrance hall on the other side was like staring into a snowstorm. White walls, white marble floor, white staircase. Two guards in black leather uniforms waited on either side of the door, so still and silent I wasn’t sure they were alive.
“You know where you’re going?” Rían asked.
Nodding, I showed him the crude map he’d drawn on my palm. Up the stairs to the second floor, third door on the left. Simple.
He kissed my temple and wished me good luck.
And then he went back out into the yard and evanesced. Tadhg was currently hosting the Queen under the guise of renegotiating the treaty with the Vellanian King. She’d agreed to visit his castle for one hour. Rían’s plan was to pop in and out so she thought he was still at the castle, and to make sure she hadn’t left.
“She can hear the heartbeats,” Rían had explained while we were discussing our plan last night.
If she was in the Forest, she could pinpoint a single heartbeat the moment a person set foot over the enchanted border. No Queen in the Forest meant no one to hear my heart thundering as I climbed the stairs. And no Queen meant no one to control her mindless minions standing guard by every door on this floor. I kept expecting them to shout or stab me with their swords. None of them so much as twitched.
The same white from the hall continued inside the Queen’s chambers, where Rían was convinced she’d hidden his heart.
If I were a heart, where would I be?
I would want to keep it somewhere safe, where no one could find it. So not in the armoire or dresser or desk. Beneath the wide, white canopy bed? No. Too simple.
A second door connected the bedroom to a bathing chamber with a sunken tub. Beside a sink rose a large gilt-framed mirror with cherubs peering at their reflections from each of the four corners.
Probably not the best place to hide a heart.
There was a closet on the other side of the room, filled with children’s toys. Wooden soldiers and swords, leather balls, a rolling hoop, a set of quoits. All lined along the wall, just waiting for a child to discover them. I ran my fingers through the yarn mane of a little white rocking horse.
Something moved behind me.
I gripped the emerald dagger. Whirled.
Bloody Rían.
“You nearly gave me a heart attack,” I breathed, pressing a hand to my pounding chest.
Chuckling, he picked up a stuffed bear to examine its black glass eyes.
“Are all of these toys yours?” It seemed oddly sentimental for the Queen to have kept them for so long.
Rían nodded. “She never let me play with one for more than a week. When I’d get attached, she’d take it away again.” He set the bear on the back of the horse. His grin faded, and he turned in a circle. “Do you hear that?”
I shook my head. All I heard were my own ragged breaths.