Wooing the Witch Queen (Queens of Villainy #1)
Chapter 1
1
In the elegant capital city of the Archduchy of Estarion, the easternmost principality of the Serafin Empire
It was a cool, rainy evening in Estaviel City when Estarion’s Archduke decided not, after all, to give his in-laws the gift of his own early demise.
He was at the opera when the decision crystallized within him, sitting in the velvet-hung cage of the royal box. His father-in-law, Estarion’s Chief Minister, sat straight-backed beside him, silver moustache magnificently waxed and uniformed chest glittering with medals. His burly brother-in-law, the high general of Estarion’s armies, lounged carelessly on his other side, one leg spread out to block him from going anywhere. On the stage below, a soprano warbled tunefully about lost love, while opera glasses sparkled eagerly across the tiers, all fixed upon the most famous young widower in the audience: Archduke Felix Augustus von Estarion.
The Archduke was, of course, clothed in endless black. It was the only color ever to be found in his wardrobe nowadays, no matter how many times he requested otherwise. It would make the perfect, breathlessly awaited climax to this evening’s public performance for him to simply lean forward, overwhelmed by his so-famous grief, and topple from the high royal box onto the stage below.
Felix, the twenty-three-year-old man behind the title, had grieved his wife’s death thirteen months ago. He had grown up with Emmeline, the kindhearted daughter of his grim regent and one of the only other children he’d ever been allowed to meet. They had protected one another against her father as well as possible throughout their shared childhood, and the quiet moments of peace they’d found together had formed his sweetest memories during those cold years.
Felix had been not only glad but desperately relieved when he’d first learned, on the cusp of adulthood, that she was the bride chosen for him by the Count, rather than some foreign stranger. When Emmeline had unexpectedly been taken ill, he had held her hand to the very end—and when her eyes had been shut by the highest of the attending physicians, he had lost all dignity and wept before witnesses for the first time since his parents had died and Count von Hertzendorff had arrived to instill brutal rules of discipline upon him.
He was surprised, at the time, that his father-in-law allowed so many servants and courtiers to witness such a shameful breakdown. It was only when he finally emerged from the fog of grief, several months later, that he realized the simple truth: with Emmeline’s death, Count von Hertzendorff had lost his prime claim to the Archduchy of Estarion—so he was already planning his next move.
At three-and-twenty, Felix was too old to require a regent. In the eyes of the law, he could—theoretically—dismiss his father-in-law from the role of Chief Minister and wrench control of the army from his brother-in-law’s violent grasp. He could even choose to wed again and bring a rival family into power.
It all seemed wildly unlikely to Felix himself, who barely knew any of the other members of his high cabinet and had never been allowed a private conversation with any of them… but Count Gerhard von Hertzendorff had not become the most powerful man in Estarion by dismissing any potential threats on the horizon. He had been preparing, even at the moment of his daughter’s deeply disappointing death, for the worst that he could imagine to happen… and Felix had played directly into his hands with his “unmanly” display of emotion.
The Count would never willingly give up the power he had seized fifteen years ago. Having been appointed temporary Regent by his fellow members of Estarion’s high cabinet, he had chosen to appoint himself Chief Minister on the day of Felix’s eighteenth birthday, although he’d had the political sense to send out that proclamation in Felix’s name.
By then, Felix hadn’t even tried to protest. He had been taught for years, by means of ruthless beatings, strategic isolation, and carefully calculated starvation, that the Count would brook no challenges to his authority… and Count von Hertzendorff recognized no mercy when it came to enforcing his will.
The laws of the Empire and the force of public opinion were both strong enough that he couldn’t push Felix over the balcony now, in front of hundreds of fascinated onlookers. However, he could make utterly certain that no one would be surprised when news of the Archduke’s eventual, tragically self-inflicted death was finally released to the newspapers.
Felix had no doubt that all the details of that upcoming death had already been carefully planned.
He’d learned when he was young that the only way to survive and ensure Emmeline’s safety was to bury himself in the dreamy world of books and poetry and leave every higher decision to the Count’s authority. But as Felix looked across the sea of glittering opera glasses now, an astonishing realization suddenly formed within him. Those old flames of rebellion, which he’d thought so thoroughly quashed years ago, popped up a few last, burning embers after all.
He had nothing left to lose.
Emmeline was gone. There was no one else he cared for. Count von Hertzendorff had taken the utmost care to manage that state of affairs by keeping a steady flow of new servants in regular rotation.
In other words… no one Felix loved could possibly be hurt by his actions anymore.
The shining liberation of that realization lifted him up out of his cushioned seat and all the way to his feet. As the entire audience gasped with shock at his first-ever public breach of protocol, he opened his mouth and drew a deep breath to speak every damning truth at the top of his lungs for everyone to hear and every newspaper to report across the continent…
Just as his brother-in-law’s steel-toed military boot—hidden from the rest of the audience by the low, swag-draped wall of the opera box—swept out to slam into the back of his knee, sending Felix toppling back into his seat with an undignified, yelping crash.
“The Archduke is ill!” the high general bellowed, pressing one large hand firmly against Felix’s chest to hold him down. “Close the curtains!”
Uniformed footmen leapt forward to untie the silk ropes that held thick crimson curtains open around their box.
“ No, ” Felix gritted, pushing against his brother-in-law’s grip, “wait! I—”
The curtains fell closed around them as a roar of sound filled the rest of the theatre, the audience losing all interest in the drama onstage.
There was no chance of being heard outside the royal box anymore.
“What the devil do you think you’re playing at?” His brother-in-law, Radomir, shifted his grip to a hard clamp on Felix’s closest wrist to keep him safely pinned. “Thinking of taking up a singing career, little brother? I wouldn’t try it, with your voice.”
“Enough of this nonsense,” snapped Felix’s father-in-law, glowering over his moustache. “We’ll have a physician summoned to the box, then bundle him home before he can cause any more trouble. You and I will stay here so no one goes into hysterics. In the meantime…”
Ignoring Felix, as usual whenever politics came up, the Count held up a letter that had been discreetly passed to him by a servant during the opera’s first act. “What’s all this nonsense about surrender to the Witch of the East? Do you have any idea how many hundreds of gildar we’ve sent her uncle over the years to keep those cursed mountains under our control? Damn it, Kitvaria’s directly on our border. We can’t let her little uprising win!”
“Sorry. I called back our final troops this morning… at least, the hundred that survived.” Radomir shrugged. “I was planning to tell you after tonight’s performance: there’s no use wasting money on any more attempts at taking back that kingdom for her uncle. It’s not worth it, even for the sake of protecting our border. She’s set a damned unbreakable spell around the whole thing. No one with an offensive weapon or a military uniform can even pass into her territory anymore! And when you add in all the monsters and misfits who’ve followed her in there over the past few months, wanting nothing more than to tear apart any civilized invaders…”
“Unbelievable.” The Count crumpled the letter in his hands. “So we’re to admit humiliation and defeat and leave her squatting like a spider on the very edge of Estarion? Thumbing her nose at the Empire without a qualm?”
“Unless the Emperor decides, for once, to send his own people to deal with her instead of wasting ours… yes,” said his son flatly. “Unless you want her to take over Estarion next—because so far, none of our troops or wizards have managed to cause her the slightest bit of trouble.”
The look of simmering fury in the Count’s hard grey eyes sent instinctive dread into Felix’s heart. He knew only too well what could come of that sort of rage. His scarred back still twinged at the memories of it.
But apparently, there was now one person in the world whom even the Count couldn’t intimidate…
Which meant that Felix had just discovered exactly where to run.
He only had to find a way in.