Evangeline felt like she has a pile of rocks lodged in her throat, but she forcefully swallowed them before croaking out, “Who invited you, Leonardo?”
“I did,” a mousy voice responded from inside the well of Rienne soldiers. The brick-like formation broke, allowing Arvil Pennington ride forth. The knotted overgrown beard he’d left Samaria with was completely gone, and his sable hair was now slicked back on his head. Evangeline’s eye’s widened in disbelief when she saw him, then narrowed in suspicion, wondering who could have conspired against her to help Arvil escape. The small man rode up to the Queen and stopped, reaching inside his tunic and pulling out a large rusted key. He hung it in front of her face.
“Perhaps you should recount those who are actually loyal to you, Evangeline. Because obviously, it’s not as many as you think,” Arvil said, implying the drunken soldier he’d taken the key from. He spun his horse around to face the multitude of Samarians who were watching the strange interaction between Evangeline and Arvil with eyes as keen as hawks.
“My fellow Samarians,” he began, “I regret to inform you that our dear Queen Evangeline is full of nothing other than deception and lies. She stands before you today spitting out falsehoods about why Olger Guttensen, the Nomanestan tyrant, invades our country. She uses these mendacities to play on your emotions and gain your support. The truth is, Olger Guttensen invades our country and murders our innocent people all because of her.” Arvil flung a chiding finger in the Queen’s direction.
“This woman consorted voluntarily with Olger, the violent descendant of a race who once had our people suffering in bondage. And for helping Samaria, she promised to reward him with our very own Samarian gold. Gold that is mined by the bare hands and strenuous labor of our men, at a time when such precious metals are very hard to come by. The little production that these mines were seeing was being promised to a foreign tyrant and not to those who make a living by it. Then the Queen had the audacity to pledge him Samarian land that has been in our country for generations if she failed to make due on her payments.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” the voice of a concerned Samarian interjected “We have no need of anything Nomanestan has to offer. What would prompt the Queen to go to him at all?”
“Look around you!” Arvil cried out. “The welfare of Samaria has been declining for years. She’s been lying to you about the condition of our food reserves. These are the facts: there is no food. The very grains you eat in your homes was sowed and reaped by Noman hands. But instead of humbling herself and going to the Sovereign Alliance when we needed food, the Queen instead turned to Olger Guttensen rather than allow others to see that Samaria was not the powerful, affluent country she’d made it out to be!”
A din of upset voices had already started to waft through the crowds as word spread from person to person, repeating what Arvil had told them. There were several shouts of debate and opposition mixed in with cries of outrage and incredulity.
“This is rubbish!” someone yelled over the ruckus of arguing, initiating a following of supportive cheers.
“How do we know he’s telling the truth?” someone else asked.
“I can see how some of you would question such an proclamation,” Arvil replied. “But I have evidence in my possession that clearly points towards Queen Evangeline’s shady involvement with Olger.”
Arvil reached inside his tunic and pulled out a folded piece of parchment. Even from several paces away, Evangeline immediately recognized the letter as Ambrose’s. She thought she’d confiscated that letter from the messenger boy. How had he slighted her?
The letter Ambrose had written to his cousin, Leonardo, outlined everything that Evangeline had been involved in for the past couple of years: her contract with Olger, the terms of agreement including payment and collateral, the refusal of help from countries other than Nomanestan, and Samaria’s suffering economy and declining production from the mines. Evangeline felt her mind begin to spin with the realization that all her secrets were about to be confessed to the world. Whether the people of Samaria believed them or not didn’t matter, it still put doubts in their already weary minds.
She looked up from the ground to see Arvil reading off of the letter like he was preaching a sermon. The cries and responses from the crowd were so lurid, that they almost drowned out Arvil’s voice. He pushed through anyway, his tone growing louder and louder with each word, driven by anger to read this letter in its entirety to Samaria’s people.
“Enough!” Evangeline erupted when the noise became deafening. Her outburst silenced Arvil’s reciting of the letter and quieted down the restless crowd. She marched over to the small man and shoved him, as hard as she could, causing him to trip over his feet and fall to the ground.
“Who do you think you are?” she demanded as she marched towards him with a frenzied look of hostility in her eyes. Arvil began to crawl away from the irate Queen on all fours, looking back over his shoulder like a scolded dog. Evangeline turned to face the crowd.
“You all are going to believe him?” the Queen asked of her people. “Arvil Pennington claims I’m the liar, but here he is, after a month spent in Rienne when he should have been here, assisting the Queen of Samaria in fixing the problems with the mines, like a loyal advisor should be. He doesn’t care about Samaria, about the problems facing our trade or our borders. You ran, Arvil, when Samaria needed you most. You’re a traitor and a weakling who is full of falsehoods, conspiring with Leonardo to put my people against me. To what end?”
“These people are too good and work too hard not to know the truth,” Arvil replied. He had flipped back over and stood up to face her. “They deserve to know that you’ve been allowing Olger Guttensen to raid our eastern borders for years now.” He turned to face the crowd. “She’s known about it this whole time!” Arvil yelled. “She’s let innocent Samarians die under the hand of Olger Guttensen. She favors the Nomans over her own people!”
“That’s a lie!” Evangeline yelled back. “I would never knowingly put my people in danger!”
“Not knowingly, maybe,” Arvil sneered. “But you still knew what was going on and you continued to let it happen. Which is worse?”
“I didn’t know it was the Nomans who raided!” Evangeline tried to defend herself. By now the crowd was bubbling and hissing like boiling water in a cauldron. Their unsure eyes darted between Evangeline, Arvil, and Leonardo, while others yelled out curses of outrage, both for the truth and the lies.
“You knew it was the Nomans who killed along the Samarian border.” A small voice spoke up behind her. “You knew, yet you sent soldiers up to Cliff’s Landing anyway. Ill prepared soldiers who had no idea what they were up against.”
Evangeline whipped around to see who was so boldly speaking out against her. It was one of the soldiers who’d been in Brutus’s company when the General had returned from Sugarpine Pass. The Queen had no idea who he was, but he had stepped out of the soldier formation to confront her.
“What Master Pennington claims is true,” the soldier said timidly as he rode up closer to the crowd. He was young, hardly more than a boy, and he was shaking so hard his chain mail rattled.
“Get back in line, boy!” a gruff sounding man yelled out.
“Let’s hear what he has to say!”
“It’s treason! Put him in the gallows!”
Shouts full of emotion flew in from the restless multitude of onlookers, and their faces were conflicted and lacking any real judgment for their Queen. But the young soldier didn’t back down. Instead he moved forward, then turned around in his saddle and reached for something behind him
. Evangeline couldn’t help but gasp in horror when he pulled the object around to face the crowd. It was the bloodied burlap sac that had arrived with Brutus. The sack that was weighed down with Captain Gerod Kingsley’s severed head, and the one holding it was the soldier she’d asked to take it to the undertaker. The boy carefully unwrapped the human remains, and the sac fell to the gro
und.
Gerod Kingsley’s face was stiff with rigor mortis, and his skin was pulled tight over his bones, bluish, and waxy. His eyes remained open yet sunk into his skull, but still they stared out over the crowd, demanding justice for his death and the deaths of innocent Samarians.
“This is what the Nomans due to those who oppose them,” the soldier explained. “This is what they will do to all of us if they are allowed into Samaria. And because of what the Queen has already done, that will surely be our fate.”
The crowd erupted at this piece of new evidence, proof that Evangeline no longer sough to protect them. The crowd burst with shouts and cries of rage, while others threatened to end the young Queen’s life. They pushed on the barricades, pounded them with their fists, demanding retribution for those who had fallen. The sound of the tumultuous crowd was so loud, it stung Evangeline’s ears. The Queen turned around to look at all three men who dare stand up to her in front of her own people.
“What right do you have to vilify the last ruling Queen of the Winnser bloodline?” she demanded. “Who are you that you think so highly of yourselves? Speak! You worthless imbeciles!” Evangeline looked as though she was going to strike Arvil who was standing the closest to her. Leonardo interrupted the confrontation that was about to turn bloody.
“They may not have authority, Queen Evangeline, to indict you of your immoral actions, but I do!” Leonardo, followed by five of his soldiers, approached the Queen with their hands on their scabbards, ready to fight back if she resisted.
“I, Leonardo Santini, Chancellor of the Sovereign Alliance, am taking you into custody and formally charging you with treason against the Realm. According to the decree two hundred and eleven set forth in the Sovereign Alliance, any relations with known tyrants, including that of Olger Guttensen, is herby forbidden and punishable by imprisonment.”
“You can’t do that!” Evangeline spat back. “I am the ruling bloodline of this country. Decree also states that the original bloodlines must be protected at all costs…”
“That is why we are setting out to retrieve your daughter, Zora,” Leonardo explained smugly, “to take your place on the throne.”
The Queen reeled back in surprise, her mouth agape and wordless. Behind Leonardo and his block of soldiers, the citizens of Samaria were going wild with outrage at the actions of betrayal their Queen had taken against them. Somewhere amidst the tumult of noise, Zora’s name had weaseled its way into the undertone of the dissonance, and they were chanting it slowly yet steadily until that’s all Evangeline could hear. The Sovereign Alliance was not technically usurping Evangeline, but removing her from power for actions that were detrimental to the Realm. Additionally, Zora was of her bloodline, so the Winnser name would continue.
All around Center Market, Samarian citizens were hurling insults at their Queen, calling her every name a traitor is meant to be called. Evangeline just put her stone face on and watched as Leonardo’s men approached her with chains in their hands, ready to bind her and take her away. Thunder rolled again, and darkness swept over the land as the storm made contact with the valley. Rain began to fall, grey and hazy, coating Evangeline’s eyelashes in wet droplets till her eyesight blurred. Lightning flashed ahead, white-hot and close to the ground, yet no one retreated in doors to take cover, as they were too invested in the outcome of Samaria’s fate.
This is it. This is the end of my reign and of my bloodline, Evangeline thought with overwhelming despair.
She looked up at the sky, waiting for the metal shackles to tighten around her wrists. As she did so, she thought she saw a bolt of lighting slice through the thick storm clouds and shoot directly towards the group of Rienne soldiers. The lightening collided with the group like a firework, and several men got thrown to the ground.
As the storm clouds swirled above them, more lightening pierced the air. It quickly formed into a spherical shape and blasted directly into the wooden barricades that separated the crowd from the platform. All the barricades surrounding Evangeline immediately ignited, and the same blue flame that Heath had hurled at her barely one day ago roared with a heat so intense, Evangeline wondered if it was really fire or something more. The rain poured down in heavy sheets across Alumhy, drenching every person in its wake, yet the fire still burned, hotter and more iridescent than anything Evangeline had ever seen.
The men about to arrest the Queen stood dead in their tracks, looking around scared and dumbfounded as the lightening darted unnaturally across the black sky. Before she knew what was happening, another sphere of fire shot through the air from the clouds, striking one of Leonardo’s men in the chest. He buckled to the ground, as silent as a ghost, and his body continued to tremble and convulse as electrocuting energy sizzled along his skin.
Spheres continued to assault Leonardo’s men, materializing from some unknown origin in the sky, killing those it reached upon impact. All around Evangeline, the Rienne soldiers crumpled dead to the ground, burned from the inside out by the mysterious magical fire that left them twitching and palsied. The fireball spheres flew in like a stream of arrows, striking down their targets until the Chancellor was left standing petrified all by himself.
The citizens of Alumhy were screaming in fear as they watched fire and lightening fall from the sky, and between each crackle of thunder, the sounds of stampeding footsteps hitting cobblestone reverberated through the city. Hordes of citizens were taking this opportunity to flee Center Market, and Evangeline feared that a great multitude of them would try and leave Samaria now that they knew the truth about what she had done.
Bodies lay convulsing on the ground as Heath’s orbs of energy and fire burned the life right out of them. Leonardo’s face was full of disbelief and as grey as ash as he watched helplessly while they suffered. He bent down next to the convulsing men, trying to wake them and bring life back into their eyes, but they were already dead.
“Evangeline,” Leonardo said, his voice now completely striped of the authoritative tone he’d carried only moments earlier. Evangeline just turned and looked at him with cold, spiteful eyes.
“What have you done?” he whispered, motioning at the men who lay dead at his feet. His face held something that Evangeline had never seen in him before; fear. Arvil stood next to him, hugging his arms to himself, looking like a wet cat.
The young Queen drew herself up, squared her shoulder, and lifted her chin before slowly walking over to them. Her hair was saturated with rainwater and lay flat against her head, yet still she looked like Samarian royalty. The shouts of Leonardo’s remaining men, mixed in with the clamor of the townspeople, could be heard from the other side of the blue flame barricade that burned as high as the buildings surrounding them.
“I am going to say this one time and one time only, Leonardo,” Evangeline threatened. “And I demand that you deliver this message to the rest of the Sovereign Alliance. I don’t want any complications.” Thunder roared above them, slowly gaining momentum, and flashes of lightning exploded through the clouds like fireworks, but the determined Queen ignored them.
“This is my land, my people, and my country. They are ruled by me, and I will do with them as I please. No one, not even the Sovereign Alliance, tells Evangeline Winnser what to do. So, the next time you trespass on Samarian lands trying to wield authority where you have none, I’ll kill you. Try and touch me now, and you’ll be so far removed you’ll beg for death before it’s all over with.” Her voice was as sharp as a knife, and all of the Queen’s men within hearing distance knew she spoke no lies to Leonardo.
“And you,” she added, looking at Arvil. “I will not rest until I find out who released you. And they will face a punishment far more treacherous than even you can imagine. Now get out!” As if on her command, the blue wall of flame began to die down, contracting inward towards where Leonardo’s men waited on the outside before disappearing entirely. All those who’d seen the spheres of fire raining down from the heavens stared at Evangeline with looks of astonishment, as
if she’d just transformed into some mythical monster overnight.
“This isn’t over, Evangeline,” Leonardo warned. “I will seek revenge for this unnecessary attack on my men. The Realm and the Sovereign Alliance will not tolerate tyranny!” He looked to the sky questioningly. “I will be back, with support from the other rulers. You can count on that.” He glared at her through the wall of rain that flew in from all directions.
She watched as the ruler of Rienne stormed off through the muddy puddles now dotting the streets, while a couple of his men gathered their dead. Arvil Pennington looked on the brink of tears, his chin quivering because he didn’t get the vindication he was looking for. But the tiny man didn’t stay to support his case now that the Leonardo was unsuccessful at apprehending Evangeline. He ran after Leonardo and blended in with the ranks of Rienne soldiers exiting the streets.
The Queen turned towards her advisors standing still behind her, their faces bereft of any emotion about what had just occurred. Center Market was quickly draining itself of Samarians, who now fled to their dwellings. With the truths now exposed to them, Evangeline knew that any support from the citizens was nonexistent. She would have to force it from them. Now that Leonardo expressed opposition to the Queen’s actions, Evangeline feared her people would flee to him for protection. Especially since they were on the verge of battle. But the Queen wasn’t about to let that happen. Every citizen in Samaria belonged to her. They would honor her, work for her, and fight for her, even if she had to make them.
“Brutus! Vincent! Come forward!” the Queen demanded. When her two most trusted military leaders where in front of her, she laid out her instructions for them.
“Vincent, have one of the Captains take this battalion behind me and police the streets of Alumhy. No one is to leave! If any citizen is caught trying to flee, arrest them. I want every able-bodied male removed from their homes and drafted into the Guard, ready to fight. If they resist, arrest them.” She looked to Brutus.
Azurite (Daughter of the Mountain Book 1) Page 40