by AJ Nuest
“I’ve done nothing of the sort!” He spun and stalked toward the older man. “The glass is flawed. Caedmon should have summoned us the moment she appeared.”
“Now hold your tongue, Braedric.” King Austiere stepped between them.
His next words were muffled as the murmurs quickly grew to angry shouts.
Rowena withdrew a step, shaking her head in confusion. Displeased her? What was the old geezer talking about? As if she had any control over what did or didn’t happen when she and this Braedric person touched the screen. “Wait a second.”
Fists were held in the air while several other men jostled, their noses merely inches apart.
Good grief, they were acting as if the whole world was at stake. They’d choreographed this production. They were in charge of the next steps, not her. “Just wait a second!” she shouted.
In the abrupt silence that followed, every set of eyes shifted to her.
Time to get back to square one, which meant first things first. “Where is Prince Caedmon?”
His name was muttered while everyone darted glances about the room.
“Well, go get the boy!” King Austiere flung a hand toward the door at the same moment the wizard stepped to the center of the frame.
“Wizard Fandorn, Your Radiance.” The end of his beard reached his knees when he bowed low. “Prince Caedmon is being sent for.”
Her Radiance? Rowena crossed her arms, biting the inside of her cheek. This entire sham was completely ridiculous. What, was giving her that title supposed to soften the blow? These fully grown men were running around like a bunch of feathered ninnies, and meanwhile her “date” hadn’t even bothered to show up. Unbelievable.
A few seconds later, Caedmon rushed through a side door, raked a hand through his mussed hair and stood between the king and wizard. His clothes were disheveled, as if he’d just put them on, and he tugged at the edge of his padded, leather vest to center the ties before facing her.
Rowena lifted an eyebrow. “Where’ve you been?”
He executed a formal bow, sweeping his hand across his legs. “My presence was not required at the ceremony.”
Her jaw dropped. Fake kingdom or not, that was a big ol’ pile of hooey! “You make a da—an appointment with me, don’t even extend the courtesy of telling me you’re not coming, and then have these men wake me up in the middle of the night so I have to deal with this mess by myself?”
“I implore your forgiveness.”
“And what’s the point of all this? Who are these people? I didn’t let Ollie spend an hour glossing and lacquering just so I could referee a bunch of doily festooned men.”
Caedmon straightened, shooting a curious glance at Wizard Fandorn. “Beseeching your pardon, the point, Sorceress, is so the Council can witness the naming of the Rescinder.”
Council? As if all these extras were supposed to represent some sort of political faction? Rowena narrowed her eyes. Exactly how far was the mastermind behind these shenanigans willing to go? Based on the panic etched on each face in that room, pretty darn far. Not to mention, it appeared they seriously expected her to name this supposed Rescinder of theirs. Okay, fine, but how in the world was she supposed to do that?
She hesitated. Or perhaps the naming wasn’t hers to do, after all. Ultimately, they controlled the outcome. If she played along, maybe they’d be satisfied and she’d finally be able to get a full night’s sleep.
She waved Caedmon forward and slapped a hand to the screen. “All right. Bring it on.”
“Me, Sorceress?” His eyebrows nearly disappeared into his hairline.
“Yeah, why not?” She’d eliminate them one at a time if she had to, until she’d met the palm of every man in the room. Since this obviously wasn’t the “date” Ollie so aptly alluded to, once they’d all tried and their Rescinder was finally chosen, hopefully they’d move on to their next victim—perhaps a botched version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Caedmon stole another glance at Fandorn and was nodded forward before he hesitantly approached. He lifted his hand and pressed his palm to hers.
A pinpoint of blinding, white light zipped around the edge of the frame. Deep rumbling shuddered underfoot. Rowena braced her legs when the floor pitched and rolled in undulating waves. Perfume bottles rattled on her dresser. Car alarms wailed outside the window. The streetlight flickered and popped, sizzling with electricity.
She snatched her hand back and stumbled to the side, grabbing the edge of the armoire to maintain her balance. When the floor eventually stabilized, she lifted her eyes to the screen. What in the hell was that?
Most of the men were crawling to their feet. A tall candelabra lay on the floor, the candles smoldering near the tasseled edge of a tapestry. Fandorn waved his hand and the candelabra lifted to standing. The flames sputtered and the smoke wafted into non-existence.
“I protest!” Braedric leapt to his feet, straightening his heavy brocade coat. “These proceedings are a farce. I am the one to be named Rescinder. Caedmon is impure!”
Oh, no. Things had just skipped way beyond a “farce.” Rowena blinked at the monitor, her jaw hanging slack. How in the world had they managed to shake her entire apartment building?
“You dare denounce the sorceress’ choice in her presence?” Fandorn’s warning boomed throughout the room. “Silence your forked tongue, Braedric, or I shall wither it in your throat.”
Braedric snapped his jaw shut, but his fists remained clenched at his sides and his face darkened to a dangerous shade of red.
One by one the men straightened their hats, bowed toward the screen and rushed to exit stage left. Braedric was the last to depart, shooting her a venomous glare before slamming the door behind him.
Only King Austiere, Wizard Fandorn and Caedmon remained. They huddled together in the center of the room, Caedmon’s back facing her, their harsh whispers so low Rowena couldn’t discern the words.
“Hey.” A shiver wrenched her shoulders, dislodging her shock. Uh-uh. No way. She’d done exactly as they asked. It was time they come clean and offer up some answers. She stepped closer to the armoire door and rapped a knuckle against the glass. “Hel-l-l-o-o. What’s going on over there?”
Caedmon nodded and glanced over his shoulder, his tanned face a sickly shade of green.
King Austiere squeezed his shoulder. “Good luck, my boy.”
“And above all, remember to keep your wits about you,” Fandorn whispered.
They faced Rowena, bowed as one and left, but not before the wizard secretly smiled at her through his bushy whiskers, a mischievous sparkle twinkling in his gray eyes.
After the door shut behind them, Caedmon closed his eyes, filled his lungs and slowly exhaled.
Okay, enough already with the high-octane theatrics. She crossed her arms. “Would you please tell me what’s going on?”
He opened his eyes and slumped. “War is upon us. The veil will remain open for three suns. The time of Gleaning has begun.”
***
“They’re saying it registered a five point five on the Richter Scale.” Oliver shook out the newspaper, the pages rustling like fall leaves, and held it open in front of his face.
Rowena sat back on her heels and re-read the headline Earthquake Rocks Chicago emblazoned across the front page. The whole thing had to be some sort of bizarre coincidence. It just had to be. “I know. I heard.”
“The rumbling woke me from a dead sleep. I thought we were being invaded by extraterrestrials.” He folded the paper and tossed it to the arm of the couch. “What about you?”
She leaned forward and resumed sanding the side panel of the Louis XVI end table. “I was already awake.”
“At three in the morning?” Oliver remained silent a moment before he sprang forward, clasping his knees. “Your mystery date showed up and you didn’t tell me? What’s the matter with you?”
She shook her head. “I kept telling you it wasn’t a date. Last night was more like a…town meeting.” She
flipped the sandpaper over and kept scrubbing.
“What do you mean?”
Rowena spelled out the details of her late-night visit, leaving off the part when she and Caedmon placed their hands on the glass…and how she’d spent the remainder of the pre-dawn hours staring wide-eyed at the television as reports of the earthquake came in. Try though she might, she couldn’t come up with one valid explanation behind the event. Maybe—with a lot of money and some top-notch special effects—Caedmon and his cohorts could have shifted the foundation of her building. But shaking an entire city? No way.
She’d been left no choice but to consider the impossible, yet the idea a Narnian Empire had somehow taken up residence inside her armoire had her questioning her sanity. One word of her suspicions to Ollie and he was likely to admit her into the nearest psychiatric ward.
“So, you were online with him all night?” He wagged his eyebrows. “Giddy up.”
“No.” She chuckled. “He said we should take the night to prepare. That he planned to spend the next twelve hours in private meditation.”
“Really? How wonderfully Zen of him.” Oliver sat back and crossed his legs, extending his arms along the back of the couch. “I tried meditation once. Didn’t stick.”
She grunted. Nothing stuck with Ollie for very long.
“There’s just one thing I don’t understand. What does gleaning mean?”
Rowena pushed up from the floor and tossed the sandpaper onto her desk, stared at the ceiling and recited from memory. “To collect gradually bit by bit.” She met Ollie’s sky-blue eyes and shrugged. “I looked up the definition online.”
He tipped his head to the side, the corners of his lips turned down. “What’s your young prince planning to collect?”
“I have no idea.” She dusted the grit off her hands and stomped her feet, swiping a cloud of brown powder from the front of her jeans.
“Hmmm…” He frowned, tapping a finger against his pursed lips. “So, when are you and the handsome Prince Charming planning to see each other again?”
Embarrassment heated her cheeks and she dropped her focus to the ground. That was another great question she couldn’t answer. After struggling two days to get the armoire open, now the dumb door refused to stay closed. In an effort to offer them both some privacy, Caedmon had said his goodnights and draped a blanket over the screen. A moment later, the candles in his room had winked out of sight.
She’d been left standing alone, staring at a black sheet of glass, trying to shuffle the night into some sort of cohesive picture that made sense.
“I just received the lab report on your key.” Violet ducked inside the studio doorway, waving several pieces of paper in the air.
Rowena snapped her chin up. Finally, some concrete answers. “And?”
“Looks like you’ve got the genuine article, based on the metallurgic data.” Violet crossed to the couch and sat beside Oliver, flipping to the second page. “However, that’s not the most interesting part. Says here Rowena’s Key is a fictitious object shrouded in legend. It supposedly played a strategic role in some Kentish war. Except, from what I could find, most historians doubt Rowena ever existed. There’s no record of her birth, so the references are very vague. Some reports describe her as a heroine of the Saxons, a beautiful femme fatale who won her people a foothold in Britain by seducing the British King. Others state she was a villainess who poisoned the king’s eldest son when he rebelled against her and that ‘she was an enchanting sorceress, skilled in the arts of seduction and weaponry.’”
Sorceress. The word swept over Rowena like a warm tide. Her heart thumped and she grabbed the edge of her desk to steady her defective knees. For whatever reason, Caedmon and his cast of characters had assigned her the role of this beautiful villainess from history. Well, either that or the unimaginable. They were real and actually believed she was the Rowena.
Oh, God. Had she seriously just entertained that lunacy?
“You don’t look so good.”
She glanced at Ollie and nodded. “I think I’d better sit down.”
Violet scooted closer to Oliver and patted the cushion on her right.
Rowena joined them on the couch, fingering the gold key between her breasts. “Does the report say anything else?”
“Only one last thing, but it’s so silly I’m almost embarrassed to mention it.”
Oliver mimicked her motions when Rowena leaned over the papers on Violet’s lap.
“You know how some fairytales involve a magic mirror?”
They locked eyes and nodded in unison.
“Well, evidently the idea originally came from the story of Rowena. She supposedly had this magic mirror which allowed her to peer through time, and whoever was on the receiving end risked falling hopelessly in love with her.”
Oh shit! Rowena sprang to her feet. The similarities were too eerie to even consider. Not a television screen, but a mirror? A magic mirror which peered through time?
No, that was crazy. And, dammit, if she had to forfeit another night’s sleep to prove the whole thing was a hoax, then so be it. Somehow, she would uncover the truth behind why someone was trying to mess with her head.
She pinned Oliver with a hard stare. “I need to go home.”
He nodded and shoved up from the couch. “I’ll drive.”
***
Despite Oliver’s insistence to join her, Rowena entered her flat alone. Until her suspicions were confirmed one way or the other, her safest bet was to keep this whole mirror business on the down-low. The last thing she needed was to become the laughing stock of the entire antiques community or, worse yet, get thrown into the loony bin.
She gently placed her keys and coat on the kitchen counter and stole down the hall to her bedroom, she pushed the door wide and poked her head inside. The armoire stood open, the light from a flickering fire dancing on the opposite side of the glass. Soft murmuring reached her ears and she hesitated, but only one voice echoed across her hardwood floor.
As she crossed the room, Caedmon inched into view, hunched over his desk, a disarray of rolled parchments, inkwells and several quills scattered along the top. He picked up one of the sheets and held it in a ray of sunlight, his lips moving as he scanned the surface.
He glanced toward the screen and quickly stood. “Good morning, Your Radiance.”
“Morning.” Even though her nightstand clock showed a little after one in the afternoon, she wasn’t about to argue the details. Based on his appearance, more interesting games were at hand.
Gone were his leather pants and padded vest. Instead, dark navy pantaloons covered his thighs, white tights encased his calves and a pair of sparkly buckled shoes decorated his feet. A thick, embroidered coat rested on his shoulders, with leg-o’-mutton sleeves and a fancy cape that swirled near the backs of his thighs. He propped a wide-brimmed, feathered hat on his head and walked to the center of the room. Holding the parchment aloft, he cleared his throat and recited:
“To Rowena Fair
Cheeks akin to roses white
Her hair a shaft of wheat
Lips that spark a man’s desire
To grovel at her feet.
“Eyes the green of glades in spring
Her breast a downy bed
Oh, fair Rowena of the glass
Do bless me on the head.”
A long moment of silence passed before Rowena clapped a hand over her mouth, but muffled laughter still seeped through her fingers. Without a doubt, his was the worst poem she’d ever heard. Yet, the fact he seemed so deadly serious was what killed her. Of all the things she expected, coming home to find Caedmon dressed like a peacock, reciting horrendous verse in her honor, never crossed her mind.
Did he really say, do bless me on the head? A riotous guffaw erupted. She doubled-over, holding her stomach, trying to avoid cackling like a lunatic right in his face.
By the time she got her amusement under control, laughter tears trailed down her cheeks. She straightened and
wiped them away with her fingertips. Oh-h-h…that was good.
Caedmon stood in the same spot, but his arms were crossed, one of his eyebrows lifted in dry assessment of her complete lack of control. “It’s horse dung, isn’t it?”
She chuckled and pinched her bottom lip before another bout of hilarity had the chance to escape. She shook her head. “Sorry. I don’t mean to offend you, but yeah, that was pretty terrible.”
“My poetic abilities are abysmal.” He stalked to the fireplace and threw the parchment into the flames.
“Oh! Don’t do that!” She stepped closer and went up on her toes, her hand pressed against the glass, trying to peer into the fire over his shoulder. This was the first time anyone had written her a poem. Albeit a dreadful rhyme which made no sense, but still a poem. Regardless of his intentions, the gesture was sweet. “Hurry, can you save it?”
“Thankfully, no. I would be humiliated beyond all measure should that parchment fall into traitorous hands.”
Her heels hit the floor. “I still would have liked to keep it.”
He strode to a spot outside her view, reappeared a moment later and fitted a lute under his arm. He strummed and a mellow tone sang through the air. He turned one of the small pegs on the neck and strummed again, but this time the chord had soured, and Rowena tightened her jaw to keep from cringing.
Uh-oh. He was preparing to sing.
He braced his foot on the seat of a leather chair and, with the next downward stroke of his hand, a dissonant keening poured from his throat, growing in volume until she winced and pulled her head back.
The man could not sing. And he most certainly could not play that beautiful instrument.
She widened her eyes and nodded, pretending to rest her cheek in her palm so she could stick a finger in her ear. Based on his fumbling lyrics, this was his first attempt at a solo. So why, in the name of all things holy, would he put both of them through such torture?
She gnashed her teeth all the way to the last jarring chord and exhaled in relief when he finally went silent.
He turned and bowed, holding the lute wide to the side.