A Queen Comes to Power: An Heir Comes to Rise Book 2

by C. C. Peñaranda

  Nik didn’t process any of the last dose of history as his mind rang with one blaring question he was terrified to know the answer to, yet had spent a century searching for: “What happened to my mother?” Tension curled up his spine, turning his whole body rigid as Aurialis slid her gaze to him, eyes filled with apology—the kind that braced a person to receive the world-shattering truth.

  “I am sorry for the dire fate that fell on her, Prince, and that I now must be the one to give you the truth you have longed for. The King of High Farrow learned of your mother’s intentions and without his right mind, only saw a threat, not the female he loved and was soul-bonded to.”

  Nik trembled all over. The Spirit’s next words felt worse than any physical blow in all his centuries of existence.

  “The king had her executed. Privately. And blamed a silent intruder to swiftly divert all suspicion from himself.”

  A hot rage consumed him as he seethed through his teeth. “You’re lying.”

  “She’s not.” Tauria’s quiet interrupting voice made him snap his head to her. She winced, but he couldn’t subside the anger he felt at the implication of his father. “I was there,” she barely more than whispered.

  Nik ripped his hand from hers in shock, and Tauria whimpered. His eyes were wide, and he couldn’t help that he looked at her as if she were a stranger in his disbelief.

  “That day, I went to seek him out in his study, finding the door slightly ajar and hearing voices inside. I shouldn’t have, but I stayed to listen for just a moment. He spoke of a plan, a tale of an intruder, that I found alarming, so I tried to catch a glimpse inside, and then I saw her. She was already gone. There was so much blood. On her…and on the king.

  “I panicked, and I ran. It wasn’t long after my arrival in the castle, and if that was what he was capable of doing to his mate…” Tauria’s voice choked with grief and terror, but Nik couldn’t comfort her or find an ounce of sympathy while his own emotions where overshadowed by her betrayal. She had harbored the secret from him all this time. “I’m so sorry, Nik. I ached to tell you straight away, but you were broken when the news surfaced… If you knew it was your father, I feared what the knowledge would do to you. I feared what he would do to you if you knew.” Tauria’s face was desolate and pleading.

  Nik shook his head but couldn’t stand to even look at her.

  “Nik, please,” she sobbed.

  “All this time…” He trailed off, unable to finish, not even knowing what to say to her. He wanted to rage, shout, and destroy anything in his path. Tauria’s was a different kind of betrayal. She knew what she was doing, what she was keeping from him, despite knowing how much it meant.

  But his father…

  Nik turned his attention to Aurialis. “You said my mother thought you could reverse the damage to my father. Can you still?” he asked, low and calm, swallowing the eruption of emotion it prickled his skin to withhold.

  The Spirit nodded, but not reassuringly. “I could. It would have been a simple reversal if I had the chance when your mother tried. But after all this time, his spirit would be broken. Everything he’s done under the influence would still burden his soul. He may very well beg for death as soon as I gave him his free will back.”

  There was no silver lining to the grim revelation. Nik wanted to kill his father for what he did to his mother…yet a conflicted part of him had to be sure there was no salvation from the demon that plagued him.

  Faythe’s voice distracted him from his violent thoughts. “Who commands his will?”

  It was the killer question. He’d become too consumed by his own grief and anger to even consider the master evil that held more influence than they could have possibly imagined. Nik assumed it was Valgard, their returned-from-the-dead High Lord Mordecai. But Aurialis came out with a different name—one no one in the room could have come remotely close to uttering.

  “Marvellas.”

  Chapter 39

  Faythe

  Faythe stumbled back a step in ice-cold horror. All this time, she had been connected to the name Marvellas as if it were a blessing, an honor, to be called her heir. Now, it took on a whole new meaning with the unfathomable revelation the Spirit of Souls was the evil at large, puppeteering the kingdoms against each other.

  With every evil born, a way to destroy it is conceived in turn.

  It had been right there in front of her since her last encounter with Aurialis. Faythe felt dizzy at the concept. This was bigger than her—bigger than any of them. To think Aurialis believed she was destined to stop Marvellas because she shared some distant bloodline…it made sense. Yet at the same time, she was just one person, one human, with a mind ability she highly doubted would even be a slight threat in the face of its master origin. What she also remembered from her last conversation with Aurialis: the location of Marvellas was completely unknown.

  It would be logical to assume she was at the heart of the conflict in Valgard or either of the two conquered kingdoms. Marvellas would be in fae form with unimaginable power. It would be hard to conceal it from everyone, and with some investigation—very dangerous investigation, probing into enemy territory—perhaps she could be traced.

  “I am afraid I cannot stay in your realm any longer,” Aurialis said through the dismal silence that settled.

  Seeing her form becoming more transparent, Faythe asked desperately, “How do I stop her?”

  “First, you must stop the King of High Farrow,” Aurialis answered sadly. “He must never get his hands on the Riscillius, Faythe. He cannot get to the other ruins, or all will be lost if they reach Marvellas.”

  With that last haunting statement, the Spirit was gone.

  The light drastically dimmed in the cottage, so much so that it could have been mistaken for nightfall. She let her eyes adjust before scanning her companions who all looked to her.

  Except Nik. He was staring at the ground in his own internal hurricane of emotion. After everything he had learned today about his father and his mother… Faythe felt the overwhelming need to comfort him, and it pained her that she didn’t know how.

  Tauria was silently distraught but held herself together, and Faythe knew it was only in consideration of everyone else in the room.

  So much pain, despair, and anger in one room, and it extended to so many of them and for different reasons. Faythe was struggling to hold herself together and longed to be alone in the confines of her rooms, or in the forest where she could scream at the top of her lungs and listen to her anguish echo back to her. She took a moment to glance at every grim face around her. Her friends, even Reylan, who had proven to have her back more than once now.

  Aurialis said the king had to be stopped first, and with that warning, the ringing reminder of the Dresair’s words followed.

  In your quest to stop the King of High Farrow, one of those close to you will forfeit their life…

  She couldn’t stand to look at them any longer. She wanted to push them all away, shut them all out, if it meant they would be safe from the inevitable fate. But she knew it would do nothing to stop the chain of events that was already in motion.

  Chapter 40

  Nikalias

  Nik leaned with both hands against the fireplace, watching the blue flames fight against each other like the rage of emotions within him. Above all else, he was heartbroken. With more than one cause.

  The first was the thought of his mother and how cruelly she was taken from him by the king she trusted, the mate she loved. It would have been easier to despise the murderer and seek vengeance if it were some faceless assassin like he’d been led to believe.

  The next was his father. He’d spent a century by his side, following his orders, yet it was never really him, and Nik hated himself for not seeing it sooner. He always knew his father’s heart had turned cold and never thought to question it deeper. He’d let his kingdom be run by a demon and stood by his mother’s murderer.

  The last and most prominent stab to the heart was Ta
uria. All this time, she knew what really happened to his mother that night, had seen the moment her life was taken, yet she’d watched it torment him for decades without saying a word. It was a betrayal he couldn’t bear.

  A quiet knock sounded at his door. Tauria hadn’t stopped to ask before entering his rooms since the first few years after she arrived in High Farrow. It was a mutual trust they’d fallen into. Until now.

  He knew it was the princess—could scent her approach from halfway down the hall. Nik intended to immediately cast her out when the door opened slowly and he heard her slip inside. Yet despite his resentment, his anger dulled in her presence, and he didn’t have it in him to shout. His room was scattered with loose parchments and broken fragments of any meaningless item that was in his path when he first returned. He didn’t care and didn’t move when Tauria took a few tentative steps toward him. He kept his back to her.

  “Nik,” she said in barely a whisper. She didn’t immediately continue with a sentence.

  His grip on the mantel tightened. Hearing her voice only made the pain worse.

  “I’m so sorry—”

  “Don’t.” He pushed off the fireplace and straightened, but he didn’t take his eyes off the dancing flames as he slid his hands into his pockets. “Don’t bother, Tauria. I know why you did it. You thought you knew what was best for me.” He turned to her then and kept his face calm despite the distraught creases on her golden-brown skin pulling at something painful within him. “You were wrong.”

  Her face fell even more at his words, but he wasn’t sorry. He had trusted her, and she had kept hold of a world-shattering secret this whole time—one he had every right to know.

  “I was young and afraid. Your father had just offered me refuge from my own nightmare. I was scared of what he would do if he found out I knew. But I was even more terrified of what the knowledge would do to you, Nik. I only wanted to protect you from that burden,” she said, her voice wavering with each sentence.

  Nik had only ever seen the princess cry once, over the loss of her parents and her kingdom. Once. Then never again. She was resilient, strong, and brave. It broke him to see her grief now and to know he was the root cause of it.

  “You should have told me,” he said in defeat, a plea made far too late.

  “We weren’t close then. I didn’t know if you would believe me. You were angry, emotional, and you would have tried to find a way to kill your father for what he did, so then he would have you executed too.”

  Nik tore his eyes away from her desperate look. “I don’t know what I would have done,” he admitted.

  Even now, knowing the horrifying secret, he was conflicted about what to do with it. A demon wearing the king’s face had killed his mother. In his heart, he knew that. But Aurialis’s words still rang in his head—that his soul was beyond salvation, that death would be a mercy for the fae trapped within the evil grasp.

  “I need time. To figure out what to do and come to terms with it. You don’t have to explain yourself, Tauria, but I trusted you, and you betrayed that. You watched me agonize over who killed her for decades, and still, you sat silent on the answer to the one question that tore me apart inside.” He looked into her sparkling brown eyes again as he finished. “I would never have kept something like from you no matter how hard it would be to tell you. I would have helped you to deal with it instead.”

  To his surprise, the princess’s desolate look steeled. Her posture straightened, and he knew her well enough to know he’d unwittingly struck a chord.

  “You can’t say that,” she said with a hard edge. “You weren’t on the run with your life from your home kingdom, hadn’t found yourself suddenly in foreign lands where the king who offered you shelter turned out to be a cold-blooded murderer. Your survival didn’t depend on the will of that king. Until you know what it’s like to be scared, young, and alone—yes, alone, Nik, because you weren’t yet as dear to me then as you are now—you do not get to tell me what you would or would not have done.” Her shoulders fell again, pain returning to her eyes. “Years went by, and I should have told you sooner. It kills me that you found out this way instead. But now you know, and I understand your grief. I’ll accept it if you need time and space. What I will not accept is the blame for being vulnerable and afraid, the blame for thinking of you, or the blame for wanting to protect your heart.”

  Nik blinked, taken aback by her passion. With every word she uttered, he found his anger toward her start to dissolve.

  Before he could reply, Tauria twisted on her heel and stalked for the door.

  He didn’t stop her. He didn’t know what he wanted to say in response. The call for her to stay, for them to talk it out into the small hours like old times, stuck in his throat as he watched her disappear. The harsh slam of the door was the last echo of her presence.

  Chapter 41

  Faythe

  Faythe walked the halls without conscious direction as her mind reeled over the impossible, the horrifying, and the damned. She couldn’t get the thoughts to stop and swayed in rapid, overwhelming panic at everything that seemed so far out of her control.

  Eventually, she had to stop walking and pressed her back to one of the walls while she focused on her breathing and wild heart. She tipped her head back and clamped her eyes shut, begging her mind to soothe the storm of emotion that threatened to undo her completely. A tear slid down her cheek, and she clenched her teeth in frustration. Her nails purposefully cut into her palm, hoping the pain would drown the sadness. She was glad for the quiet. No guards loitered in the dark hallway off the main route through the castle.

  Just as she was beginning to regain some of her composure, a dark chuckle seeped like poison through the silence. Her eyes snapped open, and her heart leaped at the sight of Captain Varis, alone and creeping toward her with cruel amusement at her obvious distress.

  “All become too much for you, has it?” he taunted, coming to a halt in front of her.

  Usually, she found the strength to muster her bravado in the face of the monster, but right now, she felt completely at his emotional mercy with the heavy weight of everything else. His presence only added to her rising anxiety, and her chest rose and fell deeply with it.

  “This is my favorite version of you, Faythe. The real you, beneath all that insufferable arrogance.”

  Faythe was still backed against the wall, and the captain closed in like a suffocating shadow that filled her lungs with each step.

  “Weak, pathetic human.” His hand came up, and she lost all her bravery under the flood of fear.

  Thinking he was going to strike her while there was no one around to witness the brutality, she closed her eyes and flinched. Varis’s hand went to her face, but not with force. His repulsive fingers traced the wet trail of her traitorous escaped tear. She held her breath, trembling now, as she had no fight left in her exhaustion and defeat.

  Help. She needed help. And for once, she wasn’t afraid to admit it. She prayed for an escape while her veins pulsed and nausea filled her stomach. Someone, anyone, please.

  “Captain.”

  At the voice that carried down the hall, Faythe snapped her eyes open, breathing a sigh of immense relief despite the malice that laced the word. When she turned her head toward Reylan, his eyes were livid. He stormed the distance to them, and Varis’s eyes also flashed in anger at the interruption. She knew he didn’t hold high respects for the general at the best of times, and the feeling was clearly mutual.

  “You will distance yourself from her,” he warned, low, dark, and calm, stopping deliberately close to Varis.

  The challenge for dominance and the fury that rippled from both males trembled every nerve cell in Faythe’s body. She shrank farther into the wall as if it could swallow her whole.

  “We were only talking—weren’t we, Faythe?” the captain said playfully, but he didn’t take his eyes off the general.

  She said nothing.

  Reylan advanced a step, the darkening of his sa
pphire eyes frightening. Wisely, Varis yielded a step back in response, but rage twitched his expression, and Faythe was surprised he held onto the reins of his violence. Her heart was in her throat at the tension. She almost wanted to put herself between them, knowing how dangerous the captain could be. But Reylan didn’t flinch, didn’t fear him in the slightest.

  “You don’t speak her name. You don’t cross her path. And if you dare raise a hand to her again, you’ll find yourself without it…perhaps without a life, depending on Faythe’s mercy.”

  They stared off for a few long, agonizing seconds. Faythe held her breath in painful anticipation at the way Reylan challenged the captain. She was sure Varis had never been belittled, threatened, in such a way before, and she didn’t have to try to feel his immense rage piercing her in nauseating waves. The captain’s face flexed and creased as he struggled to hold in his hatred. To her great relief and shock, however, his head bowed in a small nod of obedience—something she didn’t think she’d ever seen from the wicked demon.

  “Remember your station, Captain.” Reylan’s last words left no room for response.

  Varis’s jaw flexed, but he turned on his heel, his deadly glare locking onto her for a split second before he was storming away from them both.

  As soon as he was out of sight, Faythe released a long breath, finally letting her stiff posture relax now she was in the presence of safety. She turned her gaze to Reylan, finding his deep blue eyes laced with concern but still balanced on the razor’s edge of anger.

  “Are you all right?” His question was quiet while he diffused his wrath.

  She almost came apart, the seams of her grief close to breaking the longer she held everything to herself. The knowledge of the Dresair and everything she knew about her ties to Marvellas’s evil. But she couldn’t tell him, not without risk to his life, and that thought alone was enough for her to drown out the need to share.