by Terah Edun
The queen’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, yes. I know, Thomas. I’ve known since we walked into this room. A large amount still resides in you. Because the faerie power cannot live outside a host for very long. An hour at most. You might have sold a portion, but you, you are filled with a flaring magic that emits light like a honing beacons inside you. You still have their gifts.”
Chapter 17
Naked fear appeared on his face. Katherine sucked in a surprised breath. He’s bluffing.
“But that’s all right,” the queen said gaily. “Because I’m sure you’ve discovered that harvesting and using those gifts are two very, very different things.”
The man licked dry lips.
Katherine narrowed her eyes.
“Oh yes,” the queen said with a brittle smile. “Which is why you’ve been selling it off bit-by-bit, haven’t you? Can’t use it yourself, not as a fae of the Earth. Only one of the shining could rip the power from another for personal purposes. Now the question is...how to get it out of you?”
Mr. LaCroix swallowed. “I can share it...with whomever you want. Name a person.”
“But then the gift becomes theirs,” Ethan blurted out in interruption. “Give the power to another living being and it cannot be returned to the fae host. It has to be an inanimate carrier. At least for a short time.”
The queen nodded. “I know.”
Mr. LaCroix sat back on his heels. Sullen. “Fine, whatever carrier you choose.”
“Yes,” purred the queen. “But first your punishment.”
The man looked up at with a snarl. “What is your will, my queen?”
He knew now that he wouldn’t be killed. Because the queen still needed him for the transfer. So whatever she decided to punish him with—a public sentence, a length of time in the human slammer—would be nothing he couldn’t deal with.
He knew it and they knew it. Katherine could almost see the confidence regrouping in his eyes.
The queen tilted her head. “My will is a punishment that fits the crime.”
A small exhale of breath escaped Katherine’s mouth as her eyes grew wide.
The queen continued, “For the crime of attempted murder, Mr. Thomas LaCroix will bear the same action.”
The were-peacock lord’s head flew back in genuine surprise. Katherine wasn’t quite sure what her mother was decreeing, but he certainly knew.
The queen looked over at a guardian out of the corner of her eye. “Bring the lash.”
That startled a laugh out of the man. “You can’t be serious,” he said.
“Oh, I am,” the queen replied.
As the guardian quickly returned with an ebony whip made of leather that shined with oil, and Katherine felt a shiver slip down her spine. The lash was as thick as a snake’s tail and as dark as a black mamba’s scales. Equally deadly with a fatal bite, Katherine felt cold as she watched the snake-like whip uncoil in her mother’s hands.
Cecily outright shrank back from the loose whip’s coils. It lay like a placid snake at Katherine’s mother’s feet before it would sing through the air with a sharp whistle of as it struck.
The queen glanced coolly at her niece.
“Cecily, dear,” said the queen, “I think it’s time that you left.”
Cecily whimpered even as she said, “I’d rather stay.”
With open fear on her face, Katherine wondered why she’d push the issue. But it didn’t matter.
“I’d rather you not,” the queen said in a tone like ice a few seconds later. She flicked a finger at a guard who firmly grabbed Cecily by the arm and escorted her out the door.
Katherine steeled her spine, expecting to be next with Ethan. She balled angry fists and crossed her arms hastily in order to avoid looking like a petulant child banished from the playground. She didn’t think she succeeded.
But the movement certainly caught her mother’s attention.
The queen’s quick glance at her only living daughter’s face was an assessment, a calculation, and a decision all rolled in one.
“Katherine, you will stay. You must witness the work of the queen. Because the heavens above and the hell below know that you will someday have to make such decisions yourself.”
The queen’s voice was final.
Katherine had to wonder, Who was this woman and were had the female that Katherine knew as Leanna Thompson gone?
“Before I begin,” Katherine’s mother said gravely, “Thomas LaCroix, you are hereby sentenced to sixty lashes by your provincial queen’s hand. For the crime of narcotics production and tampering as well as attempted murder. Do you recognize your crimes?”
Katherine let out an audible gasp. That was a death sentence. Were-creature or not.
The man gained some backbone...from somewhere...and stood with his back straight and his head held up proudly. He looked over the queen’s head at the far wall, seeing nothing but acknowledging her words.
“I do,” he answered.
“If given the option of forty-five lashes, will you willfully and without malicious intent, hand over the remainder of the faerie people’s siphoned power?”
No expression changed on his peaceful face as he answered, “I would.”
“And would this gift of power be enough to at least close the wounds in the faerie psyche?”
LaCroix grimaced but nodded. “With careful attention it can plaster over the opening they have made, but it’s up to them not to open the wound again.”
“Once they realize the depth of their mistake upon rising from the addictive haze,” interjected Ethan. “I think Ceidian will be able to convince them of the merit of staying away from the tainted moon nectar.”
LaCroix gave a bitter and mocking laugh. “Always the most hopeful, the young.”
The queen hissed, “Not hope, LaCroix. Fear. Because Ceidian has one chance to get his people turned around. If he does not, he will deal with me.”
The were-peacock lord silenced himself with effort then shrugged. “As you will it, my queen.”
The queen nodded and cracked the whip. To the guardian standing beside her she said, “Bring the object.”
The man rushed from the room and returned with an orb.
Without any further delay, the queen waved her hand and motioned the guard forward. With a wary look, the guardian stretched out his hand so that the orb glowed with a milky iridescent inches from Thomas LaCroix’s face. With a grimace, LaCroix raised cautious hands and placed them on the orb. He closed his eyes, sighed deeply, and transferred the essence of the faerie gift from within him into the depths of the orb.
Katherine could see the transference. It was as if starlight flowed from LaCroix’s heart, up his arms, and into the orb’s glass exterior in a stream of bright light. Furiously blinding one moment and gone the next.
With a word, the guardian lowered his arm with the heavy-looking orb in his grasp and turned to his queen.
With a flick of her eyes, the queen looked over to Ethan. “Ethan Nestor, go with my guardian. Return the orb to the people who have given you a home, relay my sympathies to Ceidian, and ask him for a sit-down meeting with me in three days hence.”
Ethan nodded, bowed to his queen, and left the room with the guardian carrying the prize in a stiff hand by his side. Katherine’s mother followed her guardian’s path with watchful eyes. Once he returned with a stiff nod, she turned back to LaCroix with a pleased smile.
“Well done,” the queen said, pleased.
LaCroix said nothing. Instead he straightened his shoulders and dropped the silk robe that covered him from head to toe. He turned around so that his back faced the queen and his hands were outspread, solemn, contemplative.
The Queen of Sandersville sighed. In acceptance, in appreciation? Katherine didn’t know.
Her mother’s hand tightened on the whip as she lifted the limp black weight in her hand by the handle. Katherine knew she was standing much too close to the male to inflict damage with such a long whip. But still, two guardian
s stepped forward from the southwest and southeast corners of the group of four guardians watching over him.
One grabbed LaCroix’s right arm. One grabbed LaCroix’s left arm.
They held him tightly, waiting for their queen’s orders. LaCroix bowed his head and awaited his punishment.
Leanna Thompson took two steps back in her long dark gown and raised her hand. As she did Katherine couldn’t stop the whisper of surprise from escaping from between her lips. LaCroix turned his head slightly to the right to take a look at Katherine’s face. The open surprise that must have been on her face obviously startled him, because he opened his mouth to speak.
By then it was too late.
Queen Leanna Thompson, Provincial Queen of Sandersville, Georgia of the original thirteen colonies of the New World, had transmuted the black coils in a saber made of an onyx. And that’s when Katherine remembered why the sight of the onyx whip’s coils had struck fear in her heart from the beginning. Nine years ago, on the anniversary of her father’s death, the High Queen of Atlanta had paid an unannounced visit to the Queen of Sandersville’s home.
She was the regnant queen of the entire province of Georgia, so she could go where she pleased. She had chosen to attend the remembrance ceremony for Katherine’s father for one reason only—family obligation.
Yes, the High Queen of Atlanta was Katherine Thompson’s great aunt. Although she had never once seen her before and had yet seen her since. “Close” wasn’t a word one would use to describe her relationship with Great Aunt Lysa. But she did honor the traditions, and coven ritual stipulated that all eligible blood relatives much attend the wake or the remembrance ceremony for any individual in the family who died. For some reason or another, Great Aunt Lysa had not been present for Katherine’s father’s burial.
When she had arrived at his remembrance ceremony the mourning gift she bore had been very special. A chimera weapon that could transform into four separate weapons depending on the owner’s preference—a long black whip, an onyx saber, reinforced knuckles made of black silver, and midnight throwing stars. All deadly weapons that were not out of place in a high court, or so Katherine had heard, but completely useless in a small town like Sandersville.
So Katherine’s mother had put the present away as soon as it was polite to do so and they had all forgotten about it. Until now.
Mr. LaCroix spoke aloud, his voice a little high. “What’s going on?”
His muscles strained as he tried to jerk from of the grips of the guardians on either side. But neither budged. They had the strength of ten oxen when called upon.
Without pausing a moment, the queen spoke in a deadly voice, “For the crime of disrupting the peace between the fae communities and stripping your brethren of their powers, Thomas LaCroix, I sentence you to death.”
LaCroix’s eyes bulged out in horror just as Katherine’s left-handed mother swept back the saber and sliced straight through the were-peacock’s neck. And that was the end of Mr. Thomas LaCroix.
Katherine Thompson watched in a daze as the seconds after his head left his body felt like an eternity. The arc of blood in the air. The surprise in his wide-open eyes. The flailing of lifeless arms up in the air. The fall of his body forward with a thud to the ground. It was a clean decapitation, as far as decapitations went. As LaCroix’s head rolled across their hardwood floor, the blood from his severed neck sprayed in ever-widening circles. Katherine watched the head slowly roll until it came to a stop at the base of the china cabinet and blood began to pool on the floor from the body’s emptying veins.
For the first time that night, Katherine got a sense of the magnitude in which her mother worked. And without batting an eye, she could easily say that she hadn’t seen a tenth of who her mother really was. Not until now. Not until tonight.
Amazing how seeing your mother order someone decapitated brings all those prideful feelings to light, Katherine thought.
She was also feeling a bit smug at their similar mindset. For her entire life, it seemed, the queen and Rose were as tight as best friends, alike in so many ways, and different from Katherine in most others. But here...here was Katherine in her mother. Her streak of ruthlessness. Rose would have been far too squeamish to have the execution done. While Katherine stood with no little pride as blood dripped down the side of her face.
Looking up her mother’s eyes caught her own and Katherine watched the emotions play across the queen’s face. Shock then cautious acceptance. The queen could see the smile on Katherine’s face. She might not know what it meant, but she knew that her daughter approved of her choice of punishment.
She barely heard her mother order the guardians to remove the screaming servant girl and take the body outside for Gestap’s early morning breakfast. “I believe my daughter will be too tired to feed him otherwise and put the head on a spike in the town center,” the queen said before Katherine saw her mother walk forward to stand directly in front of her.
They stood so close together that the queen’s dress spilled over onto Katherine’s army boots.
Blinking rapidly, Katherine allowed her mother to tilt her face up and she listened with her heart frantically beating in her ears as the queen said, “We never negotiate with anarchists.”
Then the queen dropped her finger from Katherine’s chin and enfolded her only living daughter in her grasp. All Katherine could do was stand and watch the spilled red blood on the hardwood floor absorb into the dark wood as if had never existed.
Another of her mother’s homemaker witch tricks, she was sure.
Chapter 18
After a few seconds had passed it was if a spell had broken and they were once more aware of each other and the room they stood alone in except for the heavy stink of fear and anger.
With a long sigh, the queen stepped back from the tight hug she had Katherine embraced in and trailed her hands up her daughter’s long arms until both of her hands rested comfortably on Katherine’s shoulders.
“This was an easier introduction to life at a court than I had,” the queen said while massaging her daughter’s shoulders as if she wanted to will away the tension in the room by easing the knots in Katherine’s muscles.
Katherine choked back a dark laugh as she said, “Easier? What could be harder than watching an execution?”
Her mother’s eyes caught her own in a searching manner.
“Watching an execution,” her mother answered in a forthright manner. She wasn’t making light of the situation; Katherine could tell she was just being honest.
Katherine shook her head in disbelief. Not quite believing her mother. The woman who baked her cookies every year for back-to-school, the woman who laughed at the local banker’s horrible jokes and judged pig racing in the spring fields. Where had that woman gone, and who was this woman who chopped off a person’s head in one minute and destroyed the evidence the next?
Katherine’s horror and confusion must have shown on her face, because the queen closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them it was as if a window to her soul had been laid bare.
Hesitant her mother said, “Despite how this might look...this wasn’t easy for me, Katherine. The decision. The manner of execution. But I will be honest and say it is something I’m used to.”
Katherine shook her head. “What are you talking about?”
The queen’s massaging hands stilled and then they traveled lower until she gripped tightly the flesh just above her daughter’s elbows. “I tried to shield you and Rose from this.”
“From what?” asked Katherine in a mystified tone.
“Death. Pain. Cruelty,” her mother said. “Life at court, essentially.”
Still Katherine didn’t understand. “But this isn’t court. This isn’t who we are or who you are.”
The queen smiled and leaned her forehead against her daughters for just a moment before she stood straight again. “Oh, my daughter, that is exactly what I wanted you to believe growing up. To believe that court is the opposite of
death, that it is life. To know that pain isn’t the center of court, pleasure is. To abhor cruelty in any form, and instead to give kindness. And I succeeded all too well.”
“But—” interrupted Katherine.
“No,” her mother interjected. “Just listen.”
Katherine stilled and then she nodded. It was a command, not a request.
“I raised you and your sister in the opposite manner I was raised,” her mother said after taking a long breath. “I raised you to respect all communities, honor your duties even when it is the last thing you wish to do—”
Katherine flashed back on her reluctance earlier that day to have anything to do with the trolls’ ceremony. It was true, she hadn’t wanted to go. But she went.
“—and to think like a benevolent queen would and should. Even though I had no such role model myself,” her mother finished. “But the truth of the matter is that most queens are cruel tyrants. In sheltering you and your sister and raising you in a community like this, I believe I stunted you in more ways than one. Ways that the humans would refer to as ‘street smarts’ in simplistic terms. Because my sister queens outside this small haven of Sandersville rule over their people in a quite different manner then I tend to do myself. They rule by power, blood, and force. Just like the court that I grew up in. The court that was once your grandmother’s.”
Her mother paused for a moment and Katherine took a moment to interject.
“But who was she? You’ve never told Rose and me about her, or any of our family, really. Not on your side of the family tree. We’ve never even met her,” Katherine finished in a mumble.
“And you never will,” her mother answered. “My mother is long gone from my life and so is my aunt. All that is left is your aunt, Cecily, and memories. It will stay that way.”
Katherine wanted to protest, but the look in her mother’s eyes said this wasn’t the time. There was a time to be willful and a time to be obedient. The ten minutes after her mother had finished decapitating a man was definitely a time to be obedient.
Katherine asked a question tentatively, though. “So your life was different before you had us?”