Queens & Liars-Sequel to Three Broken Kingdoms (Completed)

Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Prince

Maia was bored out of her mind.

She was also terrified, sleep-deprived and had made a habit of jumping whenever she heard any sort of sound.

A few days after arriving in Crimsith, she still hadn't left Lysandra's room. She barely left her own cramped quarters. The princess brought her food but precious little news of the war outside—mostly because precious little had reached them. Messengers from Miras took around a week to arrive in Crimsith given they couldn't risk the seas at this time and had to ride across the Isthmus.

She'd barely been able to sleep in the long days she'd been cooped up here. Lysandra had offered to let her borrow some of her books for entertainment but Maia could never focus on them. The one thing that might calm her nerves was forbidden—using her magic. If anyone sighted lightning flashing within Lysandra's chambers it was game over. The whole city was looking for her—or rather, for either her or her twin, no one was sure which had been sighted—and the sight of any sort of magic would doom her.

So instead she'd passed most of her time worrying. Her nails were chewed down to stubs, she'd worn through the carpet with her pacing and she hadn't slept since her first night here, when she'd been so exhausted she'd had little choice.

At least my ankle's fine now, Maia thought to herself as she waited for Lysandra to return—the princess was currently at a covert meeting with a smuggler seeing if she could get Maia out of Crimsith. When she'd announced this to her that morning she had been touched by the kindness...only for Lysandra to hastily add that she was 'only doing it to get rid of her'. She had then launched into a long rant about how Maia's presence was 'inexcusably annoying', 'a drain on her resources and patience' and 'entirely unnecessary if she hadn't been so utterly incompetent and gotten herself into this whole wretched situation'.

Maia struggled to see how Nala had the patience to be friends with the princess.

Just as she was devising a counter-rant to greet Lysandra with when she returned, a sudden knock on the door made her jump. She cursed her jittery nerves, about to duck into her quarters and hide there when a man burst in.

He was halfway between frantic and joyous, his golden hair an utter mess, his blue eyes alight with triumph and excitement. He was carrying a beaker in his hand but as he rushed into the bedroom he tripped and dropped it. The glass flew through the air, releasing a stream of trapped shadows, hit the bookshelf and smashed all over the floor.

Aaron Crimson, Lysandra's brother and legendary alchemist, was absolutely nothing like Maia had expected. And from the look on his face, he hadn't expected her at all.

"Who are you?" He blurted out, kneeling on the ground and picking up the glass shards one by one. Realising that as a servant she should probably be helping him, she waved him away and gathered the larger ones in one hand.

"I work for Princess Lysandra," Maia said, trying to make herself look small. Medea's son. This was Medea's son and of all people he had to be the one to come in and catch her unprepared.

"Oh," he said, crouching down to help her pick up the glass despite her protests. "You didn't see anything come out of the glass by any chance?"

Maia thought back to the whips of shadow that had escaped the beaker. Lysandra had already told them about what powered alchemy—though she refused to help them use it, given she claimed to despise the art and wanted it to disappear the moment her mother was dead. Maia certainly had seen the proof of it in the shadows that flitted out of the jar, but Medea had ruthlessly protected the secrets of alchemy for years. If Aaron knew she'd just uncovered one and told his mother...