by Terah Edun
“Much different,” the queen affirmed with a slow shake of her head and a rueful look. “But now I feel that perhaps I have sheltered you girls too much. You must be able to stand on your own two feet.”
“I can,” declared Katherine defiantly.
Her mother raised an arched eyebrow, which was oddly distracting, as a streak of blood was drying just below her eye.
“You must be able to rule with a steady head and a courageous heart,” her mother continued.
Katherine stiffened her shoulders and raised her hands to squeeze her mother’s hands, which still rested on her upper arms. “I will.”
The queen nodded thoughtfully. “And you must be able to kill without regret.”
Katherine hesitated. “I can try.”
Her mother shook her head. “There is no try, Katherine. At the high courts, and, I’m beginning to see, here as well, there is kill or be killed.”
“That’s a bit melodramatic, Mother,” Katherine pointed out. “One deviant doesn’t make an entire community deviant.”
Queen Leanna smiled with a twitch of her lips that didn’t reach her eyes. “More of the philosophy I taught you, I see. The issue is not with one deviant, but with what simmers underneath the surface. I know that Mr. LaCroix was only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the problems spreading across the countryside. He was a minor problem. We have more important people to deal with.”
“Like who?” Katherine asked.
Her mother hesitated. For a moment it looked as if she would answer Katherine’s question. Then she said, “Another time, Katherine. Another time. First you must not only learn defend your people but also kill in their name. Because when I am gone, it will be left to you to protect Sandersville.”
Katherine nodded. If felt like her world had turned upside down in less than twenty-four hours. Her sister—her only sister—had died and left a shitstorm for Katherine to clean up in her wake.
Katherine almost smiled. She wasn’t delusional; she and Rose had never gotten along. It had been wishful thinking they could put aside their differences for more than a few minutes at a time, but Katherine did feel a responsibility to take up the mantle of her legacy. However slight. And shoulder the burden of ruling Sandersville alongside her mother.
And to think, she thought wryly, this morning I was complaining about taking Gestap out to breakfast.
Staring at her mother thoughtfully, Katherine said, “I understand now. But how do you learn to kill someone without regret? How do you go about it? Do you order others to do it or do it yourself?”
“It depends on the situation,” her mother said with an elegant shrug. “But you will need to learn to kill with your own hands and your own magic.”
Half of Katherine’s mind was in a permanent state of disbelief that they were having this conversation at all. It was the most surreal moment in her life. When she had turned sixteen earlier this year, she had expected that she’s perhaps get ‘the talk’ about aligning herself with a powerful warlock, maybe get some lessons on dark blood rituals, and finally start to gain some independence and have some larks. She hadn’t thought she’d been getting lessons on how to kill before she turned twenty-one.
Finally, after studying her face for a moment, her mother said, “And Katherine?”
“Yes, Mother?” Katherine muttered, a little shell-shocked.
“It’s also time you harnessed your gifts. All of them.”
Katherine frowned and looked up. She hadn’t missed the emphasis in her mother’s voice. Did she know? Did she believe in the visions and the ghosts after all?”
The queen released her arms. “I don’t know exactly what your blood gifts will bring to bear for you as a witch, but I know that your skill in contacting the elementals of the forest will come in handy. We’ll start with that this week.”
“Oh,” Katherine said. Almost disappointed. She wasn’t sure if she could handle more revelations or bonding with her mother tonight. But it would have been nice to understand something about herself tonight. Instead she’d learned her mother was a cold-blooded killing machine when called upon, the sleazy-but-now-dead were-peacock was a criminal mastermind, and a lot of the fae were dumber than they looked...the trolls included, which was a particularly hard thing to accomplish.
Still Katherine rallied her thoughts and nodded to her mother. “Very well.”
“Good,” said the queen, approval leaking into her voice.
As an involuntary shiver overcame Katherine’s body, and her mother spied her skin shaking and asked, “Are you all right, my darling?”
“I don’t know,” Katherine answered honestly.
“You will be,” her mother said soothingly.
Katherine raised an eyebrow that her mother didn’t see as she turned away to walk toward the French doors where Katherine was sure all of the guardians not assigned a task awaited her orders.
She guessed their conversation was over. But something itched in the back of her mind. Something that she wanted to voice, but couldn’t.
Katherine wasn’t entirely sure her mother was well.
“And where the hell is Aunt Sarah?” she whispered to herself as she followed the queen into the hallway.
Unlike the calm of the parlor they had stood in, the hallway and the entrance to the house was a clamor. A clamor mainly consisting of two people. The servant girl that Katherine had all but forgotten in the melee, a man Katherine recognized as the town funeral director who was pushing buttons on his little cell phone and stridently avoiding the grasp of a guardian hell-bent on taking the device away from him, and a rearing unicorn at the front door. Katherine did a double take at the last one, although they were all pretty weird.
She more concerned that the unicorn’s, definitely male, hooves were covered in its naturally dark orange blood.
“No offense to the unicorn,” muttered Katherine to no one, “but he looks a right mess.”
And he did. Because the orange blood was showing like neon paint against the unicorn’s all-black fur. He looked like an extra prop in a Halloween house of fright. Add in the fangs that were just visible below the unicorn’s trembling upper lip and the bright red eyes, and you had a legitimate unicorn from hell. Of course, he wasn’t actually from Hell.
Nicern, was the leader of the local unicorn pack, and was what was considered a licorn. At least that was the formal term for it. Katherine just normally referred to him and his kind as ‘the blood-drinking unicorns from hell.’ It was an apt title, as the entire unicorn pack were actually licorns, since unicorns had all died out millennia ago from over-hunting, and they were all as bitchy as demons from the third tier of Lucifer’s kingdom. Nicern being no exception. He could be mad about anything and drunker than a tick on a hellhound at all hours of the day. So Katherine’s guess was as good as anyone’s as to why he whinnying unintelligently—after all, he could talk with only a slight lisp that no one dared point out due to the fangs.
Katherine tried plugging her ears against the inhuman whinnying, the very human-sounding screeches from the servant, and the outright yelling match between the guardian, who had succeeded in prying the phone away, and the funeral director, but it barely eased the jarring noise. And everyone but the two guardians at the door were too far gone into the madness to realize the queen had stepped into the room.
Chapter 19
Finally Katherine lowered her hands to her mouth, inserted two fingers between her lips, and let out a screeching whistle so loud that it cut the clamor off instantly.
Her mother sighed with a grateful smile over her shoulder and said, “Thank you, Katherine.”
The guardian, currently in a tug of war with the funeral director, straightened with a jerk of his arm, prying the cell phone that had been re-captured out of the lapsed funeral director’s hand, and then Katherine recognized him as the leader of the queen’s guardians.
“Your Majesty, if I may speak?” he said quietly.
“Proceed,” the queen said reg
ally while folding her hands at her waist.
Katherine’s mother was studiously ignoring the fact that her gown was covered in blood and the guardian leader was stiffly at attention before his queen...also ignoring the obvious swath of red on his queen’s gown.
Katherine rubbed her brow in irritation. Am I the only one who sees that this is a really big deal?
Looking around the hallway, Katherine had to admit that most of the guests looked half out of their minds, and the guardians...well, the guardians looked like they always did, passive and dour.
Then some hiccups that were threatening to turn into a whimper caught her attention. The only sound in the room was coming from the hunched form that knelt on the ground, plastered as close to the wall as she could get and surrounded on two sides by guardians that were undoubtedly making her even more uncomfortable.
But it wasn’t the guardians that the servant was staring at. It was the queen. Specifically the queen’s bloodstained dress. As the servant’s lower lip began to tremble, Katherine expected to see the waterworks flowing again. But, to her surprise, and probably the girl’s, she held it together.
That is, until a new guardian came through the door that led to the house’s kitchen carrying a pot, which he immediately turned on its side and presented to the queen and, by default, the entire room. The shrieks that erupted from the servant’s mouth were enough to wake the dead.
Well, at least I’m not the only one upset, Katherine thought gratefully.
The queen grimaced at seeing Thomas’s head in her cooking pot, but waved the guardian through. “Do as I commanded,” she explained. “Straight to the town square and up on the headman’s pike with a spell to keep it fresh for five days. The whole town will know my wrath for this one...deviant.”
Katherine didn’t miss the fact that her mother used the word she had spoken to express her thoughts about LaCroix’s actions.
Perhaps we can learn from each other, she mused. Well, her mother could teach her and Katherine could try to get her to see reason.
Eyeing the screeching servant girl, Katherine muttered, “Starting with her.”
Firmly Katherine walked forward and knelt into front of the servant, effectively blocking her view of Katherine’s mother and the retreating guardian. The were-peacock woman stared at Katherine with large eyes brimming with tears and trembling lips. She looked more like a girl than a woman at that moment, and Katherine had to wonder how old she was.
I’ve changed my mind, I don’t want to know, she thought with a shudder as she remembered the servant coming forward to clothe her lord in a familiar manner, too familiar for one who wasn’t intimate with his touch.
Calmly Katherine reached forward to grab the servant’s hands, only pausing to give the guardian who reached out to stop her an irritated look. What was the girl going to do, claw her to death?
In any case, the servant let Katherine enfold her hands in her own and slowly pull her to her feet.
Trembling but standing, she faced Katherine with her head held high. Which made the were-peacock’s servant at least a foot taller than Katherine who was holding her up emotionally. But Katherine didn’t mind. She was used to people towering over her, her mother and sister included. It didn’t intimidate her anymore, even though it used it. And when you lived in a town with occasional giant caravans passing through, everyone, at some point in their lives, felt like the smallest person in the room.
“Deep breaths,” Katherine counseled, easing into her own set of rhythmic deep breaths as she continued holding the woman’s hands. Slowly the servant followed suit, as if mesmerized by Katherine’s calm manner, and they synced up their breathing.
Peacocks were vain, tedious, and flighty creatures in real life. And the weres that called them brethren didn’t stray far from that personality tree, either. But they were also very much a communal species. Were-peacocks existed in large groups and rarely strayed far from each other. So Katherine could see how it would distress the woman to lose her leader and the only other were-peacock around for miles, or at least Katherine assumed so. She wasn’t quite sure where her mother had ordered these two were-peacocks to be picked up from, but the were-peacock reservation was on the other side of the small town—that much she knew.
With her breaths even and her sobs abated, Katherine smiled at the servant and said, “Better?”
The woman nodded. “Th-thank you, mistress.”
“No problem,” murmured Katherine. “What’s your name?”
The were-peacock glanced over nervously at the licorn who had stepped through the door, but she turned back to answer Katherine’s query. “Nimestra.”
“Well, Nimestra, what are you crying about?” Katherine asked softly.
The woman let out a breathy sigh. “He’s dead. My master is dead.”
“Yes, he is,” her mother interrupted with finality. “But you are not. Bless your gods that you had none of the faerie power within you, and leave. Now.”
The woman stood quivering, but she didn’t make a move toward the door. Whether or not it was because Nicern’s intimidating form was still standing in the door, Katherine would never know, because in the next moment the woman voiced a tremulous query.
“My queen?”
“Yes,” answered Leanna from where she was already turned away to deal with the angry visitor on her front steps.
“I wish you to know,” Nimestra said with an audible gulp. “None of the were-peacock community had any hand in Master LaCroix’s plans. He...felt that we weren’t worthy to carry it out.”
“You mean he was a secretive bastard who didn’t trust anyone but his own self,” the queen offered not unkindly.
Nimestra blinked. “I—“
The queen waved a dismissive hand. “Never you mind. I know it is not done among your kind to speak ill of the dead.”
Nimestra nodded gratefully. “Then I will take my leave as you command.”
As Katherine watched Nimestra walk toward the door with a repressed look of anger at the guardians who had previously blocked her way, Katherine’s mother called out, “Wait!”
Nimestra turned with a look of fearful surprise on her face. Much as her former master had looked numerous times in his last few minutes alive before the Queen of Sandersville.
The queen said, “Come here.”
Trembling Nimestra walked over to her and prepared to kneel.
A short no from the queen stopped her. Then Katherine’s mother gathered Nimestra’s face in between her hands. She didn’t speak. She just looked deep into her eyes. Katherine’s mother was standing an angle where she could see her face. There was no pity there. No regret. Only ice-cold desire.
Silently the queen dropped her hands away from Nimestra’s face as Katherine saw tears begin to track down the poor, frightened woman’s cheeks.
She thinks mother will execute her, too, Katherine thought silently. The trouble was, Katherine couldn’t say with absolute certainty that she was wrong. But still, Nimestra was being braver than she had all night. She wasn’t bawling, just silently crying. As the queen continued to stare unfazed, Nimestra hastily wiped her hands on her face. Perhaps to remove the dampness of the tears trailing down her cheeks. She only succeeded in smearing eye shadow and mascara along her cheeks with streaks of black and blue.
The woman didn’t notice when she lowered her hands to her waist. To be fair, Katherine wouldn’t have noticed, either. Not if she was trapped in a queen’s gaze like the girl was. The gaze of a queen was different than the gaze of a witch. Her mother rarely used the technique, but Katherine could always feel her mother’s witch presence build just before she tapped into the inherited rather than natural gift.
It was said to be like being mesmerized by the cold black eyes of a serpent in most cases. Katherine knew her mother could use the gaze to assess a person’s intent and worth with a thought. But it was a frightfully dreadful look to be subjected to. Even standing to the side, Katherine felt gooseflesh rise on her
arms as she watched the exchange of gazes.
Coldness swept into the room and Katherine knew it was her mother. Again. She began to wonder when this night would end, and the same time hoped it would continue on. She had never seen so much of a queen’s power and influence used in such a short time. Selfishly she wondered if she would inherit such gifts.
If not now, then when? Katherine thought to herself. There’s probably a stupid ceremony to get them.
Heaven knew the coven societies loved their ceremonies.
Then she snapped out of her thoughts as her mother said, “With LaCroix dead, I need a known representative lord of the were-peacocks. One who will obey my commands to the letter and bring back the were-peacock family from this appalling fall from grace.”
Nimestra’s eyes widened but all she did was nod.
The queen paced in front of her. “That person will need to be known in the were-peacock community and knowledgeable about LaCroix’s affairs, both so they do not commit the same mistake he did and so they continue in his place with very little fuss. Do you agree?”
Again Nimestra nodded.
The queen continued on, “I don’t have time to interview candidates, but I’m also tired of pompous assholes who bring nothing but grief to their communities. Perhaps it’s time to put a female in charge?”
The queen turned to Nimestra in a sparkle in her eye. “Do you agree, Nimestra?”
The servant woman’s shoulders hunched. If she did agree, she was taking on a challenge no one in their right mind would accept. After all, LaCroix’s heir would still have to worry about retribution from the faerie, deal with the ramifications of the tainted moon nectar, cancel their supply lines while losing revenue hand-over-foot, and deal with retribution in the form of small-town justice.
Katherine didn’t envy Nimestra’s choice. Not that it was much of a choice. With her queen covered in her ascendant’s blood, she wouldn’t think about turning down the ‘offer,’ either.
Finally Nimestra nodded and said weakly, “Yes, my queen.”