Rae Carson - The Crown of Embers

He opens his mouth. Closes it. At last he says, “I think it would be best if you discussed your dreams with Ximena or Mara.”

The hurt that wells up my throat is unexpected and inexplicable. “Maybe I will,” I whisper. “Thank you for your counsel.”

During the next couple of days, I think hard about what Hector said. I try, twice, to talk to Ximena about my dreams. But the words clot in my mouth. It’s not fear so much as shame that stills my tongue. I can’t bear to be weak and frightened in front of everyone. I am queen now. I should be so much braver, so much stronger.

But then comes the night when the knife is so real, so cold and sharp against my skin for the barest instant before it is an exploding fire in my belly. Then the nightmare flashes to a different place, a different knife, a different terror. I am helpless, my limbs leaden, as the dagger pricks at Humberto’s precious throat. “You could have stopped this, Elisa,” he tells me, just before the blade whisks across his neck and Humberto’s hot blood spurts all over my crown, which is suddenly in my hands.

This time, my waking screams are cut off by vomit spewing from my mouth.

Mara and Ximena rush to help me clean up. I try to rise, and they hold me down, insisting they will have me set to rights in no time. But I thrust them back with more strength than I ought to have. Clutching the bedpost, I drag myself over the side and gain my feet.

My legs quiver with disuse, but they do not betray me. “Find Hector,” I order to no one in particular. The vomit is already a cold plaster gluing my nightgown to my skin, and my nose stings from the rotten-spice scent. “I’m going to wash,” I tell them. “And then . . . and then . . .” I have no choice. I have to face this black monster of terror before it eats me from the inside out. “And then, I must return to the catacombs. Tonight.”

I bathe quickly, with Mara’s help. Ximena plies me with a gown, but I refuse. “Pants,” I say. “And my linen blouse.” I’ll not be hampered by a skirt—it’s all I can do to remain steady as it is—and I know I’ll feel more comfortable, more capable, in my desert garb.

Hector arrives as Ximena finishes lacing my camel-hair boots, and I rise to greet him. “Sorry to rouse you,” I say. I feel guilty that I’ve decided on an excursion during the one night he allows himself to rest.

“A queen needn’t ever apologize to her guard. Where are we going?”

“The catacombs. I need to . . . to see the place again.”

“We scoured it a dozen times. We found nothing.”

Ximena weaves my hair into one long braid down my back. I have so much hair that she usually weaves two, one atop the other, but she senses my urgency. “ We found nothing? Or the general?” I ask. “Forgive me if I don’t trust him to be thorough.”

Hector opens his mouth as if to say something, but changes his mind.

I wave off the question. “Also . . . there’s something else. Like a memory that’s almost there but not.”

My nurse ties the end of my braid and gives my back a gentle pat. Hector says, “Then we go. But do let me carry you if you tire.”

“Of course. Thank you.” I turn away to hide my flushing face, remembering how he carried me in our failed rush to save Martín. It would be easy to let him do it again. For a moment, I consider pretending to be weaker than I am.

But I shake it off. I’m already in danger of being thought a feeble queen, and I will not pretend weakness. Not ever, not for anyone.

I hold my head high as my entourage—Hector, Ximena, Mara, and a handful of guards—array themselves in a protective circle around me. In careful formation, we exit the suite and hurry to the ground floor.

A sentry I’ve never met before stands in Martín’s place. Anger at him boils up inside me, but I recognize the feeling as unfair and manage a nod as he bows low. Hector insists on leading us into the stairwell, and I let him. The steps are tricky, and my legs feel like date jelly, but I put a hand on Hector’s shoulder and use him as a crutch as I descend.

The yawning jaws of the Hall of Skulls seem to pulse in the flickering candle flames. Mara is rigid beside me, and I find strange comfort in the fact that someone is as frightened as I am.

But the fear dissipates as we enter Alejandro’s tomb. It’s so different than in my nightmares, crowded with my companions this time, several bearing torches. It’s bright and warm, the air still. I feel everyone’s eyes on me as I wander through the caskets, my fingers brushing the silk banners. I’m not sure what I’m hoping to find, how this excursion will help. When the toes of my boots encounter a large dark stain on the stone floor, I freeze.

My blood.

My fingertips find the wound at my side, then the bump on my skull. I fell and hit my head, Doctor Enzo told me. But that’s not right. I fell onto my side. Now that I’m staring at the exact spot, I remember my cheek splatting in my own blood. How, then, did I get such a terrible knot on the back of my head? What really happened here?

I mutter, “Something isn’t . . . I don’t remember . . .” I’m not sure what I’m trying to say. That I didn’t hit my head? I obviously did. Maybe I tried to get up and then fell a second time. I lost so much blood, it’s a wonder I remember as much as I do.

“Elisa?” Hector says.

I look up, startled by his voice. The torchlight makes hollows of his cheeks. “I’m not sure. I . . .” Something about the light. The way it’s moving. So different from my dream. My gaze moves to the torch he carries. “Your torch.”

He waits for me to puzzle it out, familiar by now with the way my mind works.

Think, Elisa! And then I have it. “Your torch flame isn’t moving.”

“No,” he agrees. “It’s very still.”

Everyone is watching us, watching me. Perhaps they’re worried that my injuries have addled my mind, that, as Doctor Enzo suggested, there is permanent damage. But my thoughts are clearer than ever.

“In my dream—no, in my memory —there was a breeze.” I close my eyes, listen to the underground river wash through the caverns. I remember the brush of air against my face before the torch winked out. “It was more than a breeze. It gusted . My torch was sconced in the wall. And when the wind blew, it died.” I open my eyes.

It’s such a small thing, the slightest sliver of strangeness, but I am queen and they must take me seriously.

“Maybe someone opened the entrance upstairs,” Ximena suggests.

“Or what if someone walked by?” says one of the guards. “In a hurry.”

“Her Majesty said it gusted, ” Mara says. “Walking by would not cause a torch to go out.”

“Maybe he had bad gas,” says another. “Have you seen what they feed us in the barracks?”

“Fernando!” Hector snaps, but I chuckle. It’s not particularly funny, but everyone joins me, and I allow myself to keep at it because in spite of the pain, it also feels really nice.

Finally I catch my breath and say what everyone is surely thinking: “I suppose we ought to consider that there is a hidden entrance to this chamber.”

THINKING of the escape tunnel Hector and I used to reenter the palace, I realize that of course my new home would have other secrets, many of them forgotten, perhaps lost to centuries of restorations and additions.

Ximena brushes past me and begins searching the stone wall with her fingertips. “If there is another way in, we must find it,” she mutters. She’s right; we dare not leave any entrance to the palace unguarded.

Everyone jumps to help in the search, and my nurse directs them with strategic efficiency. Within moments, each section of wall and floor suffers the scrutiny of prying fingers. I itch to join them, but it’s all I can do to prop myself upright against an empty casket.