Chapter Eleven- The Queen Who Wept
The hair raises on my neck when I hear the King screaming at the servants.
Variations of ‘ don’t touch her’ and ‘wicked woman’ float to us, causing Reese to look over at me.
I shrug my shoulders, still at a loss over the orders we’ve been given.
I would much rather be with Thorne as he mourns one of the few people who loved him as it is clear to me that Ivy adored him.
“You’re going to use your hypnotic abilities to stay the King,” Reese whispers and pushes the door open.
That shouldn’t surprise me. Reese is ever the useless High-Sword of the Knights who wields me like a weapon.
“I wouldn’t expect you to help anyway,” I snip.
When we enter, the King is sprawled on the floor over Queen Ivy, shielding her body with his. His arms under her shoulders, his legs on either side of hers. He’s positioned himself deliberately so that no one can move her.
“Wretched selfish woman!” He bellows.
King Dreven’s normally slicked back hair is falling around his face, making it obvious that it’s thinning.
The four Corpsewrights look at each other in concern, unsure of what to do.
They turn to Reese and me in relief. I offer a meek smile and a half wave, awkwardness settling over me.
The ashen skin of the Corpsewrights highlights the red of their eyes, the hollowness of their cheeks.
Their bodies are covered in sigils which I will never be worthy of translating.
All four of them have no gender, no age, and they are ancient beyond understanding.
Their hair is the color of fresh blood, the same dark red of their eyes.
Braids are pulled back from above their ears, meeting in the middle to fall in a single braid to their knees.
It’s like they’re perfect copies of one another, save for a few details here and there.
I turn my attention back to the King, the same man that had my mother executed by stoning. I allow myself to revel in his pain, the rawness in his throat, the veins straining in his temples as he screams. Globs of saliva fall from his mouth like the animal he is and I almost smirk.
I have finally allowed myself not to feel hatred for Thorne, not to take out my hunger for revenge on him. This raw burning delight in the King’s pain is not what I felt when Thorne hurt.
I know now that Thorne is a victim of this man, too. Maybe after that first night with him, it wasn’t about revenge anymore. I curse myself inwardly.
One of the Corpsewrights notices my delight at the King’s suffering and I imagine they would have spoken up to chide me if not for the weight of the moment.
He cries into her hair, a sickening action since he cursed her to be mute for the last twenty-three years.
He treated her like a caged pet, probably forced her to carry the twins after her infidelity bred Thorne, and I have never heard him say a kind word to her.
The cruel King I’m used to has become a shell of a man in the arms of his dead wife.
She lies limp beneath him, being denied her final rights by the man who consistently drains the life of those around him.
I remember my own mother’s hands sliding between my fingers. Fingers which were too small to know blood.
I’m suddenly on the King, wrenching him by the shoulders and pulling. I want nothing more than to grip his jaw in my hands and free his neck of his head. But I don’t. He doesn’t want to release her; he fights and screams and thrashes to no avail.
I twist my hand into his greasy hair and jab my knuckles between his ribs, forcing him to bend sideways in agony. His dull eyes meet mine.
“Avaerasay,” I demand control of his mind with one word. He slumps to the floor, sitting against a bedpost.
The room falls still, silent as my pupils shrink to slits, holding him in my vision.
The Corpsewrights murmur to each other in horror at my magic, at the power it takes to do such a spell.
It should be impossible. Arcanists are not usually bestowed with enough magic to overrule another’s will.
Especially not the King, for fuck’s sake.
Stygian Arcanists can’t usurp another’s autonomy and, save for the royal family, we are the strongest.
What they do not know, what they can’t understand, is the magnitude of my power.
That the magic I was given as an infant through Sylvithria’s venom is unlike anything studied in our Kingdom’s history before.
I should know, I’ve looked. I wield within my blood the power of the Venomwoods and with it, I am linked to the Titan Xeusis’s beloved serpents. They are with me, within me.
I blink and look over at the Corpsewrights.
Even these ancient beings know to exercise caution when magic can play one’s will like a harp. Not that I know what they’re saying, given they prefer the dead Titan’s language to communicate with one another.
The ability to usurp and control another person’s will is an imbalance in magic. It’s why the spell Amnyistey—which puts someone unconscious—is also frowned upon. Though Prince Thorne uses it with ease and I’ve been known to use it, it’s still not widely accepted.
The Corpsewrights hurry to Queen Ivy, who has begun to go cold and blue. They pull out various carving knives, stitching material, and salves to set them in. Some of the sigils will be cut into her, others sewn with dark silk from the Arcanist’s tarantulas.
I see the familiar ire in Reese’s gaze as he watches me effortlessly keep the King at bay.
His jealousy is palpable in the silence of the room, the King watching me.
His face screws in discomfort as he tries to crash his will against the impenetrable wall of mine.
I’ve spent most of my life perfecting this spell, this hypnotic ability.
Not even a Shadowfall King will break it.
My favorite part of the spell is the way it wipes the victim’s memory that I ever controlled them. It’s a precaution, a necessity. The King will never know it was me.
Reese nods at someone in the doorway behind me and Elemerov enters with Thorne, who goes ashen, silently leaning against the wall for support.
“All royals need a guard or knight to escort them for the next twenty-four hours,” Reese declares.
“But if it was suicide…” I start.
“Just until we’re sure.” His glare dares me to question him again. I could. But then King Dreven claws at my consciousness and I wince.
I return my attention to the King while investigating the scene, a sick theory forming somewhere in the back of my mind. If I look at Thorne, who is trying not to break, I won’t be able to focus.
I see what Thorne is fighting to understand.
Queen Ivy drained her life’s blood from her right wrist into a small silver bowl over two familiar sigils.
One for the Titan Xeusis and one for Shivara, the Titaness of Glacian Magic.
My temples pound with the expenditure of my magic against the King, but I try to make out the third swirling sigil which the bowl sits upon.
It calls to me, urging me to trace my fingers over it.
I reinforce my mental control over the King and walk over to examine the bowl containing Ivy’s blood.
I dip my fingers, smearing her blood between them and I realize that it feels like that shapeless place she took me to.
Suddenly, fractures of her thoughts slam into my head, as if her last desperate act was, in part, to give me clarity.
Prince Thorne, the son of the Queen of Netherhelm and the King of Frostguard, scorned as a bastard in King Dreven’s eyes.
Yet, he unknowingly stands as the most formidable being to emerge since the fall of the Titans.
Anointed by Xeusis, the Titan of Dark Magic, to command the darkness and weave its power into dominion.
Blessed by Shivara, the Titaness of Glacian Magic, he wields unyielding frost, shaping its icy wrath into a force of unrivaled destruction.
He steps in accordance to King Dreven’s word, one foot in front of the other, unaware of the magnitude of his power.
He bares the scars of torture that Ivy was forced to watch mar his body for his entire life.
Her precious son, born of love, not duty.
She was certain as she drew her final breath that he would set the wrong things right.
So she showed him love the only way she could; she reversed the wrong I dealt him.
She gave her beloved silver-haired prince her own life force so that his heart might beat again.
On a sharp inhale, I shudder and allow the information to settle over me, like tar in my lungs. I’m still crouching in the spell circle that she created, where her bare lifeless feet lay.
The soft spells move through the room from the Corpsewrights. The light floral scent of their salves and oils begin to drown out the acrid scent of blood from the space.
Boots step into my vision.
Thorne.
I follow the line of him upward, and—
Titans bleed me.
His eyes are glassed with tears, but there’s something fractured beneath them. Not just grief. Not just rage. Something unmoored. Like he hasn’t decided which feeling to become yet. He doesn’t know how to react; he is a shell of himself.
His mother is dead.
I killed him.
And still—he’s here.
Alive.
Looking down at me.
I don’t think. I don’t allow myself to.
I reach for him, fisting his shirt, and pull.
For a heartbeat, I expect resistance. Violence. Anything. I’d allow it, whatever he needed to do to me. I’d take it.
But he drops.
The impact of his knees against the stone echoes through the chamber, and then he’s folding into me like something undone. A ship against a cliffside, a creature untamed.
I freeze.
I don’t understand this.
I don’t understand him.
He presses into my chest like he needs something solid, something that won’t vanish beneath him. A breath shudders through him, then another. Then he breaks.
Not cleanly. Not fully. A heart never breaks cleanly in two.
Just enough to tremble.
My arms come around him before I can stop them, an instinct unexplored.
Reflex. Guilt.
I don’t know.
I shouldn’t touch him.
I shouldn’t be the one holding him together when I am the reason he’s coming apart. I am a rabid thing, untrustworthy and vicious.
And yet—
He lets me.
That’s what unsettles me most.
Not the tears soaking into my shirt. Not the way his fingers clutch at me like I’m something to anchor to. Like I have the ability to keep him from slipping into the darkness of insanity for all he’s lost.
He doesn’t push me away. I want to say that I understand, that I know what he feels.
But I don’t know anything. Not the emotions swirling through him like a tempest. .
Not why he’s choosing this, choosing me, instead of tearing my throat out.
So, I expose my throat to him, a small gesture of vulnerability.
But he only nudges himself further into me.
So, I settle for the only truth I have.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
The words feel thin. Useless. He doesn’t respond. But he doesn’t leave either.
His strong form pushes against my sturdy chest, needing to feel stabilized. Our boots kick the salts and dehydrated Luminaria flowers out of the spell circle as I move from crouching to sitting to hold him more efficiently.
Like that could ever be enough.
Somehow I allow my hand to grasp his head, the tendrils of hair moving between my fingers. His hair is perfect even when it’s sticky with blood.
How tragic, a prince who’s never known love, finding solace in the arms of the wretched assassin meant to kill him.