The Queen's Mark

by Tori Smith

  He gleamed a smile in my direction. “Look at him,” he said, facing my guardian. “Nearly perfect, isn’t he?”

  He proceeded to grab Lucas’s shoulders.

  “A sturdy build,” he said shaking him. The man got to his feet. “A strong back.”

  He sent his leather shoe into Lucas’s back once, his side twice, which caused my protector to roar again and I pleaded.

  The man’s hand lifted.

  “He’s the perfect unmistakable image,” the man said taking Lucas’s jaw. He lifted it into the light. “Of a human man, isn’t he?”

  He let go of Lucas only long enough to send his knee into Lucas’s gut, and on my feet, I didn’t make it far when the two men who whipped Lucas left him and came over to me.

  They grabbed my arms.

  “Leave her alone,” Lucas ached, on his side.

  “Oh, now you want to talk?” the blond questioned. He wasn’t as calm as he’d been before. He roared at Lucas, rushing over and jerking his head back by his hair

  “You want to tell her who I am?” he spat at him. “You disgusting, filthy creature!”

  He threw him down, kicking him for good measure.

  He huffed from the labor.

  “Get him up,” he said, which his men did. He waved. “And take those bindings off her. She’s worthless.”

  Surprised, someone did, two someones, when they loosened the chains. Upon taking them off, I couldn’t help myself. I ran and I ran right to Lucas.

  “Let her,” came from behind me and I wasn’t restricted when I went to my knees, lifting a man I’d seen nothing but strong in my presence who could now barely aid me enough to get him to his knees.

  “Look at them,” the blond man said. “Two abominations actually showing humanlike care.”

  “What the hell is your problem?” My first tears fell as I held Lucas’s face. I stared back at the man who’d been so cruel to us both. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Is this how you address me?” he asked, literally asked like I was supposed to speak to him in any different type of capacity. He stepped forward. “I have to say, beloved, I expected a little more at our first meeting.”

  My eyes flashed at what he called me, but even still, his term of endearment I couldn’t wrap my head around, what it meant and who he actually was.

  “Prime Minister—”

  “You may call me Gabriel,” he finished for me, then did a mock bow. “Highness.”

  I jumped as if slapped, watching as Gabriel lit another cigarette. After a drag, he blew out the smoke. “But we probably should be a little less formal if we’re supposed to be getting married, shouldn’t we?”

  Flicking down the cigarette, he actually put it out on his wood floor this time. Though, I supposed why shouldn’t he, as one of the most powerful men in the world? He obviously knew that stepping over the bud before coming over to me and Lucas. A simple wave of his hand and Lucas and I were apart again, on our separate sides of the room, and even though I fought, Lucas barely had.

  He barely could, his body tossed to the floor.

  I pushed my tears out of my eyes.

  “You are underwhelming for a bride, though. Aren’t you?” he questioned me, sliding his hands in his pockets. “Even for their kind from what I hear.”

  Not understanding, I sat there. Gabriel stalked over to Lucas in my hesitance, and upon grabbing him, a grunt left my guardian’s throat.

  “Come on, my queen,” Gabriel said, Lucas’s arm in his hand before the man took a blade to his neck.

  I breathed deep.

  Gabriel grinned. “I could easily slice his neck, so stop me. You’re unrestricted, aren’t you?”

  I was, my hands free.

  It could be easy, couldn’t it? If I tried…

  Before the thoughts could even clearly manifest, I noticed more than Gabriel’s eyes on me.

  Lucas rested on his haunches beside him, shallow breaths falling from his lips. The move he made in my direction had been subtle but it wasn’t lost on me.

  The slight shake of his head told me not to act, to not save him, and even though I didn’t understand why, I noted it.

  Because I trusted him.

  Freezing, I did nothing, trusting, and it turned out Gabriel’s threat had been just that—a threat. He let go of Lucas entirely, flipping his blade closed and he laughed when he came over to me.

  “So it’s true,” he said, putting his knife away to applaud me. “The ever powerful witch queen has no magic. Well, I’m assuming you do, you just don’t know how to use it.” He turned to Lucas. “She’s the equivalent to what? An infant by your people at this stage?”

  He waited for no response before smiling at me. “I have to say that is quite a disappointment.”

  “You’re disappointing,” I spat, so confused why this man was supposed to be my betrothed. I couldn’t possibly fulfill my destiny with him by my side. My people wouldn’t have been so cruel.

  He actually looked hurt by what I said.

  “Well, if it means anything you are as well,” he said, bringing his hands behind him. “I have to say marrying an abomination doesn’t sit well on any bloke, but if I’m going to do it I supposed it should be the queen and you will come to grips with your power in time I suppose. My people did say you showed as much.”

  I didn’t understand as I hadn’t showed his people anything about me before coming into this room.

  Gabriel lifted his head. “You met who used to be my third in command in the States, correct? Marcine Radley?”

  Marcine… What?

  He laughed at me and my obvious surprise. “Yes, she was mine. On my team for years until well, her timely end. I suppose I can thank you and yours for that,” he said, tossing his hand in Lucas’s general direction. “She’d been watching you for a while, but not just you, everyone. She’d actually taken high interest in one known as Bria?”

  “If you touch her or any of my colleagues—”

  He waved me off. “She actually proved to be more unremarkable than you. It’s hard to tell sometimes with you people as you have the gall to actually look like us.” He spat those words. “Even still that was a pointless rabbit hole, but you didn’t turn out to be did you? The witch queen herself.”

  His chuckle brightened his expression. “Every once and a while my people luck out, a right place, right time kind of thing. Marcine let onto you when you exposed yourself to one of your guardians at the office. By the way, have the rest of them made it to my estate yet?”

  My eyes widened, the breaths physically leaving me.

  One of his men looked up from a tablet. “On route, Prime Minister. They boarded a plane not long after she did.”

  “They’ll find you,” I cut at him, jerking. “And when they do—”

  “They’ll what? Kill me?” he asked, chuckling. “They don’t even know where we are, love.”

  He proceeded to circle me, slow and calculated. “No, they don’t know where we are just as well as you don’t know who you are, the witch queen my Marcine stumbled on. I have to say, we originally went after your parents because of their connection to a clear magical creature, but finding out you were the queen, well, that had been a delight. Don’t worry. Your parents resisted spilling all your truths for as long as they could, who you were, your lack of magical ability to their knowledge, and after, they didn’t suffer.”

  The ache that left my throat I didn’t mean to sound. I didn’t want to give this man anything, least of all my vulnerability but I couldn’t help it.

  I just couldn’t.

  Gabriel only casted another cruel smile at me, pushing his hands into his pockets.

  “I really wish your people hadn’t called me in the end, your guardians,” he said, waving someone into the room. “I would have preferred the challenge of finding you myself. This has all been in the making for a long time. It would have been nice catching you myself after the start of my destiny has finally begun.”

  I had no
idea what he was talking about, this man crazed with madness that clearly traveled beyond me. But as I watched a man with a black box come into the room, my attention went there. He brought the box to Gabriel and my captor opened the lid.

  Both Lucas and I were dragged to the center of the room after that and Lucas all but drained of the last of his life, couldn’t even lift his head to see inside the box.

  I wished I had been that lucky.

  “I don’t usually take to supernatural weaponry, but there are some gems,” Gabriel said, picking up what looked to be a shined arrow, then an ax that looked familiar.

  Too familiar.

  “You know this one, don’t you?” he asked me, turning it in his hand. He mocked cutting Lucas’s head off with it before throwing his hand up in laughter.

  Gabriel touched the blade. “I hear it houses your power,” he said before dropping it into the box like it was useless. “Nothing more than fancy kitchen cutlery to me.”

  “Stop it.”

  My whisper he actually heard, Gabriel’s head tilting and a sympathy in his eyes I nearly believed before he picked up a jagged blade from the black box, a dagger with a blackened shine to the metal. He watched me as he picked up that blade, completely stone faced as he drew back.

  And stabbed Lucas right in his side.

  His roar only drowned out my screams, watching as Gabriel turned the handle and dragged Lucas to him by the hair again.

  “How does it feel to be like everyone else,” Gabriel growled turning it again before he withdrew it in a single pull. Tossing it on the floor, Lucas’s blood lined the oak, my guardian falling and submitting to his side.

  I lifted from my feet the same time I was being pulled back, Gabriel looking at Lucas as I was dragged from the room.

  “Take him to the special place,” he said to my guardian, then looked at me. “And take her to my special place.”

  Seventeen

  Arden

  Tears tracked my cheeks in a room I’d been in for a long time, barely coherent to how I’d gotten there with every anxious moment that passed. My thoughts could only travel over Lucas and how he’d been stabbed.

  The tears pressured my cheeks again as I shivered, forced to wear my current attire when it’d been thrown at me. Gun in my face, I’d been told to put it on, wear it.

  The lingerie barely covered my breasts.

  Sitting just below the apex of my thighs, the thin material I could feel everything in, the breeze in the cold room and the bedding underneath me. They placed me in a bedroom. I assumed mine until the door creaked open only moments after I dressed.

  I refused to turn for some reason, not wanting to and I felt him the moment he arrived behind me.

  A warm chest pressed to my back that sent a rush of bile to line my throat, as well a fresh trail of watery tears.

  “I hear my touch isn’t so bad, Your Eminence,” Gabriel said, his finger running down my shoulder. He played with the loose strap there. “And I promise you, women only cry during the sex because they enjoy it.”

  Both statements sent surprise in me and I cringed, shrugging off his latest brace of my shoulders. He attempted to bring me in, but I turned, moving away across his bed. My heart racing, I thought he’d actually pursue me, but he stood his ground beside the bed. As predicted, he was nearly as naked as myself, wearing only a set a sleep pants and a sour expression.

  He did the pout thing he did, his hand rising to the canopy of a bed, which was no doubt his own.

  “You’re scared of me,” he surmised and I turned from him at his attempt of another touch.

  He had the nerve to look offended again. “I assure you, Highness, I will not touch you unless you want to be touched. It’s much more fun for me. Rape isn’t something gentlemen do.”

  Then why was he here? I moved again when he reached out.

  “What do you want?” I asked him, a myriad of many thoughts in my mind. Where was Lucas and why was Gabriel doing this to me? The man acted as if he hated me, my kind disgusting him.

  Sitting, Gabriel put his hands in his lap, the fact he was beautiful from his perfectly sculpted chest and abs a sin to humanity. This man wasn’t human, but more creature than myself or Lucas could ever be.

  He crossed his legs. “Because despite the position we’ve both been placed in I do see some merit to a union between Her Majesty and myself.”

  I shook my head, confused as to why he’d still want to marry me despite clearly hating what I was.

  “You’re wondering why I want to?” he asked as if he were in my head. His blond eyebrow slowly lifted. “And I’m honestly surprised you don’t know why.”

  “Pardon me for my confusion,” I said, my lip curling in his direction. “I thought you despised breeding with what you feel are monsters.”

  He reached again, getting a hold of my night gown before I pulled away.

  “Monsters in a very appealing form, though, aren’t you?” he asked, getting up with a smile. Laughing, he shook his head as he stared out a window. From the view, I got nothing but nature, a wide abyss of rolling hills, and even though I spotted a small town in the distance, where we were was still unidentifiable to me. He could have taken us anywhere between the UK and the hotel we’d been in for all I knew.

  He folded his arms over his large chest. “I wasn’t too impressed by what the future told was planned for us, two people uniting the races, one of them being supernatural who’s destined to bring peace to all.”

  “Yeah, that sounds terrible.”

  His green eyes cut my way.

  “Actually, it does,” he said tilting his head. “A future where I’m submissive to you and who you are, as well as the rest of humankind.”

  “It wouldn’t be like that,” I said, defending something I only recently associated myself as being. Until not long ago, I believed I’d been human and even after finding out I wasn’t, not once, did I place what he was versus what I was in a hierarchical order. We were just beings, two beings.

  “Why? Because of you?” he asked. He bowed to me. “Her Majesty will take pity on the poor, unfortunate humans and rule her world graciously?”

  “Why not?” I asked him unsure why he couldn’t see it that why. “Why couldn’t we live in peace?”

  “A peace where one people are far superior to the other?” he spat, his eyes flaring and I thought I discovered his trigger. He only got riled up like this when the topic changed to this direction before. He put his hand to his chest. “I fall inferior to no one, nor do my people.”

  “Then what do you want with me?” I asked him, tired of being played with. I got on my knees. “Why am I here—?”

  “Because you’re the key.” He nodded. “Despite all this, you are and I see the benefits of uniting.” Breathing, he relaxed his arms to his sides. “I could tolerate you and you tolerate me, as well as lead both our people into that prophesized peace.”

  “How so?”

  My question caused him to smile and I sat still with his approach, my body frozen as he lounged on his side. He attempted to touch my jaw, but I moved once more.

  “We have ways of keeping you dormant,” he said, moving his hand down to my shoulder. “A world where we are all equal.”

  “And I your slave,” I said shrugging him off. “Myself and my people.”

  His hands came together and he shrugged himself. “If you want to see it that way. I see it as a solution to the future’s needs and mine, a destiny fulfilled.”

  Somehow I wasn’t sure my people in the future planned for this to be the ultimate outcome for peace for our kind and I had a strong feeling his didn’t, as well. No way would magical people ever agree to such a union with such a race unless forced. Had that been the case? A forced union?

  I found that hard to believe if his people were as inferior as he said.

  If we had power, there was no way the humans could have controlled anything people with supernatural abilities wanted to do. None of this felt right at all, but in
my current state I had no answers. I’d had zero answers since I’d just come in to all this knowledge, not accustomed to any of this.

  “And once you submit,” Gabriel said, his head tilted at me. This man had a way of making me feel the most vile, as disgusting as he believed me and my people were.

  “We can be together in bliss. I’m a very powerful man, Arden. We’ll have a good life. Especially, with you at my side, the most powerful woman in the universe. Even sexier, controlled by one of the most powerful men.”

  The tears coated my eyes once more, my thoughts surrounding not myself.

  But Lucas, Lucas in pain and the rest of my boys. Would I ever see them again?

  “What have you done with them?” I asked him. “The others? Lucas…?”

  His name actually hurt to say and that bile filled my mouth, my throat raw.

  Gabriel’s fingers had started a dance to my shoulder, but stopped.

  “Your minions are on their way to my home,” he said, lifting the sheets. Tucking himself underneath them, he lounged on the pillow. “They’re to be greeted in only the warmest fashion once Her Majesty has come around.”

  My lashes lowered.

  “And Lucas?” I asked facing him. My question apparently only made him smile.

  “He’ll live. Just as the others will if you comply,” he said. Moving, he touched a cold hand behind my back. “That is if his body holds up to the poison I lodged into his side. Like I said, I don’t normally mess with magical weapons, but it does have its uses. I wouldn’t take long for your decision though. I can’t exactly remember how long it takes for the poison to reach its way to the heart. Could be a week,” he continued, pulling the strap down my shoulder. He squeezed. “An hour.”

  Despite all his talk of not advancing me, not touching me, he was, his hand pushing toward the front of my chest and his mouth on a descent to my shoulder. I didn’t know this man and had no idea his capabilities. But if he was lying about all this, touching me…

  My move had been quick but not enough to get away from him. He chased me, and even though I’d gotten around the bed, it hadn’t been enough for me to get to the door.