The Fearless Royal: A Reverse Harem Urban Fantasy (Annabelle's Harem Book 3)

by Anna Hill

  This was true, and it seemed to convince Robert.

  “Come with me,” he muttered. Once again, it was clear that he hated relying on Jacob for anything. But he wasn't dumb enough to not use this… especially when he didn’t have me to leech magic from anymore. He needed some way to extend his magic.

  My mother and I glanced at each other before we followed Jacob and Robert out of the room.

  As we walked down the hall, I realized exactly where we were.

  This was where I’d been taken when I was captured. I should’ve known immediately by the metal walls… and I couldn’t believe I didn’t realize it before.

  Robert led Jacob into a room that was guarded by two men. It had some kind of locking system that required Robert to put his hand on a pad. I assumed Robert was the only one who could gain entrance to this room. Which made the guards seem like a little much, but that was Robert, I supposed… A little much.

  We followed them into the room and my jaw dropped.

  Inside the room were shelves upon shelves of these weird-looking jars. I couldn’t tell what they were made of… Porcelain, maybe?

  Robert took one down and set it on a table in the middle of the room. He then, with a few slams of his cane, transmutated a glass vial with a stand, a plastic gallon jug, and two jars of chemicals that I assumed were the ones Jacob mentioned.

  “Do it,” Robert insisted.

  Jacob looked up at him nervously. “Okay… I need a measuring cup.”

  Robert conjured that up too, and Jacob took a deep breath and began measuring out the chemicals. He then took a few cups of each and poured them into the jug.

  Then he took the vial, opened the porcelain jar, and filled the vial. He dumped it into the plastic jug, and I watched as the liquid began to bubble and grow.

  Jacob wasn’t lying. Just as he had said, the solution began to settle as it filled the gallon jug. It even overflowed a bit… Whatever was in my magic definitely interacted with the chemicals he had procured.

  Robert still seemed skeptical, though.

  I watched as he opened his cane and began to dump the gallon of liquid inside. Not the whole thing because I don’t think it would have fit, but just enough to fill it to the top.

  He then pointed the cane at the table. I assumed he was doing this with the intention of making everything on it disappear… and it did.

  Robert’s jaw dropped.

  “You… weren’t lying.”

  “No. I wasn’t. Instead of pouring magic straight into your cane, we can just take vials of it, make my mixture, and all the magic you have will last so much longer. The amount of magic you have now will very likely last you for the rest of your life!”

  I felt a knot in my stomach. The rest of his life? How on earth was I supposed to overtake him if he was going to have my magic for the rest of his life?

  “Alright, Jacob… I was beginning to regret that I didn’t kill you off sooner, but I suppose I’m glad now. And I’ll let your parents live…”

  Jacob fell to his knees. “Thank you, Your Majesty. Thank you. You have no idea how much I appreciate that.”

  Robert ignored him. “You’ll still be staying here until we find Annabelle. I won’t let you out of my sight. Don’t think that my appreciation for this little trick means that I’ll forget all of the things you fucked up.”

  “Yes, of course. I understand completely.” Jacob nodded emphatically.

  Robert gave him a crooked smile before he slowly walked out of the room, Jacob in tow.

  I looked at my mom, and she looked just as distraught as me.

  “I’m never going to beat him,” I told her. “How can I? He has an almost endless supply of my magic to use against me.”

  “I’m sure we’ll… find a way,” she responded hesitantly.

  “Are you? Because I’m not. I’m really not. I don’t think I can do this…”

  “Honey…” she said softly.

  I was so upset with myself. All the effort I’d put in, all the people who died for me…

  It was all for nothing. I was an idiot to believe I could ever rule Elderan. I was over here learning about government, assuming that I was going to be Queen, but I wasn’t. I was never going to be Queen.

  I woke up feeling completely distraught. I wasn’t crying, I wasn’t exactly sad, I was more… angry. Incredibly, furiously angry.

  Rhyion knew something was wrong immediately.

  “My love, what is it? What’s wrong?” he asked. “Did you not get your answer?"

  “Oh, I got my answer…” I muttered.

  He looked even more confused.

  I stared at him seriously. “Rhyion, I’m never going to be Queen of Elderan… I’m so sorry. Everything you, Lio, and Angelo have sacrificed… it’s all been for naught. I’m never going to be the queen you guys thought I would."

  He put his hand on my cheek. "First of all, Annabelle, you know none of us are here just because we want you as our queen. We’re all madly in love with you. It’s more than just politics to us. You are our lover… you know that.”

  “Yeah… Well, your lover is all I'm ever going to be.”

  “Don’t say that. Why would you say that?”

  “Robert has endless supplies of my magic, Rhyion. It’s endless.” It made sense now why Resa told me Jacob was vital to Robert. He truly was. He was the reason Robert had magic that would last him until his final days…

  And even if I outlived Robert, he had enough magic to pass on to whatever human ruled after him. He had a son, I thought. I wasn’t even sure, though. He kept his private life so hidden.

  “How?” Rhyion asked.

  “It was because of Jacob. He figured out some way to expand my magic. He could make a concentrated vial of it into an entire gallon. And he showed Robert how to do it, so even with Jacob gone, Robert still has the capability. It’s over… I’m screwed.”

  Rhyion didn’t say another word. He stood up, walked out of the bedroom, and went down the hall.

  I was totally confused, so I jumped up after him and followed him down the hall as he stepped into a spare bedroom and closed the door behind him. Again, without a word.

  What the hell? Had I upset him? Was he mad at me? I had no read on him in this moment.

  I heard feet scurry, and soon both Angelo and Lio had popped out of their rooms to see what was going on.

  “What’s up?” Angelo asked first.

  “I… I can’t defeat Robert,” I murmured. I hated having to tell all three of them.

  Lio and Angelo looked at each other. “Why not, exactly?”

  “He has my magic… a ton of my magic. He’s never going to run out. He has enough magic to last him an actual lifetime. So, I’m screwed… We’re all kind of screwed.”

  Neither of them said anything. Like my mom, they were clearly disappointed and had no way to comfort me.

  Because I was right. I could try to fight him while he had access to my magic, sure, but he was just as powerful as me. It would be like fighting myself.

  Maybe worse than fighting myself, because frankly, he had more time to train. He’d had access to my or my mother’s magic since before I was born. He knew what he was doing, whereas I’d only been doing this for a year now.

  “Where’s Rhyion?” asked Lio, after a moment.

  “I told him what I dreamt, and he just… walked into that room.” I shrugged.

  I didn’t know if I should follow him, so I didn’t. It felt weird, like I was intruding on some private moment. He might have been having a breakdown in there… freaking out about how we would never defeat the human elite that had been destroying Elderan for a hundred years.

  “Should I check on him?” I asked.

  Both of them looked confused. “I’m really… not sure,” Lio admitted.

  But we didn’t have to figure it out because a moment later, Rhyion came bursting through the door with a book in his hand.

  “I’ve got it,” Rhyion said with a smile.

&n
bsp; Now we all looked at each other in confusion. “Got what?” I asked him.

  “The answer to our problems.” He laid the large book out into the palms of his hands and handed it to me to look at. “You see this?”

  It seemed to be an old spell written in a language I could not read.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s a spell we can use to destroy all of the magic Robert has kept.”

  I was floored. “There’s a spell for that… in one of these old books?”

  “Yes. What Robert has done with your magic is probably more technologically advanced, but the technique isn’t really old. People have been trying to steal witches’ magic from the dawn of time. And occasionally, they succeeded. But witches discovered a way to reclaim that magic… to basically absorb it again, so the person who stole it is essentially left with nothing.”

  “I… I can do that? I can just take it all back?”

  “Yes! I mean, we’ll have to figure out where he’s hiding it all, of course…”

  I grinned. “I know.”

  “You know what?” Angelo piped up.

  "I know where he’s hiding it. I know.”

  “Where?” Lio asked urgently.

  “It’s where they kept me when they kidnapped me. So, actually, I’m not sure exactly where… but obviously you guys do, since you rescued me.”

  “Yes,” Angelo acknowledged. “We know exactly where that is.”

  “It’s under lock and key, though. There are guards outside—”

  “We can take them,” Angelo said confidently.

  “—And you can only get in using Robert’s handprint.”

  “But… can’t you get in no matter what?” Rhyion asked. “I mean, you’ve seen the room, you’ve been there in a dream… Can’t you just teleport us straight in?”

  I hadn’t even thought of that.

  “Yeah… I guess you’re right. I could do that. In fact, Robert wouldn’t even know we were breaking in. So it would probably go pretty smoothly.”

  “It’s settled, then!” Angelo said excitedly. “We’ll destroy all the magic as soon as possible, and you’ll fight Robert right after! We could have Elderan back in less than a week!”

  Both Lio and I grinned at hearing this, but Rhyion didn’t look as happy.

  “No, it’s not going to work like that," he stated, very matter-of-factly. “We still don’t have a plan for winning over the general population. We cannot attack Robert until we have one. If we kill him and overthrow the government first, we will never be accepted by most of Elderan. There will be widespread backlash, maybe even revolts. We have to be smart about this.”

  I nodded. “Rhyion’s right… we should take our time. We have to establish things first. I still need to make some big decisions on how I’m going to run the government anyway. There is absolutely no reason to rush.”

  Angelo didn’t say anything, but it was clear he thought there was some reason to rush… He was done with waiting. And I understood him because so was I.

  It would be nice to rush in and defeat Robert, it truly would. But being with Rhyion so much had made me less hotheaded and more practical than before. I had to do this the right way, the responsible way.

  The way that made me a leader.

  “I'll keep studying, and so will Rhyion. I’m sure in a few months I’ll have an established plan for my future government, and he’ll have come up with a way to change public opinion. Let’s just take things slow.”

  6

  “Okay, take a look at this.” I handed Rhyion a sketch I’d made of a pyramid, and inside the pyramid were the many cabinet positions I’d decided to factor into my government, all listed from most important to least.

  Rhyion, Angelo, and Lio were at the top pyramid, all listed simply as my advisors. They had the power, like I would, to give commands to other cabinet members or to suggest new laws. I could delegate a lot to them.

  I didn’t have anyone else’s name in any other position because, obviously, I didn’t know anyone else. Which made it a bit complicated when it came to deciding who was going to take part in my new governmental body.

  It used to be that a witch chose every single cabinet position. When a witch or wizard entered as King or Queen, they had full reign. Which was fine, nobody ever complained because for the most part witches and wizards made selfless decisions. They were wise beyond their years. They did what was best for the country.

  I was going to take another route, though.

  Nobody may have complained back then about the fact that witches and wizards ruled everything, but I times had changed. After one hundred years of horrific rule that led the country into ruin, I thought people might want to have a little more say in politics.

  So I was going to do something different: I’d let the people choose the cabinet members.

  When I first told the boys this, they all seemed a little skeptical that I was going to put the power in the hands of the people. But I explained to them that this was likely the best thing we could do to raise public opinion of us as leaders. We give them a voice—a say in their own lives—and they’d be more likely to welcome us as leaders.

  One thing wouldn’t change, though. Nobody was going to vote on who was royalty. The next King or Queen would be the most powerful witch or wizard and would be one of my children, of course. Whoever was the strongest and could prove it in a series of tests would be the person who ruled over Elderan. That was how it had always been done, and I wouldn’t be changing that part of it.

  And the King or Queen would get to choose their own advisors. But every other position would be left up to the people to decide.

  We’d hold elections very soon after I took power, allowing a few months for people to campaign for positions they wanted. I hoped to also extend this to smaller districts in Elderan, creating a lot of smaller governments to act within my large one.

  It was all pretty tricky, and I doubted I’d get it all running smoothly right away. It would take some time, and there were a lot of kinks to work out. I knew that.

  But the important thing was, we were getting something going. A government that was going to outlast even me. We would hopefully be creating a fair, honest, trustworthy government that would take care of its people for years to come.

  There were a lot of other things I wanted to do to improve Elderan. There were plenty of social welfare programs that needed to be put into place, laws created to ensure that the poorest of the country got paid a living wage, emergency food banks with free food to anyone who needed it…

  But that would all come later, and as Rhyion liked to remind me constantly, much of this was going to need to be delegated to the appropriate cabinet members and subsequently voted on. I couldn’t do it all myself.

  But I had no doubt I was going to build a better Elderan. Slowly but surely, we would get there.

  And it was weird, but as I planned for all the ways Elderan was going to be a better, safer place to live… I felt a lot of guilt lift from me. The guilt for those that had died for my cause, who suffered for me. It still weighed on me, of course. It would forever be a reminder to me to do my best and make sure their sacrifices were worth it.

  But more and more these days, it felt like their sacrifices would be worth it. That millions of people were going to be happier, healthier, and safer because of what they did. Lives were going to change, and not just the ones that were currently in existence, but future generations! I hoped for thousands of years of prosperity after the greed of the human elite was wiped away from government.

  Rhyion looked over my little pyramid sketch and gave a soft smile. “This looks great, Annabelle.”

  “Really? You think?” I grinned.

  “Yeah, you’ve been doing a lot of research lately, and the plan you have in place is solid. I’m sure there will be problems that arise once we are actually putting this into place, but for now, I think you’ve done most of what you can do.”

  “Really?” I asked e
xcitedly. “You think I’m ready, then?”

  “I do.” He no longer said that with a smile, though. He looked upset.

  “So… why does it seem like that’s a bad thing?” I asked.

  “Because I’m not ready.” He sighed. “I still don’t have any idea of how we’re going to make the people accept you.”

  “Oh… well, that’s okay. It can wait.”

  Rhyion shook his head. “For how long? Because frankly, Annabelle, I have no idea when I’m going to actually figure this out or if it’s even in my capabilities.” He looked at me seriously for a moment. “I need you to ask your mom.”

  “What? Ask her what, exactly?"

  "If she has any ideas, if she is aware of any magic that we could use… I know this is more in my area of expertise and I don't want to ask, but frankly, I’m desperate here. We’re all desperate to do this. I think the whole village is eagerly awaiting your battle with Robert, and they should be. We’re ready… we just need this one key piece.”

  “Okay, sure,” I told him. “I’ll ask her.”

  If I was being honest, I doubted whether talking to my mother was going to make a big difference here. What would she know that Rhyion didn’t? But Rhyion was clearly feeling so frustrated that I didn’t want to ask him that.

  “Just tell her that we need to make the people see Robert for who he truly is. They don't know the real history, and we need to show them in a way that is going to have them totally convinced. If we just come in and tell them they’ve been lied to for years without any proof, they’d have no reason to believe it.”

  “Okay, yeah… I’ll let her know.”

  Rhyion nodded, but with a look of disappointment.

  I walked around his desk and sat on his lap.

  “Hey, babe, we’re going to figure this out,” I said. “We will.”

  “Yeah, I know…” But he didn’t seem like he did.

  I kissed his cheek. “How often did I doubt myself? How often did you assure me I’d one day be the Queen of Elderan?”

  “Many times. And you will be.”

  “Yes, I will be. Because I have your help. And Lio’s and Angelo’s. We’re a team, and we’re going to destroy Robert. We’re so close, baby.”