When they reached the sunroom, Grace told the guards to wait in the hall, then ordered the servants to bring refreshments.
The door shut.
But they were not alone.
At first, it was just that prey-like awareness Hanne had honed in the malsite, a sense of alarm she couldn’t ignore. The stink gave it away: decay, ozone, and the metallic tang of blood. A rancor was here.
I am not afraid, she thought. Tuluna protects me. An Incursion cannot hurt me.
She pressed any quaver out of her voice as she glared around at the couches and tables and potted plants. “What do you want?”
“Johanne, are you well?” Grace frowned at her. “I know it can be difficult to see a husband off to war, but you knew this was going to happen. If you need a physician—”
“Quiet.” Hanne wished she’d brought her dagger, but there hadn’t been a place for it in this gown or these shoes. Still, her crown sat heavy on her head. The obsidian rings and necklace and brooch warmed her skin. “I’m not talking to you.”
“Then—” A rancor appeared on the far side of the room, near the sideboard, and Grace bit off her question. Her hands flew to the pendant at her throat. “Great Numina.”
The rancor hissed, baring its barbed teeth. Just the sight of the creature nearly threw Hanne back into the malsite, back into that vision of the Dark Shard. This was not the same rancor—it was taller and wider, with different patterns of mottling across its body—which meant she was indeed unlucky enough to meet two of these monsters in her life.
But she was not the same Hanne as before. She was powerful now. Ready. And she was not helpless. She would never be helpless again.
“What do you want?” This time, the question came out stronger. Fiercer.
Queen Grace released a slow, shuddering breath. “I should have listened to her,” she whispered to herself. “I shouldn’t have told her to leave.”
“Daghath Mal is pleased with you.”
As before, listening to the rancor was terrible. Its voice was like glass shattering, like eyeballs squishing. Warmth spilled around Hanne’s ears, but she didn’t touch them to check for blood. That would show weakness.
Still, she couldn’t help but ask: “Who—”
The rancor grinned. “Daghath Mal, the King from Beneath. He watches your every move, and he applauds your”—the teeth gleamed wickedly—”tenacity.”
Hanne sucked in a breath, but that was all. No weakness. She wasn’t afraid.
Hummingbird wings beat inside her chest, faster and faster.
“You,” continued the rancor, “fulfilled your purpose in Ivasland.”
Hanne glanced at Grace from the corner of her eye, but she couldn’t tell if the queen understood the rancor. The woman just stood there with her hands covering her bloody ears, her whole body quaking. But it wouldn’t be long until she became accustomed to the noise, and if she even started to understand what the rancor was suggesting—that Hanne had done the bidding of evil—then Hanne would have no choice but to kill her.
Yes, Rune had understood why Hanne had gone to Ivasland, but Rune was desperate to make this work, and painfully honorable even when he shouldn’t be. But in Grace, Hanne saw an older and less-clever version of herself. She recognized ruthlessness when she saw it. Grace could ruin everything.
“Leave.” Hanne dared a step toward the rancor, but its foul stench was almost overwhelming. Couldn’t the guards outside smell it? Hear it? “Or do you mean to kill us?”
The queen strangled a sound in the back of her throat. First her son. Then her husband. And now her.
Hanne had no intention of either of them dying (today, anyway), but she had to admit that it seemed entirely possible the rancor sought to slaughter everyone in Honor’s Keep, one by one. Starting at the top.
“If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead. No, I bring you new orders.” The rancor slipped toward her, closer until she could feel the heat of its body, taste the stench of its breath. “Know that refusal means death.”
Her eyes cut to Grace, but the queen didn’t seem to register the words yet. She looked wretched, though: blood streamed from her ears, between her fingers, and down her hands and wrists.
“What do you want?” Hanne asked it.
“You view yourself as a conqueror,” it said. “A peacemaker.”
Hanne nodded.
“Can you understand it?” A note of panic entered Grace’s voice. “I think it’s trying to speak.”
“You must prove it.” The rancor crept closer, its teeth clicking. “Put an end to her suffering. Kill the queen and become the queen.”
Hanne looked at Grace: the way the queen’s hands trembled, the shadows deepening beneath her eyes. This woman had sent armies into Embria for all Hanne’s life. She should die. But Grace would die on Hanne’s time, when it fit into her plan, when a second royal death so soon after her arrival didn’t look wildly suspicious.
“No.”
“No?” The queen’s voice rose to a hysterical pitch, believing Hanne’s reply was for her, for the question of whether Hanne could understand the beast.
“No?” The rancor hissed. “You would defy your king?”
“I bow to no king,” said Hanne. “Especially not yours.”
“Dear Elmali. You can understand it. It is speaking.” Grace turned on Hanne. “Are you one of them? Are you a rancor in disguise?”
“Then you are no conqueror,” the rancor sneered. “You won’t take what is yours.”
That wasn’t true. Hanne was the most ambitious person she knew.
But how could a queen’s death be this necessary to a rancor?
She almost didn’t see it move. It simply seemed to shift out of existence. Then it lunged for Grace—claws out, teeth bared.
Queen Grace hardly had a chance to scream, but scream she did, and the guards in the hall tried to throw open the door—but it was stuck, held fast by some dark power.
In spite of herself, Hanne screamed, too, but she wasn’t going to run. She would never run from these monsters again. Instead, she wrenched the obsidian crown off her head—ripping out strands of hair with it—and thrust the points into the beast.
It was all so fast.
The rancor was tearing out Grace’s throat, blood spraying like a breaking wave. Guards pounded on the door, calling for their queen, yelling to be let in. And Hanne was striking again and again, driving the jagged spikes of obsidian deep into the mushroom flesh. There was a pop, and then the creature howled in agony as shards of volcanic glass broke off into its body.