Chapter 3
In the Queen of Balravia’s private hunting lodge, hidden deep within the darkest and most ancient woods in the heart of Balravia
Lorelei had always excelled at the dramatic art of timing her entrances and exits.
Even as she spoke those final, taunting words, she was silently summoning a portal; she had the satisfaction of seeing the Golden Beacon’s mask of indifference crack with a single twitch of one eyelid as she offered him a jaunty wave and stepped away the victor in their conversation, leaving only sparkles behind to remind him exactly who was in control.
Then she landed in her pink-and-white morning room, on the other side of the lodge, and released the shriek of frustration that had been building within her all throughout their encounter. “Argh!”
“So the two of you had a pleasant catch-up?” Her cousin Katrin was practicing sword-play on the far side of the room, having pushed all of the couches out of the way and rolled up the long sleeves of her gown. She rose smoothly from a flowing lunge to aim a wry glance over one strong shoulder.
Lorelei said, “That man is the most hardheaded, arrogant, maddening—”
“He is rumored to be unstoppable,” Ilse mused.
She sat curled up on a couch by the tall windows, reading the first of a pile of novels propped on the plush golden cushions beside her.
“He is rather yummy looking, though, isn’t he?
I wonder if the stories are true and he’s still a virgin. Is that even possible?”
“Don’t even think about it.” Lorelei’s eyes narrowed. “He certainly won’t be seducing anyone here to escape!”
“Oh, no,” Ilse said with perfect innocence, turning another page in her book. “I wasn’t saying that out of any interest for myself. I was only thinking of you, Your Majesty!”
At that, Katrin gave a muffled snort of disloyal laughter—but she was, at least, sensible enough to hide it in a cough and immediately resume her exercises. Lorelei swept a dangerously narrowed gaze from her cousin’s tall back to her second lady-in-waiting’s perfectly oblivious face.
She was glad that they had learned to get along so well over the years. She even wished them well in the promising new flirtation they’d been engaging in for the past few months when they thought she wasn’t paying attention.
Every so often, though, there was a downside to their new amity. Surely none of the other Queens of Villainy’s attendants felt so free to mercilessly tease their own queens.
“That eventuality,” she promised them both, “will never happen.” Once, a long time ago, Lorelei had allowed more than one handsome man to soften her wits, gain her trust, and then humiliate her—but she’d risen like a phoenix from the ashes of those all-too-public early lessons and taken control of the narrative forced upon her.
Physical lovers, she took happily and often, but she would never again make the mistake of allowing any man, no matter how attractive, into her heart.
Seven years ago, when she’d chosen to proposition the Golden Beacon, she hadn’t known how dangerous he truly was; now that she knew him better, she would never dream of taking that risk.
… Even if he had looked like a fantasy plucked from her most decadent imaginings just now, spread out on that bed for her personal perusal.
How in Sylvana’s name had he managed to lie there, helplessly bound by chains of her making, and still somehow project the impression of a patient host in full control of the room and their conversation?
“Queen Ailana’s been trying to get hold of you, by the way,” Katrin reported as she made a complicated, spinning move. “Her latest message said that it was extremely urgent.”
“Ugh.” Grimacing, Lorelei threw herself across an empty sofa.
“She must have worked out he’s missing.” That was the problem with making friends and allies with the most successful spy-mistress on the continent: Ailana knew almost everything.
Her official magic lay in the powers of ice and snow that came from her aelfar heritage, but as far as Lorelei was concerned, Ailana’s most terrifying power was her ability to coolly, calmly ferret out private information—and then turn her icy logic upon Lorelei’s wildest schemes like the most disappointed older sister in the world.
Lorelei had never believed in wasting time on regrets.
If she had sat around weeping about her own mistakes ten years ago, she would have been dead within days!
Still, her most recent brilliant plan—to unite all three independent queens on the continent against the threat of Imperial expansion—had come with side effects she had not anticipated.
Somehow, both of her fellow queens, different though they were, had chipped their ways into her guarded heart.
Clever, strategic Ailana of Nornne and grumpy, blunt Saskia of Kitvaria had earned her respect and affection as well as her loyalty …
so the regret that Lorelei had felt this past week after mistakenly harming Saskia’s lover had burned too badly to endure.
Felix, the softspoken Archduke of Estarion, was head over heels in love with Lorelei’s friend, not a sneaking threat to Saskia after all.
Lorelei had seen for herself how he’d stood for all three queens on that battlefield yesterday when he’d ordered the Golden Beacon to remove all Imperial troops from Estarian land and call off the planned joint invasion of Saskia’s nation.
Even the Empire’s high general couldn’t refuse to follow that archducal order, with no higher authority present on the field to contradict it.
However, the moment the Golden Beacon returned to Fiora to report that interaction to the Emperor, Otto II would react with murderous fury to the ruination of his plans.
Whether he sent hired assassins, made up an act of Imperial treason to call for Felix’s public execution, or simply broke the constitution of the Empire to have his way on that longed-for expansion, his response would be immediate, punishing, and brutal.
Obviously, Lorelei had needed to do something to help and make up for the harm she’d already done to Saskia’s beloved …
But she knew exactly how Ailana would react to the path she’d chosen.
“Ugh,” she repeated and closed her eyes, drawing up chains of ivy from the ground beneath the floor to cover, surround, and shield her in a softly rustling, green cocoon of peace. “I need a nap before I can even think about that conversation.”
It was absurd that she hadn’t managed to sleep earlier, after so many days and nights spent wide awake, dealing with crises.
By rights, she should have fallen into bed the moment she had the Golden Beacon safely in her clutches and then slept as peacefully as a dryad in winter.
Instead, once her initial enchantment upon him had faded, she’d paced her lodge for hours with skin that prickled as if it were being poked by invisible needles, waiting for him to finally wake up.
No, worse: worrying about why he hadn’t.
Ugh!
Ailana didn’t know everything. She couldn’t.
Even Lorelei didn’t understand the storm of feelings that had overcome her yesterday as she’d stood shoulder-to-shoulder with her closest allies and watched the godsblessed Golden Beacon, after seven full years of private sparring, victories, and defeats, calmly announce that he would be passing on every detail of their meeting to the Emperor Lorelei despised …
and then following Otto’s selfish, greedy orders, however misguided they might be and regardless of his own personal feelings on the matter.
It was unbearable. That was all she had known, with a burning conviction that had overruled all logical objections.
It was wrong to hear him say that. She owed her loyalty to her fellow queens, not to her enemy’s high general—but she still had to save him from his own misguided sense of duty, no matter what either of her allies thought of her methods.
Even if her quest was irrational—impossible!
—she had to try to turn him off that dark path in time, before he could do anything truly unforgivable …
… And even if she didn’t understand why she had to do it, she knew her instincts almost always led her in the right direction.
Unfortunately, when the buzzing swarm of worries and schemes in her head finally subsided enough to allow her to slide into sleep in the shelter of her private green cocoon, her dreaming mind transported her directly back to the moment when she had first discovered that her instincts couldn’t always be trusted.
If Lorelei’s instincts were always right, she would have known to hide when her father first arrived in the fae realm.
But she had been raised in her mother’s court, the cossetted mortal daughter of Efaelen’s immortal fae queen, and at ten years of age, she hadn’t yet been included in any political councils.
It didn’t even occur to her that she might be in danger when she heard the leaves around her start whispering the news.
“The King of Balravia … the King of Balravia has come…”
This was wonderful news! Lorelei had always wanted to meet her father, who lived far away in the mortal realm, cut off by an aetheric veil from the neighboring fae realm where she and her mother lived.
He had never been able to visit her before because mortals couldn’t cross through that veil on their own, but he must have finally found a friend to help him now—and she already knew that he would adore her when they met, just as her mother always had.
She would love him so much, too! She would show him all of her best magical skills, and he would look at her with pride and be thrilled to have such a remarkable daughter.
She danced her way to her mother’s private rooms, so wrapped up in her own delightful plans that she was barely even aware of the raised voices shouting beyond her mother’s door.
“If you think the nation will accept some flighty fae—”
“You cannot alter the magical contract—”