Corruption of the Rose
Page 26
At the far end of the room, Queen Beatrice jumped up from her chair at her desk. Her face set into hard lines as her eyes fell on the mage.
“What are you doing in here? No one is permitted in my personal chambers,” the queen snapped.
Rose gently pulled her hood back and smiled casually as she approached the desk. “I assure you there is an exception for me. In fact, I do believe that you have been expecting me for some months now.”
The queen’s eyebrows flew up, and her face relaxed, her lips parting on a sigh. “It is you. You have my perfume?”
Rose nodded and drew a small vial from her pouch, setting it on the desk before the queen, her hand hovering over it, preventing the cautious queen from snapping it up. Saris grinned. It was like watching a cat toying with a mouse. Rose had toiled over finishing the elixir from the Forial Rose essences all to this end, and the queen didn’t even realize it.
“Give it to me,” the queen demanded, her tone crass.
Rose lifted an eyebrow at her, her lips curving in a smirk. “Of course, but first—don’t you wish to know the fate of your man?”
“My man?” the queen frowned and then laughed. “Oh, you mean Roninbar. Hopefully nothing too dreadful. He was useful, and I would like to keep him for as long as he continues to be so.”
“I see. He claimed a love,” Rose murmured as she withdrew her hand.
The woman snatched it up, her fingers curling around it like greedy claws, her laughter a brittle bark of disdain. “Love? Spare me. I endure the king because I must, and I endure Roninbar’s pathetic paintings because it suits my purposes. Speaking of which, where is he? He still has other duties to take care of. It certainly took him long enough to bring you to me,” she stated crossly.
“Oh, he is here,” Rose replied with a grin. “But first, anoint yourself, my queen, and see how the perfume favors you.”
“Yes,” the queen mumbled, her eyes fixated on the small blue bottle. “I do think I will. I cannot wait to see the way the king reacts. You may of course wait to witness the power of the perfume.”
Rose inclined her head, waiting patiently as Queen Beatrice dabbed the perfume on her neck and wrists. The queen lifted her wrist to her nose and sniffed.
“It is quite delightful. I’ve never smelled anything like it before.”
“And nor will you,” Rose agreed. “The flowers only grow in one place. But here, I have a gift for you,” she said as she pulled out the amulet. It caught the light as it spun there on its chain, the opal catching the light from the hearth. “With my apologies,” she added.
Queen Beatrice plucked the amulet from Rose’s fingertips. Stepping away, she held it up so that it would best catch the light and admired it for a long moment before she composed herself once more to address Rose.
“It is lovely, but now I must insist that you produce Roninbar.”
Rose blinked at her guilelessly. “Oh, but I did. Look deep into the opal, your majesty. Don’t you see a light flickering deep within it? He wanted you to have his heart and soul—and now you get to keep it.”
The queen’s fingers went lax, and the opal fell to the floor at her feet, her face pale as she looked at Rose with horror.
“What did you do?” she whispered.
“I gave him exactly what he wanted,” Rose replied sweetly. “He wanted to be with you forever, after all.”
“But I have no use for him in a jewel!” Queen Beatrice snapped. “What am I supposed to do without him being here to do his duty? I don’t want his pitiful soul and heart—I want the muscle of the man who can do what he’s told without a thought in his pretty head.”
Rose cocked her head, her eyebrows arched. “Do you truly wish for him to be here without a thought in his head?” she asked sweetly.
“Of course!” the queen snapped. She barked out a laugh. “What am I saying? You have just hidden him somewhere, and the opal is just a clever conjurer’s trick. Bring him to me at once.”
Saris held back a chuckle as his mate shrugged. The queen was playing directly into her hands. Rose tossed a grin in his direction and waved him in.
“Saris, my love, please bring our other gift.”
Concealed in his heavy cloak and hood to disguise his inhuman features as much as possible, he shuffled forward and laid the bag on the queen’s plush bed. Rose smirked as she walked by the queen and to the bed. Leaning down, she loosened the straps on the material surrounding them until they fell loose.
Her lips moved as she whispered an incantation to awaken the body. It would be without a soul or mind, but Rose assured him that it would possess some form of memory—but mostly hunger for that the short time it would have before it fell apart. With the enticement of the perfume, it would fuel that unnatural hunger into a frenzy. It would fall apart all the quicker, but that suited him perfectly. He had no interest in dealing with a ghoul.
The last word falling from her lips, she smiled and drew back, straightening once more. She gestured to the queen.
“He but sleeps. Go awaken him, your majesty,” Rose invited.
Queen Beatrice frowned at Rose, but stepped forward. “Felix?” she called cautiously as she approached the bedside.
The corpse lunged up at the sound of her voice, responding to the one being it had most loved in its memory, its mouth opening in a rattling moan. The scream that left the queen was gratifying, and he got a not-so-secret thrill at the way Rose’s grin widened in response.
Although she attempted to evade the creature’s grasp, the ghoul was quick, his fingernails digging into her soft skin as he yanked her to him on the bed. Queen Beatrice collapsed against him, her screams of terror turning to pain as his teeth dug into her flesh and ripped it away as his hips pressed down against hers in a confusion of desires.
Blood spurted in an arc, spraying crimson, and the queen’s pale hand that flopped frantically at her side dropped listless, now covered in blood. The ghoul didn’t even notice that she was no longer responding. He continued to tear into her, oblivious to Rose as she picked up the opal and carried it back over to the queen. At his mate’s silent command, Saris stepped behind Roninbar and, with a curl of his lip, clasped his hand firmly around the back of the male’s neck, holding him in place so that Rose could approach the dying queen.
Blood gurgled on the queen’s lips, and his mate approached with a sweet smile, her finger sliding the opal into the blood as she very gently set it on the woman’s bloodied breasts.
“In pain? Of course. I understand,” Rose murmured as a pained cry escaped from the queen. “You would have had this for me, wouldn’t you? Didn’t you order Roninbar to kill me even if I was late in producing this perfume—a perfume! —just so you could secure your place? So no other woman would replace you in your rooms? It was acceptable to you to have me killed or even tortured to get what you wanted. So now you will have it. You don’t have to worry any longer. No one in the castle will ever forget you, and no other woman shall ever grace this room.” She trailed off for a moment as she smiled at the blood sprays covering the walls.
“And now, you will have your dear Felix…”
Queen Beatrice shook her head mutely, a cry wheezing out of her torn throat. The last bloody gurgle, and her eyes fluttered shut. Rose murmured her incantation, drawing the soul with the churning currents of her magic. The queen’s body lurched, the chest pushing out for a moment before there was a psychic tear, and he watched as the shimmering light tore out from the queen’s body, drawn into the magical current of the amulet. Saris did not envy the pair. Among its magical functions, opals were also known to amplify desires and emotions. They would be caught in there together with the queens hatred and Roninbar’s endless love to torment each other.
Smiling to herself, Rose lifted the amulet to the light and stared into its depths at the two pulsing lights contained within. Her eyes lifted to him, and she gave a nod.
Grinning, glad to be done with the entire affair, Saris slid his hands up the male’s nec
k to the sides of his head in one swift motion and wrenched the head free from its body. The spell severed, the corpse collapsed, and Saris dropped the head a safe distance away from it.
Setting the opal on the desk, Rose hummed a melody to herself and half-danced across the room to his side. His clawed thumb stroked over her cheek, smearing the spray of blood coating her skin.
“Satisfied now, my love?” he murmured.
“Completely,” she affirmed, her smile widening.
Hand in hand, he escorted her back out the servant’s exit and into the mist-shrouded gardens. They walked beneath the light of the moon rising into the heavens, disappearing into the murk of the night as someone in the queen’s chambers screamed in horror.
Author’s Note
First of all, thank you so much for taking a chance on this story. As you might have noticed this book is a bit darker than most of my work, perhaps even darker in tone than my Dark Spirits series. With this book I was thinking of a Halloween story in which there is no redeemable, misunderstood monster saved by the heroine’s love. Instead, I wanted to explore the descent of the heroine into her own true desires and monstrous nature in terms of what is considered right by society. A tale of transformation in the other direction that overall serves its own purpose. In this story the monsters are unapologetically just as they appear.
I truly hope that it did not disappoint and that you enjoyed the book to give you a little bit of a dark thrill for the season.
Have a most happy Halloween!
S.J. Sanders
Other Works by S.J. Sanders
The Mate Index
First Contact
The VaDorok
Hearts of Indesh (Valentine Novella)
The Edoka’s Destiny
The Vori’s Mate
Eliza’s Miracle (Novella)
A Kiss on Kaidava
The Vori’s Secret
A Mate for Oigr (Halloween Novella)
Heart of the Agraak
A Gift for Medif
The Arobi’s Queen
Teril’s Fire
Monsterly Yours
The Orc Wife
The Troll Bride
The Accidental Werewolf’s Mate
The Pixie’s Queen
The Unicorn’s Mare (coming Dec 2020)
Sci-Fi Fairytales
Red: A Dystopian World Alien Romance
The Sirein: (coming Nov 2020)
Ragoru Beginnings Romance
White: Emala’s Story
Huntress
Dark Spirits
Havoc of Souls
The Mirror (also part of Mischief Matchmakers)
Forest of Spirits
Desert of the Vanished (coming soon)
Shadowed Dreams Erotica
The Lantern
Serpent of the Abyss
The Mintars
Librarian and the Beast
The Atlavans
The Darvel Exploratory Systems
Classified Planet: Turongal
Serpents of the Abyss (coming soon)
Mist World: Asylum of Graelf (currently an ongoing serial in reader group)
Argurma Salvager
Broken Earth
Pirate’s Gold
Sands of Argurumal (Coming Nov 2020)
About the Author
S.J. Sanders is a writer of Science Fiction and Fantasy Romance. With a love of all things alien and monster she is fascinated with concepts of far off worlds, as well as the lore and legends of various cultures. When not writing, she loves reading, sculpting, painting and travel (especially to exotic destinations). Although born and raised in Alaska, she currently as a resident of Florida with her family.
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