by Jaymin Eve
Damn that bear. At some point during our brief meetings over the past years he had earned my respect. I hoped I wouldn’t have to try to kill him anytime soon.
Eventually it was time for me to wish my guests a good night and retire to my private study. Time to renegotiate the peace terms with … the bear king. I needed to reinstate the protocols between us. He already had me thinking of him as Kade. Despite the friendly nature of our dance, I was on edge, knowing that if there was any moment he’d use the kiss or the fact he’d saved my life against me, it was now.
After I gave a closing speech, written by my advisor, Calista led me to the private study. Two plush chairs were situated a respectable distance from each other. A small coffee table between them held a teapot and a scroll with ink and quill – the peace accords. The same accords our ancestors had started right after the dark war. Every time a new king or queen took office, they pledged to keep these accords alive. It was also a good time to ask for more land or less strict sanctions for vortex travel. Who knew what the bear king would want.
As I took my seat Calista fussed over my dress. “Be strong but polite. Remember your lessons in negotiations.”
I nodded. There was a reason I played poker so often. I’d been relaxed during the dance, but this was business. The bear king would get nothing from me today … unless of course he asked for the life debt I owed him. Doubtful that would be what he demanded of me though.
Calista slipped out of the door and I wiped my sweating palms on the velvet chair beneath me. The door creaked open and suddenly the room was filled with his presence. I stood, as protocol dictated, and he strode across the room to stand before me. He wore no smile this time, but he had taken off his heavy embroidered jacket, wearing a simple light linen tunic that showcased his chiseled body.
“Your Highness,” I said.
His expression didn’t change, but his eyes darkened. “Your Highness,” he repeated back to me. “I appreciate you taking the time tonight to discuss these accords. However, I need to return to my people soon. These are not safe times.”
It was like the dance had not happened. The warmth and friendliness was gone, and in its place were two rulers who would fight for their boroughs and people with a ferocity that had caused wars in the past. Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.
We both sat, each of us glancing down at the peace accords.
“Are these the same peace accords from last time?” he asked in his gruff voice.
He must have met with the Red Queen when he was crowned. I nodded, prepared to fight him on every single issue outlined in them.
But then he picked up the quill, dipped it in the ink, signed his name and handed the paper to me. He didn’t even read it! My mouth dropped open in shock, which elicited a smile from him.
“Did you expect me to argue every little point … ask for more land or taxes?” He seemed pleased to have caught me off guard. I grabbed the quill from him and signed my own name before tucking the accords away.
“Yes, I did,” was all I could say.
He waved a hand. “I have no need of that. But I would like one thing from you.” He leaned forward into my personal space.
Here it was. He had signed to make me happy and would now ask for the favor, one I probably couldn’t refuse because he’d saved my life earlier with the mecca.
I plastered my best poker face on. “Oh, and what is that?”
At this close range his scent mingled around me, and it had my wolf practically purring inside of me. You don’t like bears, I reminded her. But damn, there was a pull in that smell. It was amazing … like freshly chopped wood and … roses. I swallowed hard.
“I need us to be friends,” he said.
It took me a few moments to focus again, and then his words registered.
“Friends?” I repeated, perplexed.
He nodded. “Historically, the wolf queen and the bear king have barely tolerated each other. That needs to end. We have a common enemy now and we can only defeat them if we work together.”
His warning of a common enemy sent ice water through my veins.
“Common enemy?” I needed to hear him say it, to confirm what Gerald had told us that day, and what I was starting to see was the truth.
He nodded. “The Tuatha de Danann.”
“I just don’t understand. Why now? I thought they were all long dead. What do they want?” I’d never done much study on the fae. We were taught they were dead and that was pretty much it. Why had we not learned more about them? My history classes seemed to cover every detail of the shifters, but not the fae. It was odd. I should have known what that creature in the park was. How easy it would be for an enemy to take us down when we knew nothing about them at all.
The bear king leaned even closer, until we were only inches apart. “The Tuatha de Danann hold a special interest for my family. When they ruled this world they were known as the tribe of gods. They held power beyond any understanding of humans, and when they left this world the shifters were born. We had a lot of teachings early, but the stories have vanished. Each generation knows less and less. Why is that?”
It was almost as if the fae had deliberately wiped this information from our world, which worried me.
The air pulsed between us again, and I really wished it would stop doing that. I briefly contemplated slapping him again, just to break the tension, but I sensed he wouldn’t be so forgiving the second time around. Needing a distraction, I jumped up and took a few steps around the back of the chair in the pretense of searching for a book on the full-wall shelf behind me.
Sucking in deeply, I calmed myself. “Maybe we could work together. We need to be prepared.” I turned back from the shelf and faced him. He had not moved, but his eyes were tracking me. Then, in the spirit of friendship and working together, I decided to ask him one of the questions plaguing my mind.
“Have you ever heard of an ercho?”
His eyes darkened but he didn’t look confused. “Hellions are no more than myth. Beyond even fae and gods.”
I let out a huff of air and changed my mind. Now was not the time to tell him about my attack. There was no reason to lay all my cards on the table. I was here to learn about our enemy, not really to be best friends with the king of the bears.
I changed the subject. “Do you have any knowledge of a female heir with a lioness familiar?”
His brow furrowed, and I knew he wanted to go back to the ercho thing, but I made it very clear I was done with that conversation for now. “A female heir would be a wolf,” he finally said. “We keep track best we can, but there are none with lionesses listed that I know.”
Before he could ask me why I was randomly throwing these questions at him, I recounted Finn’s story of the woman and her familiar. He listened intently until I was done, then his huge hand came up to scratch the edge of his beard.
“Maybe we’re looking at this all wrong. It doesn’t have to be a wolf … the fae have heirs too.”
When he said that my mouth popped open. “So you think these fae are just running around New York City?”
He nodded, standing. “Seems like a very logical possibility. I know Gerald told you that we were attacked the same night as your queen, as all the heirs were. They were too strong to be human, and did not have shifter energy. I think the fae are definitely on the earth again, and they are coming for us.”
He crossed closer to me, the chair thankfully still between us, as I leaned against the bookshelf trying to contain my shock and fear. Reaching into a side pocket of his black dress pants, he produced a small palm-size book. “Since you know very little of the fae, as my first act of friendship, let me give you this.”
He extended his hand and I grabbed the book, our fingers touching, the already familiar dance of mecca between us strong. The cover was leather and had two words stamped into it. Two very important words: Fae History.
“Thank you…” This was not how I’d expected this night to go. But maybe something e
ven better had actually emerged. A true friendship.
He nodded. “See, this friends thing is going to be fun.”
Well, it was kind of nice to have a friend who understood the duty of a ruler, who shouldered the same burdens that I now did. Somehow I knew I could learn a lot from him. And to be a good leader, one should never stop learning.
Not to mention if the fae were gearing up for some huge attack, for whatever reason, it was good to have the bears on our side – assuming our people would ever side together. I moved away from the wall and rounded the chair to stand close by him. He held out a hand, and with barely a hesitation I took it, ignoring the familiar lurch within my stomach.
“Our people will think us weak for this alliance,” I said, as we shook hands once. I went to pull away but he held on for an extra beat.
“No one questions my strength,” he murmured, before finally releasing me. “But as a new queen you will have to prove your own. So we can keep this just between us for now. If you have need of me, send word with Finn. He will find my eagle and we can meet on the Island.”
So his familiar was an eagle. Interesting, those were very rare.
As he moved toward the door, our meeting finished for the day, he turned back at the last moment. “Read the book. You will have questions, and for the most part I don’t have any answers, but I do know some of the facts. For one, I can sense that this is going to be much bigger than either of us could guess. We have to try to be prepared for an all-out war.”
And with that worrying and cryptic prediction he was gone. I stood there for many minutes, clutching the small book, wondering what drama I had just been crowned into.
Chapter Eleven
Revenge is a fickle stone to throw.
The next morning I asked Calista to return the king’s mecca stone, the one which Selene had stolen for the Summit task. He had given me the fae history book to mark our friendship and I wanted to give a peace offering as well. I had a bunch of other things to deal with also: staffing issues, getting a wing set up for Winnie – who would be moving into the palace soon – figuring out if the fae were amassing an army to come and wipe us all out…
But my first order of business as queen was to run a full and thorough investigation into who killed our late queen. It was expected of me, and I was personally determined to find out. All the strange happenings seemed to be tied to her death and it felt important to look closer at everything to do with the Red Queen.
By midday I had already interviewed her entire royal guard and her three personal maids. They all said the same thing. The queen went into her library for tea alone, as she did most mornings, and an hour later a metallic scent alerted her guards. Blood. They had to bust the door down; it had been sealed somehow – not by any sort of magical means or otherwise that they recognized – and by the time they got inside she was already dead. No one else was in the room.
They immediately barred the door and called in Sabina. Since there was only that one guarded entry into the room, the magic born had been the first call to make sure there was nothing of a magical nature going on, which included invisibility and other weird and wonderful spells.
Sabina found nothing also apparently. I’d just finished interviewing her, and she confirmed the guards’ stories, and added that she had detected nothing of magical significance.
It just didn’t add up to me. The Red Queen was clearly murdered, brutally so, and yet no one had seen her assailant. But all confirmed there had been two cups of hot tea. The most logical explanation for the queen’s death was that a magic born or maybe a fae had killed her. The attacks on all of us happened shortly after her death, but those assailants appeared to be human, even in death. Were they some sort of weird fae hybrid? Surely they would emit a magical essence. Humans had a barely detectable energy. The fae were supposed to have been the original creators of the mecca. They must be filled with magic.
Was there a magic-born shifter helping a fae? Violet was totally in the clear there. I trusted her above all others, which left Sabina, Jesabele, and Seamus.
All I had were more questions and no way to get answers.
Sabina could have been lying to me. That Violet – who had been hiding behind thick curtains, acting as my lie-detector – had not picked up on any lies from her, didn’t mean there weren’t any. Magic born were not like other shifters, and Sabina might have figured out a way to hide the information.
Could it have been her all along? Maybe she’d had a fight with the Red Queen. Maybe Selene hired her to take out the queen. But what could Selene offer her? Sabina was already the queen’s magic born, the one with the most access to the mecca. There had to be more to it.
My fingernails were anxiously drumming the side of my new throne, which had been installed sometime last night. Calista hadn’t been kidding when she said that each one was specially designed for the new queen. Like my crown of mecca stones, this high-backed, silver and ornate piece had scattered energy stones in a zigzag pattern up each side pillar. The tingle rushed through me, and it was almost like sitting atop pure power.
I was almost done with my interviews for today. Just one more: Bethany, the queen’s advisor. The moment of the queen’s death, Bethany took a leave of absence and went into mourning with her family, who lived on the lower east side. Now I had requested her presence to give a full detail of what she knew.
There was a knock on the door.
“Enter!” I called out. I had requested complete privacy, no guards or even Calista inside the chamber. I didn’t want anyone afraid of telling me a secret with others present. The only exception was Violet, still hiding behind the thick velvet drapes. My guards were not happy about being excluded from the room; these were perilous times and with a queen killer on the loose, but they allowed it only if they could search and remove all weapons at the door.
Bethany approached me, her hands wringing together nervously and her mousy brown hair hanging limp. She had dark circles under her puffy eyes and I could tell she had been crying for days.
“Your Majesty.” She gave a low bow and stayed down.
“You may rise, Bethany.” I liked her. She had always been a strong and loyal advisor to the queen. Seeing her in this frail state pained me. I tried to soften my voice. She looked easily spooked. Fragile.
“I want you to be able to speak freely, no protocol. Just tell me what happened the night the queen died.”
She nodded, chewing her lip. “I had been busy that day arranging Violet’s itinerary in London and the work the queen wanted done there. The queen said goodnight to me around 7pm, as she often does, and that’s the last I heard of her that night until–”
I nodded. “The queen had tea with someone early the next morning. There were two cups. Do you have any idea who it could have been?”
“No,” she answered, a little too quickly.
“Lie!” Violet jumped out from behind the curtain, scaring us both. Always with the dramatic entrances.
Bethany looked like she had been slapped. Her eyes were wide and brimmed with tears.
“Please don’t,” she whimpered at Violet.
I stood now, approaching her. I never in a thousand years would have suspected Bethany of harming our queen. No way. She loved her.
Violet’s head was cocked to the side as she stalked Bethany like prey.
“Who killed the queen?” Violet’s voice carried a musical quality.
Bethany’s upper lip broke out in a sweat. “I don’t know.”
Violet relaxed a little. “Truth.”
I phrased the question differently. “Who do you think killed the queen?”
Bethany was panting now as if speaking of this caused her pain. “I can’t say.”
Violet’s eyebrows drew together. “Truth.”
What the hell was going on here?
Violet reached out to touched Bethany’s arm and recoiled immediately like she’d been burned. “She’s magic touched.”
Bethany dropped to
her knees now, sobbing.
I was at a loss.
“A very, very powerful magic born has spelled her so she can’t tell us what we want to know.” Violet looked at me with a gaze that sent shivers down my spine.
“Who is more powerful than you?” I asked.
Violet looked lost, shrugging her shoulders.
“Did Sabina do this?” I asked Bethany.
“No,” she whimpered.
I could see the former advisor was nearing her breakdown limits, so I broke protocol and knelt next to Bethany, making her look into my eyes. “Was it a bear shifter who did this? Did the queen have a bear lover?”
Had the king been lying to me this entire time, trying to cover up an affair with the Red Queen? Implicate an ancient myth of beings who had not been seen for centuries to throw us off track – just the mere thought had fury raging through me, the need to skin him alive tingling within my fingers.
“Not a bear,” Bethany scraped out.
I looked at Violet, who nodded. Truth.
Not a bear, so that meant...
“Did the queen have a lover that you suspect killed her? Someone strong and magical?” This was like pulling teeth, but clearly the right question had to be asked to get around the spell.
Bethany’s eyes began to bulge as her skin turned purple, like she couldn’t breathe.
“…yes.” She barely got the word out before going cross-eyed and collapsing backward.
“No!” I leaned over her body to feel for a pulse … nothing.
Violet was just standing there frozen.
“Do something!” I yelled at my best friend.
Violet shook her head. “I can’t. The spell had a safeguard built in. Clearly her confirming that information triggered it. Instant death.”
Falling back and sitting on my heels, I released my frustration by letting loose an ear-piercing howl.
Violet matched mine with her own, and my guards burst through the doors to see what was wrong. I stood, holding my head high as they surveyed Bethany’s body.