Chapter Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Seven
Flying high and swift.
—ALICE SETON’S MOTTO
I had just shut the door of the council room when Roland shoved me against the wall. His eyes bloomed with color, my transformation sweeping across him.
And I moaned as his lips crashed down onto mine.
Between desperate presses of his mouth, I gasped: “Where is the king?”
“Safe.” A rough kiss. “In bed.” Another, even rougher. “He received my note. He believes the plot was real.”
I pulled back, studying his face. Turning it from side to side. “Your nose was broken.”
“Already set it.” He grinned, bewildered it had all gone according to plan. “Oliver was sent to fetch me, so I suppose we have about—an hour, two?—before I should return to court. You brilliant, miraculous—”
I kissed him again before my flush would be too obvious. “It is not finished yet.”
“You’re right. I am not nearly finished.” He tore off my stolen doublet, his lips falling to my breasts, murmuring how beautiful they were, how soft for him, as he circled each nipple with his tongue.
“You want this so badly.” He kissed and nipped his way down my body, dragging my hose down to my ankles with his teeth. “Don’t you?”
My head fell back. “Yes.”
With him, I was transformed—I became someone else, someone unafraid to be naked. When I was bare before him, his mouth brushed against my knee.
“If I use my magic to read your desires,” he said, his lips trailing higher, higher still, “you must agree to it first. I don’t want to be in your head unless you want me there.” My thighs trembled in his hands. He was stroking me now. Drawing more circles. “Agreed?”
I nodded, unsure if I could speak.
“Tell me at any point if you want me to stop, or if it doesn’t feel—”
I sank my hands into his hair. “I agree. Do not disappoint me. Your reputation precedes you.”
“My reputation is accurate,” he breathed against me.
In proof, a slow, languid kiss where I craved his mouth most. His tongue followed, moving across me, inside of me, gentle at first, until he sensed I wanted more.
He slid a finger in me, then a second. Those hands.
How often I’d studied them. As they plucked the strings of an instrument, gripped a sword, hooked hair behind his ear. And now—
I had always been a quiet person. But as he led me to the edge of myself, I had to cover my mouth to stifle my cries. When I thought faster, harder, he knew; he answered all of my body’s questions. “Not so soon,” he murmured, kissing my inner thigh. “Not yet. Shh, Bianca.”
He lifted me up and laid me across the council table, scattering stacks of the king’s petitions to the ground.
“I saw this fantasy in your mind.” Then the pressure returned, more urgent than before.
His fingers moved inside me, his tongue flicked exactly where I longed for it, and we passed emotion back and forth—joy and disbelief and complete and total bliss.
He moaned when he sensed how close I was to my pleasure, peering up at me from between my legs, wide-eyed with lust. “You want to. Now. I can feel it.”
I nodded desperately as his head dropped again. I bit into my palm. “You are so precious to me,” he said softly. “I love, I love, giving you what you want.”
And finally, at last, he pressed where he knew my body would break. I lay trembling on the council table for a long while, blinking up at the ceiling. He held my knees, waited patiently for my heartbeat to recover.
I sat up. My thoughts scrambled into coherency.
I was forever ruined for mortal men, and I told him so. Roland ran the pad of his thumb across my lips and smiled. His fingers were slick with me.
So was his signet ring, the mark of the king.
“I agree,” he said. “No more mortal men for you. Only this.”
I allowed myself to sink into his loveliness. I had never indulged so openly. He was beautiful. Breathtaking. Every feature refined: the thin ridge of his nose, the cut of his cheekbones and jaw, the swell of his lips.
“I have a job to finish,” I said, tearing myself away. “As do you.”
He buried his face in my neck. I wrapped my legs around his waist and he hoisted me up, his hands cupping my backside. “Very true.” A low groan as he carried me to the wall, pressed me against it. “Or else I would stay here all day. And what do you suppose we would—”
There was a pounding on the door. We both turned to it.
“Fuck,” he mouthed, but his eyes were shining.
“One moment!” I called.
“What are you two doing in there?” Oliver hissed.
Roland dropped a kiss onto my brow and set me down. Once we were dressed again—and Roland had straightened his doublet to his liking—we cracked open the door.
“You told me to meet you here,” said Oliver dully, his eyes traveling over our disheveled hair, our bloody livery. “Did you not?”
Above the door, the oath flashed silver, a reminder he could not yet cross. For Alvion, I take up my sword. For love of King, I become his armor. For his Magician, I offer my future.
“Did you bring the documents?” asked Roland.
Oliver nodded, peeking over our shoulders into the council room.
“Good. Bianca, look them over, won’t you? You’re better at this sort of thing.”
Oliver muttered, “What, at reading?”
We wore more appropriate clothing—and our true faces—to be received by the king.
Roland’s former chambers had already been handed over to the Guildfords, so we changed in mine. They were empty at first glance. No Bess waiting for me. There was only a russet mouse with blood-red eyes perched on the mantel.
“Leave us,” I said to the men, giving Miranda privacy to transform.
Naked and bristling, she curled over her knees. I tossed her a shift. As she tugged it over her head, she asked, “Is Tom truly dead?”
“Yes.”
She rolled over, then, laughing hysterically, clutching her stomach. The veins on her neck protruded as she cackled. When she was finally spent, she peered up at me. “What now?”
“Now, we are going to have Roland reinstated as lord chancellor by the king and you pardoned. Oliver has taken the liberty of writing your confession already. It says you were forced by the Guildfords, you had no ill will toward the king. Charles Guildford is under arrest and will be escorted to the Tomb.”
She turned so I could lace up her gown. “Will there be no more blood?”
“There will be more.”
Over her shoulder, a cruel slash of a grin. “Excellent.”
We leaned over the agreements and pardons drawn up by Oliver.
Roland held up a candle for me as I crossed out lines.
Rewrote others. “‘The crown shall pass to the king’s rightful heir. However, if, before his crowning, said heir plans or executes treasonous acts against His Majesty King Richard—see page eight for list of treasonous acts and deeds—or proves disloyal to His Majesty King Richard in either deed or remark—see page eleven for treasonous remarks—the lord chancellor may rule as regent in his stead.’” I tested that on my tongue. “Are you sure that wording is correct?”
Oliver hesitated. “Precision is essential. Every single word holds immense meaning in an oath.”
I crossed out plans and wrote intends.
He nodded. “Better. Now, Roland, you sign it.”
Sealing the parchment with dripped wax and a stamp of Roland’s ring, we carried it to the king’s chambers. There, Captain Tromblay nodded to us, his beard still laced with Guildford blood. “Lord Chancellor,” he said as Roland passed.
Roland’s smirk was arrogant as ever as the doors opened wide for him.
The king lay in bed, and as soon as he saw Roland, he reached for him. Roland rushed over and knelt at his side. “Your Majesty,” he said, gripping his hands. “I came as soon as I received word. Your Mercury here—” He nodded to Oliver. “—rode swiftly.”
“You tried to warn me,” cried the king. “Sweet Roland. How did you escape the Tomb?”
“Whispers of a plot reached me. That the Guildfords were planning to assassinate you and let the crown pass to Fulke. They were going to marry him to Cecily. The Archimago Tomb could not hold someone who so desperately wanted to save his king’s life, not when it bends to your will, now could it?”
The king nodded; the lie’s logic made sense to him. “They will die for this,” he hissed.
Roland’s eyes met mine as he brushed his lips over the king’s forehead. “We have taken the liberty of drawing up an arrest warrant for Charles Guildford and Fulke Roet,” Roland said.
Oliver stepped forward. “And a pardon for the Guildford magician. Miranda is her name, I believe. She has been questioned, and her loyalty to you is undoubtable. She was forced.”
“Yes, yes,” the king muttered. He was accustomed to being handed papers.
Roland helped him out of the bed to sit at his desk, and one by one, Oliver slipped the papers before the king.
His pen scratched Richard Rex again and again.
He did take the time to skim each one; Roland had said he would, though he rarely asked questions.
Until: “What is this one, darling?” He held up the page covered in the scribbles of my own hand, not that he knew it.
My hand was everywhere, and he did not see its shadow.
“Oh, this?” Roland inspected it, wrinkling his nose. “In the event of your—”
The king stiffened.
Roland’s smile was practiced. “A precaution only, Your Majesty. You are still in your prime. It reaffirms the crown will pass to your heir, when he is born, Planets willing, and not the traitor Fulke Roet. It allows me to serve as regent until your son comes of age.”
“Aha.” The king signed. Oliver laid his hand over each signature, and the ink flared silver.
In the corridor, there was sudden shrieking, a desperate shout of the king’s name. Cecily was banging on the doors.
“Roland, shut her up,” sighed the king.
“I’ll do it, Your Majesty,” I said.
The king finally noticed me in the corner, candlelight illuminating only half my face. “Have you taken this pretty one into your service?” the king asked Roland.
Roland nodded quickly, as if in afterthought. “Oh, yes. Bianca Mortlake. She’s been of great use to me.”
I swept out of the king’s bedchamber to find Cecily Guildford caught in the captain’s arms, hitting his chest with her fists. Joan, Bess, and Kitty Seton stood, heads bowed, several steps behind her.
“They say—” Cecily sobbed. “—my father is to be—” She collapsed into tears, incoherent as she cried out in sharp bursts, “—executed. And I—the king would never—and Roland—”
“I can take it from here, Captain Tromblay,” I said. “The king would like me to escort Cecily back to her rooms.”
She blanched, stumbling back. “You.”
I only stared calmly.
“Am I to be a prisoner in my own home?”
“Your father and brother attempted to assassinate the king. He must be sure you had no part in the scheme before he releases you.”
“I want to see Roland, not you,” she insisted, laying her hand on her stomach. “I am queen of Alvion. I am carrying the king’s son. I command you, witch, to fetch Roland for me now.”
I want Roland to send the queen to her rooms, I thought to him, and the desire wound through the king’s chambers until it reached him. He soon appeared behind my shoulder. “Which queen?” he whispered in my ear, gently squeezing my hip as he passed.
Cecily fell to her knees, grasping his hands and kissing them, lowering her forehead to his ring. “Roland, tell me what the witch says isn’t true,” she said against his knuckles. “You cannot doubt my loyalty. My father, he’s a good man. He loves the king. He would never—”
Roland drew his hand away from her mouth.
“Call Bianca a witch again, Cecily, and I’ll reconsider my defense on your behalf.
Your father is a traitor. You Guildfords met before dawn—don’t look at me like I’m a fool—and you plotted to remove me from power just as you plotted against the king.
There is no heir in your belly. I know it, and you know it. ”
Her lower lip trembled. She glanced between us. “Roland, if they had a plot, they did not trust me with it.”
“I know,” Roland said softly. “That is why the king and I will spare your life. All will be well. Let his temper cool. He swears he’ll kill you with his bare hands if he lays eyes on you. Go.”
“My brother is dead.” Seeing he was still unmoved, she scoffed, wiped her tears, and swept her skirts into her hands.
The venom in her eyes might have poisoned someone else, someone who was not as accustomed to such stares as I was.
“Enjoy his bed,” she spat at me, before twisting around, her tail of maids scampering after her.
“I will,” I murmured. Roland turned to me in shock and coughed into his sleeve.
Only Kitty Seton glanced back over her shoulder. After the fall of her own family, she reveled in the sweep of another off the board.
I had not lied to Miranda about the blood. Because soon, so very soon, as the Moon rose, as the stars spun into new positions, the sky would match the Final Breath we’d found, and the king would be dead.