“The queen found out. How could she not, when the bump became apparent. She told your grandfather that she wanted to ban the Magi and especially Molly, but your grandfather wouldn’t hear of it. He built Molly four bungalows on the grounds. One for her and the baby, and the others as decoys. Officially, they were for guests, but it was Molly and her daughter that lived there. The others were hardly ever used.”
“That’s where you are staying now?” said Elise. “And Molly had a girl?”
“She did! When your grandfather died, your grandmother told your father the truth. He was a young man by then and had just succeeded to the throne. Immediately, he threw Molly and her daughter out onto the street. He paid Molly off so she wouldn’t tell anyone the truth. She was true to her word and never spoke of it again. If anyone asked who her daughter’s father was, she told them she didn’t know. She ended up in Yorke, and when Zania retired, she joined her there. Molly died quite a few years ago, but her daughter is still alive.”
“Who is she?”
“Her name is Ellen. She also lives a simple life in Yorke. Because she is only half Magi, she has so far been able to hide her true parentage from the authorities, but she has a son.”
My mind whirled as I thought about the implications. I had an aunt and cousin out there somewhere.
Leo looked at me then as though he was about to drop a bombshell. When he spoke, he did just that.
“Her son’s name is Xavier.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Shock of the truth
“Xavier? Please tell me that you don’t mean my Xavier?”
“If by your Xavier, you mean Xavier Gallo, then yes, I’m afraid so. Xavier is your cousin.”
I stood up, feeling out of breath. The world seemed to close in around me as I fought to breathe. Blackness tinged the corners of my eyes.
“It’s not that bad,” Elise ran over and put her arms around me to soothe me.
“Not that bad?” I croaked. “I had a hundred men to choose from. Of the four I chose, one was gay, one was probably sleeping with a kitchen maid, one is our cousin, and the last one is dating you! I think on a scale of what’s bad, this could very well be right at the top!”
I was hysterical, and the dizziness was beginning to close in. Elise guided me to a chair and put my head between my knees. Slowly, my vision began to clear, and my breathing returned to normal.
“I don’t get it!” I said at last. “Why would my father want me to marry my cousin?”
“You don’t think Father knows?” asked Elise, still fanning me with her hands.
I sat up straight. “Of course, he knows. There has been something going on this whole time. Xavier has been hiding something, and this is it. This is why father wanted him in, but I can’t understand why. It makes no sense.”
“I’m sorry to say this,” began Leo, “and it’s just a theory, but your father only had daughters. Maybe he wanted a male member of his family to rule the kingdom? He’s of an older generation who may think it’s for the best.”
“Xavier doesn’t even know how to put clothes on, let alone rule a country.” I fumed at the thought of it. My father had never had a problem with having daughters, and we’d been brought up to one day rule. Nothing was ever denied us because we were girls. I didn’t buy it. There was something else.
“I’m going to find Xavier...or Father. One of them is going to tell me the truth!” I slammed the door on the way out and marched through the palace. When I’d got as far as the entrance hall, my mother collared me.
“There you are. I’ve been looking all over for you. The dressmaker is here and wants to measure you for the wedding dress.”
“I’m in no mood for wedding dresses,” I replied abruptly. “Where is Father? I need to speak to him.”
“He’s out with Xavier. He thought it would be best to get to know his future son-in-law before the big day.”
“He already knows him. When are they due back?” I could speak to them both at once. It would give me a chance to tell them what I thought of them.
“I don’t know. I think your father mentioned taking him somewhere and that they’d be all day. It will give us plenty of time to sort out the dress. I want it to look perfect, and I’m sure you do too. Oh, and before I forget, Luca passed me a letter before he went home. He asked me to give it to you.”
She fished around in her pocket before handing me a plain envelope. I took it and turned, planning to read it in my room.
“Where are you going? The dressmaker is waiting, and she’s already been here for an hour. It would be rude to keep her any longer.”
So I slipped the envelope into my own pocket and followed my mother to the dressing room. It seemed so empty without Xavi and her bevy of beauticians there, but there was a huge pile of white fabric and a tiny old lady with half-moon glasses and a tape measure in her hands.
I spent the afternoon being measured from head to toe before being swathed in every type of fabric imaginable. Swatches of every color of the rainbow and more were laid out for me to choose from, but all I could think about was the letter from Luca.
I found an opportunity to open it when my mother and the old woman were discussing the difference between baby pink and petal pink.
I ripped open the envelope and read. It was not the love letter I was expecting, just a hurriedly written note.
What did I do wrong?
L
What did he do wrong? Absolutely nothing, that’s what. He must have been as blindsided by the announcement that I was going to marry Xavier as I was. What must he have thought as the photo of Xavier flashed up on screen? I wanted to write back to him, but I was sure he’d hate me now. Why wouldn’t he? He must have thought I’d changed my mind. They say that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone, and in this case, it was true. I missed him. Not in the same heart-wrenching way I missed Grace or Cynder, but I missed his presence. I missed the future he’d painted for us. I wasn’t even sure what my future would be now.
After another few hours of bridal wear discussions, I was finally allowed to leave. I wandered through the palace aimlessly, not knowing which way to turn or what to do next. Cynder was gone, Daniel was gone, and Luca was gone. I felt like I had no one left to talk to.
I was just about to drag myself back to bed when Father and Xavier walked through the main palace doors. Both of them were soaked through to the skin after being out in the rain.
Good! It served them right!
I marched over to them. “I know! I know everything!” I shouted. They both looked at me. A curious expression came over Xavier’s face. He actually smiled. My father, on the other hand, looked nervous as well he might.
“Let’s talk about this in my office,” he said, ushering me away from the members of staff, who had stopped what they were doing and were watching the spectacle I was making instead. Not that I cared.
As soon as the door closed behind us, I began to shout again, but my father cut me off.
“What exactly is it you know?”
“I know that my grandfather had another child. I know that Xavier is my cousin!”
My father sighed and massaged his temples. “How did you find out?”
“It doesn’t matter how I found out. The question is why? Do you not think I’m good enough? Am I so bad that you’d have me marry a blood relative to help me rule?”
“There is nothing against the law about cousins marrying,” Xavier cut in. The smirk on his face was beginning to annoy me. He was enjoying this. He wanted to be found out. Far from the gorgeous man I thought he was, the smirk made him look ugly. I wanted to smack it right off his face. “And we are only half-cousins remember?”
“Xavier, I think it best if you go and get dry so I can speak to my daughter alone.”
Xavier looked put out by the request, but he headed for the door all the same. “Just make sure you tell her my plans for the future.”
He opened the door and walked through it
, giving me the opportunity to slam it behind his sneaky back.
“I only found out about Xavier when the positions opened for the ball. Of course, I’d known about his mother for many years, so I knew it was a possibility that she had children, but I hoped that she’d not tell them about their grandfather. I had gone to great lengths to keep the whole sordid story out of the press.”
“Yes, you paid off Molly.”
He seemed surprised. “So you know her name too? Not that it matters, not now. I was so angry with my father when I found out he’d cheated on my mother with a woman who was not only a maid but a mage too. It was a scandal and my mother never really got over it. I hated him, really hated him.” He stood up and began to pace the room. “Of course, I only found out after he died, so I didn’t get the chance to tell him what I thought of him. I paid Molly a huge amount of money to keep her daughter’s parentage a secret, but it seems that I wasted that money after all.”
“She didn’t tell anyone. Her daughter already knew the truth. She didn’t tell anyone either except for her only son.”
“Well, her only son decided to blackmail me,” he replied angrily. “He told me that if he didn’t succeed to the throne, he’d tell the world the truth.”
“You were being blackmailed?” It made sense now. Leo was wrong about not trusting a girl to rule. This wasn’t about me. It never had been. This was about Xavier.
“Yes. What was I to do? I made sure he got an invite and kept him in the competition. Very soon, he’ll get what he wants when he marries you.”
“But why does he want to be king? He’s shown no interest in it to me.”
“He wants to keep Silverwood clean.”
I was confused. “What does that even mean?”
“He wants it empty of immigrants. He wants the Magi out.”
I thought about this for a second. Like everything else I was being told, it made no sense. “But he is a Mage!”
“His grandmother was. I think we can assume that by the time the magi blood got down to him, it was diluted enough to not work. He’s no more a mage than you or I.”
“But why does he want them all out of Silverwood?”
“I suspect for the same reason I do. He hates them. Maybe with him, it’s jealousy, but what do I care? If he’ll continue my work when I’m gone, then that’s all I need to know.”
Xavier might have been blackmailing my father, but they were on the same side. I could see that now. My father had spent years being angry at the woman that broke his mother’s heart, and he’d blamed all Magi. That’s why their rights had become less and less since my grandfather died. Xavier blackmailing him was just the excuse he needed to further his campaign of hatred over them.
“An entire group of people are being thrown out of the land because of an old man’s indiscretion over forty years ago. You can’t do this!”
“What choice do I have? He’ll tell the press otherwise.”
“So what if he does?” I countered angrily. “Maybe the people have a right to know the truth. Maybe then, when everything is out in the open, the Magi can come back, and we can start building bridges.”
“I have no interest in building bridges with the Magi.”
“I don’t care where your interests lie anymore. I’d rather the royal reputation be ruined forever than marry that man.”
My father sighed again and sat back in his chair.
“I’m afraid it’s not that simple.”
“Why not?” I demanded.
“Because it was Xavier that planted the bomb at the ball and there is currently another one hidden in the palace.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Daniel
The air flew out of my lungs in a whoosh, winding me with the impact of his words.
“Xavier planted the bomb?”
“Yes, but don’t worry, I made sure that you, your mother, and sister were all out of the way of the blast zone when it detonated. You weren’t in any danger.”
“You...you...you knew about this?”
“Not at first. At first, I just thought he was blackmailing me. I’d hoped that when I invited him and helped you chose him as one of the five men, he’d back down. After dinner, he came to me, and we had a little chat. He told me then about the bomb. I was going to call the police on him, but when he put forward the idea that we could blame the protesters, it got me thinking. I’d been trying to get rid of the Magi for years. Sure they were ok to do the dirty work in the palace, but they were getting ideas above their station. To be honest, it didn’t take me long to come around to Xavier’s way of thinking. I waited until my three girls were out of harm’s way and gave him the signal. When he saw some fellow from the kitchen walking through the corridor, he hit the timer. Ten seconds later our problems were solved.”
“People died!” I cried out, unable to believe what I was hearing. “Innocent people! And an innocent man has been blamed for it!”
“I was kind of hoping he’d die in the blast, to be honest, but he managed to escape. He was only a kitchen hand.”
“Only a kitchen hand?” I could feel myself start to hyperventilate again. All this time, he’d been on the run accused of murder when it was my own father and soon-to-be husband who’d done it.
“It had to be done. The Magi were getting too big, too powerful.”
“They just want to go to university, to get jobs,” I whispered.
“Yes, and where would that lead? To rebellion, that’s where. I did what I had to do for the sake of this kingdom, and I expect you to do the same. You’ll be marrying Xavier next week, and you’ll keep quiet about everything I told you. If anything happens between now and then, such as the press hearing of this, we’ll all be finished. You don’t want to end up in jail do you?”
I left my father’s office feeling faint. My whole life had turned on its head. I didn’t know who I could trust anymore. If I couldn’t trust my own father, who could I trust?
I wanted to go and shout and scream at Xavier, but I knew there was no point. Before he’d left my father’s office, he’d smiled at me knowingly. His face, I’d once thought was beautiful was contorted into a thing of evil and just thinking of him made my blood curdle.
That night I lay on my bed in a daze, thinking back over everything that had happened in the past few months. Cynder had told me that he’d heard someone talking to my father right after the bomb had gone off. He’d thought it was a member of staff, but it had to be Xavier. They’d collaborated to use him as a scapegoat right from the start. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. At least, I knew the truth now. I’d always known that Cynder didn’t plant that bomb, but it was a small relief to have it proven. Not that it helped him in any way. He was still out there somewhere and still wanted by the police. I was in no doubt that if he did get caught, they’d still sentence him to death. Why wouldn’t they? It didn’t matter that he was innocent. They wanted the truth buried.
I was trapped in the palace by my duties, and if I didn’t marry Xavier on the 26th of September as planned, he was going to blow us all up. If it was just me, I think I’d have let him, but it wasn’t just me. It was Elise, and my mother, and Leo, and the staff. None of them deserved to die because one man...make that two men, hated the Magi over something that happened so long ago. Xavier wasn’t even born when my grandfather died, but he’d learned to hate him as much as my father had. So many innocent people were already suffering because of an act of indiscretion. So much hate abounded and my future, far from being the one I had imagined of being the one to bring about peace between the Magi and non-magic’s, had been torn away from me.
The next few weeks passed in a blur. Each day, more awful than the last. My mother made endless appointments to do with the wedding arrangements, and there was interview after interview, photo shoot after photo shoot with Sadie, all of which I had to hold Xavier’s hand and smile through as though I was the happiest woman alive, all the while feeling like I was dying inside. The nation
was in a frenzy of such excitement that not only did Xavier and I take up the front cover of every newspaper, but most of the inside columns as well. In fact, everyone in Silverwood was excited about the wedding except me.
I’d been forced to lie to Elise and Leo, telling them it was all a mistake and that I did love Xavier after all. Elise knew I was lying, but as time when on, she began to accept it. I mainly kept out of her way, just as I did with everyone. Xavier never let an opportunity go to remind me that I was under his control. If I did or said anything he didn’t like, he’d casually let the hidden bomb into the conversation.
There was just one other person in Silverwood who I imagined would be as upset as I. Cynder would be out there seeing all the press coverage. There was no way he could avoid it. I wondered if he went to bed at night as tied up in knots as I felt.
Another man I’d managed to make unhappy was Luca. Every day I received a letter from him declaring how much he missed me. It got so difficult to read them that I eventually stopped, taking them to my room instead to read at a later date.
Wherever I was in the palace, I was aware that somewhere beneath my feet was a bomb, just waiting to go off. Xavier assured me that we were all safe as long as I turned up at the wedding and kept my mouth shut, but it hardly made me feel better. It didn’t alter the fact that there were enough explosives nearby to kill everyone in the palace. Every slight movement or strange light I saw had me on edge. I couldn’t sleep with my nerves stretched to the breaking from the fear and my dread of the wedding. Jenny was in favor of getting more sedatives from the doctor, putting my jitteriness down to nerves, but I talked her out of it. I needed to stay alert.
As summer passed into early autumn and the trees in the garden began to change color, I found myself out there more than ever. Except this time I was alone. There was no Luca to share kisses, nor Daniel to share jokes with. I’d even stopped glancing up to Cynder’s apartment window to see if the curtains had moved. He was long gone, taking my heart with him.
Charm (A Cinderella reverse fairytale) (Reverse Fairytales Book 1) Page 21