It took an absurdly long argument before Cordelia could finally start up the circular staircase to the castle tower where Mother had been imprisoned. The dukes—Arden and Lune in particular—were adamant that, as queen, Cordelia should sit in state in the grand throne room and wait for Mother to be summoned to her side. Nothing that any of the children said made any difference—until Rosalind finally cut through all of their bluster.
“Don’t waste any more of your breath,” she snapped. “We already know exactly how the two of you have kept her, so there’s no point in trying to hide the ugly details. The three of us saw her in that prison cell days ago.”
“You … did?” Lune’s eyebrows shot up.
The duchess of Solenne looked smug.
Arden’s face reddened with furious chagrin.
The sidelong looks that they all gave one another were anything but reassuring.
At least the dark and gloomy stairwell that led up to Mother’s tower was too narrow to fit the whole entourage that had marched the siblings through the town. It took Giles’s smooth tongue to persuade the duchess of Solenne and her two allies to stop at the bottom of the stairs. When Cordelia reached the locked and ironbound door at the very highest level of the tower, she turned to Lune and Arden with her jaw firmly set.
“Pass me the key.”
“Your Majesty, we would be more than happy to—”
“The key,” she snapped, infusing her voice with the full power of the land far below her feet.
She had endured everything else today. She had accepted the anchor of the Raven Crown. She had given up her wings for the sake of the kingdom and everyone inside it, and she had stepped voluntarily into this cage of a stone castle.
But she would not face her mother at long last with these two dukes as interested onlookers. It was too much to ask.
The duke of Arden opened his mouth to object. The duke of Lune stilled him with a swift headshake. “Of course,” he said smoothly, “you’ll want a moment of privacy. We’ll wait out here, for your convenience.”
Cordelia turned the key in the lock with shaking fingers … and then stepped back to let Giles and Rosalind rush in first.
She slipped into the shadowy room behind them and Connall, closing the door firmly behind her and keeping the big iron key clenched tightly in her fist. Her eyes stayed fixed on the dirty stone floor while her triplets flung themselves into their mother’s startled embrace.
“Rosalind? Giles? What are you two doing here? They haven’t caught you, too—? Oh!” Mother’s voice cut off with a gasp.
A heavy weight seemed to press down against Cordelia’s head, far heavier than the silver crown she wore. She pushed back against it, forcing her chin upright and her gaze forward … to where her mother stared at her over her triplets’ heads with an expression of undiluted horror.
Connall silently closed one hand in support around her shoulder … and Cordelia’s spine stiffened with the strength of that connection. “We’re here to rescue you, Mother.” Her voice was perfectly steady as she raised her chin an extra notch. “Aren’t you glad?”
“Have you gone mad?” Eyes wide and haunted, Mother shook her head desperately. “This throne will kill you, Cordelia. I told you! If I could ever, just once, trust you to listen and do as I say instead of wildly running off and ignoring all of my—”
“Mother,” said Connall, “look at the crown Cordelia’s wearing. Please. See exactly what she’s wearing now!”
Mother frowned and squinted through the shadows. Shoulders squared, Cordelia stepped closer to catch the dim, slanting bars of light that fell from the high window.
Mother let out a small, incoherent, broken noise. Then she swallowed hard. “But … how—?”
“Oh, we’ll tell you everything,” Giles said cheerfully. “Don’t worry! I’m working on a song all about it.”
“Make sure you remember to include all the juicy details from my battles—both of them!” Rosalind patted the long sword that hung by her side, and Mother’s eyes widened even more at the sight of it.
“But—the danger—!”
“We don’t have to hide anymore,” Connall said. “Cordelia’s changed everything for us.”
“We will tell you all about it,” Cordelia promised, “and we’ll get that horrible collar off you, too. But, Mother …”
She took a deep breath as she met her mother’s fierce, dark gaze—so familiar, so infuriating, and so beloved that her whole body trembled with its impact. The weight of her mother’s shock and disapproval was almost enough to topple her completely.
But Mother wasn’t all-powerful and all-knowing, as Cordelia had once believed her to be. Mother was fallible. She made mistakes. She had her own weaknesses, like everybody else.
And her love, fierce and unyielding across the years, had made all of them a family.
“I am the Raven Queen,” Cordelia said, “whether you like it or not. I won’t always do as you wish from now on, and you can’t give me orders anymore.”
“Cordelia …” Mother started forward, frowning—but Cordelia’s raised hand halted her in midstep.
“I promise I will always listen to your advice—but you cannot keep any more secrets from us, no matter who you’re trying to protect! I know it can feel too dangerous to share them. I’ve made that mistake now, too. But the truth is, it nearly ruined everything … and we need to be able to trust you.”
At Cordelia’s final words, Mother flinched. She looked down at Giles and Rosalind for support.
Even Giles didn’t stand up for her this time, though. Cordelia’s triplets both stepped back and looked up at Mother steadily, waiting for her reply. Connall stood by Cordelia’s side.
When their mother finally spoke, her voice was hoarse with emotion. “I have only ever tried to protect you all.”
“We know,” Giles said.
Rosalind nodded.
“We’ll protect you, too,” said Cordelia. “But you have to understand that things have changed. If you can’t—if you hate the throne too much—then you can go back to our forest and stay there. I promise I won’t stop you. No one else will, either. You’ll be perfectly safe there forever.”
Mother shook her head, moistening her lips. “You know I would never abandon any of my children,” she whispered. “You must all know that by now. I love all of you.”
“We love you, too.” Cordelia’s throat tightened.
“Then …” Mother blinked rapidly. “You’ll let me stay? And I’ll find a way to accept your throne, somehow?”
“We both will,” Cordelia promised.
The strong stone walls seemed to close in around them with her words … and something shattered in Cordelia’s chest.
It was the wall that she had built with all of her strength to hide away from the truth of her surrendered wings and everything else she had gone through ever since that first night in the forest when she had flown out of their castle and lost her first home for good.
She had stayed so strong behind that wall for so long.
She had tried so hard not to cry.
But when Mother tentatively held out her arms, Cordelia ran straight into them … and the tears that streamed out of her face to soak into her mother’s warm, familiar chest felt like rain falling onto barren earth, bringing the whole parched land back to life.
Two days later, the long, curving high street through Corvenne’s capital city was crowded unbearably full of people. How could so many human beings ever have squeezed into one place?
Flowers rained down from the windows of the tall, skinny white buildings, latticed in black beams, that leaned out over the street. If Cordelia could only have slipped into bird form, she would have shot through that shower of blooms and arrived at the grand Hall of Investiture in less than five minutes. Instead, she was paraded at a snail’s pace down the street among her siblings with all five adult dukes blocking them in, walking before and behind the family with serene, unhurried smiles.
Rows of soldiers acted as human shields around them while a massive crowd of shouting, singing onlookers fought to shove through all those lines of protection, hands desperately outstretched to grasp at Cordelia through the deafeningly loud confusion. Mother and Alys were waiting ahead, making a final check for safety before the ceremony of investiture could begin.
The sickly sweet stench of so many sweaty strangers mixed in Cordelia’s shallow breaths with the horrible, raw stink of human refuse from the open gutters that ran down the cobblestoned street. The Raven Crown pressed into her scalp, painfully heavy. Impossible to remove in front of everyone.
She was hemmed in on every side. She was trapped. No space to move, no clean air to breathe—
Rosalind’s hand closed around her elbow. “Chin up,” her sister whispered into her ear. “Remember, you’re their queen now. They just want a good look, to know who to thank for saving all their lives when you stopped that endless war.”
Cordelia couldn’t answer. She had to keep her jaw clamped shut or else her teeth would start chattering in front of everyone.
You promised, she reminded herself fiercely. You promised.
Connall frowned down at her from his position at the end of their row, his hands freed once more and his voice grave in her head. You’re safe now, little sister.
So are you, she thought back to him.
He was a beloved brother of the true Raven Queen and the newly named duke of Harcourt, too, as Cordelia had passed that title to him. The land itself had swallowed up their grandmother; no one else would ever dare try to imprison him again. For the first time in his life, her older brother could relax his guard.
Cordelia couldn’t open her mouth to say it, though.
Beside her, Giles took one swift look down at her tightly clenched face and then said, “Did I tell you three that I’ve thought up a new song? It’s going to be my best one ever, I’m certain.”
“Already?” Rosalind groaned. “I don’t know if I’m ready yet for another—”
“Oh, this one is far more epic than my last,” he said cheerfully. “You see, it’s all about the really itchy, grimy bits between my toes and how much they’ve been bothering me these last few days of travel. It’s a follow-up to my stomach song but far more tragic and impressive. Here, listen!”
He sucked in a loud, deep breath, then clasped his hands to his heart as he launched into a piercing falsetto that soared like a cat’s yowl through all the din:
My toes! My toes!
They smell nothing like a—
“Shush!” Rosalind snorted with laughter as she gestured menacingly at him. “D’you want these people to start throwing water instead of flowers, just to shut you up?”
At the end of their row, serious Connall looked indescribably pained by his younger siblings’ antics. Giles beamed, though, as he glanced down at the small smile that Cordelia hadn’t managed to suppress. Her teeth weren’t even trying to chatter anymore.
“Cordy likes my song,” he said smugly, “and I think everyone in Corvenne will be singing it within a week at most. How could they resist? I haven’t even sung you all the best bit yet. You’ll never guess what I came up with as a rhyme for ‘toe hair’—”
“Stop!” Rosalind clapped her hands to her ears. “I am begging you!”
But of course, there was never any stopping Giles once he’d fully launched into a performance. By the time they reached the next turning of the street, Cordelia’s chest was quaking with barely suppressed laughter, and the overwhelming din of the grasping crowd around her had settled into a dull roar. Even the crown didn’t feel quite so heavy anymore. It was hers, after all—and all the people she loved would help her to grow into it.
The whole land of Corvenne stretched around her now, vast and open to all of her exploring senses.
She was the Raven Queen—and with her family by her side, she was ready to rule.