Chapter Thirty-One
Thirty-One
Power waxes and wanes.
—BIANCA MORTLAKE’S MOTTO
In the dead of night, on the banks of the Snake, I transformed the king back into a corpse.
I believed he deserved to rest as himself, in the end.
Have his body decay. Return one day, if we did return after death, if the Saturn realm was not our true end, as someone or something better.
Miranda ripped him open, and we filled his body with heavy stones.
Roland spat on the surface of the water, the ripples lapping into darkness.
My tears fell in a steady rhythm. As King Richard sank into the muck of the Snake, the last thing I saw of him was his gray eyes, the eyes of his son.
How lost he seemed, how wretched and innocent in death.
It did not take much to kill a king, but it did take much to kill.
Our court gathered in the great hall.
Roland’s footsteps clipped across the wooden floors, a resounding, powerful echo.
Roland, Roland, Roland, the court whispered.
Roland is coming. The Venus King. All the nobility bowed.
Ladies sank into demure curtseys. Even Queen Cecily and her two remaining attendants, Kitty and Agnes, lowered their heads.
The doors groaned, and there he was. Wide shoulders cutting through the crowd, a head taller than most of the men. He carried his sword at his hip, his pink hair a flare in the sunlight. The stained glass windows above were still shattered from Jasper’s fists.
The nobility bent to kiss the jewels on his fingers.
And over their heads, he smiled at me.
The court parted. I stepped forward, but when I bent to kiss his ring, he shook his head no. He raised my hand to his mouth instead, brushing his lips slowly across my knuckles. “Lady Mortlake,” he murmured. Then he lifted my hand and pressed it to his brow.
The crowd gasped.
It was an ancient sign of chivalry. A pronouncement of who held his heart, his loyalty. They already knew we were lovers, but now he’d claimed me as his before the entire court.
As we walked arm in arm to the dais, courtiers tipped their heads to me. “Lady Mortlake,” they whispered, even as distrust and envy stirred within them.
“Lady Bianca.”
“Bless you, Your Grace.”
“Lady Mortlake, how lovely you look.”
Roland whispered into my ear, “More than lovely, Mouse. See how they are blades of grass? When wind blows, they bow. And now they bow to you.”
He pulled me closer. Kissed the tip of my nose.
The king followed behind us, struggling with his cane. The courtiers paid their obeisance as he passed.
Roland sank into one of the thrones, and I stood just beside him out of a direct shaft of sun. Roland entwined our fingers together as the king settled into his own seat. In the crowd, Oliver tapped his chin, an instruction to raise mine.
“My friends, we have a new ambassador here today from Bastian.” Roland nodded to a somber man in all black, with flaxen hair and a scythe stitched onto his breast. “It seems rumors have spread across the continent that the assassination attempt by the Guildfords and the Roets had been successful. It was not.” Roland’s glare swung away from the ambassador.
“As you can see, King Richard is alive and well. I’d beg you to send your report to your emperor and his magician quickly. ”
I squeezed Roland’s hand. His smile was tender, meant for me alone. “Alvion is strong,” he proclaimed. “Our magicians are strong. And none shall threaten our borders or our blood.”
The Bastian ambassador’s eyes narrowed. Confusion swirled in his head. For there I was—standing beside Roland. And there the king was, alive and well, just as Roland had said.
It was outside the scope of my known powers, or any Moonborn powers. Balthasar would tear through tomes and find nothing.
For who could see the red glint in the king’s eyes but me?
Miranda had taken to her new role with abandon.
After a lifetime of service to the Guildfords, eating tarts in bed was a welcome change.
We had assured her it would only be a Moon or two, but she enjoyed playing king already. We all enjoyed playing king.
We had gathered in my apartments—Oliver, Miranda, Roland, and I—huddled together around a fire, whittling our plan into a new shape.
Wearily, I watched the sparks leap and fall as they argued.
Oliver and Miranda wanted to execute the real Fulke.
It was our only logical choice, they argued.
Public. In the square. His murder of Ambrose as the charge.
“The king wouldn’t hesitate,” Miranda added.
“Hal would,” Roland said.
I tensed at that.
“Fulke is our ace,” he continued. “Chew up our ace, and what do we have? There is great value in having what someone else wants desperately. Balthasar will be cautious with us as long as he believes we might give Fulke to him. I know him.”
I bit my lip. Tore myself away from the fire.
I played it out for them. If we let Fulke live.
If the court believed that, because he had committed such egregious treason against the king, he’d been struck from the line of succession.
If we announced the king’s death, if Roland stepped in as regent now, if, if, if.
It all led to only one outcome I could see.
The entire court—the entire country—whispering it was Roland who had killed Richard.
They would whisper it because it was easy conjecture, and because it was all they knew of us.
The ambition in Roland tugged on him. I recognized it intimately. It had always, always mirrored my own. But what he said was, “You should be named regent, not me.”
“What? No. Roland, you know I—”
“Joy.” Miranda rolled her eyes. “A lovers’ quarrel.”
“Bianca is right,” murmured Oliver. He leaned against my desk with his arms crossed.
Before him were scraps of parchment. The ciphered language he was inventing, just for the four of us to speak.
We had yet to come up with a name for it.
“We require legitimacy right now, not further chaos. We need royal blood.”
Roland tilted toward the hearth. “Royal blood,” he laughed. “Why should that matter? Thousands of years ago, did it matter to Oberon? The first king of Alvion would never have had a crown without his magician. Oberon handed Armel this kingdom.”
“But we have royal blood,” I said. “Or the appearance of it.”
Roland turned, his brow furrowed.
“We are the shadows, Roland. We cannot step into the light. Not yet. We need the court and the Bastian ambassador to see the king alive and well for several more months, with you returned to power. Any calls for Fulke’s rule will be silenced.
Balthasar will not be able to come for us.
And soon, when the time is right, we’ll kill the king again. ”
It took only two steps for Roland to cross the room. He took my face in his hands and kissed me hard.
Miranda rolled her eyes again. “Venusborn are all passionate lunatics.”
When we finally broke apart and I told her the specifics of my new plan, she gaped at us. “You both are lunatics.”
“No,” said Roland, pride shining within him. He shook his head. “No. She is the true king.”
The memory sank into the past. I turned my pale gaze to meet the Bastian ambassador’s and smiled with all of my malice.
For years, I had thought the wide-eyed glances thrown at me were unwarranted, the whispers unfair. But all along, the court had seen in me what I had not yet seen in myself.
I was the magician they had been promised.