by Terah Edun
She spread her hands out, sat, and said, “Shall we get on with why we’re here?”
Mr. LaCroix lifted his hand and snapped imperious fingers. Out of the kitchen hurried a dainty woman with blonde hair, a short sky-jump nose, and a petite form. She hurried over to Mr. LaCroix’s side as if summoned with a silk robe in her hands that her lord took from her quickly.
The now-clothed were-peacock pack leader turned to the queen with a flourish. “When my queen calls me, I come.” He smiled and bowed.
“Do you know why I’ve called you?”
“In the dead of night?” said Thomas with purr. “I’d hope for something very entertaining.”
The lasciviousness in his tone left Katherine squirming. That was her mother, for gosh sakes.
Her mother apparently didn’t appreciate it, either. The Queen of Sandersville stood and slammed her hands onto the chestnut table.
“Let me put it to you simply, Lord LaCroix,” she said. “My daughter is dead, a significant portion of my people have taken ill, and I believe that you are the cause. Why don’t you tell me why I shouldn’t have you beheaded this very minute?”
The man straightened uneasily at his queen’s tone as he ran his now-shaky hands on the lapels of his robe as if to assure himself the cloth was still there. Katherine could feel tension blow through the room like an icy breeze.
Then she stiffened as she felt the temperature drop. It’s not metaphorical at all. It’s physical.
Katherine shifted her gaze to her immobile mother and wondered at how large the fury that was running through her must be for the queen’s emotions to drop the temperature in the room without an outward sign—no flicker of her fingers, no murmur from her lips, just cold, hard emotional fury transforming her emotional distress into a tangible manifestation The longer the queen waited for an answer, the colder the room grew.
An audible gulp came from Mr. LaCroix’s area. It could have been the servant girl. Katherine highly doubted it.
Then he spoke. “Your Highness, I assure you, one monarch to another, that I and my people have had nothing to do with any illnesses in the coven community.”
A brittle smile appeared on her mother’s face. “As we stand on ceremony, I expect you to address me as Your Majesty, Provincial Queen of Sandersville. As your superior, that respect is due to me.”
A tic appeared at the corner of Mr. LaCroix mouth’s as he listened to the queen’s words, but he was too well bred...or too afraid...to state his objections.
Satisfied, Katherine thought, As well he should be afraid. He stands before his provincial queen as proud as a peacock on game day. But he, and we all, know the respect due to a witch queen from her fae underlings, up to and including the lords and monarchs who represent each community.
Mr. LaCroix, apparently realizing the precarious position he inhabited, swiftly bowed deep at the waist to his queen, even going as far as to bow so deeply that the posture was almost submissive in nature rather than simply the bow deemed necessary from a high-ranking lord second in rank only to his provincial queen.
Katherine watched as he didn’t move and held the position, waiting for the queen’s command to rise.
In short order her mother gave it.
“Rise,” she said, sounding contemplative.
The man stayed where he was. “If I have offended Your glorious Majesty, a thousand apologies from the rays of the mostly heavenly sun I will bring you a gift that will surpass all others for the oversight.”
Well, he certainly knows how to smoothly talk himself out of a situation, Katherine thought.
“Your oversight is forgiven, Mr. LaCroix. Now rise!” the queen commanded in a tone that said her patience was being taxed.
When he did so, the queen let out a slow breath. “You’re a smart individual. You know I would not call you here for any other reason that a dire threat to our community and the sanctity of the population, Mr. LaCroix.”
“You have always put the well-being of your people first, my queen. A tribute to your kindness, generosity, and fair rule,” he answered gamely.
“And yet, my people are suffering,” the queen said icily as she took her seat.
“Suffering, Your Majesty?” Mr. LaCroix asked with a helpless look that would have been well placed on an orphan.
Katherine’s mother was unmoved as she titled her head and said, “Yes. The faerie of Ceidian’s court are ill, quite ill.”
Mr. LaCroix opened his mouth to protest and the queen held up a forestalling hand. Katherine wasn’t quite sure if he planned on saying he had no idea about their illness or deny general wrongdoing in any case, but it didn’t matter. One didn’t screw up one’s face and make their mouth in an O in order to agree with a charge against themselves.
Katherine was beginning to wonder if her mother would ever accuse Mr. LaCroix of anything or if she intended it to be all sidestep and innuendo for the rest of the night. If she did, Katherine knew fairly well how this would end. A light slap on the wrist for the were-peacock lord. After all, her mother abhorred capital punishments in the form of the death penalty. He would get a hefty fine, which Mr. LaCroix, thanks to his shipments, could easily pay and be on his way.
She was in for a surprise with her mother’s next words, however.
“I do not care for your protests. All of my evidence, carefully gathered before my daughter’s death, leads to you and your shipments,” said the queen.
“Your Majesty,” protested Mr. LaCroix with an elegant sweep of his hand that almost had Katherine laughing into her fist. The man just managed to make a bathrobe look stately, but even he couldn’t make the goop laden in his hair evaporate or look any more suave in bare feet.
“Every fortnight from three forty-five a.m. until four fifteen a.m. you receive shipments of rare moon nectar,” the queen interrupted. “Moon nectar that I allowed you to bring in for one reason—to break the monopoly the faerie king had on the distribution of the product in Sandersville. I agreed to this in order to not only break down their network but also to give Ceidian a cause to fear. He relies far too much on the sale and trade of the substance and was growing too entrenched for his own good.”
Katherine’s respect for her mother’s tenure as queen grew. She only saw the day-to-day monotony of her mother signing municipal orders in her office or meeting boring groups of farmers who came to argue about grain levies. This, this was underhanded. This was sneaky. It was almost queenly.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” said Mr. LaCroix as he eased into he conversation smoothly. “And so I did as you commanded. I have broken his hold and handed you more in the meantime.”
“As well as handed yourself an open market,” the queen said softly while resting her chin on her peaked hands. “Because, you see, I ordered you to loosen up his stranglehold on distribution, not grab it all for yourself by making addicts of his buyers and sellers in addition to draining their powers.”
An affronted look crossed the were-peacock’s face. “I wanted nothing to do with their powers, just a better market share for myself.”
As if that was the worst of the crimes the queen had lobbied at him.
Maybe it was, Katherine thought to herself. What could be worse than stealing someone’s power? The very essence of their being?
“Unfortunately, you’re a known liar. You protest your innocence prettily, but I must say that I don’t believe you,” said the queen with mocking sadness as she leaned back into the hardbacked panel of the chair.
Then, with a snap of her fingers, six of her guardians came into the room. Four surrounding Mr. LaCroix from far enough away that Katherine could still easily see Mr. LaCroix’s face, one standing behind the queen’s chair, and another putting a hand on Katherine’s shoulder to pull her back toward the French doors and exit into the hall.
Katherine let him drag her back a few steps, but she refused to leave the room and shook off his tugging hand from her shoulder with an irritated jerk. This was just getting good. There was
no way she was leaving now.
Shock poured over the were-peacock’s face and the tiny woman beside him gasped as she tried to hide behind her lord.
The sound of the front door opening didn’t startle the queen or her lord’s eyes from each other. Cecily came to stand by Katherine, and to Katherine’s dread, the queen’s headman stepped around to the left of the lord of the were-peacocks. His axe at the ready in his hands.
Katherine’s mother cocked her head to the side with an ice-cold look in her eyes. “You have sixty seconds to convince me otherwise, Lord LaCroix, and give me a reason to spare your life.”
Chapter 15
Mr. Thomas LaCroix turned as pale as Katherine had yet seen him. He looked like he might faint. But he rallied.
“And what, Your Majesty, would convince you to spare my life?” he said.
“An antidote,” the queen said simply.
“There isn’t one,” he said while clutching the female servant close. He and the woman seemed to shrink into themselves with his statement. If he had been in were-form, Katherine was sure his proud display of spread feathers would have been plastered to his skin and the musky odor of fear an ever-present scent in the room. But there wasn’t and the two individuals on trial weren’t, so she had to look for visual clues on LaCroix’s present body and for his skin form, by all appearances human, to figure what he was feeling, what he was planning, and what could possibly go wrong next.
So he does care for someone beside himself, Katherine thought. Who knew it was possible?
Then Katherine took a closer, more uncharitable look at his stance. He was holding the woman still in a position equidistant from the two guardians to the northeast and southeast of him. If Katherine didn’t know any better, she would think he was using the woman as a shield, which wasn’t a stupid idea. Evil and creepy, but not stupid. If he threw the servant at the closest guardian in an attempt to flee, that would make the were-peacock’s escape that much easier.
Katherine’s lips pressed together firmly, signaling her disapproval.
What is it they say about cowards? ‘Better a fool’s death than a waste of a coward’s breath?’ she thought to herself.
Until that moment she hadn’t really known what the seemingly nonsensical statement meant. But she had to admit now that she still knew. But seeing as this entire night seemed to be one mystery after the other, it seemed rather appropriate that a nonsensical statement fit a rather unconventional standoff. Even though she didn’t quite get anything that was currently happening, there was one thing Katherine Thompson did know, however. She would rather see Mr. LaCroix quartered and hanged than free and fleeing.
The guardians apparently were thinking along the same lines, because with a signal from their leader standing at the northwest corner of the quadrant, all four lifted their hands and glowing red pikes appeared. That was the great thing about guardians. They could summon any weapon to their hands that they chose, magical or mundane. She had seen them call in everything from old-time swords to the guns they always kept holstered at their shoulders. This time they had chosen pikes, and it didn’t take a brain scientist to figure out why.
At a nod from the queen, the guardians lowered their pikes until each rested in the air no more than a foot from the were-peacock’s face on all sides. A male guardian spoke. “By orders of the Provincial Queen of Sandersville, I have orders to execute either of you if you so much as move more than a few centimeters.”
Katherine expected her mother to countermand that order that sounded like it was based on a prior conversation. Perhaps plans put in place prior to the arrival of the were-peacock lord and his servant? But no, her mother didn’t make a move to increase the comfort of the two figures who stood as almost one body in the center of the room. Instead she nodded, smiled, and said, “Why do we need to be so formal?”
The queen’s tone was mocking and completely different from anything Katherine had previously heard echo from her mother’s mouth.
It’s almost chameleon-like how she changes from mother to queen from one second to the next, Katherine thought. She had to wonder if her mother even remembered that that she was present or if she had assumed that Katherine had been removed from the room by a guardian.
Taking stock of her surroundings, Katherine acknowledged that even though she had the perfect view of the proceedings and the flustered were-peacock lord between the guardians, those same guardians at least partially blocked her from the view of the queen’s eyes.
Katherine’s mother continued speaking unabated. This time her voice like ice as she leaned forward. “If you so much as attempt to change your skin form into your were form, I’ll be forced to retroactively sign your death warrant, Mr. LaCroix, because you’ll be dead long before you hit the skies, and I won’t be the sorrier for it. Just one headache lighter for an already excruciating day.”
The last sentence was the queen’s only acknowledgement of the suffering she had already gone through today. Otherwise her face was calm, her expression was icy, and her entire demeanor radiated swift justice. She was the absolutely opposite of the frazzled and distraught woman Katherine had seen earlier today.
How does she do that? she wondered absentmindedly as she watched the action in the room as if were a play-by-play of the much-loved human and ogre sport of boxing. Katherine felt at once both an impartial observer and a participator in the central scandal. Up until her mother’s abrupt twelfth-hour call, she had been in charge of getting the answers as to why the faerie community were sickened with a moon nectar addiction that not only caused them to waste away like husks on the wind but also stole their very power from their bodies. She felt responsible for those individuals in a way she never had before, and it made her slightly uneasy.
So she was both apprehensive that her mother’s strong-arming tactics wouldn’t work to get an answer and a cure and relieved that it was someone else’s duty, the queen’s duty instead of the heir’s, to solve this horrendous small-town crime.
I guess I can’t ever call life in Sandersville boring again, Katherine thought wryly as she ignored an itch in her eye that she firmly told herself she’d deal with later. She didn’t want to draw attention to her presence in the room now. Besides, it was more than an itch. As long as she ignored the sensation it would wait and simmer, like an itch at the corner of her eye. That itch that represented more than a space of skin in need of being scratched, it was the patch on her mind and heart that was holding closed a dark well ready to burst open with the rush of emotions boarded up behind its cap.
No matter how it felt to hold back the well of frustration and sadness, she had to. Katherine knew that in the same sense that she knew that after today her life would never be the same again. So she held back her emotions of rage, pain, fear, and horror. Because right now was the time to attend to her duties, however and whatever form they appeared in. After that...after Mr. LaCroix was met with justice, after the dark faerie emerged from drugged haze and were on the road to recovery, after she and Cecily found out what happened, and after Rose was laid to rest...when she had her answers, then they would come. But right now she didn’t have the time or the energy for a cry-fest. What she wanted and what she needed was answers.
“We can’t fly,” squeaked the female servant. Perhaps an attempt to relay how non-dangerous they were or just a statement blurted out in sheer panic.
Nevertheless, the queen responded, “Perhaps not very far, but even a few feet is too much in my opinion.”
The lord of the were-peacocks didn’t deign to acknowledge either the queen or the lead guardian’s statement, but he did wipe the sweat from his brow and push the servant girl away from him in disgust.
“I told the truth, Queen Leanna,” he pleaded. “There is no antidote to give. But I have something better.”
The queen leaned back with suspicious eyes. “And what would that be?”
Mr. LaCroix smiled with a crafty look that made Katherine want to wipe the smirk off his face h
erself. If that was too gauche for her Southern-born and -bred mother, then Katherine wasn’t above ordering the guardians to do it for her with a swift one-two punch to the smirking were-peacock’s stomach.
The idea surprised her...not because of the spiteful feelings that welled up inside her, but because the idea of punishing him for his pride even amidst his downfall was one she was comfortable with. Hell, more than comfortable with. The man stood there, a threat to all they stood for—the protection of the people and the town they called home. Katherine realized she would do a lot more than order him punched to protect their residents.
She may not have wanted to inherit this small, piece-of-shit town in the middle of nowhere, but now that it was hers or going to become hers, she was startling to feel some responsibility for it. Responsibility and righteous anger towards anyone who threatened it.
Katherine turned to get a better view of her mother as she thought, Perhaps we’re not so different after all.
Her mother’s threats, her taunts, and her superior positioning over the were-peacock lord all served a purpose: to protect her people. If she had to do that with a cold demeanor, feudal tactics, and threats, then so be it. She was a queen, and queens ruled.
Finally, her mother stood up.
Fear swept over the man’s face. Blatant fear.
Katherine watched with cautious calm. Wondering what would happen. What would her mother do to force this sniveling weasel to give up his knowledge? To give up what he knew for the betterment of all?
If she had expected her mother to go in soft at the last minute, she would have been dead wrong. Good thing she hadn’t.
Katherine knew her mother was a Southern belle. Proud of her heritage, careful of her looks, endlessly obsessed with community gossip, and not above letting a nice-looking warlock open a door for her.
Hell, Katherine thought with a grin, Dad died. She didn’t. Why shouldn’t she appreciate the finer points of a male figure and a gentlemen?