Chapter 5 #2
Fireguards raised their eyes to watch me pass as we approached the throne room. There was nothing they could do to help me here. If the queen wanted to interrogate me, she would. If she wanted to feed me to the dragon, she would.
Vession was oddly tense, as well.
He held up a hand to the Fireguards about to throw open the doors, stopping them. Shooting me another glance, they stayed their hands and shot each other looks.
“What did you do?” Vession hissed at me.
I blinked. Vession sounded … afraid. I hadn’t been worried at all until seeing his face look like that. Vession never showed emotion. Vession was never afraid .
“I … I …” I sputtered.
“Wonderful,” he grit out, and gestured for the Fireguards to get on with it.
The doors opened, and he practically pushed me forward.
That was more like the Vession and I knew, and the familiarity gave me courage.
I raised my head.
The queen sat garbed in a dress of dazzling white, dripping with diamonds and crystals that threw light in every direction, making it hard to look at her without squinting. Nestled in her silver hair was a crown of matching diamonds.
She should die. Her. Not my mother. Her.
The king was nowhere to be seen, but two Nobles stood by her side with graying beards and blue robes. Two primas stood next to them.
What was this, a trial?
“I heard you are scurrying around in the dark like the little mud rat you are. Are you too good for my ballroom?”
I kept my face carefully blank. Well, I supposed the cards were on the table.
Normally, I’d try to charm my way out of a bad situation, but something about the queen rattled me, and it was more than my hatred for her.
Magick sparked along her veins, getting under my skin and irritating me. She put me on edge. My hackles raised.
I vowed to keep my temper and play the game. Not only that, but play it well.
“I apologize if I strayed from my boundaries. Parties bore me and?—”
“Are you not thankful for a chance to mingle with those of higher birth than you?” she cut in, eyes sharp and just as light as her hair.
I froze, holding my breath .
By admitting out loud that I wasn’t a Noble, she was admitting I had mixed heritage. That meant she had to know who my father was, right? She knew my history! Likely she had said it to try and humiliate me, but all she did was reveal her knowledge.
Keep it together. Keep your calm.
“I was unaware I was of lower birth. My mother never spoke of my father.” I hated to throw blame at the feet of my dead mother, but it was the most neutral card I had to play.
The queen lifted one pale eyebrow.
“Noble Vession tells me you are quite intelligent, worryingly so. Don’t tell me you haven’t figured it out.”
Perhaps a little flattery wasn’t out of the question.
“Few are blessed like you,” I said softly, bowing my head to her and running a hand through my dark hair.
Vession made a grumble in his throat behind me. I’d likely get cuffed around my ear later for my impertinence.
Her chin lifted at me. “You are silver-tongued, and handsome. Your future is bright as long as you stick to the confines of your birth.”
She turned to the Nobles and primas at her side.
“I declare this experiment a success. Would you not agree?”
The word jarred me, even as her cronies nodded and smiled, congratulating her on her ‘success.’
“Experiment?” I choked, speaking out of turn without thinking.
Vession grabbed the back of my neck and squeezed, digging his nails into my skin in warning.
The queen settled deeper into her throne.
“Come out, sweetheart.”
A small figure tip-toed out from behind the queen’s throne from where he’d been hiding. A child around ten years old kept his eyes on the ground, hands clutching onto a stuffed dragon.
The prince.
I studied his dark hair, likely from the king.
He glanced up at me and I met a near mirror image of myself, but with slight differences.
Instead of my dark eyes, the queen’s silver peeked back at me, tinged with green.
My features were heavier and this boy carried the queen’s more delicate face.
The prince’s nose was softer, and more rounded, like the queen’s.
“Easy,” Vession growled into my ear.
I was breathing heavily.
“Dearest, he’s figuring it out,” the queen mockingly said to the prince, her voice so sugary sweet I wanted to choke. “Come up here and sit on Mummy’s lap.”
The child looked understandably terrified in the presence of the stark-faced Nobles and primas, but did as he was told. He seemed old to be sitting on anyone’s lap.
“You have this little mud rat to thank for your existence,” she told him, not talking to me, but she might as well have been with the self-satisfied smirk that twisted the corners of her mouth.
“Experiment?” I repeated again like the dumb rat she accused me of being.
“We are done here,” she called out regally, dismissing me in one motion.
Vession’s hand on my shoulder was a vice grip, but I refused to move.
“What experiment?” I shouted at her.
The little boy stared at me, open-mouthed with wide eyes.
The queen laughed, waving her hands at the Fireguards. “Away with him. He bores me.”
Vession tried to manhandle me but I was stronger these days. Two Fireguards stepped in to assist, and in short order they wrestled me out of the audience chamber, shoving me out into the corridor and slamming the door behind us.
I shoved away Vession and the Fireguards, who didn’t look the least bit insulted as they took up posts outside the door.
“What the hell are you thinking?” Vession snarled at me. “She could execute you!”
“Like she did my mother, you mean?” I shot out, on a limb.
His lips tightened, and he shot a glance at the listening Fireguards. They kept their faces stoically uninterested.
“Back to my chambers. Now.”
Fine by me.
I followed behind as he stomped down the corridor.
“You are an idiot.”
It felt like I was twelve years old again, being yanked away from my mother’s bosom and thrown into the viper pit. I shook the insult off. Vession calling me an idiot was a term of endearment at this point.
“What experiment?” I grit out, undeterred.
Vession sat down in his chair, his head resting on his steepled hands. His shoulders slumped forward, a deep sigh leaving his chest.
It was the most … at loss I’d ever seen him.
“You figured it out in the throne room. Must I say it?” he spat at me.
My heart skipped a beat.
“Yes, you must,” I confirmed. Otherwise, I wouldn’t believe it. Not that I needed yet another reason to murder the queen.
He brought his hand to the armrest of his chair, wrapping his knuckles against it.
“Very well.”
I braced myself.
“ You were the experiment. Remember how I said years ago that your mother was a friend of the queen, entrusted with an important task? Well … your father is the king.”
Suspecting it was one thing; hearing it said out loud, quite another. My pulse raced inside my veins, and the room swam around me.
“I—”
“The queen wanted assurances she could have healthy sons with the king. So there was an experiment.”
The way he said it was so clinical, but it was my life. It was my mother’s life.
And the king … I’d seen him maybe less than three times total in my entire life, and we lived in the same building.
Was it a secret, then? Was that why my mother was always so afraid?
Was that why she had pushed me so hard in my studies, and told me I was better than everyone else?
Not because of who I was, but who I had come from?
“No one knows, and it’s safer for you that way. Let everyone think you’re the result of a Noble woman dallying with a Fireguard. If I were you, I’d keep your head down and stick to the archives. Live your life so that the queen forgets you exist.”
Ha. Fat chance of that. I’d seen the way her hatred for me burned in those cold, silver eyes.
But a tiny sliver of satisfaction … of righteousness sparked inside of me. I had Noble blood. And I had mud blood .
I belonged where I said I belonged—with the best attributes of both worlds.
“Get something to eat, then get to the archives. Keep your head down,” he implored me.
“Vession, it’s like you don’t know me at all.”
His eyes narrowed at me, but I smirked.