Links

Chapter Five

Arabella Angevin scowled at her sister from across the room, her blue eyes burning into Althea's with an irritation the adopted princess hadn't witnessed since she'd dumped Arabella in the castle's manure pile some thirteen years earlier. At the thought, a rather ill-timed smile came to her face, which seemed to frustrate Arabella even more.

"You can't seriously be considering this father!" Arabella protested from where she stood by the great stained glass window of the second floor gallery. "It's a suicide mission! An ill-informed one, at that! We have no evidence that Nirole is the source of the outbreak. Letting Althea go there could be exposing Escadus to Nirole's wrath and a war we can neither manage nor afford. This is madness!"

From her left, Althea heard Hazel clear her throat.

"With your permission, King Angevin?"

Althea's father nodded once.

"While I'm not at all downplaying Princess Arabella's concerns about the potential for a war, the fact of the matter is we do have evidence that Nirole has launched at least one targeted attack on Princess Althea herself. The chimera we killed bore the mark of Nirole, and judging by the tally on that mark, it was not a simple soldier, but a highly trained, tactical killer. What's more—it knew things about the princess no ordinary soldier would have known. To me, this indicates that the beast had been watching her target for some time, maybe even years."

Althea smiled, grateful for her second's ever-unwavering support.

"There have been other attacks as well," came Adela's voice from the other side of Althea. "Althea and her team have not noticed marks on these creatures, but it is somewhat telling that it has, consistently, been animal or magical beings attacking instead of human soldiers." She gave a quick glance around the room at the several other council members present there. "Nirole is, as you are well aware, the kingdom of the animal citizens. Not to mention Queen Morgan is a third form Link, capable of controlling people, animals, and other Links."

"And we know she's powerful enough to control large numbers of these individuals at a time," Althea added with a single, steadfast nod. "There's got to be a reason that Nirole has been so quiet in recent years. Why we've not heard a peep from them about the outbreak affecting them. I, for one, happen to think it's very suspicious that the magical beings there are not being struck down by the disease like is happening here."

"A correction on that," Arabella snapped as soon as her youngest sister had finished. "We are not losing magical beings here, only magic-bearing humans. The fact that Nirole's citizens were transformed into animals so long ago could be the very thing which is protecting them."

"But Queen Morgan is a third form Link, like Adela mentioned," said a councilwoman by the name of Piper Price. "We currently have a third form Link in our medical ward suffering from the affliction. It stands to reason that this means Queen Morgan herself should have been infected by now. Yet, to the best of the council's knowledge, she has not, and that in itself seems worthy of investigation. We do know that even though our magical creatures are not falling ill here, they can be vectors and spread the disease to the magic-born."

"So, even if the animal citizens of Nirole are not exhibiting symptoms, they are capable of spreading the illness to Queen Morgan," Althea remarked. "This plague is affecting multiple kingdoms, Arabella—I highly doubt the queen is ignorant of the situation. Yet, still it seems she sends soldiers on the hunt, who take captive humans—potentially infected ones—back to Nirole. Why, just last night we received word from the Ivopan Guard that two individuals from their kingdom's rural communities had been snatched, and three others killed—two of them children. It just doesn't make sense that she would be taking those kinds of risks if she didn't have some piece of information we don't."