The Dark Queen

by M. Dalto

  Alex…

  No. Not Alex.

  He cursed himself for his reckless behavior. His carelessness could have gotten other people hurt, or worse. But when he saw her, all he could think about was how much he missed her, that he would give anything to save her, even if it meant sacrificing his own safety.

  It was all a farce, of course.

  It wasn’t Alex, he knew that now.

  How that woman—Brynaxia—could look so much like his missing wife was a mystery to him.

  One that he was determined to find the answer to.

  As soon as he could get free of the restraints that currently held him down.

  He woke up in a room that looked strangely familiar, even in the low candlelight, and soon realized it was the room Alex had used when she first came to the Empire. Whether this woman was aware, he didn’t know.

  Nothing good ever came from being restrained to a four-post bed without his shirt on.

  Ignoring that, he focused on finding a way to escape. The shackles were sturdy restraints—the thick metal bands cut deep into his skin as he struggled to test their strength. Try as he might, there was no way to break those chains, or slide his hands free.

  He was completely and utterly trapped.

  Huffing a sigh, he stared at the ceiling above the bed. He wasn’t dead. Yet. Why they still wanted him alive, however, was the question.

  Jamison—he hoped he had used his brain and left. Those from the Borderlands were not a force to be reckoned with. Not alone, and not with only Dremond’s best three available to them.

  Cursing himself yet again, Treyan wished he had considered that before he lunged at the group on the palace stairs as if he was reuniting with family he hadn’t seen in ages.

  Not. Alex.

  He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes.

  Brynaxia.

  The name sounded familiar—why hadn’t he paid more attention to his studies when he was younger? That was always Reylor’s strength. He should have agreed to his brother’s countless offers to tutor him, just as Treyan had helped Reylor with his swordplay.

  It was a name of an older origin; that he at least knew…in older dialects of Lelriera it meant royalty. But that man next to her…he knew he’d never seen him before. Why the two of them would worm their way into Razen and Crystal’s acquaintance…

  It made no sense.

  He left his family alone for this.

  He left his Captain alone when he thought he knew better.

  “You look troubled, young prince,” a voice purred from the darkness of the doorway.

  A voice so familiar yet so foreign it made his lungs ache in his chest.

  “Who are you?” he demanded, angling his head to meet her stare.

  Dark eyes. Alex’s eye.

  No. Not Alex.

  “Who do you think I am?” she asked as she approached the bed, her voice low and sultry. She had changed from the elaborate dress she wore when he first saw her into a thin, black silken robe, tied at the waist.

  “I know who you’re not,” he said levelly, keeping his gaze above her shoulders.

  Not Alex, not Alex, not Alex.

  “I can be whoever you want me to be, prince,” she hummed as she stopped next to the bed. Her hand, so familiar to the touch, ran over his bare arm where it lay tethered above his head. Gooseflesh raised in the wake of her fingertips, and he damned his body to hell and back for its reaction.

  “No, you cannot,” he spat as he tried to calm his rushing blood.

  She held her ground, smiling down at him.

  “Just as you can be whoever I want you to be.”

  Not Alex. Not Alex.

  “You remind me of someone, you know,” she continued, looking him over like a prized stallion. “Someone from a long time ago, who once may have made me happy, but then also may have broken my heart. Did you break hearts, prince? Were Empireborn lining themselves up at your palace door hoping you’d give them any attention?”

  Not. Alex.

  “Where are they?” she asked softly, one hand trailing a nail down his arm, to his shoulder and back.

  “Who?” he said calmly, though his heart panicked. It was all beginning to make sense now.

  “The others.”

  “I came here alone.” Not necessarily a lie.

  “Perhaps,” she mused. “You may have foolishly come here alone, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t leave others behind, waiting for you, in the process.”

  “And why would I do that?” he ground out through clenched teeth as her nails began to drag along his chest.

  “Maybe you were looking for someone. Someone you left behind. Someone you lost.”

  “And even if I was,” he snarled, “it would be of no interest to you.”

  “No?” she challenged. “You ran out of the woods like a specter, yelling out a name—it certainly felt as though you were looking for someone—that you thought I was that someone.”

  His blue eyes darkened in the candlelight as he growled. “You are not Alex.”

  Whatever it was—his words, his tone—it made her pause. The fingers that trailed along his chest almost balled into a fist as she closed her eyes tight as if she was fighting off some inner pain. Her hand relaxed a moment later, and her eyes reopened to look at him.

  Without speaking she crawled onto the end the bed, bracing herself above him, leaning in uncomfortably close.

  “All you need to do is close your eyes, prince, and pretend that I am. I will be the closest you get to her for a long, long time…”

  Treyan closed his eyes, but not because she had suggested he do so.

  “No.”

  The hand that flew across his face paled in comparison to the fingernails that drew blood along his chest.

  Not Alex, not Alex…

  “Alex…”

  Alex…

  She heard him.

  She didn’t know how, but she heard Treyan’s voice.

  Maybe it was a hallucination, like the many she’d had since she was locked in the dark, damp prison. So many times, she thought she had heard him, or Sarayna or Reylor…sometimes even her mother, though she didn’t know why now. Perhaps because it was a comfort—a memory of a simpler time.

  A time when she was free.

  But now…

  She clung to her knees, pulled tight against her chest, and hung her head.

  Just a hallucination.

  Only a memory…

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Jared rented a four-door vehicle for their journey to Sudbury where Alexstrayna’s parents allegedly lived. She sat in the front passenger seat with Jared behind the wheel, while Lexan lay sprawled in the backseat as if he owned it.

  Reylor could not be convinced to join them, and with how Jared had been acting lately, she wished she could have joined him in his decision to stay behind. She tried to persuade him to come one more time before they left, but he insisted that his time would be better spent in Boston. Sarayna knew his decision to stay behind had more to do with who they were going to go see.

  Reylor didn’t belong here and knew it. His presence alone was almost ethereal and would bring about too many questions, not to mention the color of his eyes…

  “How do you do it?” she asked out loud as she turned in her seat to face her brother once they were on their way.

  “Do what?” he asked sleepily, having already closed his eyes as he lay his head against the door.

  “Your eyes. How do you keep them from being red?”

  He opened his eyes at that, and instead of the deep red of Reylor’s as she expected, a bright blue like her own met her gaze.

  “Like that,” Sarayna noted.

  “Like what?”

  “Like that! They’re blue—how do you keep them from being red?”

  “Like this?” he asked and blinked his eyes to reveal the red irises Sarayna expected.

  “Yes, like that! How can you do it and Reylor can’t?”

  Another b
link and his eyes were back to blue. “Because my eyes aren’t red, and he chooses to not waste his magic on such trivial details.”

  “Your eyes aren’t red?”

  “I believe that’s what I said.”

  “You’re the Prince of the Borderlands—”

  “Not by choice,” he corrected her. “I was taken immediately after I was born. Or do you forget this story, dear sister?”

  She scowled at him.

  “Since an infant cannot make a rational decision, neither the Annals, the Prophecy, nor the Empire could deem me a true traitor.”

  “Why make them red at all?” Jared asked.

  Lexan’s gaze darted up so he was meeting Jared’s in the rear-view mirror. “Because, Emperor, it’s easier to convince those you want to follow you that you’re one of them rather than make them accept you for who you truly are.”

  Sarayna sensed Jared tense in the seat next to her. She almost reached out a hand to his thigh in reassurance, but she let it go.

  “After all this time, Reylor could have changed his eyes back if he wanted to?”

  “If he wanted to,” he agreed. “But he never did. Not even when Razen was teaching me how. It was as though he wanted to remind himself, and others, what had happened to him. His own personal penance, perhaps?” He shrugged.

  “What makes them red in the first place?” Jared asked, his eyes back on the road.

  Lexan rolled his eyes. “I don’t know…a curse? A Prophecy? Why does half the shit that occurs in that Empire ever happen the way it does?”

  “So you really don’t know why?” she asked with a perked brow.

  “No, I don’t,” Lexan confirmed. “But Reylor might. I’m sure he’d love to have a conversation about his traitorous ways when we return.”

  Sara turned back around in her seat, considering the conversation over. Leaving the city at that time of day was slow-going. It appeared every other citizen of Boston had the idea to leave at the exact same time. Once they escaped the congestion, the bustling city melted away to quaint and comfortable residential bliss.

  Jared had been mostly quiet during the drive, and Sarayna kept darting her gaze to him as he shifted between focusing on the road and drawing his eyes up to the rear-view mirror as though suspiciously monitoring Lexan. There was an odd tension between the three of them she could not place, and she was uncertain how much longer she’d be able to ignore it without confronting Jared about it again.

  “It’s almost funny, how similar it is to the Empire,” Jared muttered almost twenty minutes later, once they were driving through sprawling bits of farmland and apple orchards.

  “If you ignore the power lines and motor vehicles,” Lexan drawled.

  Jared continued as if he didn’t hear him. “I wonder if Alex’s parents innately knew where to raise their child, knowing who she’d become, where she’d belong.”

  Lexan snorted and shifted in his seat while Sarayna cast him a glare for being such an asshole. “What about your parents?” she asked Jared.

  The Emperor’s jaw clenched, and she wondered if he would answer. She was about to tell him to forget she even asked, when he spoke:

  “I grew up in the Midwest, legitimately in the middle of nowhere. My parents split when I was younger—Dad went to the West Coast, Mom to the East. I moved to the city as soon as I could, so maybe they knew after all.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sara said as she watched him.

  He gave her a shake of his head. “Don’t be. Dad cheated on Mom and never said boo to me since.”

  Something flashed across his features as she watched him, like a painful memory, and he glanced at her for the first time during the car ride. Again, she wanted to reach out to him, to tell him it was okay, but she hesitated. In that moment, Lexan sat up in his seat, leaned between the two of them and pointed out the windshield.

  “I think we’re here.”

  ‘Here’ was far more elaborate than Sarayna ever imagined her mother’s childhood home would be.

  They drove up a long gravel drive, and on either side sprawled what looked like an orchard. The trees gave way, and the house came into view at the end of the drive. From what Sara could see, it was huge, and the land seemed to continue on and on until it hit a lake behind it, whose waters glistened in the sunlight.

  “Are we sure this is the right place?” Sarayna asked, almost dreamlike, as she stepped from the vehicle once they parked.

  “Unless the directions your brother gave me were sorely incorrect, this is the place,” Jared replied, his eyes focused on the expanse of land before them.

  “I should be offended by your insinuations,” Lexan mused calmly as he shut the car door. “But it all leads back to the lovely little book Sara pilfered from our mother’s apartment.”

  “I didn’t pilfer it,” she retorted.

  “Fine, borrowed,” Lexan conceded. “Either way, have you thought about what you’re going to say to them when they answer the door?”

  She hadn’t. Not completely, but her brother didn’t need to know that. “We’ll just tell them we’re friends of their daughter’s, and we haven’t heard from her in a while, and are concerned about her sudden disappearance.”

  Lexan smirked. “I’m sure that will go over well.”

  She stuck her tongue out at him; she knew it was childish but didn’t care. Jared was already halfway up the walkway. Slowing her pace, she matched her steps with Lexan’s.

  “Do you have any idea what’s going on with him?” she whispered.

  “He’s not my Emperor,” he murmured, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “Maybe you should ask him yourself.”

  “I would if I thought he would tell me,” she muttered.

  “Trouble in paradise?” he asked with a glance.

  She didn’t give him a response as she watched Jared climb the stairs to the elaborate front door and took them two at a time herself as he knocked.

  Sarayna took in a breath and let it out slowly. Once. Twice. On the third, she was convinced that no one was going to answer. “Maybe they’re not home.”

  Jared cast her a glance, then looked to the expensive car in the driveway, and arched a brow…just as the front door opened.

  The woman before them was most definitely related to her mother.

  Though her hair was a little darker, as if she had colored it, she had the same dark eyes and similar features. She was dressed in business casual clothing, nothing elaborate or ornate to distinguish her occupation or stature one way or another. This was what her mother would look like when she grew older. If she had been allowed to live a normal life within the Otherrealm.

  What Sarayna herself could look like…

  If they had the chance to grow older.

  “Hello?” the woman greeted them, a slight unplaced accent in her words. “May I help you?”

  Sarayna froze.

  This was her mother’s mother.

  Her grandmother.

  She never thought she’d have the chance to meet her.

  She wanted to leap at her, wrap her arms around her, and hug her tightly.

  Before she could do any of that, Jared took a step forward, clearing his throat as he positioned himself between the two women as if sensing her unease, like he could understand her turmoil.

  “Hello—we’re sorry to bother you on such short notice, but are you Mrs. Ross?”

  “I am,” the woman in the doorway confirmed. “And you are?”

  “We’re friends of your daughter,” Jared continued, “and—”

  “My daughter?” the woman asked, confused.

  “Alexstrayna?” Lexan as from Sara’s other side.

  The woman only gave him a blank stare.

  Panic sank in. Maybe they had the wrong house, or maybe her parents had moved, or—

  “Alexandra,” Jared corrected, and the woman seemed to snap out of whatever trance she was in.

  “Oh, Alex,” she confirmed, frowning. “Unfortunately, Alex isn’t here—”r />
  “We know, we were just wondering—”

  “No, you don’t understand,” the Empress’ mother interrupted. “My daughter is dead.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “We warned Alexandra, years ago, when she first wanted to move to the city, that it would be a completely different world than what she was used to.”

  “That’s an understatement,” Lexan murmured, lingering in the entryway to the sitting room.

  Sarayna cut him a glare from where she sat on an ornate sofa next to Jared, freshly made cups of tea on the low table before them. Alex’s mother, whom they discovered was named Janet, sat in a matching armchair across from them.

  “She didn’t want to listen to us,” Janet continued, as if she hadn’t heard Lexan’s comment. “She moved there anyway, getting a job as a barista at Starbucks rather than a real job like my husband and I suggested.”

  “And you hadn’t heard from her much since she moved?” Jared asked calmly. Sara had decided she would let him take charge of the conversation, lest Sarayna say anything she may regret.

  Janet shook her head in response to Jared’s question. “We had a tested relationship since she was young. She had been through a lot at an early age and couldn’t wait to get out of our small rural town. As soon as she turned eighteen, she left.”

  “What do you mean by ‘a lot’?” Sarayna asked, almost too eagerly. Anything she could discover about her mother’s life seemed valuable.

  “It was almost as though she never truly fit in with the other children, and she was often cast aside. Of course, she’d rather be alone most of the time, so it surprised us when she wanted to move to the city—”

  “What makes you think she’s dead?” Lexan pressed, starting to make his way around the sitting room, casually looking at the art and knickknacks that lined the shelves and tables.

  Janet didn’t seem pleased that she was cut off, but straightened as she smoothed her skirt over her thighs. “It was her birthday—we call her every year. When she turned twenty-five, we didn’t hear from her. Her friend Crystal—the sweetheart that she is—was keeping an eye on her for us, and assured us she was fine, just preoccupied. Then Crystal went missing too.”