The third was King Xavier.
The current king wasn’t an old man—he was only five or six years older than Julian. But he looked like one, with his pale, colorless hair, heavy glasses, and skinny, frail frame. Even the layers of red and bronze velvet that made up his cloak couldn’t conceal the stoop in his shoulders from a childhood spent hunched over books in libraries. People said that Xavier was a strategic genius—that was how he had built up a rebellion against Noa’s mother. Not because people liked him better, or because he was a great hero or warrior, but because he had known exactly what rumors to spread, what false promises to make, and how to bribe the generals and the greedy nobles who felt ignored in the queen’s court to take his side.
Noa’s breath died in her throat as Xavier’s eyes met hers. He had been one of her mother’s councillors. She had spoken to him several times; he had even attended her tenth birthday party—
“Get out, girl,” Xavier snapped. His voice was just like the rest of him, thin and reedy. But his pale blue eyes were sharp with intelligence, though they barely rested on Noa before he turned to one of the councillors. “I thought I ordered this area cleared.”
Noa bowed, shaking with fury. She tried to disguise it by making her face a mask of fear. She ran from the courtyard and down the corridor. But rather than turning and going down the stairs, she went straight through a series of servants’ halls until she came to another entrance to the courtyard. She slunk toward the ivied nook where she had left the king and his advisors, keeping to the shadows.
“—have to take precautions,” the king was saying. “We need more information from him. Otherwise what good is he?”
Noa peered through the greenery. The king was pacing, his eyes like shards of glass, while his councillors hovered nervously.
“The Dark Lord’s movements have become increasingly erratic, Your Highness,” said the older of the two councillors, a woman with a Ferralian accent.
“But we’re certain he’s nearing the Gabriolan Islands?” Xavier said. The councillor nodded.
Noa frowned. How did Xavier know where Astrae was? The island was invisible if viewed from behind, so he couldn’t have spies following them. And the stretch of sea between Astrae and the Gabriolans was empty of islands to station sentries.
The councillor said something that Noa couldn’t hear. They had moved behind a canyonweed bush, and its fat yellow flowers obscured the woman’s face. Noa’s toes went numb with fear at the sound of her own name.
Xavier shook his head. “Maria, if I ever manage to get my hands on just one of those brats, I could have Julian Marchena eating out of the palm of my hand. He’d cut his own head off to spare his sisters any pain—and after he did, we could quietly execute them both and finally have done with the whole rotten Marchena line. One day.”
If Noa’s toes had been numb before, now her whole legs were, and at least half her stomach. She barely dared to breathe. It was one thing to hear secondhand that Xavier wanted her and Mite. It was quite another to hear it from his own lips, while his pale fingers absently plucked petals from the climbing roses.
“Your Highness, perhaps we should focus on the plan,” the younger councillor said.
The king made a thoughtful sound. “We’ll wait until he reaches the Devorian Rocks. That’s the perfect place for an ambush. And then, after I take it from him, we’ll watch his defenses crumble. We may not be able to get our hands on his sisters—yet—but we can have the next best thing.”
Take what? Noa’s thoughts were racing. What did Julian value more than anything else, apart from her and Mite? Had Xavier figured out that they’d found one of the Lost Words? She silently prayed for the councillors to ask questions, but clearly they knew exactly what the king meant.
“What if he guesses our plan?” Maria said. “What if he’s protected it with magics that we haven’t anticipated?”
Xavier let out a humorless laugh. “You’re giving Julian more credit than he deserves. That boy hasn’t had a strategic thought in his life. His mother was just the same . . . it’s why she never suspected me. No, Maria. For all his terrifying magical gifts, Julian Marchena will fall—and it will be because of his own lack of cunning.”
17
The Castle Is Haunted
Noa barely remembered the journey back to Astrae. She knew she had fled through the shadow of a tree fern just as the king and his councillors turned to leave, and that the otter had led her back through Death, but everything else was a blur. A shapeless fear had seized hold of her mind, crowding out everything else.
King Xavier was going to kill Julian. He was going to kill Julian just like he had killed Mom.
For some reason—maybe because, as the otter had warned, the shadow doors moved around—she fell out of Death into waist-deep water on the shore of Astrae, through the shadow of a boulder. She waded to the beach, where one of the mages found her and marched her back to the castle. She was deposited in the empty throne room, dripping all over the marble.
Noa sat on the throne and drew her legs to her chest. It was a warm day, but she was shaking. She fiddled with her charm bracelet, and the little glass whales clinked soothingly. Slowly, far too slowly, her fear ebbed, and she was able to think more clearly. King Xavier wasn’t going to kill Julian—not if she remained calm and remembered everything she had overheard. She pulled the Chronicle out of her pack—which, obviously, was waterproof,
