“I’m sorry!” cried the Queen, “Forgive me?”
“You have done nothing to be worthy of forgiveness,” said Amelliea, moving past her down the corridor without looking back.
Chapter 49
The Truth of the Matter
“Father, I want to go home!” cried Amelliea, bursting into Bloom’s chamber. “I want to go home with you, now. Please, lets just get out of here!” She fell face first on the bed and began to sob.
“What has happened?” Bloom asked gently.
“She’s horrible, that’s what!” sobbed Amelliea. “It was on the Queen’s own orders that I was abandoned in the woods as a baby!”
Bloom’s face was serious. “She confessed everything?” he asked in surprise.
“No, I figured it out! It wasn’t hard to do—you know how she is!”
Bloom sat down beside his daughter and pet Amelliea’s head, brushing the hair from her eyes. “It’s alright,” he said.
“You don’t understand! I longed for my mother as a child, searching for her in the face of every woman I met,” sniffled Amelliea. “I imagined that I would feel whole if ever I found her, and that the hurt in my heart created by her absence would be healed, and all the pain and sorrow of missing her would be washed away without a trace.” Amelliea pushed up onto her elbows before continuing. “And now I have found her, and she is no less than a Queen, beautiful and wealthy beyond reason! Yet even now she remains absent from my life, physically there but never present, so obsessed is she with the way things look!” said Amelliea.
“I understand only to well,” sighed Bloom, and Amelliea remembered that he too was an orphan. “The desire to know where I came from never fully abated, and growing up I had to come to terms with the fact that I may never truly know who I was, nor where I was from. Then, many years later I found my parents names in a great book of family trees. Unfortunately, that gave me little solace, since that is all my parents will ever be for me, a pair of names at the end of a book!”
“That is horrible!” cried Amelliea. “What a wretched thing it is to be abandoned for no reason you can help! My mother cast me out before I could even speak!”
“Yet it was the Queen’s selfish actions that led me to find you, and I have been so happy to share in your life,” said Bloom.
“You have been the best father I could have ever wished for!” sobbed Amelliea.
“I hardly knew what I was doing most of the time,” laughed Bloom, tearing up as he smiled down at her.
“Well I suspect that it was my mother herself who poisoned the King!” said Amelliea. “So that’s how good a parent she would have been.”
“It’s not out of the scope of possibility,” frowned Bloom, considering Amelliea’s statement regarding the King.
“Did you know, she hung the painting of the Wolf Baron in her study?”
“Is that so?” asked Bloom, furrowing his brow.
“I swear she adored him, mistaking his violence for strength of character!”
“How can you ask such a woman to understand you?” wondered Bloom aloud, shaking his head.
“She doesn’t understand me, and she never will! What’s worse is she doesn’t even have my best interest at heart!” said Amelliea, winding herself up all over again. “My own mother want’s me to be some other person entirely! I doubt she even knows how to love, or what love even is!”
“I’m certain she loves you in her own way, perhaps in the only way she can.”
“And in what way is that?” snorted Amelliea. “The way a giant lizard loves the bunny it is saving for breakfast? I mean nothing to her! She is even using my coronation to plot her mutiny. Can’t we go home and be selfish just this once?” She collapsed back down on the bed, hiding her face in the pillow.
“Is that what you really want?” asked Bloom.
“Yes,” replied Amelliea, but Bloom could tell by the sound of her voice that she was smiling even though she was facing away from him. She never could keep a straight face when lying to him.
“The werewolf problem is not going away by itself,” said Bloom. “The fever will spread, and in time it will result in a war that will be much harder to contain. We must stay and end this while we still can.”
“I know,” groaned Amelliea.
“I ask you for the time being to avoid confrontations with you mother if at all possible,” said Bloom.
“Fine,” moaned the girl.
“You’ll have to tuff it out, but only for a few days longer.”
“Alright, I get it!”
Bloom shook his head, humoring Amelliea in her dramatic mood. “On the bright side, we now know the exact date of your birthday,” he smiled.
“I don’t even want to turn seventeen!” protested Amelliea, turning over onto her back. “One year closer to death!”
“Nonsense!” laughed Bloom. “It’s a perfectly good age.”
“Spoken like a true immortal,” retorted Amelliea, resisting the fact that her father had managed to console her yet again, even on a matter so painful and complex. “Life can be brutal,” she whispered, thinking back to all the things her mother had said.
“This is what it means to be an adult, my daughter, to accept the world as it is, not as you think it should be,” answered Bloom.
“That does not mean we cannot try to make it better,” supposed Amelliea, sitting up and wiping away the last of her tears.
“In deed, and that is exactly why we are here,” replied Bloom.
Chapter 50
Stolen
The next evening, the Queen sent for Amelliea. Trying hard to please her mother, the girl dawned one of the bland-colored gowns with the sewn up sleeves, and went to the Queen’s study once again.
“If we are to live together we must leave our history in the past where it belongs, and work hard to foster unity instead of hostility,” said the Queen to her daughter. Amelliea thought that this would be easier to do if her mother could only keep from saying and doing new cruel things each day, but she nodded her agreement anyway, and as a reward the Queen gave Amelliea one of her cold hugs, briefly draping her arms around the girl before quickly pulling away. “Now then, we must make the final preparations for the ceremony!” said the Queen with excitement.
“What can I do to help?” asked Amelliea. The sleeves of her dress hung down well below her knees, tapering slightly as they neared the floor.
“You will be doing nothing and helping no one. As royalty, your job is only to delegate the tasks of others, and so you will be observing and learning from me as I finalize the preparations for the celebratory dinner.”
They went down to the dining hall where flowers were being arranged in large ceramic vases, and dishes were being set out on the tables. As it turned out, the Queen was so particular in the way she wanted everything done, that Amelliea did not have to delegate a single task, and the girl stood around growing ever more bored and irritable while her mother demanded that all the napkins be refolded in a new pattern, and that the silver be polished over again for the third time. Amelliea found that she could barely stand being nothing more to people than a pretty waste of space, and she sighed a lot, and passed this way and that waiting for she knew not what. Death itself was starting too seem like a humane alternative to living another hour in such limitation when her mother at last released Amelliea to retire to her room. Eager to get away, Amelliea rushed from the dining hall and up the stairs to her living quarters. On the way she ran into Albert who detained her from her destination, and probed her with a series of troubling questions.
“So the spell that trapped the Wolf Barron in the painting, can it be undone?”
“Of course it can,” said Amelliea, trying to push past him.
Albert stepped in front of her. “And is Bloom the only one who can do it?”
“No,” said Amelliea, “anyone can do it.”
“So he isn’t dead?”
“Of course not, my father is no murderer!”
&nb
sp; “My dear girl, I must know how to extract the Wolf Baron from the portrait.”
“Whatever for?” asked Amelliea. She was tempted to use an effective, but fairly painful fighting technique she had learned in the Gator region on Albert, but she did not think that this would go over very well with her mother.
“What do you mean? He is a distinguished member of this court!”
“He is also a dangerous werewolf,” said Amelliea.
“This is discrimination! He has not bitten anyone!”
“Yes he has,” said Amelliea.
“Whom has he bitten?”
Amelliea hesitated.
“You see, the poor Wolf Barron has been unjustly imprisoned in that portrait! As we speak, he endures a punishment he has not deserved, and I know that the Barron would be terribly saddened to have missed your coronation.”
“We both know all of that is entirely untrue.”
“Young lady, how dare you speak to me in so blunt a manner? Your mother will hear of this, I assure you, and when she does—”
“When she does, she will likely agree that my having endured your conniving attempts to extract information from me was punishment enough!”
“You insolent child!”
“Let me through!” said Amelliea trying to get passed him.
“What is happening here?” said Bloom’s voice as he came up behind Amelliea.
“Why nothing,” smiled Albert, visibly fearful of the wizard. He patted Amelliea on the head, and the girl shrugged away from him, recoiling under his touch. “Everything is fine and good,” said Albert. “Just having a little chat with the Princess to be, that’s all…”
“We must be on our way,” said Bloom, staring down the older man. “Amelliea needs to get some rest.”
“Yes-yes, of course…” muttered Albert, gesturing for them to go on ahead.
“And if you want the Wolf Barron out of the painting, all you have to do is reach in and pull him out,” said Bloom over his shoulder.
“Ah, most excellent, thank you sir. Reach in? Into the painting, you mean?” asked Albert, but Bloom was in no mood to give him further instructions.
Bloom and Amelliea turned the corner. Amelliea looked over at her father, noticing that he looked upset.
“Why did you tell him how to free the werewolf?” asked Amelliea.
“Because I know the Queen would kill us both before she would let the Wolf Baron remain trapped in that portrait a single night more.”
“Why do you think she wants him out so much?” asked Amelliea.
“Because the Wolf Barron is likely the one entrusted to lead the takeover, seeing as he enjoys killing so very much and the Queen can not exactly dispose of her council members on her own, or command a werewolf army to execute people left and right and expose herself as the culprit of the crime. If the people learned she was operating outside of the law, there could be an uprising that she would not be able to defeat.”
“We still don’t know what their plan is,” said Amelliea.
“But we know the key players,” said Bloom. “At this point, it is in our best interest to have the Wolf Barron running loose, since he is certain to be at the helm of the action.”
“He will lead us right to the other werewolves!” said the girl.
Bloom nodded, “Exactly, and while the werewolves will look as ordinary people at the banquet, they will be waiting for his command to transform.”
“Still, is it not wiser to keep the Wolf Baron contained a while longer?”
“If the Queen figures out how to pull the Wolf Baron from the painting herself, she will be that much more eager to dispose of us. This way, at least she will stop to wonder if we might still be of some use to her.”
“You think she would figure it out?” asked Amelliea.
“All the books on transfiguration in the magic section are missing from the library.”
“You’re telling me that all this time you knew my mother had kept you alive only to retrieve the Wolf Baron?”
“My dear Amelliea, I no longer expect the best from people who consistently try to do their worst,” said Bloom. They made it to Amelliea’s chamber.
The girl unlocked the door and went into the room. She looked at her surroundings and furrowed her brow, sensing that something was wrong. Picking up her hairbrush, she carefully looked it over. “Nothing is where I left it,” she said, as she realized that the Queen had been distracting her all evening so that her guards could go through Amelliea’s things.
“They searched me as well,” grumbled Bloom. “And they stole one of my possessions, which I must urgently reclaim!”
“The potion?” guessed Amelliea.
Bloom sighed heavily.
“Oh no!” cried the girl, sinking down into a chair. “What are we going to do? Can we make more of it?”
“I don’t have the ingredients to make more,” said Bloom. “Besides, there isn’t time. It’s nearly sunrise.” He pointed to the window where the sky was beginning to glow with the first luminance of very early morning.
“This is terrible! Our plan is ruined!”
“Don’t worry, we are going to get it back,” consoled Bloom.
“How? We don’t even know where to look for it!” groaned Amelliea.
“Its not that difficult to deduce where it might be.”
“Oh no,” said Amelliea getting up and looking at her father’s determined face. “No way, no—forget about it! We are not breaking into the Queen’s study!”
“Are you coming or staying?” asked Bloom, moving to the door.
“What, now? We’re going to do it now?” asked Amelliea.
“Well, there’s hardly a moment to lose, since the coronation is in a few hours,” replied her father.
Amelliea swallowed hard and followed him out into the hallway. They snuck through the dark castle. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you about,” whispered Amelliea after a moment.
“Can it wait?” asked Bloom, looking both ways before proceeding through an intersecting corridor.
“No!” hissed Amelliea, tiptoeing behind him.
“Well, what is it then?” asked Bloom.
“Should I really go through with—you know, the coronation and stuff?”
“Might as well,” shrugged Bloom. “I don’t see the harm in it.”
“It’s just, well, I’m not sure I want to be a Princess,” confessed Amelliea. “I rather like who I am, and I don’t want or need things to change.”
“You’ve always been a Princess to me,” whispered Bloom, looking back at her and making Amelliea smile. “If you ask me, its time you made it official.” He took her hand. “Hurry now!” he urged, as they charged to the entrance of the Queen’s study. A guard stood at the door picking his nose. At the sight of them, he pulled his finger from his nostril and grabbed his spear in a mixture of embarrassment and alarm.
“What in Windiffera—” he began, the volume of his voice rising sharply.
His palms aglow, Bloom pronounced an incantation, interrupting the man in mid phrase. The wizard rushed forward and placed a hand on the guard’s shoulder. “Good evening, my lady!” said Bloom.
“Good evening, my lady…” repeated the guard with a glazed over expression.
“No, your Royal Highness!” said Bloom.
“No, your Royal Highness…” repeated the guard.
“Very good my Queen!” said the wizard.
“Very good my Queen…” imitated the guard numbly, as though he were in a trance.
Bloom snapped his fingers in front of the man’s face, making the guard blink. “Come on!” Bloom said to Amelliea. They rushed into the Queen’s study, leaving the guard to stand at the door in a daze. The Wolf Baron was still trapped in the portrait, looking as terrible as ever. Amelliea stared at the painting, feeling as though the werewolf could leap from the frame at any moment.
“Where would it be hidden?” asked Bloom, moving around the room. He looked through the
cabinet drawers, and felt around the shelf. Amelliea trailed her hands along the walls, knocking occasionally here and there in hopes of discovering a secret compartment. Bloom searched through the cabinet and Amelliea moved on to look behind the screen where she had changed into the gown her mother had gifted her several days before.
Bloom snapped his fingers, “I know, we can use the enchanted parchment to find it!” he whispered. He felt around in his pockets.
“Well, do you have it?” asked Amelliea, peeking out from behind the screen.
“I left it back in my room,” sighed the wizard. “Nothing is ever easy,” he grumbled.
Suddenly, they heard voices outside the study door.
“Good evening, my lady,” said the guard’s muffled voice.
“Has anyone been here?” asked the Queen.
“No, your Royal Highness!” answered the guard.
“We shall be having a conference in private. Let no one disturb us!” said a masculine voice that clearly belonged to Albert.
“Very good my Queen,” said the guard.
Amelliea ground her teeth, hoping the conversation would not continue, lest her mother would realize that the guard had been charmed to repeat the same three sentences over and over again. Bloom gestured for Amelliea to hide behind the screen, and he himself ducked beneath the writing desk. The next moment, the door of the study opened and the Queen entered, flanked by the ever-complaining Albert.
“What is wrong with your guards?” he asked.
“It is of no matter, they will all learn to behave soon enough,” said the Queen.
“And what if they fight back?” asked Albert. “Not all the guards are on our side. I fear many of them have somehow guessed that it was you who poisoned the King.”
“I shall behead every last guard that suspects this,” said the Queen. “They will learn to fear and respect me, or face ending up on my kill list.”
Albert snorted like a pig. “I should like to add a few names of my own to that list.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Albert,” sighed the Queen. “We first have to do away with a dozen council members or so, and make it look like a tragic incident, caused by an angry rebellion aiming to overthrow me.”
The Curse (The Windore Series Book 2) Page 32