7. Jess

Chapter 7

Jess

I stumbled through the mirror and sprawled across the floor of the dimly lit catacombs. I tried to ease my fall but slipped and cracked my head against the stone. My heart pounded, and I struggled to gather my senses and clear my vision.

Keelan hadn’t followed. Neither had Atikus.

I was alone.

As I caught my breath, I realized I was bracing my weight against a large slab of well-polished marble. A quick glance at the golden placard noted it as my great-great-grandfather’s sarcophagus. I yanked my hand away and clutched it to my chest while my eyes darted about the room.

A mirror, the twin of the one I had fallen through back in the cave, loomed behind like some specter ready to pounce. When we saw the crypt from the other side, Atikus had suspected the pieces might be portals. My unintentional trip confirmed that theory, but, as I stared at the mirror on the Fontaine end of the journey, I saw only reflective glass.

“Why can I not see Atikus and Keelan in the cave?” I wondered, my words echoing in the lonely chamber.

The crypt felt familiar, but I had never liked the place. Its creepy magical torches cast far too many dancing shadows across the marble prisons of the dead. My father brought me down here when he wanted to impart some deep lesson about the weight of the Crown and our royal lineage. I knew I should revere the sacred ground, but it was hard to get past the idea of walking through rooms full of dead kings and queens who were likely more dust than flesh. To calm me, my father would point out the place where he would one day rest, then where I would follow. That only made my skin crawl more. What child wanted to think about where they would be interred?

I rose and brushed off my shirt and trousers, then took a tentative step. The flickering flames made no sound, released no smoke. In the stillness of the chamber, my thoughts boomed like thunder in my head.

Keelan tried to kill me.

I remembered the crazed look in his eyes as he held me with his blade plunging toward my throat. I knew that man was not the noble Guardsman I had come to know. Someone— something —had taken him over, commanded his actions. Still, knowing that truth could not douse the fear coursing through my veins. I tried replaying the moments before I Traveled to the crypt, tried making sense of what had happened.

I’d been sleeping.

Then Keelan loomed over me with wild eyes and a knife.

He had been talking to himself—or wrestling with himself—I could not tell. In the end, Atikus tried to pull the hulking man off of me but had been slammed into a wall for his effort. I hoped the kind old Mage was all right.

I had barely squeezed out of Keelan’s grasp before he lunged across the room and pinned me against the shelving, his razor-sharp knifepoint quivering inches away. I could still see the torchlight glinting off his silver blade.

He struggled, fought against whatever, whoever, commanded him to act.

I wondered at the strength it took for him to resist the powerful Compulsion, especially for a man with such a passive Gift.

I was unsure how I ended up flying through the mirror, let alone why it had brought me here . I didn’t remember breaking from his grasp, but somehow I had hurtled from inescapable death to the safety of a room full of dead royalty.

Had the whole episode not been terrifying, that irony would have made me laugh.

The crypt wasn’t large, only a dozen chambers connected by a wide central walkway. Two bronze doors loomed at one end, opening into a room I couldn’t remember ever visiting. At the other end, plain gray stone mirrored their golden counterparts. The walls were polished and held only golden plates memorializing ancient monarchs. As I approached the towering doors at the walkway’s end, I looked to my right into the last grotto, the one that would soon allow my father his eternal rest.

My steps faltered, and I froze.

I stared into the empty, unlit space.

Its darkness mirrored my thoughts, as images of my father’s face rose to the fore.

With all I had been through over the past few weeks, I had yet to grieve, or even focus on my father or brother— or even my mother —all of whom were lost to me now. Their faces fluttered before me.

My father’s gentle smile.

My mother’s glare.

My brother’s playful smirk.

The last image stabbed into me more deeply than any blade ever could.

“Oh, Justin. Why did you have to be so stupid? Why did you . . .” A wave of long-pent emotion stole the words.

I hugged myself and stared into the darkness of Father’s tomb.

As many times as I relished my personal space, my time without pestering servants or nattering nobles, I had never once felt isolated.

In that tomb, before the resting place of my father, surrounded by the remnants of my distant family, I felt alone.

My younger brother Kendall was all the family I had left, but he was only eleven. He would need me now, need me to be strong, need me to be his rock.

The people of Fontaine would need me—indeed, those of the entire Kingdom.

Then I remembered the looming war.

The entire continent needed me to succeed.

Me. A girl of seventeen. An orphan adrift in a chaotic world refusing to be ruled.

In the silence of the stone chamber, surrounded by the kings and queens of old, I grasped the weight of the Crown, my Crown , and I knew I must bear it alone.

Tears broke free, and I slumped to the floor.

A half hour later, I gathered myself, wiped streaks from my face, and stood. I reached for the wooden lever to open the doors, but a tiny voice in my head stilled my hand.

No one here knows I am Queen now. That means they do not know about Father, or Justin, or Mother . . . or the invasion. Will they believe me when I tell them? What if they do not want me as their Queen? Am I ready for this? Where do I even start?

Tears threatened again, but I sniffed them back and stiffened my spine.

I am Queen now. I cannot act like a scared little rabbit. What would Father do?

I thought back to the endless hours I’d sat in Council with my father listening to men droning on about taxes or land, farming or Constables, fishing rights or disputed ducal decrees, or a thousand other tedious topics thrust before the King. I tried paying attention, but most of it felt so distant from anything I might need as a teenager. And yet, here I was at seventeen—the Queen.

“Father always said to surround yourself with wise men and listen to their guidance. I might have to amend that to include some wise women, too,” I mused. “At least this gives me a place to start so I don’t look completely lost. Start with the Council.”

I looked down at my rumpled riding clothes and shook my head, then ran a hand through my tangled mess of hair. I sniffed the grime left on my fingers and winced. It had been weeks since I’d bathed, and there was no way I would look—or smell—like a queen until I had a proper bath and a change of clothes.

My steely eyes and upturned chin would have to do.

My father always told me those were more powerful tools than the crown, though I never understood the comment until now.

Without fretting further, I pulled the wooden lever and listened as powerful mechanisms began to creak. A sliver of sunlight grew into a flood as the doors opened.

“What the—” I heard from someone outside.

I couldn’t suppress a chuckle as a startled cleric, bent with age, stumbled backward.

“Father, I have risen,” I blurted, aware of the implications of my words, considering I stood in the doorway to the tomb of kings looking like a bedraggled corpse recently laid to rest.

The man’s eyes widened, and he tripped, landing on his backside. He tried to speak, but his words were more jumbled than his tangled feet, and I was fairly certain the man’s eyes would pop out of their sockets if they widened any further.

I bit back a laugh and regained my composure. “Forgive me, Father. I didn’t mean . . . Oh, never mind. Escort me to the Palace.”

“Of course, Princess . . . Your Highness. Right away, Highness,” he stammered as he struggled to his feet.