The Kingdoms of Evernow Box Set

by Heidi Catherine

  Ariel nodded, seeming to be gathering her senses.

  “Did you kill the King?” asked River.

  Ariel shook her head in such a way that River was certain she was telling the truth.

  “Then who did?”

  “You know who did,” said Ariel, plainly.

  “Edison?”

  Ariel nodded. “I couldn’t save him.”

  “Nobody could. Whatever that poison was, it was strong.”

  “I don’t mean the King,” said Ariel. “Although, I couldn’t save him either, as I didn’t realize he was being poisoned. I mean Edison. I couldn’t save him from himself. I tried so hard to raise him to be a good person. But he was determined to rule the kingdom and he was in such a hurry to remove anyone in his path. That’s why he poisoned the King’s soup. And Tate’s.”

  River’s breath caught in her throat as she stepped away from Ariel. “I need to check on Tate.”

  “I told you he’s okay,” said Ariel. “I swapped the soup headed for his cell.”

  “You swapped it?”

  Ariel nodded. “With Edison’s bowl. I had a cook make a distraction and I made the switch. I figured that if whatever soup he made was good enough for Tate, then it was good enough for him to eat himself.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” asked River. Didn’t murderers normally die with their secrets? Why would she confess so easily to having killed her son?

  “Secrets can eat a person alive. I can’t carry another one.” Ariel was openly crying now with silent tears sliding down her face. “My entire life has been a lie.”

  “But why me?” she asked. Surely Ariel had other people she could confide in.

  “Because your soul is light. I trust you. And you’re carrying a very important child in your belly. I can feel the goodness of his young soul from here.”

  River blinked as her hands flew to her belly. Could this possibly be true? Was she really pregnant with Tate’s child?

  “The King had Edison fetch you a fertility elixir from Wintergreen,” said Ariel. “Only as soon as I smelled it, I knew the Alchemist had been playing games. Fertility elixirs should smell strongly of clary sage, but the one you were given smelled more like lavender. He gave Edison a calming elixir instead. I imagine he wasn’t behaving too calmly when he asked for it. But it seemed it didn’t matter. For you’re carrying my grandchild regardless of the elixir you breathed in.”

  “Your grandchild?” asked River. “But Edison isn’t the father.”

  “That’s right,” said Ariel. “Edison wasn’t my son. Tate is.”

  ARIEL

  THE BEFORE

  Ariel looked at baby Edison asleep in his basket and marveled at his perfection. His sweet little nose, the faint shadow of his budding eyebrows, his dark eyelashes… she absorbed every detail of him, letting the bliss of his arrival sink in.

  He’d only been part of this world for a matter of hours and already she couldn’t imagine her life without him. He was perfect and his soul was good. That part was a relief. She’d wondered what she was going to do if her own child had a dark soul. But even when he’d been in her belly, she’d known this wouldn’t be possible. His goodness had seeped into her core and she’d loved being pregnant with him.

  Her husband, Jacob, had gone to the palace to share the news. She’d practically had to push him out the door away from his son, to go. But rules were rules. Every baby born on royal land had to be recorded. Besides, the Queen would want to know when Ariel would be able to resume her duties as the herbalist. Jacob had been doing a good job in the past few days when Ariel had taken to her bed, but it wasn’t the same. His heart wasn’t in the tonics, it was with her. And now with Edison.

  She looked to the window, wondering how long it would be before he returned. She’d enjoyed watching him cradle his newborn son in his strong arms.

  Hearing the sound of a baby cry, Ariel blinked, and looked at Edison who remained fast asleep. Did babies cry in their sleep? She hoped he wasn’t having some kind of newborn nightmare. Her breasts ached to feed him and the sound of his cry had only made this worse.

  But when Jacob appeared at the door, she realized it wasn’t Edison who’d made the sound. Jacob was standing there with another baby clutched in his arms and a Guardian standing beside him.

  “Jacob?” His name became a question, as she searched his face for answers. What was going on? This baby was wrapped in a blue silk blanket, and even from her bed, she could see the anger in its scrunched up red face.

  “This is the Queen’s baby,” said Jacob, bringing the child to her. “Birthed at almost the same time as Edison, only the Queen isn’t well. She lost blood and is confined to her bed. She’s… unconscious and unable to feed her son.”

  Ariel adjusted herself in her bed, fearing the words her husband would say next. There was only one reason he’d bring a baby to her in these circumstances.

  “When the King heard of Edison’s birth, he commanded you to come to the palace, although I explained that you were unable to leave your bed. So, he had me bring the Prince to you. He’s hungry and his mother can’t feed him.”

  “Nor can I,” she said, raising her voice above the sound of the baby’s cries.

  “His name’s Prince Tate.” Jacob perched on the side of Ariel’s bed and held him out to her. “He’ll perish without milk and the King will hold you responsible. He said to tell you that Edison will suffer the same fate as the Prince. He has to live. Please, Ariel, you have to do this. We don’t have a choice.”

  Ariel glanced at the Guardian, wishing to speak her mind freely. “Please, will you leave us?” she asked him. “This is a private matter.”

  “My instructions are to not let the Prince out of my sight,” said the Guardian, shifting his feet.

  “A woman needs her privacy.” Ariel unbuttoned her nightdress and looked directly at the Guardian who flushed a color similar to the baby Prince’s angry face.

  Jacob handed her the hungry bundle and went to the Guardian. “She can’t harm the Prince. That would be no different to her harming her own child. You heard what the King said. They suffer the same fate.”

  “I suppose so,” the Guardian muttered, stepping out the door. “I’ll be right out here though, so don’t try anything or we’ll all be dead.”

  With the Guardian gone, Ariel dropped her voice and locked eyes with her husband.

  “I can’t do this,” she hissed. “It’s not right.”

  “This is our future King,” Jacob said. “The King’s only child. And he’s put his life—and our son’s life—in your hands.”

  She could see the fear in Jacob’s eyes. Surely the King wouldn’t harm Edison. He was an innocent baby. But she also knew the King’s heart was dark.

  “Hand him to me,” she said. “And comfort Edison. He’s starting to wake with all this noise. We don’t need two hungry babies. I’m not sure I have enough milk for that.”

  Jacob placed Prince Tate in her arms and Ariel studied him, noticing the opposite feeling rushing through her to the one she’d felt when she held her own child.

  Edison drew her in. Prince Tate repelled her.

  She knew this Prince was innocent, not having had enough time to commit an evil thought, let alone an evil deed. But she couldn’t ignore the feeling that his soul was dark. Was that just because he was crying? Was it because it was the first child she’d held since falling in love with Edison? No, this child had a soul that was a darker version of the man who’d sired him. As evil as their current King was, this Prince surpassed him.

  “What if I don’t have enough milk left over for Edison?” she asked, desperate for an excuse not to feed the Prince.

  “You will.” Having lifted Edison from his basket, Jacob pressed his lips to their child’s sweet forehead. “Please, Ariel, just do it.”

  “We could run away,” said Ariel. “If we climb out the window and head west to Wintergreen, we could be safely across the border before anybody notices we’re
missing.”

  “Ariel.” Jacob’s voice was firm now. “We won’t make it even a mile before we’re noticed. There’s no choice here. Besides, you can’t just leave this baby to die.”

  Ariel cradled the Prince with one hand and finished unbuttoning her nightdress with the other. Could they leave him to die? She couldn’t help but feel their kingdom would be far better off if they did exactly that.

  Barely able to look at what she was doing, she pressed the Queen’s child to her breast.

  He slurped and gurgled, suckling from her and drawing out goodness that her body had made for her own son. A child whose heart was filled with light, not the blackness in this Prince’s soul. But it was her son she was doing this for. She had to keep him safe. And if this was the only way she could do it, then so be it.

  Edison was awake in his father’s arms now and crying softly, wanting what she was giving to someone else.

  This wasn’t right. None of this was right.

  Forcing her eyes to the child on her breast, she looked at the tiny silk gown he wore, another contrast to the rough woolen vest keeping Edison’s chest warm. There was nothing about these two babies that was the same, apart from their age and size. Their lives were going to take two very different trajectories. One would be King and the other his servant. For that was what the herbalist was. A servant, if not in title, but in reality. Ariel worked for the King. What he was forcing her to do now was proof that he owned her body and he owned her soul. And one day this small child would own the souls of their entire kingdom, able to do with them as he pleased.

  Ice gripped Ariel’s spine. The reign of this child would spell the end of peaceful life in The Bay of Laurel. He’d be their downfall. The single worst thing to happen to this kingdom. And here she was keeping him alive with the milk her body had made for a child whose heart was pure. It wasn’t right. Edison would make a wonderful King if their roles were reversed. How could the universe be so stupid and cruel?

  But what could she do? Stop feeding this child and let him perish, sacrificing the life of her own child for the good of the kingdom? But the King would only go on to have more children, and their souls could be even darker than the child she currently held in her arms. That solved nothing. And besides, she could never sacrifice Edison’s life. She’d sacrifice her own life before she did that. She’d give up everything.

  The ice down her spine turned glacial as she realized that perhaps that was exactly what she needed to do.

  Ariel needed to give up everything to save the kingdom. Including her child.

  JACOB

  THE BEFORE

  Jacob stirred the large pot and drew in the aroma. He’d gotten pretty good at making tonics, while Ariel had been busy with the two babies. It made a nice change from how he usually spent his days, braiding belts and ribbons from hemp for the Guardians, a skill he’d learned from his own father. It was a skill he hoped to pass to Edison one day, even if he was going to have to give most of his attention to learning to make tonics. Because one day Edison would be the herbalist for the kingdom. A huge honor that’d been passed down the generations. Jacob had known when he’d married Ariel that this would be the future for his children and he was fine with that. Making the tonics was vital for the survival of the kingdom. One look at the Guardians told him that. Nobody would invade them with an army so strong.

  But still, the idea of passing on the skill of braiding warmed his heart. Edison might be Ariel’s son, but he was his son, too.

  He hadn’t thought it possible to love another person as much as he loved Edison. He’d already braided him a cord identical to the one he wore himself for Edison to wear when he was older. A symbol to the world that they were bonded by blood. He’d also made him a set of woolen dolls for while he was still young. There was a King and a Queen, a Prince and a Princess and two Guardian dolls. They’d turned out beautifully and he looked forward to seeing Edison play with them one day.

  As soon as Ariel had been well enough, she’d been taken to the palace to continue to care for the Prince while the Queen recovered. It’d been days now and he missed her terribly, but he’d finally received news that the Queen was waking and there was hope she’d be able to feed her own child. Soon, his wife and son would return home and they could be a family once more.

  He added some rosemary to the tonic, thinking about how proud he was of Ariel for the part she’d played in keeping the Guardians strong. Her tonics were even more powerful than those her ancestors had made. Her abilities surpassed them because she didn’t just follow her recipes when she made them, she followed her intuition. And nobody’s intuition was sharper than his wife’s.

  Dipping a spoon into the tonic, he tasted it to make sure he had the balance of ingredients right. Satisfied he had the recipe perfected, he lifted the pot from the flames and set it aside to cool.

  He’d done a good job. Ariel would be happy with him.

  He looked up to see his wife standing in the doorway, a gurgling bundle of blankets in her arms. His beautiful son.

  “You’re back,” he said, wiping his hands on a cloth and smiling.

  She looked pale with dark circles under her eyes. Was she crying? Had she become attached to Prince Tate and leaving him was more difficult than she’d expected?

  “Ariel, what’s wrong?”

  He went to her and took Edison from her arms so she could sit down.

  “Please forgive me,” she said, collapsing into a chair and burying her head in her hands.

  “I don’t understand.” He shook his head just as Edison let out an almighty cry and he looked down to see what was troubling his son.

  Only, it wasn’t his son.

  The baby he held in his arms, who was wearing a woolen vest and wrapped in a simple brown blanket, wasn’t Edison. It was unmistakably the baby Prince.

  “I don’t understand,” he said again, jiggling the Prince to quieten him down. “Where’s Edison?”

  Ariel lifted her tear-stained face from her hands and looked at him.

  “You’re holding Edison,” she said. “This is your son.”

  He shook his head and looked down at the baby. “This isn’t Edison.”

  “It is now.” Her voice was a whisper. “And your son is a Prince. He’ll make the best ruler the kingdom has ever seen.”

  “Ariel, what have you done?” He could feel the panic rising in his voice as well as his chest. This couldn’t be happening.

  “You can’t tell anybody.” She grabbed for him, but he stepped back. “I knew as soon as I saw the Prince that he had a dark soul. He was destined to destroy the kingdom and everyone in it. The more I cared for him, the more convinced I became of it. I couldn’t let him be King. Too many lives depended on it.”

  “You swapped the Prince for our son?” Jacob kicked the table leg, wishing he had free hands to flip it over. “How could you do that? How?”

  “Nobody knew those babies except me. Nobody took the time to look at them, not even the King himself. The Queen would have, but she was asleep. So, I swapped their clothes and laid them in each other’s cribs and nobody noticed. When the Queen woke, I placed our child in her arms and she cried tears of love and joy. She’ll take good care of him, I know she will. He’ll have a much better life in the palace than we can give him here.”

  Jacob couldn’t believe what he was hearing. This wasn’t happening. This was a nightmare he was having while he was awake.

  “You have to swap them back,” he said, trying to hand her the baby, no longer interested in holding him.

  “I can’t.” She took the baby and soothed him. “The Queen knows Edison now as her own. If she finds out what I’ve done, that she’s fed a commoner from her breast, then all our lives will be at risk. It’s too late. What’s done is done.”

  “Ariel. You gave away our child!” Tears of his own pricked at his eyes now and he took a few steps back. “Our child!”

  “I had no choice.” She lifted her head in a determined way h
e hadn’t seen before. “We’ll raise this child as our son. If we give him enough love and attention, we can make him good. We can fill his heart with light. This is Edison now.”

  “And what of our son? Our real son? What will become of him?” Jacob combed his fingers through his dark hair.

  “He’s Prince Tate and one day he’ll be King,” said Ariel. “The best King, for he’ll rule with kindness.”

  “I cannot raise another man’s son, while I watch another man raise mine,” he said, with yet more realization dawning on him.

  Ariel had done a terrible thing. She’d made a horrible mistake that couldn’t be undone and it had the very worst consequences. There was no way he was going to stick around to watch it. When he looked at that child in his wife’s arms, he knew he couldn’t raise him with love. He hated him.

  He turned and left the kitchen. He left the tavern. And before long, he left the palace grounds.

  Turning to look at the palace looming in the distance, he said a silent goodbye to his son. A boy who’d grow to know himself as Tate. A boy who’d one day be King.

  A boy who’d never wear the necklace he made him or know how much his father loved him.

  EDISON

  THE BEFORE

  Edison straightened his back, lifting his head, wishing he was taller. He was only a young boy, with plenty of years left to grow, but it wasn’t happening fast enough for his liking. He regularly downed a cup of the Guardians’ tonic when his mother wasn’t looking, but it didn’t seem to be helping. He needed the right genetics to go with it, and sadly he’d been born to a short and somewhat dim-witted woman and a father who took off the moment he was born, leaving him with nothing but a hemp necklace to remember him by. He hadn’t gotten off to a good start.

  He walked toward the palace, spotting Pip who was waiting under the plum tree for him, clutching that princess doll she seemed to like so much.