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Alice’s hand paused on the final poster.
DEATH TO THE ROYAL FAMILY.
DEATH TO PRINCESS AMALIA.
“This is different,” Alice whispered. Her instincts, finely honed from her years of training as a Queen’s Blade, flared to life. Warning her. “This is a threat to everything we’ve built these last few years.”
Kallista had been right. The monsters had come for them.
And they weren’t ready.
Chapter 20
AMALIA
Amalia picked the simplest dress she’d stolen from her mother’s room to wear the day she snuck out of the palace.
It was a crimson gown, with a hand-stitched skirt that cascaded off her hips in waves. It came with a matching cloak, the golden clasp fashioned to look like a songbird with a sapphire for the eye. Amalia fastened it around her shoulders.
She stood in front of her mirror, looking at herself and gathering the courage to leave. She’d asked for the mirror to be brought to her bedroom, feeling as though she had lost something by not noticing the way her face had changed over the last few months.
But staring at her reflection now, Amalia fought the urge to crawl back under her covers. Some might consider her pretty, she supposed. After all, she had her mother’s nose, her mother’s eyes. Her mother had been pretty—beautiful, even. Everyone said so. But somehow, Amalia didn’t feel like the features fit her face as well. She felt like an unfinished painting, like there was something missing from her that everyone else had. Something her mother had.
She’d spent an hour styling her hair after her bath, trying to get her curls under some semblance of control, and even braiding crimson ribbons into her hair. And yet, after all that work, the ringlets lookedflat and limp. Lifeless. With a sigh, she plucked at one of the ribbons, reaching for the sharp scissors her handmaids had left to trim it one final time.
Good enough.
Before she could chicken out and go back to bed, Amalia found her largest nightgown and put it gingerly over her mirror, covering the reflection. She was tired of looking at herself, tired of seeing a poor replica of her mother’s face staring back at her. Maybe it would get easier with time.
But for now…
Amalia took a deep breath to steady herself. Then, with all the courage she could muster, she opened her window to climb out.
She’d snuck out once before when she was just a child. It had been just after her Awakening, and after the joy of finding out she possessed control over all four elements had worn off, she had felt… empty. She had expected things to change between her and her mother after she’d been officially named heir to the realm, expected that her mother would begin teaching her how to use her powers, the way the generals in Solare taught their soldiers. She had expected her mother to be proud.
But nothing had changed between them at all. Sure, Amalia was suddenly invited to public appearances and was suddenly expected to be present at all her mother’s parties and meetings, a silent miniature version of the queen everyone loved. But behind closed doors, her mother behaved just the same as she always had. It was as though she knew from the moment of her birth that Amalia would be a disappointment and had decided right then and there not to waste time on her.
Unable to take it any longer, Amalia had run away.
Well… “ran away” is perhaps an exaggeration. She hadn’t even made it out of the palace before she’d been caught by a guard and escorted back to her rooms. Her mother had been informed, Amalia assumed, but she’d never brought it up to her. The next time Amalia had seen her, though, she’d looked even more disappointed than usual. As though she realized that even running away was somehow outside of Amalia’s skill set. Too incompetent to even accomplishthat.
This time she wasn’t running away, Amalia told herself as she hopped down from her window to the ground below, clumsily usingAir to slow her fall. She just needed to get out of the palace, just needed to see what was going on outside those marble walls in the city proper.
In the weeks after her mother’s death, Linh had told her what a mess the realm had become. The city was full of riots and murder, crimes committed out in the open, innocent people being dragged into the streets. It had terrified her when she’d heard that, and somehow it seemed to get worse and worse every time Linh updated her. For a while, she’d been so sure the rioters would come for her, would pull her out of the palace to make her pay for her mother’s crimes. The idea kept her up at night, too frightened to sleep.
Linh had described some of the horrible things they were doing to young Witches. Deplorable, disgusting things…
She just needed to see it for herself, Amalia resolved. Just needed to look out at the city and know how things were. Then, maybe, she could help somehow. That’s what her mother would have done.
Wasn’t it?
There were so few guards around the palace now. Not nearly as many as there had been when her mother was still alive. And since Solare had burned to nothing, there were no soldiers around this side of the palace to catch her and take her back to her room. Still, Amalia pulled the hood of her cloak up and kept her head down, hoping she could at least avoid being recognized, in case a palace servant saw her.
It was a longer walk to the city than she’d expected, and by the time she’d crossed the river and left the palace grounds, her legs were already complaining about the exercise. She hadn’t done much more than gentle walks around the palace gardens in years. Was it any wonder she was so out of shape?
But Amalia kept walking, hood up, trying to ignore the heat of the summer day and the shaking in her legs. She could do this. She would do this.
Linh had told her the palace was one of the few safe places left in the city—perhaps in the entire realm. Linh had her believing that since her mother’s death the city was crumbling under the weight of crime and horrors beyond her imagining.
