22. Chace #3
She began to raise her hand and open her mouth as if preparing to summon her guards to escort me out, but the gentleman at her side leaned forward and whispered at her ear. Her actions stilled, and both of their gazes flickered to me as they exchanged information.
The portly gentleman appeared to be roughly the same age as the queen, and he dressed much like a royal himself. Possibly high-ranking staff. Or…maybe the king, but in title only. The true authority resided with the queen’s family line.
Maybe. Possibly.
The gentleman stepped back, and the queen glowered at me.
“Do you have something useful to share or not?” she asked.
I held the frown from my face. “Are you saying you want what I know, but are unwilling to reciprocate?”
I took a calculated risk asking the question in such a manner. A risk I might later regret.
The queen’s eyebrows rose. “I do not care who or what you think you are. I dictate the rules here.”
“Apologies,” I said with a slight bow. “But as you may or may not know, my relative Chiara Badden was a reaper sent here on a collection.”
There was no turning back now. I had purposely disclosed that which the handbook insisted we always avoid revealing.
“I, too, am a reaper sent here to help rectify whatever went awry. A little knowledge about what actually happened could go a long way in helping me heal your city.”
The queen bristled. “Chiara Badden should never have come here, but the damage is done, and there is nothing you can do. So go home. Leave my citadel alone.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You can, and you will,” she insisted.
“You don’t understand—”
The queen slammed the base of her scepter onto the floor, sending a reverberating throng echoing through the long chamber.
I flinched then crossed my arms and squared my shoulders.
She leaned forward in her seat, her face stern and hard. “I understand far more than you realize, boy. It is you who is lacking full comprehension of the situation you have walked into.”
She rose from her throne, revealing the full magnificence of her authority with unyielding grace. “Now I want you gone from this place. Use whatever secret method you found to gain entrance and leave my citadel by nightfall. Tell your kind to visit here no more.”
“It’s not that simple—”
“Leave my sight.” The queen’s voice rang with order and wrath as she swung a hard point toward the door at my back. “See that this male departs the premises immediately.”
She turned to leave the throne room through a door set at the side of the dais.
Two guards grabbed me by the arms and dragged me toward the exit at my back.
I wasn’t ready to go. Not a single answer given had quelched my query. My hands began to heat, tingle, and glow a ghostly purple from the gift of my reaper’s touch.
The queen spun sharply to face me and pointed her scepter. “You will use none of that here. I forbid it.”
“Apologies,” I said for the third time since stepping into her presence, but my words sounded hollow.
My actions had spoken to such. I tugged my arms free from the guards’ hold, bowed, then straightened my overcoat.
“It was a gut reaction, and it won’t happen again.
I’ll leave without argument. You needn’t use force to see me out. With your permission…”
She tipped her head, but her gaze remained leery.
I smiled then turned and marched from the room. Two guards became six, and they stayed at my side for the entirety of my walk off the grounds and dissipated once I strode beyond the palace gates.
I stared at the mammoth palace fortress for countless minutes.
The meeting hadn’t gone as I had hoped. Not in the slightest. But at least one positive thing had come from my exchange with the queen.
I would bet my winning smile that she knew exactly what had caused the situation plaguing the Citadel of Veritas…
as well as knew what had happened to Chiara Badden.
That tidbit of gathered information made up for the increasing throb at my temple and my blooming vision irritation.
“Hey, you,” one of the guards called out to me.
I lowered my gaze from the castle spirals to the soldier standing before the palace gate.
“You heard our queen,” the guard said. “You have until nightfall to leave the city, or she’ll send us to hunt you down. You better get moving.”
I raised my brows at the implication of these guys attempting to take me in a fight.
With a smirk, and little else, I sauntered away.
Walked less than a block.
Something shifted in the shadows at my side.
As I turned toward the movement, a burlap sack dropped over my head.
Too quickly, a needle pricked the side of my neck, and my skin, my blood, warmed.
The assailant grabbed my wrists. My fight abnormally weak, they too-easily bound my hands, blocking the usage of my reaper’s touch.
A punch to the gut―oomph―knocked the wind from my lungs.
A slam to the head and the world tilted—became untethered.
What…what did they shoot into me?
My limbs refused to answer my call to action.
I dropped into the care of my attackers.
My body nothing more than dead weight, they dragged me from the street, the cobblestones thumping and scraping beneath my boots.