My heart pounded in my chest so violently it was like the beating of a drum. I waited for the loss of my will, waited for the desire to please him in all ways to suck me under. I waited. And I waited.
And then I felt a flush of warmth begin to wind through me. Starting first at my toes, then moving up my legs, across my chest, down my arms, and finally spreading through my skull.
It was the kiss of magic. The legacy of my kind raged through me and with it the ancient knowledge of truth.
A morphling would blossom beneath her first lover’s hand, taking on the best attributes of that male, but there was a secret truth revealed to me only now. A chanting I heard whisper through my life’s blood.
Not only had I taken on the strength of Charles’ ring as my own, but I was stronger than him. Stronger and in possession of my own mind.
This then was the real truth of the morphling. A secret all of my kind kept hidden; should any male know the real truth of the morphling, none would take us. Would make us their own.
Smiling, I trailed a finger down his cheek and whispered to him, “Touch me again, and I will cut your head off.”
Blue eyes widened first with shock then with panic. Jumping off me, he raced for the bell pull, no doubt to call in a servant and have me taken away.
I sat up. “Stop right there!”
The moment I spoke the words, I felt the flow of power ripple through the room like hottest flame, engulfing him completely. The whites of his eyes grew, all color leeched from his face as the veracity of who I really was hammered home.
He stopped, drinking in giant, gulps of air that caused his chest to rise and fall rapidly.
“Turn around.”
He did. Patting my shift back down into place around my ankles, I reached for the bowl of fruit sitting on the stand beside the bed and popped a green grape into my mouth.
“How dare you!” he roared. “I’ll see you hung for this. I’ll see you—”
I held up a silencing hand. “From now on, until the day you die, you may never speak of this. No one can know who I really am. You will never talk to me of this or any other or you shall suffer unbearable agony.”
“Why not just burn the memory from me, bitch!”
I smiled, but it was cold and meant nothing. “Because I want you to suffer, Charles. I want you to know what it’s like to lose your will as you were so willing to take my own.”
“I can do it. I could tell someone.” He lifted his chin, defiant till the end.
“Try then, Charles. Tell me, what is it I’ve done tonight?”
He opened his mouth and immediately the veins in his neck pulsed, throbbing as though he tried desperately to speak. The whites of his eyes bled red as vessels burst with his unrelenting need to speak the words of truth.
Finally he gasped, dropping his head to his chest and heaving in mighty gulps of air. “Good gods,” he groaned, “who are you?”
“Your wife. Now, give me my soul.” Standing, I walked to him and held out my hand.
He’d trapped the soul within his own body. I’d seen him push it in after Zerelda had handed it over. The sweet blue pulse of it had cried out to me. I might not be able to have Ragoth, but I could at least have all of me back.
“No.” He turned his face to the side.
I sighed. “Let me rephrase that. You will give me my soul back.”
And with a snap of my fingers I called my soul to me. He screamed as it tore out of him, like ripping at a gaping wound, he gasped and sweat pitifully as I absorbed it back into its rightful place.
The glow orb settled inside of me. And though I’d secretly hoped that the return of it would help me feel not quite so dead inside anymore, it seemed not even a soul could mend a shattered heart.
He trembled. “You foul—”
“Shut up, Charles,” I snapped.
His lips clamped shut immediately. I’d lost everything tonight. Lost myself. Lost my one true love. Any kindness there may have been in me evaporated without Ragoth in it. I’d been raised by a monster and married off to another one.
I was surrounded by grandeur and wealth and felt as though I’d just woken up in hell. My heart was nothing now but a pit of rage and darkness inside me, an organ that beat only because it was forced to. There was no beauty in my world. No more hope. No more joy. I was cold and dead inside, and all that was left to me now was a bottomless depth of hatred.
“You belong to me now, Charles. You will do as I say, in all things. This castle. The people in it. Everyone in wonderland, all mine, to do with as I please.” I popped another grape into my mouth, chewing thoughtfully.
I was fury incarnate, and every last landian would pay for what’d been done to me.
His face turned red. His cheeks bulged. I flicked my fingers. “You may speak now.”
“You cannot do this to me!” he thundered, still unable to move. “I am your king.”
Jumping from the bed, I ran to his side, and before he could utter another word, I slapped his face. Taking out every rage, every indignation I’d ever suffered at the hands of another out on him.
Staring at me agog, he seemed completely lost for words. This time it was my turn to smile.
“Now that you see how this is to work, I will leave you. I find I have no preference for such”—I sneered, glancing around the opulence of the room—“gaudy trappings.”
Swishing my skirt, I sailed past him.
“Release me, woman! You cannot leave me like—”
I slammed the door on his tirade, bumping into a servant in the hall. She was young, probably about my age, with brown hair that she’d tied behind her head. Pale, and freckle faced, I liked the look of her immediately.
“My queen”—she curtsied quickly—“is there anything I can do for—”
She stopped when Charles called me a bitch and every other invective he could imagine. Swallowing hard, she took a step forward, as though to go into the king’s room.
I lifted a brow, tilted my chin high, and sneered, “Let pigs be—”
I waited for her name.
“Druscella.”
Nodding, I slipped my arm through hers and guided her toward the opposite end of the hall. “Druscella, you are to be my personal maid. Spread the message through all the lands that all obeisance belongs to the queen now. For I am the one true ruler of wonderland.”
Chapter 6
Zelena
12 Years Later
Popping another globe grape into my mouth, I bit down on the fruit, enjoying the burst of sweet juice as it slid down my throat.
I sat in the massive hall, listening to one commoner after another snivel and whine about all the injustices done him. Even though I’d already been here three hours, I still had hours left to go, and I was fed up with this nonsense.
Charles had abandoned me, to go whore around with one of his tarts, no doubt. I was alone, in a foul mood, and ready to get this over and done with.
“Well,” I snapped when the guard brought the next protester to me.
The guard, a burly giant of a man with an eye patch and missing a few of his teeth from getting into one too many fisticuffs, hesitated before looking up at me.
Tapping my fingers on my throne, I gave him a piercing, withering glare.
“My queen”—his voice was thick with anxiety as he shook the collar of the skeletal-looking man he held before him—“this man has been accused of beating an ass—”
He droned on. I did not really hear him. Instead I looked at the pitiful excuse for a male before me.
Looking to be in his mid to late twenties, with a shocking head of ginger hair. He looked as though he’d not eaten in a fortnight; the rags he wore hung on his thin frame pitifully. Dirt smudged his cheeks and knobby knees.
Once upon a time I’d been this man. But there was a shifty look about his eyes that turned me off. Curling my nose, I held up a hand, cutting off my guard’s incessant words.
“Boy,” I snapped.
Bloodshot hazel eyes looked miserably up at me.
“You beat a donkey, why?”
I loved animals, more than humans. I’d not needed much of a reason to hate him; this had merely exacerbated the issue.
“The...the beast was stubborn and—”
“Off with his head!” I shrilled, my voice echoing to the rafters and causing the supplicants behind him to moan and groan in distress.
Druscella, my handmaiden, who stood behind my throne, cleared her throat. I knew what she was doing, what she was silently trying to express to me. She’d often warned me in her own unique and gentle way that my approach with the layman might be construed as “mean.” Normally I’d try to temper my expectations a little when she was around, but not today. Today there was nothing and no one who could have made my irritation lessen. Refusing to meet her gaze, I ignored her gentle admonition.
My guard inhaled deeply, and I thought he meant to say something, but instead he shook the man by the collar once more and ground out, “Come, filth.”
The ginger screamed, crying out to me for mercy, swearing he’d never beat another animal again. I merely rolled my eyes.
The next man to come up came along with six other people surrounding him and shouting invectives at him.
At the head of the group was an older woman with silvering hair that hung limp around her wide shoulders. Her dress was made of sackcloth, and her skin was browned from the sun.
The man beside her was thin, also older, and barefoot, allowing me to see that instead of feet he had hooves. When I noticed that, I noticed that the rest of the party did as well.
Part fawn, it told me one thing; they were from the farthest reaches of my territory in a place called Avion.
He kept his eyes to the ground.
Popping another grape into my mouth, I chewed it thoughtfully, listening as the tenor of voices rose in pitch. One word I kept hearing over and over, “thief.”
Sighing, I asked, “Well, who are you, and what crime are you accused of?”
The man trembled, but the woman did no such thing. She shoved him behind her with disdain and contempt and sneered, “This, your majesty, is Alerid, the thief. He’s stolen my only precious possession in the world, my mother’s jewel, to buy a cow from the dairy farmer.”
And so saying, she turned and yanked on the hand of a youngish looking male with wheat-colored hair, and sturdily built.
Arching a brow, I waited for her introduction of him, but when it didn’t come, I snapped, “And you are?”
Snatching the straw hat off his head, he curled it anxiously in his hands and murmured, “Sysapheus.”
My stomach rumbled. Gods, I loathed this part of ruling. “Well, Sysapheus, tell me your bit of the tale.”
Clearing his throat loud enough that I heard it, he looked down at his feet as he muttered, “It’s...it’s true. I received a note just this morning from Alerid.”
“And how do you know it was from him?”
“Well, his owl, miss. His owl brought it to me, clutching onto a blood pearl.”
“The note said?” I tapped my nails impatiently on the armrest. All I could see was a line of people left to speak with. My entire day would be ruined by this. Damn Charles for not being able to keep his penis in his pants. If he’d been here, at least we could have divided and conquered and gotten through this line quicker.
Growing more frustrated with my pathetic excuse of a husband by the second, I felt my anger rising and the magic inside me with it. Why couldn’t people work out problems on their own? Why involve me in these matters at all?
I resented them all for it.
“That he was in need of a dairy and in exchange I got to keep the blood pearl.”
The farmer tapped at his chest pocket, and that’s when I noticed a lump beneath it I hadn’t before.
“Did you send the owl?”
I eyed Alerid. He kept his gaze down at his feet, breathing softly and slowly and refusing to answer me.
Which only irritated me further. “Speak, you devil of a man!”
The woman shook her head. “He is a mute.”
“Is he now, how very convenient. And who are you to him?”
Notching her pointy chin high, she said in a voice as clear as a bell, “His wife.”
So saying, she spat by his hoof. “I’ve put up with his drunkenness, his bar fights, but no more. I am through.”
The wife.
I must admit to being a tiny bit shocked by that turn of events. I’d not expected to see that coming. Narrowing my eyes, I studied the mute further.
Something about this situation was beginning to niggle at me.
“Is what she’s saying true?” I asked the farmer, who merely looked up at me with big, woebegone eyes—eyes that sparkled with a deep vein of sadness.
I shifted in my seat as a sudden uncomfortable feeling rolled through my belly.
The dairy farmer spoke up. “The writing was his, I swear it.”
Ignoring Alerid for a moment, I turned to the other people in the party. “And why are you all here?”
“In support of Astira,” a member of the party spoke up, an older woman with bushy gray brows.
Alerid finally got some life into him and slowly shook his head, moaning pitifully. My fingers twitched. If I could have given him back his tongue, could have made him speak, I would have. But that was not the way my magic worked.
I could not rebuild parts of a body. I know; I’d tried before.
“So you are all character witnesses?” I asked slowly and wiggled in my seat.
Why did I feel suddenly so unsettled? What was this thing, this odd emotion creeping up on me? Frowning, I glanced at the long line of people still waiting, all looking at me to settle this matter.
“Yes,” Sysapheus inclined his head. “Alerid is exactly as Astira has proclaimed him to be.”
“And you all agree?” I looked at the others.
At their nod, my stomach bottomed out. I did not like this. I wasn’t averse to handing out punishment. I’d done it time aplenty during my rule, but something about this matter vexed me tremendously.
“Have you the paper?” I asked to no one in particular.
“I do.” Astira’s voice was a piercing shrill that had me wincing in disgust. I did not like this old cow.
She walked up to me with sure, steady footsteps as she pulled out a rolled sheaf from a hidden pocket in her apron.
I snatched the paper from her outstretched hand and flicked my fingers at her for her to return back to her place. I did not want this filth anywhere near me.
Reading the note, I saw that it was exactly as Sysapheus claimed it to be. Looking up, I stared at Alerid once more. “Did you write this?”
“I never gave him permission to make the trade,” Astira snapped. “He stole from me is what he did. And I’m through with him. I am done being victimized by my own miserable excuse for a husband.”
Nothing about Astira reminded me of a person victimized. She was too bold, too self-assured for someone who’d supposedly been so beaten down.
Alerid simply covered his face with his hands and gave a long keening, and pitiful groan.
“I demand my pearl back, the cow as restitution, and for this thief”—Astira kicked at Alerid’s hooves with her own—“to be condemned to death.”
All around me I could sense the interest of the humans; they hung on every word of Astira’s, looking to me to see how I’d make this right.
But for once, I was lost. Something about this situation bothered me tremendously. Astira, for one. I’d never heard of a wife asking me to behead her own husband. And the others in the party, how none of them would look at Alerid, but how they all nodded in unison.
I clutched at my stomach. It would not do to look unsure. To be weak in the eyes of my people. But I did not like this. I did not like this at all.
“Alerid, speak up, man,” I snapped at him, trying as best I could to make him give me something. Show me somet
hing that proved without a shadow of a doubt that he was innocent of this crime.
Theft in these parts was punishable by death. My hands would be tied in the matter. I did not much care for humans and did not usually care how many heads rolled, but I did not like this feeling I now felt.
“Is this your writing?” I asked him, waving the sheaf around.
It was like the world stood still for a moment. My heart was caught in my throat as I waited to see him deny it with a shake of his head.
Instead he closed his eyes and nodded, and my heart sank like a stone to my knees.
Astira smirked, and the others visibly winced.
I shook my own head, denying what I was seeing before me. It was one thing to condemn a beast to the blade, quite another to send an innocent man to it.
But what if I was wrong? What if he was innocent? The laws of my land were strict and unyielding; steal and lose your head. My laws were absolute, always had been since the moment of my reign. Laws brought peace and stability.
I clenched my jaw, sensing the eyes of hundreds burning through me, all looking to me to make this right.
Brow furrowing, I looked back to the party. “Have any of you any last words to speak on behalf of this man?”
I’d hoped Sysapheus or the bushy-eyed woman might have said something. But they’d all turned their heads aside; all of them refused to even look at me.
The grapes that’d once been so sweet in my stomach now felt like poison burning through me. My mouth grew dry and my head pounded as I muttered the words every inch of me did not wish to speak, “Off with his... head.”
Astira clapped her hands and waved goodbye as my guards dragged the silent, crying Alerid away from the room.
“Go away,” I muttered low at first and then screamed it when no one seemed to notice. “Away!” I pounded a fist on my throne, causing thunder to shake and boom through the confines as my magic exploded out from within me.
With a scream of surprise and shock, the people scattered from the throne room.
Once the final man had cleared, and I was all alone, I shook my head. I’d done wrong. I knew I’d done wrong. I’d not been able to prove it though. Trembling from head to toe, I stared sightlessly at the stone floor, trying to convince myself that Alerid truly was guilty of the crime.
The Passionate Queen Page 8