I tugged the woolen blanket off the bed and wrapped it around me, crossing the tiles to peer through the two narrow stained-glass windows. So much had happened since I’d last seen this view of the Thames from the neighboring bedchamber. The jumble of turreted buildings looked so short compared with twenty-first-century London—like a top layer had been sliced off the city. Despite the darkness of nightfall, ships and cargo vessels sat waiting for moorings near the north bank of the river. I opened the window for some fresh air, but a freezing gust of wind slapped me in the face, bringing the fetid stench of the castle moat directly below, and I wrenched the windowpane shut again.
I wished for a fire, but there was no wood.
A memory of Nick and I wrapped up in silk sheets at Robin House drifted into my vision, and I forced the image away. As I lay down on the hard bed, my thoughts turned to the monster Henry Howard. During our first meeting at Hampton Court, he’d reminded me of the fate of Anne Boleyn—the girl that King Henry the Eighth had married for love, only to execute her when she upset him one too many times. My stomach twisted into a sickening knot. As hideous as Howard was, he’d seen this coming before anyone. I was ending up just like Anne Boleyn, except I’d been a Tudor queen less than a year.
I crawled beneath the blanket and tossed fitfully. Did Nick really have the stomach to put me through a grueling trial—let alone a beheading—out of pure anger and spite? Or was this all part of a terrible plan to scare me, to force me into following his command and staying in this century? He’d sprung our wedding day on me without so much as a conversation—that was proof of his tyrannical nature that I’d willingly overlooked. Or else, perhaps my arrest was a symbolic gesture to appease the raging Duke of Norfolk and his army, and Nick planned to release me once things had cooled down. If that were so, though, why wouldn’t he have just let me escape using the blue-diamond ring? If he wanted me safe, why would he publicly condemn me and risk my life? There was no coming back from a king’s damnation in a place like this.
The endless questions chased themselves through my mind until, in the early hours of the morning, I drifted off to sleep, but it was shallow. I jerked awake at every small sound, my terrified mind convinced that each one was the executioner coming for me.
Counting blood-red sunsets told me that I spent an agonizing eleven days locked in that silent chamber with zero visitors or word from the king. At every waking moment, I was ready to fight in case someone burst in with a torture device or an executioner’s axe. Meager bits of food were brought to me, but nothing else. There was too much time to think, too much time to cut open every moment of my relationship with Nick and dig through the tender wounds to unearth the mistakes I’d made.
Our love had exploded like a meteor that had fused us together so fast that I still hadn’t caught my breath. He’d felt like home—like my person in the world—so incredibly quickly that it had colored every decision I’d made, even the one to try to save him from his dreadful fate as Nicholas the Ironheart. Before we met, I knew him only as the sixteenth-century king who ruthlessly ruled his nation. When I figured out that was because his little sister Kit had been murdered by one of his most trusted subjects, I’d had only one goal: to save Kit and to stop the boy I loved from becoming that tyrant.
Sunlight on the leaded windowpane reflected my stricken face like a mirror as I faced one truth after another: I adored Kit, but saving her life was perhaps the biggest mistake of all. I’d tried to change the path of history, Lucinda’s life had been taken in exchange, and then I’d pushed Nick toward his hideous destiny anyway. I had been such an idiot to believe that I could insert myself into the past and live in it as a queen. It had proved almost impossible to convince the most accomplished people in the land that a twenty-first-century girl had the makings of a Tudor queen. Maybe the only chance Nick and I ever had was if he’d chosen to stay with me in my time and disappeared from the Tudor world. Surely life could’ve gone on here with Kit as the rightful new queen. For all this time, we’d been fighting an unwinnable battle, and while Kit may have been saved, Nick had been lost to darkness the way the books had always said.
I was still brooding over the timeline when, on the fifteenth day of my imprisonment, an unexpected tap sounded on the wooden door. I froze with fear as it opened slowly with an unnerving creak. Alice Grey looked so pasty and gaunt in the doorway that I almost didn’t recognize her. She gaped at me, and I realized I must look as awful to her. When we both recovered from our shock, we fell into each other, hugging, and I stifled the urge to sob into her soft hair, which smelled like cinnamon cake.
“I was not permitted to come before now,” she said, helping me to sit on the bed, treating me as if I was fragile. Tears pooled in her molten brown eyes as she searched my face. “My lady, are you greatly sore of heart?”
“I’m terrible,” I replied honestly. “I’ve lost everything.” Speaking the words aloud shattered my soul. It wasn’t just my life here that was over. Unless Nick freed me, I’d never see the twenty-first century again: my mom, my friends—even Dad, with his stuffy Camry and boring public radio programs.
Alice was rubbing my shoulder, her other hand catching her escaping tears.
“What’s happening at court?” I said faintly. I couldn’t bring myself to ask about Nick.
She settled herself with a deep exhale. “The palace has calmed. The king has reformed his council, and Francis speaks in a manner most heartening. There have been feasts, and merriments, and the courtiers are making ready for the Easter celebrations.”
I nodded, staring at my lap. Now that I’d been booted from the palace, the Tudor court was thriving again. I was right, I’d been nothing more than a parasite here, a plague. An alien from an incompatible world who did nothing but delay the king’s malevolent, self-serving temperament by a year at best.
“Where’s Bridget?” I said.
Alice sighed. “Mistress Nightingale has taken leave to Buckinghamshire. I fear her heart has become much troubled these past weeks.”
Shame crawled up my throat. When I’d met Bridget, she’d been so chirpy, so excited about becoming a maid of honour and meeting a rich husband. Another thing that had been lost because of me.
Alice placed a hand over mine, a cold band of polished gold surprising my skin.
“Francis and I are married,” she said.
“Oh my gosh, that’s amazing!” I hadn’t smiled in so long that it nearly hurt my cheeks. “Where did you do it?”
“At court.” The flush in her cheeks exposed the happiness that she was trying to hide. “My lady, that you could not be there has caused me much sorrow. After everything, Francis wished to wait not.”
“No, of course not, it’s brilliant news.” I managed another smile of encouragement. At least Alice’s life was falling into place, even if mine was crumbling to pieces.
The conversation dropped to silence before I summoned the courage to ask Alice if she knew anything about my fate.
Her lips trembled, her eyes meeting her lap. “Your trial will take place on the morrow.”
All the blood fled my face. A sort of darkness overcame the room, and I lost all sense of myself, like I might pass out. Alice steadied me with both hands, and I could tell that she was fighting not to break down. “I wish I could help you,” she stammered through more tears.