Free Maid of Wonder by Jennifer McGowan

Just then, however, the room visibly darkens. Dee has overlaid the frame of pricked holes so heavily with coverings that the firelight is slowly dying inside, giving the Presence Chamber the illusion of a fading spell.
    â€œAnd so the stars all must finally slumber,” he says ponderously. “Except for our own Gloriana.”
    With that announcement, Dee tosses a small package at the Queen’s feet. The guards surrounding the Queen step forward, bristling, but they are nowhere near quick enough. The package bursts into sudden flame, illuminating the Queen in a brilliant yellow-white light.
    Just that quickly, the flame is extinguished.
    Complete darkness falls over the room.
    Complete darkness . . . and silence.
    For one long, heavily weighted moment.
    Then Beatrice bursts into wild applause. “Bravo!” she shouts. “Bravo!”
    Mad clapping breaks out as the courtiers follow her lead, while the Queen demands that the candles be relit and the music commence. I do not miss the glance exchanged between monarch and maid. Beatrice and Elizabeth are avowed enemies, yes. But they are also allies in a court susceptible to the slightest shift of public opinion. The tiniest hint of any royally sanctioned “grand spectacle” falling flat can all too quickly stir up the gale-force winds of whispered doubts. Everything the Queen does must succeed and be grander than all that has come before. Such is the price of currying favor among a fickle court.
    I look to Dee, only to find him staring back. He stands in the lee and patronage of his beloved Queen, smug in his success. But his pride is not only a result of his trick of colored stars, I suddenly understand. John Dee’s ways are subtle, and his trap was neatly sprung. I glance right, and see the youngman who has left the far side of the Presence Chamber to stand beside Dee. The young man I felt I’d met before—though it seemed impossible—the young man I saw quite clearly just now, as visible on the plane of angels as if he too could walk within that hallowed realm. The young man who I now realize is working with John Dee.
    Marcus Quinn.
    He has been watching me.
    I think of my last conversation with the dark angel, the person I felt peering at me in the shadows. I thought it was a shade, some poor deceased soul, but it wasn’t. It was Marcus Quinn. He somehow followed me onto the dreaming plane, I am certain of it.
    Across the gradually lightening room, I can no longer perceive the angels or spirit beings pressing close around me. They have shrunk away from the noise and the clamor of the Presence Chamber, the clearing of tables and the moving of benches, as the gathered throng of mortals prepares for a night of drink and music.
    Instead, all I see is Dee, turning to Marcus and his men, gesturing wildly as he appears to explain how to remove his strange machine, so that he might go and be properly honored by the Queen for creating such a marvelous distraction for her.
    But even Elizabeth does not understand the full extent of that distraction. The display of lights and stars was also a ploy to draw me out, to prove to Dee what I would never have revealed on my own: that I have developed my Sight far more than anyone suspects, including the Queen.
    And now he can betray me.
    Dee is determined to prove his worth as the Queen’s most trusted diviner, and his chance is before him, with the Queen’s need to decipher Mother Shipton’s prophecy. If he succeeds, his future is set. The Queen will grant him money, titles, and protection. But he is no fool. He knows that I, too, am being put to the test, along with anyone else the Queen sees fit to question. In Dee’s mind, I have become a threat who stands between him and everything he has ever wanted.
    And the first step to removing a threat is to unmask it.
    Across the room, my adversary tips his head toward me . . . and smiles.

CHAPTER EIGHT

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