Free Crown of Crystal Flame by C. L. Wilson Page B

jealousy there. A fear amplified. His brave, strong, beloved queen had begun to doubt him, to see rivals for his affections, enemies among friends. It was almost as if she were back in Cappellas again, fighting a bitter, brutal shadowy war for survival and power.
    Looking back, he could see it clearly, and the change no longer seemed at all natural.
    Annoura wasn’t Marked. He took what comfort he could from that, but someone had been playing on her fears. Undermining the love and trust Dorian and Annoura had shared for decades. Rousing all the suspicions bred into her by her Cappellan upbringing. Tricking her into betraying herself, just as the Lady Ellysetta said the Mages tried to do with her. And he, so used to her changeable nature, her manipulations, and the small ways she’d always tested his love, had thought nothing of it.
    The more he thought about it, the more he realized that Mage influence was the only explanation that made sense. And since the changes in Annoura had begun before Lord Bolor came to court, that meant Lord Bolor wasn’t the only Mage who’d been influencing her.
    So who was it? Who had been closest to her? Who could have had the time and opportunity to play on his queen’s suspicious nature and amplify her fears?
    Jiarine, Lady Montevero, was an obvious candidate—considering that she’d been the one to befriend Lord Bolor at court—but she’d been taken to Old Castle for questioning after Bolor’s unmasking. Tortured by some too-zealous prison guard, too, according to his Prime Minister Lord Corrias’s report. And she’d known nothing. She was, apparently, as big a dupe as the rest of them.
    Annoura’s other Favorites were possibilities, including, of course, the oh-so-charming Ser Vale, a handsome, minor noble sponsored to the court years ago by Jiarine Montevero. He’d wormed his way into Annoura’s inner circle quickly enough. If Dorian didn’t trust Annoura so much, he might have suspected the relationship between her and Vale had become deeper than mere friendship and flirtation.
    He scrubbed his scalp in frustration. Did he really think Lady Montevero and that silky-smooth lordling, Ser Vale, were agents of Eld, or was he just an angry, jealous husband trying to blame someone else for the disintegration of his marriage to a complicated and temperamental queen?
    Dorian spun away from the window and stalked across the room to his desk. Maybe he was angry and jealous. But maybe he was also right. He needed someone he could trust to conduct an investigation. If there really were still Mages at work in Celieria City, his queen and his entire kingdom lay at risk.
    Dorian sat down, pulled a fresh sheet of blank vellum from his paper box, and uncapped the inkwell.

C HAPTER F OUR
    Eyes filled with cold blood-fed
seeking, enjoying their amusement’s dread
Eyes that look forward to bloodsfied
anxious, desperate to taste the dead.
    Shadow’s Eyes,
a Fey poem
    Celieria ~ Celieria City
29 th day of Verados
    Hooves thundered down the North Road as a royal courier—the last in a network of couriers posted every ten miles from Celieria City to Kreppes—galloped towards the city gates. As one of the four riders assigned to run the ten miles stretching between the royal palace and the first posting exchange on the North Road, his face was well-known to every guard who worked the gate, but he still flashed his courier’s flag as he approached—a bright red square of fabric to indicate that he carried dispatches from the king. The guards hoisted a larger version of the same flag over the gatehouse and raised the gate so he could ride through without stopping.
    “Make way!” the city guards cried. “Make way!” They rushed to clear the crowded city street as the courier galloped past.
    Five chimes later, his horse lathered and panting, the courier arrived in the small, private courtyard of the king’s dispatch office. Alerted by the signal flags raised at the north gate, Lord Renald,