Queen of Hearts (The Risen King)

by Samantha Warren

  “Easy, now. Easy, child. You don't want to choke.”

  A wet cloth pressed to his forehead and pushed him back onto the bed. With tremendous effort, he forced his eyes open a bare fraction. The ceiling above came into view, decorated by intricate swirls and images that danced together in the stone. They were images he had seen for much of his life, images that were as familiar to him as the voice.

  “Kane?” the voice asked again.

  He rolled his head to the side. The pain that radiated through his body was terrible, but he continued to turn his neck until he could see the face of the woman beside him.

  “Mother,” he whispered. His own voice was barely audible and it ripped from his throat like a thousand shards of ice tearing at his delicate flesh.

  Titania sat beside him on the intricately carved chair that used to sit at his desk. Her tanned hand held his, but she did not smile as she had when he was a boy and grew sick. No, this time, she stared at him with hard eyes, the eyes of a queen, not a mother.

  He tried to sit up again, to gain some distance from the awful stare, but he met resistance once more. He jerked his arm and heard the soft clink of metal. His nostrils flared and he clenched his teeth together. “What have you done to me?”

  She sat back and crossed her legs. She was wearing a pale yellow pantsuit that shimmered and cast a warm glow on her tanned skin. She raised a hand and beckoned to someone in the corner, out of Kane's view. He recognized the man who came forward, dressed in armor and carrying a highly decorated sword at his side. It was Fjorn, the captain of the queen's prison guard. He stood beside her and raised his head as he looked down his nose at Kane.

  “Kane, Prince of the Southern Land, you are under suspicion of treason and murder. You will be placed under house arrest, with round the clock supervision, until such time as your guilt or innocence can be determined.” Fjorn pulled off his glove, revealing three fingers. The other two had been lost during a war between the North and South nearly seven centuries ago. He circled Kane's wrist and squeezed tightly for four seconds. When he pulled away, a thick red line shimmered on Kane's arm, stretching the whole way around his wrist. It pulsed in the pale light, a glaring sight against his golden skin.

  The prince's nostrils flared. “You're banding me? Like a common criminal?” He jerked his arm again, but the chain on his wrist held him firmly to the bed.

  “You are a common criminal.” His mother spoke in a very matter-of-fact tone. She would not let any emotion bleed into her voice with company present. She nodded toward the red line. “This will keep you from leaving the castle or going where you don't belong until I can figure out what to do with you.”

  Kane snarled at her. “Why not just kill me now? Why the charade? Get it over with. We both know how this ends.”

  Titania's own nostrils flared. She swatted a hand in the direction of the captain. The man bowed and left, letting the door thud firmly behind him. When he was gone, the queen leaned forward over the bed so that her face was a bare inch from her son's. “I should kill you. I should make you suffer greatly for what you've done. I should flay the skin from your bones in front of the entire court.” She gripped his chin with her hand and dug her fingernails into his cheeks. “You killed my husband, your own father. You betrayed your family, your people. You chose to side with our greatest enemy and may very well have cost us the throne.”

  Blood trickled down Kane's cheeks as Titania yanked her hand away from his face. She turned and walked away from the bed, toward the fountain that sprang from the wall. She stared into the cool water for several silent minutes. Kane dared not speak.

  “I should do all those things. You deserve them. No one would fault me for it.” She turned from the fountain and looked at him with sad eyes. “But you are still my blood. No matter what you have done, you are still my son, and I am still your mother.” She walked across the room and settled onto the edge of the chair again. She pressed her finger to the red band on his wrist. It flared brightly and the colors danced and shimmered, but it remained firmly in place.

  Kane clenched his teeth together as he stared at his mother's face. Tears dripped from her eyes. Whether they were unchecked or unnoticed, he wasn't sure. Her lips were pressed tightly together. She seemed to have aged centuries in just those few minutes, with the weight of all the horrors she had witnessed recently destroying her from the inside out. His heart jerked in his chest, reminding him once again what emotion other than anger felt like.

  “Zela told me what happened,” Titania said, not raising her eyes from Kane's wrist. “She told me what you did.”

  Kane was silent. He waited, content to let her lead the conversation. He was at her mercy. And that was right where he wanted to be. He realized, with a bit of a shock, that he was happy to finally be caught. He had been running from his family for far too long. He had been on the wrong side of the fence, fighting against them, conspiring with the enemy, when what he really wanted was to be back home.

  “You saved them, Kane. For that, I thank you.” Titania pulled away from him and rose. She walked to the door, refusing to look at him anymore.

  “Wait,” he called. He raised his hand toward her and the chain jangled on his wrist. “How is my daughter? Aiofe?”

  The queen paused with her hand on the door. She did not turn to face him. “She is safe. Her grandparents are with her, along with the knights. And Zela is there as well.”

  Kane clenched his jaw. “Are you going to make her fight Leanansidhe? Are you going to risk your own granddaughter in this war?”

  Titania raised her head and turned toward her son. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I am. She is a skilled hunter, just like her mother was. She knows the risks, and she is willing to take them. She will make a valuable addition to our army.”

  He pushed himself up onto his elbows, straining against the restrictive chains. The anger that always sat just under his heart was pushed aside by fear. “Please, don't send her out there. Don't risk the one thing I have left.”

  “I have no choice,” she said as she stared at him with those blue eyes. “You made sure of that.”

  With that, Titania turned and walked out the door. When she was gone, a small faery about half Kane's size skittered in through the opened door and shut it behind her. She kept her head down and refused to look at his face. After setting a tray on his dresser, she buzzed about the room, cleaning up a mess that he had not noticed before. She pulled the chamberpot from underneath him without a word and cleaned him up.

  “What's your name?” he asked as she straightened the covers over him.

  She twitched visibly, but did not answer. Once, she looked up at him, but her eyes slid over his face, unwilling to rest on his for even the briefest of moments. She scampered to the door and peaked outside. A faint conversation that Kane could not understand took place and in a moment, the captain of the prison guard came back into the room.

  “Fjorn,” Kane said with a nod of his head.

  The man ignored him. Instead he waved his hand near the chains on Kane's wrists and chest. They loosened just enough to allow Kane to sit up. It taxed his strength, but he was able to rise enough to prop himself against the pillows behind him. The small faery removed the tray from the dresser and placed it on a short table that rested over Kane's lap. She hovered in the corner while Kane ate. When he was finished, she took the tray from him and darted out the door as quick as she could.

  Before Kane could say anything, Fjorn waved his hand toward the chains again. They tightened up, pulling Kane back to the bed.

  “Is this really necessary?” Kane growled at the captain and shot him a glare. Fjorn returned the glare, but refused to spare any words for the prince. After the chains were tight, he walked over to the corner, once again outside of Kane's peripheral vision, and resumed his post.

  “So I'm just supposed to lay here until you guys decide what to do with me? What was the point of the banding, then?”

  Silence rolled over the room,
broken only by the trickling of the water in the fountain. With an irritated sigh, Kane stared at the ceiling and counted the faeries until he fell asleep.

  *~*~*

  THREE

  *~*~*

  “I think I'll let Bors have a go at you next time,” Lancelot said as he gripped Arthur's wrist and the blond king pulled him to his feet.

  Arthur laughed. “Getting tired of being beaten all the time?” He winked at Lancelot before stealing a glance at the window far overhead. He caught a brief glimpse of red hair before it disappeared from view. He sighed and stared into the black, empty square.

  Lancelot snorted behind him. “You really are over the edge with that one, aren't you?” He picked up a cotton cloth that lay on the ground nearby and began wiping sweat off his face, neck, and chest.

  Arthur turned back toward his friend with a weak smile. He grabbed a second cloth and proceeded to dry off his own body. “There's just something about her,” he said as he glanced over his shoulder toward the castle again. “Something... I don't know how to explain it. It was very similar to the way I felt about Guin when I first saw her. I needed her in my life. I needed her to be mine, forever.” He shook his head and laughed as he used the cloth to wipe down his blade. “I know, it's ridiculous.”

  “It's not, actually.” Aloysius Callaghan ran a shirt sleeve across his brow as he walked up to them. He had wanted to test his mettle against the knights and Balan had stepped up to the challenge. The young man was currently on his back on the grass, breathing deeply and trying to regain his strength after a sound lashing by the old man. His foster brother, Balin, was nearby, laughing and gently berating Balan for being so easily beaten by a man nearly four times his age.

  Arthur nodded toward the small shed and Lancelot and Alo followed him across the yard. “What do you mean?” he asked the old man.

  Alo grabbed a cloth that hung inside the shed and wiped off his blade. “Your instant attraction to Aiofe. It's not ridiculous. It's magic.”

  Lancelot pulled his shirt on. As his head popped through, his dark hair stuck up in sweaty, curly patches. “Magic? So it's not real?” The knight's eyes darted to his king, gauging Arthur's reaction. The other man said nothing. He just looked at Alo and waited for him to continue.

  Alo sat on a crate beside the door. “On the contrary. It's quite real. At least, I think it is.”

  Arthur breathed an audible sigh of relief, but he said, “I still don't understand.”

  The old man finished wiping off his blade and put it back in its sheath. “The line of the hunters is...” He chewed his lip for a moment, searching for the right word. “I guess you could call us blessed. After the first couple generations, Titania realized that humans caught up in romantic entanglements make poor hunters. If hunters are dealing with love issues, they're ineffective, distracted, a danger to themselves and others. So she enchanted the line. When we fall in love, it's instant and forever.”

  Lancelot squinted at Alo. “So she plays matchmaker?”

  Alo laughed. “No, not exactly. At least, I don't think it works quite that way. I've never seen two people together who I wouldn't have pegged as a match made in heaven without the magic. They always just fit. I'm not exactly sure how it works, but when two people are meant to be together, the magic seems to know. It's like they find each other. And from the moment they meet, they are one. When I met Maureen, the moment I laid eyes on her, my world changed. I knew she was the one I was going to spend my life with. I knew that without her, I wouldn't be complete. When we have a fight, we always know deep down inside that we're going to work it out somehow, no matter what happens in the in between.”

  Arthur was nodding as Alo spoke. “Yes, exactly. That's how I feel, too. When I saw her face, I knew she was the one I was meant to spend this life with, that I would do anything to protect her.”

  Alo pushed himself to his feet as the knights finished dressing and putting away their weapons. He walked toward the stairs that led out of the courtyard. “That does sound like magic. I would guess, seeing as you boys have been raised by the Queens, you might fall under something similar to the hunters.”

  Arthur pondered that while they climbed the steps.

  Lancelot paused at the door. “But it is possible that the love isn't real? That it's all magic?”

  Arthur shot his friend a glare, but Alo shrugged. “I guess that's a possibility, but knowing what I do of the Queens and the way the magic works, I would say it's just pulling from true feelings, enhancing them. Not creating them.” He glanced at his wrist. A band of leather was there with a silver watch attached. “Anyway, I should go find my wife. Your man is going to show us to our new home this morning so we can get settled in.”

  Alo bid them both farewell and disappeared into the castle. Arthur and Lancelot stood at the door, watching the others train in the yard below.

  “He seems to be taking the loss of his home and ending up in this place very well,” Lancelot said.

  “He does indeed. But I'm not surprised. He may have lost his home, but he still has his family. And he was part of Titania's personal army. He still is. I would not be at all surprised if he and his wife find themselves needed in this coming war. They are both trained hunters and know the ways of the faeries. They could be very useful to us.”

  Lancelot nodded. “True. They could be valuable.” He paused for a moment before continuing. “What do you think about what he said? About all that love stuff, I mean?”

  Arthur glanced over at his friend and shrugged. “I don't know. All I know is how I feel.” He watched Lancelot out of the corner of his eye. The man said nothing more, but the king could see the gears working in his brain. He could almost read his thoughts. They were both thinking the same thing. The last time this happened, the last time Arthur felt so strongly about a woman, that woman was Guinevere. And she had promptly betrayed him, sneaking around behind his back with his best friend, the man standing beside him right now. She had nearly destroyed them both. She had destroyed their friendship, for sure. And she had killed a piece of Arthur. She had betrayed his trust and made him doubt everything.

  “You both are looking quite pensive this morning.” Tristan leaned against the stone rail on the stairs as he ran an oil-soaked cloth over the wood of his bow.

  Lancelot and Arthur looked at each other and shrugged. “We were discussing the reaches of faery magic.”

  The quiet man's eyebrow twitched and the corners of his lips pulled up, as if he knew exactly what they had both been thinking about, but instead of bringing it up, he changed the subject. “I'm famished. Is it almost time for the noon meal?”

  Arthur glanced at the sky. “It should be close. Let us head inside and change. I'll send a servant to notify the kitchen.”

  They entered the building and climbed the long set of stairs to the main floor. A young ghostly boy no older than seven was scurrying past with a chamber pot in his hands. Arthur flagged him down.

  “Please let the cooks know we will be ready to eat shortly.”

  The youngster nodded once and hurried off, disappearing behind a hidden door in the hallway.

  “One of these days, we need to take the time to find all the secret passages in this place.” Lancelot was staring after the boy with an irritated look on his face. “I don't like how they just vanish.”

  Tristan laughed. “I think it would take centuries to find all the hidden passages and rooms in a place like this.”

  The dark-haired knight's frown just grew deeper. “Arthur's the king. He should know about things like that.”

  The king shrugged. “I get the feeling that in a place like this, the only ones who know everything about this castle are the servants. Come, we need to change before we eat.”

  Arthur led the way up the stairs to the second floor. As Tristan and Lancelot walked down the hallway toward their rooms, he paused on the landing and looked up toward the third floor. He used to sleep up there, before Aiofe came along. Just the night before,
he relinquished his room, giving it to her until they could find more suitable arrangements. Or until...

  He shut off the thought as a young maiden swept around the corner of the stairwell into view. She bowed before him, her skirts sweeping low across the stone floor. “Your majesty.”

  “Good morning, Lilia,” Arthur said as he inclined his head. “I trust you are well.”

  The young woman nodded fiercely. “Yes, your highness.”

  Arthur hesitated a moment before asking what he really wanted to know. “And Aiofe?”

  The faery woman's eyes darted up from the ground, meeting his for the briefest of moments. There was a twinkle in her golden eyes and a faint smile pulled at her lips. “She is quite well, your highness. Tired, but well.”

  The king cleared his throat and straightened. “Very good. Thank you.” Heat blossomed on his cheeks and spread up his ears. “You may go now.” He nodded once and spun on his heel, walking faster than he needed to away from the girl.

  Rogan was in the room when Arthur entered, preparing clothing for the day. He gave the king a very curious look. “Is there a problem, my king?”

  Arthur shook his head rapidly. “No, none at all.” He began removing his sweaty clothes as Rogan prepared a bowl of warm water with some scented oils.

  “How is the young miss this morning?”

  Arthur's belt slipped from his hands and clattered on the floor. He leaned over and snatched it up from the stone. “Fine. She's fine.” He kept his head down and refused to look Rogan in the eyes. Somehow, the faery knew what had transpired between him and Aiofe the previous evening. Somehow they always knew.

  “Very good, m'lord.” Rogan helped Arthur clean off and then dressed him in comfortable clothing that was more fancy than anything he was used to wearing on a day to day basis. “The generals will be coming again today, your majesty. With everything that happened yesterday, the Queens felt it best to meet and discuss possible courses of action, instead of following through with the original plan. With Leanansidhe injured, we may be able to push off the main assault until we are better prepared.”