Wooing the Witch Queen (Queens of Villainy #1)

Chapter 9

9

Felix had never been more grateful for his concealing mask and cloak than when he’d emerged onto the tower roof to find Queen Saskia with her head thrown back, lips parted, a cloud of crows swirling around her and energy crackling so intensely through the air that it lifted the hair at the back of his neck.

It should have been a terrifying sight: the wicked witch of Kitvaria no doubt summoning a terrible storm of magic to rain down upon her enemies.

But it had stopped his breath for quite a different reason.

Even now, as he led her down through the twisting staircase towards the library he’d rashly invited her to visit, Felix couldn’t escape the memory of her pale throat tipped back and exposed to the sunlight; her dark lashes swept against her cheek as she squeezed her eyes shut in some extreme of emotion or magical effort. It was beyond rash to even allow himself to imagine that pose in a different context; in the months of numbness since Emmeline had died, he’d barely even remembered the existence of such matters. And yet…

Intimacy with his wife and oldest friend had always been a comfort. It might have begun as a requirement upon their arranged wedding, but over the four years of their marriage, it had become a shared game that brought them both pleasure, escape, and relief—as familiar, as gentle, and as achingly sweet as Emmeline herself.

That hot, hungry bolt that had lanced through him in the open air above the tower felt as different as a lightning storm, ready to break him open.

“ Caw! ” With a firm rap against Felix’s hood, the crow on his shoulder—Oskar—alerted him to the open doorway he’d almost walked past.

Felix rapidly corrected course, not only by physically turning his body but by turning his mind to the challenge ahead.

It would be impossible to describe the current state of Queen Saskia’s library as impressive. Still, as they stepped into the vast room together, he braced himself to give a calm accounting of his work. He’d learned long ago to bear disdain; he wouldn’t flinch now, no matter how scathing her assessment.

He wasn’t prepared, though, for the small sound of wonder that came from her throat. “You’ve done so much!”

“I have?” Blinking, he looked around the densely cluttered chamber, trying to see it through fresh eyes.

A solid fifth of the curving, floor-to-ceiling bookcases on the lower level of the circular library had been emptied in his quest to sort and catalogue the random selection of handwritten and printed spellbooks, history books, scientific journals, newspaper clippings, printed ballads, and more. Now, dozens of carefully balanced stacks of books and paper filled the room, even covering the faded chairs and couches where the three dangerous queens had awaited him a week ago. Six neat stacks of his own lists sat on the study table, next to a tightly sealed inkwell and his single, precious pen; a single cleared walkway led to that table from the door.

“I am aware,” he said, “that it’s nowhere near ready for your use—”

“But you’ve made real progress.” She swept out one hand in demonstration, and the crows who’d clustered behind her took that as their signal to flock past her and race towards the empty bookcases, squabbling and pecking at each other in competition for the best perches on the shelves. Felix’s own crow abandoned him to join the race with a noisy squawk, and the queen had to raise her voice to continue. “It’s clear that there’s a purpose behind all of these divisions, and that’s something no one has been able to say about this library since my uncle stole it eighteen years ago.”

She was, nigh-on miraculously, pleased; she might be far less so when she actually realized how simplistic his categorizations so far had been, with no true education in wizardry to ground them. Still, Felix forced himself to say, “I can explain how I’ve divided them, if you’d like to oversee my work.”

“Must I?” She grimaced. “I have more than enough work of my own, at the moment. What I would like, though”—she slid him a glance that looked shockingly mischievous—“is a look at that expensive pen of yours, after hearing so much about it.”

The dangerous heat that had been simmering inside his gut ever since he’d stepped onto the tower roof leapt into flame at that look.

His wits, which had kept him alive at court for years, shut it back down immediately. The Witch Queen of Kitvaria might be capable of many previously-unheard-of things, but she was certainly not interested in flirting with him now. Perhaps she was in a whimsical mood, after whatever great spell she’d been working on the roof; more worryingly, she might be hinting at real anger over the cost of his acquisition.

Either way, he had to remember that she was infinitely more likely to kill him than to kiss him, no matter what his treacherously reawakening body might wish him to imagine. So, as Felix walked past her to the study table, he set his teeth against the impact of that inevitable storm of energy and kept his body as firmly under control as if he’d been performing his usual role at court under Count von Hertzendorff’s icy oversight.

It was hard not to give in to enthusiasm, though, as the noise of the crows finally began to subside and he lifted the wonderful new pen to show her. “You see? There’s not a single spot of ink visible from the outside—and no spatters on your books or papers, either.”

“Hmm.” She leaned closer to examine it, dark eyes narrowing with a focus as sharp as any blade. “Is that wood encasing the ink? Won’t it seep through?”

“No, it’s ebonite—a new type of rubber, only developed a few years ago. It looks like wood, but it’s far more secure. Feel for yourself.” He laid the pen in her cupped right hand and breathed through the prickling sensation of her skin brushing against his.

The distraction vanished with a splash of icy cold as he recognized the marks of old scars on her fingers and palms. “Are those burns?”

There were so many of them. Had someone hurt her— marked her—on purpose?

Poisonous old memories stirred from the compartments where he’d locked them long ago…

But she shook her head dismissively. “Oh, those are just from my laboratory work.” Closing her fingers around the pen, she held it up to study from different angles. “Which end do you write with?”

“Here.” Shoving down the old memories before they could take over, he showed her how to remove the cap, revealing a shining steel nib, far sturdier than any hand-carved quill. “Would you care to give it a try?” He scooped up a spare piece of paper and laid it on a bare section of the table before her. “You have to use a slightly different angle than you would ordinarily, but… no, that’s not quite—here, let me show you.”

Stepping up behind her, he wrapped his right hand gently around hers. He redirected her movements to draw a firm line of ink, his attention wholly focused on instruction as he leaned over her to help—until her warm, lush body shifted with a deep breath against his cloak.

He froze, every sense flaming into life with sudden, excruciating awareness.

Heat radiated from the skin of her hand, held in his clasp. And where their bodies met, her smaller, curving figure surrounded by his…

Elva protect me!

Felix took a lunging step backwards as he released her, opening up a good two feet of space between them. Still bent over the table, she remained unmoving for a silent moment as his heartbeat thundered against his chest. Then she set her jaw more firmly and scribbled a firm, decisive line of script across the blank paper.

He didn’t even try to read what she wrote. He was too busy remembering how to breathe.

When she finally straightened, she was wearing a cool and distant look, as if in her mind, she’d already retreated far away from the importunate overtures of her second-rate librarian and his cluttered library.

“Forgive my impertinence,” Felix said hoarsely. “I—”

“There is nothing to forgive.” She closed the pen and handed it back to him, her smile perfunctory. “I see your point. This is a better way to write—and I appreciate your help as well as your care for my books.” Her gaze passed smoothly over him to land on the stack of manuscripts on the floor beside him, still waiting to be categorized, and her mask of politeness abruptly fell away. “ Wait. That pile, there… are they—?”

Felix shifted aside to clear the way. “They are all in the same handwriting, but I haven’t found any name for the author. I haven’t yet had the chance to look through them carefully enough to decide on a grouping. They seem to cover a wide variety of topics, so I suppose I could distribute them throughout the library, but…”

“ Don’t. ” The word rang with power as she reached out to brush the tips of her fingers across the bound manuscript at the top. Was he imagining the way her fingers trembled as they touched it? “These were my mother’s notes.”

“Your mother ?” Felix’s eyebrows rose behind his mask. “I didn’t know Kitvaria had had a scholar—or a wizard—for a queen.”

“Oh, she wasn’t raised to rule. She never even wanted to.” The current queen’s lips twisted as she spoke, her fingers resting lightly on the stack of manuscripts. “Mama planned to spend her life adventuring and exploring different cultures across the world… but when my father fell in love with her, he promised full support of her work—an equal partnership. So she stayed in one kingdom after all and devoted herself to ethnography within it. She used to visit for months at a time with all the different groups around the kingdom, trolls and goblins and humans alike, and she learned from every one of them.”

Felix tried to imagine either of his impeccably proper parents—much less the Count—choosing to abandon the glittering court in Estaviel City to camp in the woods with trolls. It was impossible. “Your father didn’t mind?”

“Well, he missed her, of course, but he knew she was doing important work. He always said her studies, when they were finally collated and published, would revolutionize the way that humans across the continent thought about their neighbors. And of course, she used to take me with her on her expeditions whenever she could, although…” Queen Saskia’s voice drifted off.

“Although?” Felix prompted, a moment later.

This time, the curve of her mouth held only bitterness. “ Although my uncle always made a great, noisy fuss in front of everyone about the so-called dangers of those journeys. At the time, I was young and idiotic enough to think him actually concerned for my sake.”

Felix’s chest constricted at the pain in her voice. His own childhood had been upturned when his parents had died. How much worse would it have been if they’d been murdered… and by a relative he’d loved?

It took all of his self-control not to step forward and offer comfort. He knew, though, that the powerful Witch Queen of Kitvaria wouldn’t welcome it from him—especially not so soon after he’d outrageously laid his hands upon her person. So, he kept his lips sealed behind his mask and his feet firmly planted on the floor as he watched her battle to regain her self-control.

Giving herself a brisk shake, Queen Saskia released her mother’s notes and stepped backwards. “Regardless, I’m glad you’ve kept these all together. You are still missing one important volume, though, from the full collection.”

“I am?” Felix frowned. “I haven’t spotted any others in that handwriting yet.”

“That would be because I hid the final book.” She crossed the library floor in long strides that sent her autumn-leaf-colored skirts swishing around her determined figure and brought a wave of crows rising from their perches to fly after her. They circled her, cawing, cooing, and rattling with interest, as she dropped to her knees behind the elaborately carved and curling staircase that led from the first level of the library to the mezzanine and second level of shelves above. “If I can still find the hinge, after all these years… aha !”

Something clicked inside the base of the staircase. As Felix watched with fascination, a miniature door popped open in the smoothly grained wood, which he could have sworn to be unbroken. Queen Saskia reached deep inside the hidden compartment and drew out a thick sheaf of papers, bound only by a crimson ribbon.

“ Good. ” She let out the word on a sigh and gave the top sheet an absent-minded stroke with one thumb before rising to her feet.

Her crows swarmed eagerly to investigate both the treasure in her hands and the open compartment from which it had come, while Felix hung back, waiting.

“I couldn’t save my parents,” Queen Saskia said, “but I managed to protect this one legacy, at least: my mother’s greatest work. She wanted to reframe how every wizard is taught, to take account not only of our human traditions but of other species’ magical traditions as well. It was to be an entirely new approach to wizardry… and if my uncle’s men had ever come across it, he would have ordered it burned as a matter of principle.”

Her lips compressed for a long moment as she looked down at the papers, ignoring the pestering of her crows. When she looked back up, her dark gaze met Felix’s through the eyeholes of his mask and pierced him with its intensity. “I hadn’t planned to take this from its hiding place until this library was fully in order again and my temporary librarian’s post was ended. But, Sinistro…” She tilted her chin in a nod of respect. “I think I may trust you with it, after all.”

It wasn’t heat, this time, but a helpless lurch of tenderness that Felix felt as he reached forward to carefully take the papers from her hands. “I will be honored to keep your mother’s words safe,” he murmured, bowing deeply.

He meant that promise with all his heart… but guilt twisted in his gut as he straightened, examining the manuscript in his hands and realizing exactly what it might mean for him.

A New Approach to Wizardry , from First Principles Onwards, read the title in a confident, looping script that was only slightly faded by the years.

Queen Saskia had truly honored him with her trust… but she’d also handed him exactly what he needed in order to successfully continue to deceive her.