Chapter Six- The Veiled Queen
“What could that poor woman have possibly done to wrong the King?” I ask Thorne as he sweeps her ashes into the fireplace of her family’s home. She was a plump older woman with the sweetest disposition.
“Attempted poisoning with laced Savorium,” he sighs. I frown.
A shame it didn’t work.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the King uses the blasted substance. I look down and kick ash off of my boots.
The woman was the second execution of the night and it took two seconds of Thorne’s touch for the woman to disintegrate. I ignore the fact that I’m shaking. Who wouldn’t be? That power, that curse is completely unnatural.
Most of my focus is on trying not to think about what Queen Ivy said to me. I can’t decide if I’m his salvation because I’m meant to kill him or somehow save him. Why must prophecies be so vague?
“So why can’t they be properly beheaded or stoned like common criminals?”
“I kill anyone who my father decides does not deserve a trial. Now, with an uptick in rebel ideals, there’s a lot to do.” He tugs his glove back on.
I have heard the King referred to as a ‘wicked tyrant’ and the lack of fair trials merely reinforces that. Anyone with eyes knows that the democracy of Netherhelm died long ago. I want to ask Thorne why he does it, but then my subconscious informs me that he clearly doesn’t have a choice.
“Seems… fair,” I snark.
“About as fair as hanging people from the palace gates simply for their station,” Thorne turns his ire on me.
“They have innocent blood on their hands!” I roar, the anger rising in my chest and exploding outward. I send a ball of my magic into the far wall to dispel its need to escape from me.
“I don’t. Yet you made an attempt at my life,” Thorne is shoving me backwards, both of us clearly losing our temper. Finally.
“All the children of Xeusis have strayed from him and bled the unfortunate dry," I bare my teeth at him. He wraps gloved hands around my throat to silence me.
The Shadowfalls are direct descendants of the Titan Xuesis. The royals have all turned to greed instead of harmony in the thousand years since the Titan fell.
“You must surely be the most poorly educated assassin,” he tsks and tightens his grip. “If you knew anything at all…” he gets closer to whisper in my ear as his magic drains the fight from me. “You’d know that I am not Shadowfall by blood, but by name alone.”
Wh— I don’t have time to respond before I’m violently yanked into drowning darkness. All I can think is, the Shadowfall name alone was enough to corrupt Thorne and that he is killing me.
I am only aware of complete darkness, the kind that swims in Thorne’s eyes when he’s about to use his magic. The stone beneath my bare feet causes me to wonder why there are no shoes in the afterlife. Well that… and how I let Thorne get the drop on me so easily.
“No! No!” Muffled screams echo through a large stone chamber. “He’s mine! You cannot take him!”
I turn a corner towards the sound realizing that I’m in the palace.
“Enough!” The wicked tyrant roars. While I can’t make out anyone's faces, I’d recognize his voice anywhere.
So I’m not dead then.
The screaming woman is sprawled on a bed in the chamber, her arms chained to the wall behind her.
The afterbirth still pours from between her legs, she screams and thrashes, her skin painted with sweat.
The need to look away is eclipsed only by the force of whoever is showing me this vision, forcing me to watch.
“The boy is not mine!” King Dreven bellows, sending two maidservants fleeing as I feel the blood of the woman begin to pool on the floor beneath me.
“No, that’s not true, please, give me him, give me my baby,” she pleads. I gasp; this is Queen Ivy.
“His hair is white and his eyes are blue!” King Dreven slaps the woman. It feels like watching someone kick an injured puppy. The man sends the small infant away in the arms of another maidservant.
“Who did you open your legs for?” Her monstrous husband demands and snaps a whip across her bare thighs until she screams. More blood pours from her as she tenses.
“No one!” She cries.
“Liar!”
“She will bleed out!” A healer informs the king.
“Thorian!” Queen Ivy screams the child’s name in agony as her husband continues to torture her.
The King begins to cast an intricate spell, ignoring the healer’s protest. He slaves over it for hours until the woman loses consciousness. The blood from her womb is pooling up to my thighs now and I can’t move, I can’t help her. I’m not meant to.
I watch in horror as the Arcanist King sews her mouth closed and casts her unconscious body in a magic so dark that I have to look away from it as it consumes her.
She awakes as he pulls the final thread closed on her mouth and her eyes go wide and she tries to scream.
The thread pulls and her lips begin to tear.
He whispers more words to the spell and they become a part of her, she can’t open her jaw, she can’t fight against the stitches any longer. I watch as panic takes over her and she thrashes violently.
“You will not speak, from this day forth. He is not Thorian, he is Thorne for the thorn you left in my heart by baring another man’s child,” he sneers.
It is then that her power explodes from her, covering the room in her blood, in the blood of all women wrongfully silenced.
I feel her agony, her cry for help, her sorrow for her son.
But that is the last of what I’m meant to see.
An invisible force sends me backwards until I’m falling into oblivion.
***
There is nothing slow or groggy in the way I jolt awake. I’m panting hard, sweat coating my skin.
“About time,” Thorne grumbles.
I narrow my eyes on him in the dimly lit tavern. I thought I burned it down already? There’s clearly still damage, but Thorne has repaired it enough to keep it as his sanctuary.
He’s cleaning blood from a dagger after opting for a traditional execution route for the man on the floor beside me. Another death.
The thick-necked bearded man has been sliced ear to ear, left to bleed out on the floor. I hurry to stand and free a dagger from my harness. I flick it gracefully at Thorne, it sails through the air towards him with wicked speed. Anger is boiling my blood, making it uncomfortable in my veins.
“Don’t you ever fucking do that to me again!” I roar, advancing on him. The small dagger hits its mark, burying in his shoulder to the hilt. But he only grunts as though he’s simply been kicked.
He removes the dagger while sucking air through his teeth and meets my eyes. His are a storm of blue and alight with mischief.
“What would you prefer I do to you, Harrow?” He raises his eyebrows.
The words freeze me in place, the use of my name on his tongue rendering me speechless. I have never felt more emotions in a single evening than I have tonight. I gather myself and stare back into him, aware of the warning in my snake-like irises.
“Don’t—” I warn. He steps towards me.
“Why are you still playing royal knight?” He tilts his head. Then he licks his own blood off of my dagger, my eyes trailing the movement. He doesn't break eye contact as he hands it back to me.
“I am a royal knight,” I insist.
He barks a laugh and places his gloved hands on my shoulders.
“But not loyal.” He points at me like he’s got me.
“I have been so far,” I cross my arms.
“If you are truly a loyal knight then I am truly Dreven’s son.” He continues his cruel laughter and extends his arms. “You can’t kill me.”
“Forgive me, your invincibility complicated things. I also had no intentions of sleeping with you, Your Highness," I dramatically bow at the title. This finally earns a frown from him. Checkmate.
We stare at each other a moment, silence stretching out between us because we truly have no idea how to be around one another. I decide to break the silence.
“Your mother…”
His head snaps up, his gaze furious.
“Easy Princeling, I don’t intend to hurt her,” I flash him a smile and grab a liquor bottle from the bar.
“Stop calling me that,” he frowns.
I scoff at him and sip from the bottle.
“What about my mother then?” He snatches it from me and takes a long drink. Neither of us acknowledge the body in the room.
“She’s been communicating with me,” I say slowly because I think he should know about it. Though I don’t know why I care…
“Communicating? How?” He perches on the barstool beside mine.
I realize— because of his sharpened interest— that he’s never heard his mother’s voice.
Something like an ache settles in my chest as he adjusts himself on the stool.
I smell him then, the same mix of blood, pine, and musk as the night we slept together. It’s distracting; he clears his throat.
“I can’t explain it,” is all I can manage when he looks at me.
How can someone be so infuriating and so attractive?
He narrows his eyes as if he doesn’t believe me. “What are you playing at, Serpent?”
“I’m not playing at anything,” I groan and press my palms into my eyes. “You are absolutely insufferable.”
“Me?” He presses a hand against his chest, exasperated. “You are the assassin who blindly came to kill me with zero idea about who or what I am.”
“I know you kill people,” I snatch the bottle from him and take a long drink. We both eye the body on the floor.
“You do as well. How are we different?” He snatches the bottle from me in turn. His gloved fingers graze mine and it sends chills up my arms.
“I kill bad people,” I reason.
“You’re the judge, jury, and executioner then?”
“So are you!” I shout, standing to give him my back.
“No, I merely execute. I do not choose who and I do not have a choice!” His voice rises to meet mine but his anger explodes when he sends the liquor bottle shattering against the far wall.
When he meets my eyes, those dark tendrils of magic make themselves known as if warning me that he’s about to lose control.
I do not have a choice. His words flash through my mind, intermingled with his torn flesh just hours earlier.
“Then tell me what it is I do not know,” I implore him. This seems to shock him, perhaps the gentler tone of my voice was too much.
“No. We need to leave so that you may fulfill your assignment from Aleksander.” He shoves past me towards the back exit of the bar.
I’m just about to suggest the removal of the body when Thorne snaps. Suddenly the floor and ground beneath it open up and swallow the corpse. The only sound is the groaning of the building as if in protest.
“Do you royals have any limits to your abilities?” I scoff at him. The question is rhetorical, of course, but this method of disposal never ceases to amaze me and he must think this is my first time witnessing it.
“The threshold is just very high,” he shrugs and I follow him.
“Yes but—” I hurry after him. I’ll chastise myself for that later.
“No more questions,” he grumbles.
We move, together, down the cobblestone streets and out of the market with our hoods up so as not to draw any unwanted attention.
“Prince Aleksander, he’s power hungry,” I say it as a statement instead of a question. Though I don’t know why.
“And the sky is blue,” Thorne sighs.
“I just mean…” I groan. “I don’t understand why he chose me to do this tonight. He wants me loyal to him, not just the crown,”
“He wants someone strong enough to aid him in managing my curse,” he turns his head to me. His silver earring catches and reflects moonlight.
“He’s not managing anything. He’s torturing you,” I bite out in frustration.
“So?” He whirls on me. “You mean to kill me, Serpent. Why do you care?”
“I don’t,” I snarl. Don’t care or don’t mean to kill him? My inner monologue haunts me.
“Then why are you still in Netherhelm?” He crosses his arms.
“I was born here,” I match his attitude.
“I meant in the palace, in the knighthood, you swine,” he bares his teeth—perfect and straight—in frustration.
It was a good question. The simple answer is that I still have to kill him. The more complicated answer is that I need to figure out his curse and how to free him of it so he can die. The worst part of this complicated and ill thought-out plan is the way I’ve been dragging my feet.
“What binds your curse?” I counter.
He gives me his back, leading me silently up the hill to the palace. Asshole.
Once Thorne slams his bedroom door in my face, I let out a long-winded sigh and traipse back to my bedroom on the opposite side of the palace. Crowley flies downward and lands on my shoulder, nuzzling my hair.
“And where were you when the Prince knocked me out?”
He only blinks at me. Right.