THE ROYAL TRIALS: HEIR

by James Tate

  THE ROYAL TRIALS: HEIR

  Tate James

  The Royal Trials: Heir

  The Royal Trials Book 3

  Copyright © 2019 by Katrina Fischer

  Cover Art © 2019 Amanda Carroll

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Stay In Touch

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Epilogue

  Untitled

  A note from the author…

  The Royal Wars: Knight

  Also by TATE JAMES

  FERAL MAGIC SAMPLE

  CHAPTER ONE

  This book is dedicated to my first fan, and the strongest person I have ever known. I hope I can be half the woman you are when I grow up, Mum xx

  Stay In Touch

  Stay in touch with Tate.

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  Prologue

  Ophelia

  A small flutter in my belly brought a smile to my face, and I laid my hand over my midsection. It was her. My baby.

  "She's happy," I whispered, beaming up at my love.

  He caressed my face with the backs of his fingers, dropping a tender kiss on my lips. "Because her mama is happy," he replied with a breathtaking smile.

  I turned back to the thriving bush of white flowers, which I'd been harvesting for an arrangement. They were my signature flower, one that my people had dubbed the Ophelia Bloom, but they were so much more personal than that. They'd grown the first night Sal and I had... well...

  I smiled again to myself, stroking my fingers over my flat stomach where I imagined our daughter fluttered happily. It hadn’t been long, but I’d experienced such a shocking increase in magic that I couldn’t help being aware of the new life within me.

  Our daughter. Our baby Zarina.

  "What did you decide to do about the Trials?" Sal murmured, burying his face in my hair as he hugged me from behind. "You know Lord Grantham will push for an answer today."

  I heaved a sigh at the reminder of real life. Every day my responsibilities seemed to weigh heavier on my shoulders. Something was going on with the land’s magic, but I couldn't put my finger on what. It was just... off.

  The added pressure of finding myself a husband in these antiquated games was the last thing I needed.

  "Why can't I just rule alone?" I muttered, not really expecting an answer. I knew why.

  Sal sighed, then swept my hair aside and pressed a kiss to my neck. "Because you channel too much magic for one person. You—"

  "I know, I know," I groaned, turning around and weaving my arms around his neck. "I know. If I don't share the flow of magic, it'll eventually tear me apart. I know. I just wish..." I trailed off, biting my lip as a lump formed in my throat. It was an argument we'd already had a hundred times.

  Sal just gave me an infuriating, lopsided smile. "You wish you could cancel the Trials altogether and marry a god?" He said it jokingly, but he wanted it just as badly as I did. "You know that can never happen, Ophelia," he whispered, his voice so full of pain and regret that my heart cracked a little more.

  Every day with my love filled me with immeasurable joy, and broke my heart a little more. Because we were doomed. If the other gods found out Sal had fallen for a human... Not to mention if they discovered our daughter...

  I shuddered.

  The stories Sal had told me made one thing painfully clear. Relationships between humans and our gods were strictly forbidden. And for the offspring of those relationships? A death sentence.

  "Maybe I can change things," I murmured, gathering up my picked flowers and starting to head back into my sanctuary. Sal followed close behind, his fingertips resting lightly on my lower back.

  My sanctuary and the surrounding gardens, they were the only places we could be ourselves. The only places we could be together.

  Not that anyone would recognize Sal—God of Fate—at sight. Even standing right under his own statue in the Lakehaven temple, people didn't recognize him. But still, anyone with even a hint of magic couldn't help but notice the faint shimmering glow to his skin and know he was something different. Something more. Something to be feared and respected.

  My unhuman lover chuckled as he followed me inside. He watched me arrange my flowers in a vase, then arched a brow when I looked up.

  "How do you propose you do that?" he asked. "Change things? Even I can't do that, and I'm supposed to be King of the Gods." He said his title with scorn, and we shared a grin. Sal's race was powerful and foreign, but they were not gods. Not in the way my people thought they were.

  I wiped my hands off on my dress and gave him a sly smile. "Well, I thought you'd never ask." I reached out and took his hand. "I want to show you something."

  Leading him across the room, I slid the false wall panel open and poked my finger through the little gap it revealed. The small blade inside sliced my fingertip, and my blood keyed open the hidden passageway at our feet.

  "This is surprising," Sal muttered, following me down the stairs into the darkness. "When did you do all this? How did you do all this?"

  I grinned into the darkness, then used my magic to light up all the room’s lanterns. "I have my ways. I wanted to show you this." I tugged him over to the book I'd left open on the table in the middle of the room.

  Sal sucked in a breath as he touched a finger gently to the ancient paper. "Where did you find this?"

  I shrugged and smiled, not ready to share all my secrets. As much as I loved him, I didn't trust him. How could I, as often as he’d warned me not to?

  "Ophelia, do you understand what this is?" he breathed, turning to me in shock.

  I nodded. "I have a fair idea. But this is what could change things." I waved a hand around my hidden room. "I've been gathering artifacts. Things that might help... I don't know. It's taking me a while to work through." I indicated to the book and the fact that it was written in a totally foreign language for me. "Any chance you could lend a hand?"

  After all, it was his native tongue.

  Sal sucked in a sharp breath. "My love, I would do almost anything for you, and for our daughter... but don't ask me to do this. That book—my mother's book—it was meant to be destroyed thousands of years ago. If Nache finds out it still exists..." He trailed off with a shudder. "She can never find out."

  I tightened my lips, screwing up my nose in disappointment but not surprise. It had been a long shot, considering how many times Sal had warned me against my curiosity about his race.

  "Is she still missing in action?" I asked, subtly shifting the subject from the magical book that shouldn't exist to Sal's ancient ex-wife.
Of course, I was the only human who knew they'd been separated for centuries before I was even born. It wouldn't do for the goddess of marriage and home to be divorced, now would it?

  Sal sighed heavily, running a hand through his caramel-brown hair. "Yeah. She's up to something, no doubt about it."

  I grimaced. Sal—in an attempt at honesty—had told her about me some years before, right after we'd met and realized we were... fated. She hadn't taken the news well and threatened him with all kinds of hellfire and brimstone, then... poof. Gone.

  "Maybe she just moved on with her life," I suggested, not even remotely believing it myself. "Maybe she found some nice lesser god and settled down?"

  Sal arched a disbelieving brow at me. "We wish. No, she's cooking up something bad, and every day that passes I get more and more worried about what it is."

  I could see the concern written all over his face, much stronger than he was voicing to me. From what he and his sister had told me, Nache hadn't handled Sal leaving her very well and had been waging a subtle war against him in their realm ever since. Him flouting their rules and starting a relationship with me, a human—despite my watered-down god blood—was the breaking point. Insult on top of injury.

  "You're worried she's going to hurt me," I murmured, softly closing the ancient book and turning my back on it. The last thing I needed was for Sal to take it from me.

  His gaze turned intense, his brow furrowing. "I know she'll hurt you. Sooner or later."

  There was something more going on, I could see it in his guarded face. He'd always been secretive—it was something I'd grown used to—but this was worse than usual.

  "What aren't you telling me?" I whispered, pleading with my eyes, silently begging him to confide in me.

  His lips parted and for a second my hopes lifted. But then he shut down and turned away with a frustrated sigh.

  "It's nothing," he muttered, totally unconvincingly. "Nothing you need to worry about anyway. You've got enough on your mind." He turned back to me with a grin and looked pointedly to my midsection.

  I rolled my eyes, but laid a protective hand over my belly anyway, my fingers sliding over the silk bodice. Ridiculous dress. The only reason I was wearing it was because of the official meeting I had to be at shortly. When given the choice, I happily wore pants every day—particularly denim ones. They were just so much more practical.

  "Tell me what you're hoping to achieve with all of this," Sal instructed, changing the subject to my hidden room of artifacts. He browsed the shelves of what looked like knickknacks, but each one buzzed with power.

  I kept my gaze on him, making sure he wasn’t paying attention as I propped my butt on the desk and ensured the book of power was concealed by my heavy skirts. Out of sight, out of mind, right?

  "You know what I'm trying to do," I reminded him. "I'm trying to change my fate, or at the very least, the fate of our daughter. I don't want her to deal with all of this... bullshit. She shouldn't have to let the Trials choose her a husband of power, simply to avoid being torn apart by magic." I paused. "And neither should I."

  My godly lover paused, then placed the item he's been looking at back on the shelf before coming over to me. "Ophelia," he sighed. "My love. You know it doesn't work like this. You can't just stockpile your magic into relics and think that solves things. This world of yours, it requires balance. One queen alone, especially not one as incredibly powerful as you, could ever be balanced."

  I pursed my lips, refusing to be distracted by the soft fingers he trailed down the side of my face. "I have to at least try," I insisted. "If not for me, then for Zarina."

  He said nothing back to that, the deep frown on his face showing how conflicted he was. The rules of his realm were so deeply ingrained that the idea of helping me buck traditions here was making his head explode. But on the other hand, this was our daughter.

  "Just don't do anything risky," he finally said in a soft whisper. "If anything happened to you..." He shook his head. "Please just stay safe, my love. Keep our baby safe."

  I grinned; he was coming around to my side. "I'm always careful."

  He snorted a laugh, shaking his head. "You need to get to that meeting. Stall their plans for the Trials as long as you can, or at least until our girl is born. I can force myself to share you if it means keeping you alive, but I don't want Zarina tainted by the bonding magic."

  "Agreed." I rose up on tiptoes to place a light kiss on his lips. "I love you, Sal. No matter what happens, don't ever forget that."

  The smile he gave me in return was sad and full of worry. "It'll all work out in the end, Ophelia. It's fate."

  His words echoed in my head as we left my hidden room beneath the sanctuary and parted ways in the gardens.

  If only he really did hold power over our fates... It would make it all so much easier.

  * * *

  Something smashed in the hallway outside the nursery, and I flinched.

  My movement must have frightened Zarina; she tensed in my arms and let out a cry. Panicked, I shushed her, trying desperately to keep my calm and not scare her further.

  But what more could I do? My palace was under attack, half my army slaughtered.

  My baby girl calmed slowly, sniffling and rubbing her face with chubby little hands, but it was too late.

  The doors exploded in a spray of shattered wood, and I curled my body over Zarina to protect her.

  "So predictable," my attacker sneered, his dark hood pulled low over his face to disguise his identity. I knew, though. I would recognize that hateful, bitter voice anywhere. It'd imprinted on my mind when I’d rejected his advances some five years earlier and he'd threatened to ruin me and destroy my reign.

  "Come to save your bastard heir, Ophelia? Where's your secret lover now, hmm?" Titus tossed his hood back, his arrogance beating out his desire for anonymity.

  Stupid fool. If anyone saw him and lived to tell the tale, his whole plan would be destroyed.

  Still, his comment cut deep and kindled my fury. Where was Sal? I'd woken up two mornings after Zarina's birth and found myself totally alone. No note, no message, no way to contact him. It was as though he'd never even existed.

  Except I had the physical reminder in our daughter. Every day she looked up at me with Sal's eyes and my heart broke a little more.

  He loved me.

  He loved Zarina.

  So where was he when we needed him most?

  "You're making a mistake, Titus," I spat back at my attacker, still cradling my baby into my body like I could create a force field of my own energy around her. Maybe I could have, an hour before. But it'd taken just about every drop of my magic to keep me alive long enough to reach her.

  My former suitor smiled a cruel smile. "No, Ophelia. For once I'm doing exactly what I want and taking what I deserve. Your throne and your magic."

  Titus threw his hand out, shooting a bolt of pure magic faster than I could turn my back on him. It slammed into me—and my baby—with the force of a freight train, and I screamed.

  He shouldn't have magic like that; he lacked the genetic signature. It was why he was a prince and not a king in his homeland of Verrater, despite being the eldest born.

  No, the magic he attacked me and my little girl with, it was tainted with the distinctive glow of Sal's people. This attack wasn't Titus's doing after all. Someone else was pulling the strings, and that scared me more than anything else.

  Months of channeling my magic had toughened my psyche to the flow of power, so his attack had little effect on me. But Zarina was too young. Too vulnerable.

  "I've got you, baby girl," I whispered with a sob as I poured the last reserves of my own magic into her, then dug deeper, searching for more. "You'll be fine, Zarina my sweet, Mama will protect you."

  I gritted my teeth hard and kept digging deeper, grabbing more and more magic to push into my princess, fighting off Titus in a way that she couldn't do herself.

  Eventually, his attack weakened, then faded to not
hing, and by the stricken look on his face, I guessed he'd just run out of reserves himself.

  This was my opportunity. Probably the only one I'd ever get.

  With a whispered apology, I pulled a small measure of magic back out of my baby—causing her to howl in pain—then shot it back at Titus with the precision of a lifetime spent in practice.

  His face went slack, and he dropped to the floor in an unconscious heap... but he wasn't dead. I only had moments, at best, before he was up again.

  I rushed to the heavy tapestry on the far wall, shoved it aside, and keyed my code into the mechanical lock guarding the door behind. The second it was accepted, a light flashed green and it slid open soundlessly.

  "Take her," I sobbed, handing my baby, my heart, to the elderly woman who waited there. "Take her and hide her. Please, Magda, please don't let them find her. She's our country's future. It's fated."

  My former governess didn't bother hiding the tears rolling down her cheeks as she cuddled Zarina to her chest and rocked her, instantly calming the baby’s screams.

  "Come with us, Ophelia," she pleaded. "We can all get away."

  I wanted to. So damn badly. But still, I shook my head.

  "No, they won't stop. This isn't just Titus..." A noise made me gasp, and I shot a look over at Titus's stunned form. "I need to let them win the battle, Magda."

  The old woman sobbed, but nodded. "But never the war, Ophelia. Zarina will see to that when she's old enough."