“I don’t know.”
“Does the stone speak to her at all?”
“I don’t know.”
“Has it fallen out? Or does it still live in her belly?”
“I don’t know.”
I see the blow coming, but my dodge is weak and slow. The Invierno’s fist glances across my cheekbone, sending daggers of pain into my eye socket.
“God despises liars,” the Invierno says.
I blink to clear tears from that eye. It’s going to swell shut, but it’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before. I say, “Why would the queen share any of that with me? I’m just a guard.”
“You must think I’m stupid. You’re the second-highest ranking military officer in the kingdom and a Quorum Lord.”
I shrug. “The queen is a very private person.”
The Invierno raises his fist.
“Hit me all you want,” I say. “Pummel me to death, in fact. My answers will not change.”
The Invierno steps back, frowning. “You must love her very much,” he says, not unkindly.
It’s hard to keep my face nonchalant. Because every time someone mentions her, I can’t help but consider the wondrous, new possibility that she might love me back.
Be ready, she said. I’ll come for you.
Oh, I’ll be ready. These traitors will be shocked at how ready. And then they’ll be dead.
5
BY the time Belén calls a halt, my legs and rear scream in pain. It’s as though all the muscle and sinew have been rubbed away, and my entire existence is bone grinding against my granite block of a saddle.
Belén dismounts and reaches up to help me down. I try to lift my right foot from the stirrup, but my body won’t obey.
“Elisa?”
I grit my teeth. “Can’t . . . move.”
He laughs. “Stand up in the stirrups first. Get as high on your toes as possible. It will return some movement to your muscles.”
I do exactly as he says, and it seems to help. But just as I’m swinging my leg around, my thighs seize with cramps, and I topple into his arms.
“See?” he says in my ear. “Not so bad.”
I whimper.
He helps me straighten up. “Walk around a bit. Maybe gather firewood. Then we’ll practice. Otherwise it will just be worse tomorrow.”
Worse? I doubt such a thing is possible, but I nod and start limping away. I should learn how to mind the horse, how to rub her down and maintain the tack. Tomorrow, I tell myself. I’ll ask someone to teach me tomorrow.
“I didn’t realize you were in such pain,” Mara says. She has leaped nimbly off her horse, unbothered by the lack of saddle. “You should have said something.”
“We can’t afford any more delays!”
She sighs. “Oh, Elisa.”
“What?”
Mara stares at me, a strange expression on her face. She opens her mouth, closes it.
I raise an eyebrow. “Just say it.”
She takes a deep breath. “Once only, and then I’ll never bring it up again.”
I force my voice to remain calm. “You can say anything to me.”
“Here it is, then.” Another deep breath. “You’re risking a lot. For a man. I know you love Hector. We all do. But he’s just one person.”
If I hadn’t dismissed my nurse, Ximena, she would be right here in Mara’s place, saying the exact same thing. One of the hardest things about being queen has been learning when to disagree with the people I love most.
“I’m not doing this for love,” I say. “I mean, yes, I love him. But I’ve loved and lost before. It’s awful, but it’s a survivable thing.” I scuff the toe of my boot through the dirt, uncovering pine needles and half-rotted leaves shed by the cottonwood looming over me. My dirt, I think. My land.
“I desperately need that marriage alliance with him,” I tell her. “It will serve as a bond between our northern and southern regions. But mostly . . .” Here, I pause. The thought is still so nebulous in my mind, but I know it’s important. I know it the way I know the sun rises in the east each morning. “I need to see Invierne for myself. I need to learn more about it. Because something is wrong there.”
Storm and Belén have been tending the horses, and as one they freeze in their ministrations and turn to stare at me. “What do you mean?” Belén asks.
I start pacing. It hurts, but it feels good too, as if my body craves movement. “They are desperate for something. They sent an army of tens of thousands after me and my Godstone. When that didn’t work, they resorted to stealth and manipulation. Animagi martyred themselves to shake my country apart. So much loss of life. So much risk. And for what? Why?”
“It’s simple,” Storm says. “They believe it is God’s will that they have you. They believe he’ll restore their power, the kind they had before your people came to this world and changed everything. The animagi could do so much more with living Godstones than with those cold, dead things they carry.”
Mara gasps. It’s almost like a sob. “They burned down Brisadulce’s gate with ‘those cold, dead things’! They killed King Alejandro. They . . .” She flattens her palm against her belly. “They burned me. You’re saying they could do more?”
“Yes,” Storm says. “Oh, yes.”
But I’m shaking my head. “That’s not it,” I say, and they all stare at me. “I mean, I’m sure that’s part of it. But there’s more. None of you were there the day the animagus burned himself alive at my birthday parade, but you heard about it, yes? Read the reports?”
They nod.
“He said the Inviernos were more numerous than the stars in the sky. Is that true, Storm?”
He regards me thoughtfully. “There are many more of us than there are of you.”
“And that single declaration filled our whole country with panic and rage, because what if Invierne sends another army? Even larger than before? We would not survive another such onslaught. But what did he not say?”
“Ah,” Belén says. “I see.”
“What?” Mara says. “What do you see?”
“The animagus did not say they would attack again.”
I nod. “Inviernos only speak literal truth. But . . .” I look pointedly at Storm. “I have learned that they frequently deceive through omission.”
Belén turns to the Invierno. “Is she right? Does Invierne have no intention of invading again?”
Storm hangs his head. I made him dye his hair black so he wouldn’t stand out so much, but now his white-blond roots are growing out in a large skunk stripe along his part. “I don’t know,” he says wearily. “If my training as an animagus had been successful, I would have been inducted into the ruling council and thus privy to so much more. But I failed.”
I stretch my arms high to work out the kinks, somewhat enjoying the burn this produces in my thighs and lower back. “So my next question is: Why not? If they are as numerous as they say, why don’t they invade? I think something is preventing them. And I want to find out what it is.”
“Maybe they’ll invade after they have you and your Godstone,” Mara says. “Maybe that’s why they’re using Hector to lure you to them.”
“Maybe.”
“If they’re vulnerable in any way,” Belén says, “we should attack. Press our advantage.”
Storm turns back to his horse, but not before I catch the flicker of sadness on his face. He is wholly mine now, subject to me in both fealty and friendship. But it can’t be easy to hear us discuss the conquest of his homeland.
“I’ve thought of that,” I say softly. But if it’s true that they’re vulnerable, it means that Invierne is like a desperate mother puma cornered in her den, and thus more dangerous than ever.