“It’s been a stressful day...”
“I know darling, we’ll be able to tell the world soon enough about us...”
Darling? Was he talking to his blonde friend over the phone? I could only hear his side of the conversation, so I had to fill in the blanks myself.
“She’s in the kitchen. I’ve got her working. First time in her useless life she’s actually done anything. She can’t cook, but I enjoy watching her try...”
He laughed. He’d not be laughing tomorrow when I retried the dead rat recipe. Maybe I’d boil the whole rat carcass this time.
“Don’t worry. I’ve got guards surrounding the place. The door is alarmed, and only those with a special key fob can get in or out. Even if she did manage it, there are so many guards outside, they’d catch her...”
“Yes, the city is still under lockdown. No one can get in, and no one can get out without my permission. I’ve left the northeast gate open for your arrival. Make sure you go there, or you’ll not be let in. They are expecting you, so you can come through at any point in the next few days. Just leave it until tomorrow. I’ve got a dinner party tonight, and we don’t want to let the cat out of the bag and announce you as the new queen too early do we?”
More laughter.
“I love you too. Good night.”
A noise along the corridor had me jumping back behind the curtain. The blonde woman wearing a silk robe walked up to the door and opened it just as Luca put the phone down.
“Who was that honey?” she drawled.
“Nothing, just one of my guards. Come on, let’s go back to bed.” He turned the light off, and the pair of them walked back down the corridor leaving me feeling extremely confused.
So he was with one woman and telling another he loved her, and that she would be queen?
I don’t know why I was surprised. I was quite frankly amazed how he thought he’d pull it off. How could the blonde not know? And then I remembered what he’d done to me and to everyone in Silverwood. He was an unbelievably brilliant liar.
Making sure they were both long gone, I crept out from behind the curtain. Luca had mentioned something about a key fob to get through the main door. It was unlikely, but if he was having secret conversations in that room, it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that he kept key fobs in there too.
The door was slightly ajar, so I pushed it open and sneaked in, closing it behind me. I turned on the small lamp on the desk and looked around me. It was an office. Luca’s office. On the wall hung photos of himself dressed in his Thalian royal regalia. He’d also framed clippings of newspaper articles about himself. The guy was the epitome of narcissism.
On the other wall was a huge map of Silverwood with arrows and scribbling all over it.
A huge red circle was drawn around the capital with red X’s marking the gates. I searched for the northeast one. It too had a red x, but in Luca’s tiny writing were the words leave open.
Another set of X’s marked the border crossings surrounding the whole kingdom. He’d been thorough. Every path, road, and street crossing the border to another kingdom was marked in some way, and unlike the capital, none of these had been left open. Effectively he’d managed to shut down the entire kingdom in only a couple of weeks. Just how long had he been planning all this?
Smaller crosses, this time in green ink were dotted around the kingdom. The largest was over a field in the south. I realized with a shock that it was exactly where the farmhouse was. He’d found us. I’d never been gladder that Cynder had made the decision to move everyone. I scrambled around in my pocket for the map he’d given me. Comparing it to the large map on the wall, I saw, with relief, that he hadn’t yet found the Freedom of Magic’s new hiding place, but it was only a matter of time. With all the crosses on the map, he must have a whole army working for him.
A noise outside the room alerted me to the fact that a guard was walking along the corridor. I quickly switched off the lamp and hid behind Luca’s desk. The footsteps continued past the room and drifted off into silence. The only sound I could hear was the sound of my own heart beating. I was really walking on thin ice, being out of the kitchen and yet when would I have this opportunity again? I’d noticed on the way in that this particular room had a lock on it, so I suspected the only reason it was unlocked now was because the blonde had caught Luca up to no good. I’d never get this chance again. When I was sure the guard had truly gone, I switched the lamp back on and began to open the drawers in his desk. The top drawer was filled with junk. Paper clips, pens, etc. The only thing in there that did cause me to stop was a gun and a round of ammunition. However much I wanted to take it to try and escape, I knew that I’d never make it. The guards were armed too, and there were a lot more of them than me. After sorting through the rest of the junk, and coming up with no key fob, I moved down to the next one. It was filled with papers. I pulled the top one out. It was a mock-up of an invitation to Luca’s coronation. I threw it to one side in disgust and moved on to the next one. It too was an invite, although this time to a wedding. It wasn’t the invitations we’d sent out. They had been delicately hand drawn with a beautiful carriage on the front and tied with gold ribbon. This had a crass painted picture of a man in a crown and a young woman. The man was obviously supposed to be Luca, but who was the woman? It was not the blonde upstairs that was for sure. This woman had dark hair. I opened the card and gasped when I read what was inside.
It was an invite to the wedding of Luca and Drusilla Bloom. I didn’t need to search around in my brain to remember that name. It had been in the papers almost as much as mine had in the past six months. Drusilla Bloom was one of Cynder’s ugly stepsisters. It all made sense now. How she’d managed to get the money to forge a wedding certificate to Cynder. Luca had been behind it. For a woman who desperately craved fame and fortune, she’d hit the jackpot with Luca. Although I’d never met the woman, the pair of them were a good match for each other. I checked the date. Three months from now. He was planning on getting married in three months, and no one even knew they were dating yet, least of all his mistress or whatever she was upstairs. Picking up the Coronation invitation I’d thrown to one side, I looked at the date on that one too.
It was dated just one day before the wedding. When Drusilla got married, she’d be marrying a king.
She’d be leading my kingdom.
The thought of that awful woman taking my place was almost too much to bear. She, along with her mother and sister, had abused Cynder as a child, forcing him to sleep by the kitchen hearth just as I was doing.
I took a few deep breaths and tried not to let my emotions take over. Crying would do me no good. I needed to come up with a plan. Once Luca was the king, it wouldn’t matter if I was dead or alive. I had to stop this madness before that happened and I had three months to do it.
After scrabbling around in the rest of the drawers, I found nothing else of any interest and definitely no key fob. I carefully placed the invitations back in the drawer where I’d found them and turned the lamp back off.
The corridor was deserted as it had been before and it was easy for me to walk back down it without being detected. The main doors were still closed. How easy would it have been for me to just walk right through them, but as soon as I tried, all the guards in the building would come running. I remembered what Luca had told Drusilla on the phone. He had guards outside too. Basically, without a key fob, I’d never be able to leave.
The Dinner Party
The day of the dinner party came and along with it, a huge amount of food and wine.
I separated everything out on the large table and began to prepare, leaving enough for me too. This time, I’d be able to have a full meal rather than the tiny morsels I managed to usually grab. It was much easier to take a bit from eight plates without being noticed than it was with two.
I was no chef, but I’d taught myself a lot in the past week and felt confident that I’d do a good job. Uncorking a bottle of wine, I poured my
self a glass and sipped at it as I stirred a sauce I’d made from scratch.
By the time I’d finished ladling the food out onto nine plates, I was a little tipsy. I was also incredibly proud of myself for the feast I’d prepared. Putting one of the unopened bottles under my arm, I carried the first two plates upstairs, with the intention of going back down and bringing the rest up after. When I walked through the dining room door, I nearly dropped the bottle in shock. There, alongside Luca and his girlfriend was his family. His parents and brother sat at one side while Seraphia and her children took the other next to the blonde.
Luca watched me carefully as I placed his plate in front of him. I could see in his expression that he was daring me to say something, but what could I say? I didn’t look like me. His family thought I was dead. If I shouted out I was really the queen, he’d have me in the basement as quick as a shot and this time, I’d never be let out. He’d already planned for his family to be in my palace when it blew up, so he obviously thought nothing of killing them.
I made two more journeys to the kitchen to bring the rest of the food and wine up, and all the time, my brain whirred as I tried to think of a way to communicate to them the truth without being caught first.
It was only as I entered the kitchen for the last time, that I realized I could have slipped Seraphia a note, but it was too late. They already had their food. Luca wouldn’t expect me to go back now.
Crying out in frustration, I sat at the table and poured out the last of the bottle of wine.
There must be something I could do but what? I picked up my fork and began to eat. The food was delicious. Even better than I’d hoped, but that did nothing to make me feel any better about the situation I was in. I’d spent all week trying to think of a way to escape, and now that the opportunity had presented itself, I’d blown it.
After finishing my meal, I washed up the pots and pans and stacked them neatly in the cupboards. I spent the rest of the evening pacing the floor, trying to get my brain to come up with something, anything to tell his family what he’d done.
It occurred to me that they already knew and were in on it, but I brushed it off. Seraphia had been welcomed into their home as a mage. If they were anti-mage, she’d never have been able to marry Tomas. No. They didn’t know. Luca, after all, was great at keeping secrets and fooling people with his lies.
He’d kept me fooled long enough.
I thought back to my time at his parents’ castle. Most of it, I’d not thought about since leaving as my departure had been somewhat hurried, but I’d spoken with Seraphia about him.
She’d mentioned that he’d not liked her to begin with but had eventually come around, changed his ways so to speak. Coincidentally, this was around the time that the invites had opened to the ball where I was supposed to pick a husband. I sighed. Everything that had gone wrong had started at that party. Out of the four men I’d picked, one was a half-mage who’d wanted to rid Silverwood of the Magi, another was hugely anti-Magi and had kept me in his basement, Daniel was a member of the Freedom of Magic and had only come to the party to overthrow my father. Only Leo was there for the reason we threw it, to marry me for love. He’d found love alright. He’d found it with my sister. As parties went, I couldn’t think of a worse one. If I ever decided to have children, I’d let them marry who they wanted without a big show and without me telling them what to do. I’d let them find love themselves as I had with Cynder. I’d been so worried about being with a mage, a kitchen worker no less, that I’d carried on the charade that I loved Luca, even though deep down in my heart, I knew I was in love with Cynder. If Luca had lied to me, it was no worse than what I’d done to myself.
The door opening broke me out of my melancholy.
“They want whiskey up there,” barked one of the guards. I opened the cupboard where an unopened bottle of whiskey sat and put it on a tray along with six glasses and a bucket of ice from the freezer. As an afterthought, I took one of the whiskey glasses away and replaced it with a champagne flute. Seraphia, like me, was not a fan of whiskey.
I opened the champagne and added the bottle to the ice bucket before hastily writing a note for Seraphia and tucking it into my pocket.
Taking the lot upstairs, I headed back into the dining room. I placed it in the center of the table and handed them each a glass. I was just about to hand Seraphia her champagne flute along with the note when she stood up.
“I’m taking the kids to bed.”
“Aw, mom!”
“Aw, mom, nothing. It’s late.” The two boys reluctantly stood up as I poured a generous measure of whiskey into the other glasses. As Seraphia headed out of the door with the kids, I put the bottle down and slowly walked after her.
She’d just reached the top of the stairs. Glancing around to make sure there were no guards, I tiptoed up after her.
At the end of the corridor, she opened a door and ushered the complaining boys in. I followed quickly and waited outside.
Opposite, was another door. I opened it to check, only to find it was a small room full of unopened boxes. Luca obviously used it for storage.
Keeping the door open to listen out for Seraphia, I peeked inside one of them. It contained jewelry. My jewelry! Luca must have been stealing it before he blew up the palace. What else did he have in here? I checked another box to find a stack of the palace china.
My blood boiled yet again at the brazenness of his actions. There was so much stuff here that it would have taken weeks to pack up. He’d been stealing it for weeks, ready to take it out just before the explosion. He must have counted on me being too wrapped up in wedding planning to notice, and he was right. I’d not noticed half the palace finery disappearing.
“I don’t want to hear a peep out of you,” I heard Seraphia closing the door to the children’s room. Running out of the storage room, I grabbed her arm and pulled her back in with me, closing the door behind us.
“What are you doing?” she shouted in alarm.
I held my forefinger to my lips to quieten her, but she wasn’t scared. She was angry at a servant girl grabbing her. Good! Anger I could cope with. Petrified screaming would have been a lot more difficult.
“Seraphia, it’s me! It’s Charmaine.” I looked her straight in the eye, hoping for a spark of recognition.
“What are you talking about? Don’t be ridiculous.” She turned as if to leave.
“You prefer champagne to whiskey, you didn’t know what shoes would go with your red dress at the ball last year. You were the one that told me to advertise jobs within the police force to the Magi. I did that Seraphia. I did it because it was a brilliant idea and it worked. So many Magi signed up.”
Seraphia turned to me slowly.
Her face showed an expression of incredulity “You can’t be Charmaine. The Queen is dead.”
I looked at her, desperate for her to believe me. “I’m not dead. I’ve had a spell put on my face, so I don’t look like me, but I am who I say I am. Take a good look at me.”
Seraphia gazed at me. Pulling out her wand she waved it past my face. My cheeks began to feel warm as whatever spell she was weaving was working. I felt my face return to normal for the first time in over a week.
“Oh, Charmaine,” she cried, running towards me and enveloping me in a hug. “This is wonderful. We have been beside ourselves with sadness. We have to tell Luca. He still thinks you are dead.”
She turned to leave once again.
“Wait!” I hissed.
“What?”
I took a deep breath. I knew that she wasn’t aware of what Luca had done, but knowing what I was about to tell her, I was worried she wouldn’t believe me.
I took a deep breath. “Luca knows.”
Seraphia shook her head. “No. Of course, he doesn’t. He’s been talking about you all dinner time. His PA had to fetch him a box of tissues at one point because he was tearing up.”
I laughed without any humor. His PA. That’s what he told them she was.
<
br /> “First of all, that’s not his PA, or at least if it is, he’s also sleeping with her, and secondly, why do you think I’m here in this house? He’s been keeping me prisoner for over a week.”
Seraphia shook her head again as she struggled to take in everything I’d just told her.
Pulling out an old chair, I bade her sit in it as I took one out for myself and started from the beginning. She was silent as I told her about the MDS and the fact that Luca was the leader. His sudden love for the Magi last year was only because he saw it as a way to rule Silverwood. His plan had worked, because now he was the king or at least would be soon.
I told her that he’d been known as The Regent and had come up with the plan to kill me by blowing up the palace after the wedding.
“He timed it so that the bombs would go off right in the middle of the wedding reception. There were so many explosives in the palace that the whole thing went up. No one would have gotten out alive. The staff working that day were all killed.”
“I was supposed to be at that reception,” she replied in a daze. “My children were going to be there.”
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