The Crown of Embers(20)

My blood.

My fingertips find the wound at my side, then the bump on my skull. I fell and hit my head, Doctor Enzo told me. But that’s not right. I fell onto my side. Now that I’m staring at the exact spot, I remember my cheek splatting in my own blood. How, then, did I get such a terrible knot on the back of my head? What really happened here?

I mutter, “Something isn’t . . . I don’t remember . . .” I’m not sure what I’m trying to say. That I didn’t hit my head? I obviously did. Maybe I tried to get up and then fell a second time. I lost so much blood, it’s a wonder I remember as much as I do.

“Elisa?” Hector says.

I look up, startled by his voice. The torchlight makes hollows of his cheeks. “I’m not sure. I . . .” Something about the light. The way it’s moving. So different from my dream. My gaze moves to the torch he carries. “Your torch.”

He waits for me to puzzle it out, familiar by now with the way my mind works.

Think, Elisa! And then I have it. “Your torch flame isn’t moving.”

“No,” he agrees. “It’s very still.”

Everyone is watching us, watching me. Perhaps they’re worried that my injuries have addled my mind, that, as Doctor Enzo suggested, there is permanent damage. But my thoughts are clearer than ever.

“In my dream—no, in my memory—there was a breeze.” I close my eyes, listen to the underground river wash through the caverns. I remember the brush of air against my face before the torch winked out. “It was more than a breeze. It gusted. My torch was sconced in the wall. And when the wind blew, it died.” I open my eyes.

It’s such a small thing, the slightest sliver of strangeness, but I am queen and they must take me seriously.

“Maybe someone opened the entrance upstairs,” Ximena suggests.

“Or what if someone walked by?” says one of the guards. “In a hurry.”

“Her Majesty said it gusted,” Mara says. “Walking by would not cause a torch to go out.”

“Maybe he had bad gas,” says another. “Have you seen what they feed us in the barracks?”

“Fernando!” Hector snaps, but I chuckle. It’s not particularly funny, but everyone joins me, and I allow myself to keep at it because in spite of the pain, it also feels really nice.

Finally I catch my breath and say what everyone is surely thinking: “I suppose we ought to consider that there is a hidden entrance to this chamber.”





Chapter 6


THINKING of the escape tunnel Hector and I used to reenter the palace, I realize that of course my new home would have other secrets, many of them forgotten, perhaps lost to centuries of restorations and additions.

Ximena brushes past me and begins searching the stone wall with her fingertips. “If there is another way in, we must find it,” she mutters. She’s right; we dare not leave any entrance to the palace unguarded.

Everyone jumps to help in the search, and my nurse directs them with strategic efficiency. Within moments, each section of wall and floor suffers the scrutiny of prying fingers. I itch to join them, but it’s all I can do to prop myself upright against an empty casket.

“Search quietly,” Ximena says. “Tell me if you hear something or feel air movement.” It comes as no surprise that my guardian knows something of secret passageways. She probably knows as many ways to exit a fortress as she does to kill a man.

Mara is crawling on the floor when she says, “I feel something. A breeze maybe.”

I start forward too quickly, and pain shoots down my side. Hector is at my elbow instantly. I lean into him.

“Which direction?” Ximena asks.

“Not sure.” Mara looks up. “I felt it against my left cheek.”

One of the guards crouches beside her with a torch.

“Watch the banner,” Ximena says as the flame comes dangerously close to the casket’s silk covering.

Mara and the guard run their fingers along the cobblestones, searching for cracks.

“Try pressing on them?” the guard suggests. “In my father’s library, one of the hearthstones triggers a door.”

So they press on all the nearest stones, from every different angle. Still nothing.

I say, “Try the pedestal.” The casket resting upon it is empty, patiently awaiting a permanent resident, maybe me.

Everyone crowds around, torches held high, blocking my view. I loose an exasperated breath.

Hector whispers into my ear, “Everything all right?”

“Just frustrated. I hate being weak. And I may have dragged everyone down here in the middle of the night for noth—”

“A latch!” Ximena says. “Tucked under the base. Let me see if I can . . .”