The Queen's Consorts Box Set: A Reverse Harem Fantasy Trilogy

by Elena Lawson

  I assumed the others were soldiers in the Horde army. But I didn’t pay them any mind. It was my Draconian I couldn’t tear my eyes away from. Watching them laugh, without a single line of worry in either of their faces brought me such joy I was near bursting. Finn caught my eye through the ever-moving bodies. Flashed me a smile. I wished I could capture his beauty—keep it forever.

  “They really are something, aren’t they?” Tiernan said, bumping my shoulder with his own.

  I nodded. “They are.”

  “There’s Alaric,” he said, and I followed his gaze. “Sneaky bastard, I hadn’t even seen him watching us.”

  I spotted him near the outcropping of rock where we’d first landed, talking to Silas, the commander of the Horde armies. Or at least, I thought it was him.

  Alaric never took his eyes from me for more than a few seconds, casting quick glances my way every chance he had. My protector. The next time he looked at me, I mouthed to him relax, and he grinned, turning his attention back to commander. I wondered if he’d tell Silas what we’d learned—that his sister who’d been missing now for weeks would likely never return.

  My chest tightened, but then I brushed off the dread clawing at my mind. Tonight was not for worrying. There was plenty of time for that tomorrow.

  I was glad there weren’t too many recognizable faces from the palace among the swarms of bodies. They’d likely be wondering why the queen’s entire retinue were attending the memorial, and yet the queen did not. They’d wonder who was standing guard for me back at the palace. We’d have to corroborate our stories before we returned to ensure no one found out.

  It was unheard of Alaric had told me, for a queen to attend such a gathering. But I was no ordinary queen and never wished to become one.

  More drummers joined the group, adding volume and even more frenzied beats to the tune. It was so loud, I thought the dancers would go deaf. I couldn’t hear my own thoughts over the booming beats.

  A group of females crowded around someone near Alaric, and I stood on tip-toe to see who it was. My shoulders tensed at the sight of Valin. Basking in the fawning of the females before him.

  Disgusting.

  I watched the pompous ass as he curled an arm around the female next to him, a pretty little thing in a low cut dress. Watched as he caught sight of Alaric and his expression changed to one of cool focus.

  Watched as he followed the line of Alaric’s constant glances. Finding me on the other end. It took him a moment, but he recognized my face. He lifted his chalice to me before turning back to the onslaught of pouting lips and hungry eyes of the females vying for his attention.

  “Looks like it’s time to go,” Tiernan shouted close to my ear, forcing me back into the present. He nudged me to look back to where Alaric stood, now alone.

  My captain inclined his head toward the outcropping of rock behind him, beckoning us to follow. Kade and Finn saw their captain’s cue as well and extricated themselves from their friends among the Horde.

  “But we’ve only just arrived,” I whined.

  Tiernan gave me a wan smile, hollered “Let’s not push it. Come on.”

  We disappeared behind the rock and I was lifted into the air and crushed against a wide, wet chest. Kade forced a rough kiss against my lips, and plopped me down, “Thank you,” he said, his voice husky. The taste of a stronger spirit stinging against my lips from the press of his.

  Finn stepped in and I reached for him, too, wrapping my arms around his middle. He rested his chin atop my head, “You have the most beautiful smile,” he yelled over the ever-growing noise and it’s funny because I was thinking the same thing about him.

  “Have fun?” Alaric interrupted, tugging me away from Finn.

  I embraced him, planting a soft kiss against the stubble on his jaw. “Do we have to go?”

  He nodded against my hair, “We should get home.”

  I pulled back from my captain, regarding each of my men, ensuring they’d each had their fill. Their smiles didn’t falter. Not even for a moment.

  Home. Looking at each of their faces, I knew I was already home. It didn’t matter where we were. The dawning realization shocked me, and I bit my lip against the abrupt aching in my chest.

  “Yes. Take me home.”

  Finn reached to lift me, when a darkened figure rounded the wall of rock, “Glad to see you could make it,” he shouted so we all could hear.

  “Valin?” Kade said in wonder, “Glad to see you could make it, too.”

  “Alaric, I didn’t expect to see you here. And the emissary, too.”

  I shrunk away from him, trying to blend into the darkness behind Finn, careful not to get too close to the edge of the plateau only a few paces away.

  Alaric cleared his throat, glancing back at me before him and my men moved to distract Valin. It would be easy to dissuade him from thinking he’d seen me from across the plateau, but not if he looked me in the eyes. He would know. And then we’d have to deal with the fallout at court if he decided the information was worth sharing.

  I shrunk behind their backs, waiting for him to leave. Not able to hear what any of them were saying over the din of the memorial still raging beyond.

  Gods. Just go already!

  A forceful gust of wind hit my back, and I moved to turn, feeling the ground beneath my feet tremble. My head recoiled at the force of the impact. A swift blow to the back of my skull. I fell.

  And fell.

  The sound of beating wings was the last thing I heard before the dizzying darkness swallowed me whole.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Alaric

  A tremor of pain raced across the back of my head. I shuddered at the force of it.

  “Where’s Liana?”

  Two words. That was all it took to obliterate every other thought from my mind.

  Where’s Liana? It was Tiernan who’d said it. I spun, leaving Valin to trail off mid-sentence.

  The day courter stood there, chest heaving and eyes wide. His head whipping back and forth.

  The edge. I was there in an instant, peering over to the clouds and darkness below. No. She couldn’t have fallen—wouldn’t have. My stomach dropped.

  Kade dove from the plateau before I could open my mouth to give the order. His wings tucked tight against his sides, plummeting downward. A pained roar echoed after him, mirroring my own pain.

  I shouted her name. But it was futile, she wouldn’t be able to hear me. I felt for her. She had a certain feel to her emotions, and I would know if she were nearby, but I felt nothing except the violent worry of Finn and Tiernan.

  I whirled back around, searching the immediate area. She wouldn’t have gone off alone. She wouldn’t do that to us. But… no. I was faced with bare rock. She wasn’t there either.

  Neither was Valin.

  Valin.

  Where had he gone?

  Valin could’ve left without our notice as we peered over the edge of the cliff, but Liana couldn’t have gotten past us without notice. She either fell down or someone took her… up.

  Draconians bobbed and weaved as they soared through the star strewn sky. Tens of them. But none of them carrying a passenger. How far could she have gotten? How long had it been? A minute? Three?

  Finn shook at my side, ready for an order—anything, just anything. He needed to move. “Go,” I ordered him, jutting my chin up to the sky, “Find her!”

  He left the ground with such force the mountain shuddered under my boots.

  “Captain?” Tiernan said, waiting—eager for orders like his comrade was.

  Could she have been right about Valin? The thought made me want to be ill. My heart thudded against my chest. Fast. Faster.

  I would rip him apart with my bare hands. Put his head on a pike—and burn the rest of him to ash. I would—

  Liana… I pictured her, taken. Alone. Afraid. It took everything I had to remain on my feet. Turn the crippling anguish at my failure into something I could use. To find her. To bring her hom
e.

  I will bring her home.

  I looked to Tiernan. Saw the same anger in his eyes I felt. The same torment. He was thinking the same thing. His emotions rippled off him in rogue waves, crashing over me. Feeding into my growing storm of fury.

  “Find Valin,” I growled through gritted teeth and raced into the crowd, sword out. The blade eager to taste the blood of a hero.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Liana

  It was dark. Hard. And so, so cold.

  I awoke with a pounding in my skull and the cloying scent of damp earth clogging my nostrils. At first, I feared I’d gone blind, but it only took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim. It took a moment more for me to realize exactly where I was. Or at least, the type of room I was in.

  Iron bit into my ankle, thick and pockmarked from years of erosion. The floor was stone. The walls were stone. It was a cell.

  I was in a cell. But this was not a cell in my palace—that much I knew. The cells at the Night Court were above ground, and I was without doubt, below.

  It was a bad dream. A nightmare.

  Yes, that’s it. I just had to wake up.

  I gave myself that hope, but it lasted only seconds. I reached back and felt the raised lump on the back of my head. The dried blood caked into my hair.

  This was no dream. I remembered the memorial. Dancing with Tiernan. Watching Kade and Finn laugh with their old comrades. Embracing Alaric.

  Valin—he was there too. He had seen me, and then when we were about to leave he came. I had hidden from him behind my males, and then… and then… nothing. I couldn’t remember anything after that. But I had obviously been hit in the head and brought here. It was him, it had to have been orchestrated by him.

  Gods! How long had I been here? I had to get out. Had to find Alaric and the others. I drew on my Grace of fire, ready to melt the iron cuff from my skin. The heat rose, warming my numbed extremities, building. And then sputtering. Fading. Gone.

  Of all the damned… I moaned in frustration. It was bindstone. The same stone we used in the palace cells, and the only thing able to almost completely nullify a prisoner’s Grace. I pounded a fist against the stone wall, wincing when the rough surface opened the flesh across my knuckles and my ring jabbed into the bone.

  My ring! Whoever they were, they hadn’t taken it. Why? It was what the Mad King wanted, wasn’t it?

  A shuffling sound pricked my ears. It was coming from outside the door. I scrambled to it, the chains dragging along behind me. My ankle snagged with my fingers only a hairsbreadth from touching the wood.

  “Who’s there?” I shouted.

  No one answered.

  My jaw tightened, and a rage unlike any I’d ever felt gripped my chest, “Bastard,” I shouted, my voice cracking, “Answer me you damned coward!”

  The shuffling sound moved away.

  My males’ faces flashed before my eyes and hot, angry tears pooled behind my eyelids. They would go mad looking for me. They would blame themselves for this mess. All because I insisted on leaving the palace. I insisted we go to the memorial. I thought I had done it for them, but the truth was, I had done it for myself, too. Maybe even more so. I wanted to escape.

  And now I got my wish. I didn’t know where I was, but I wasn’t in the palace, and if the freezing air was any indication, I was far, far, from it. In the Wastes. Exactly where we thought the Mad King would hide out. And if the age of the cracked stone and eroded iron was any sign, I was in the bowels of his palace. The original Night Court palace, the one that clung to the sides of Mount Noctis in shambles.

  It was a ruin. But of course, this is where he would want me. This is where he wanted to end Morgana’s line. But if he thought one man could take on the night court armies alone and retake the throne of Night, he truly was mad.

  It didn’t matter who sat on my throne—they would fight with all the power they had to ensure his tyrannical rule could never touch our people again.

  The thought gave me a modicum of peace.

  But it was wrong.

  I couldn’t think like that. As though I was already dead.

  My males could have seen the direction they had taken me. They could already be on their way. And if they weren’t, who says I need saving? I smiled at the thought and the tears dried on my cheeks.

  With a renewed fervor, I searched the floor for something—anything to use as a weapon. And when I was done, I’d search the walls too. If there was even so much as a crack in the stone, I’d somehow find a way to use it to my advantage.

  I’d see my males again. And if that was to be in the next life, at least I’d know I’d done everything I could to get back to them.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Tiernan

  Arrow hadn’t returned with us from the top of the mountain. The falcon was still searching for her and wouldn’t stop until he found his mark—or until I went to call him home.

  It was no use. We had combed through the chaotic gathering at the top of that blasted mountain. Searching the euphoric faces of all those in attendance while Kade and Finn searched the skies. Drawing as little attention to ourselves as possible.

  It went without having to be said. No one could know the queen was missing—her hold on the throne was still tenuous at best. Gods, I hardly believed it myself. One minute she was there and the next she was gone—leaving a gaping hole, raw and bloody in my chest. It was a fear unlike any I could remember. Not since I was a boy.

  But it was no use—the searching. It only wasted more valuable time. We knew who had taken her though no one said it outright. It had to have been Valin. Why, only a moment after she vanished, did he also vanish?

  I knew. I had known there was something not right about him from the start. I was the only one who agreed with her. And yet I had done nothing about it. I never dreamed that this would be the outcome of my failure to act.

  My fists clenched into white-knuckled bricks at my sides, mirroring the tensed and anxious state of Finn as we walked, when really, we’d rather run—or fly, to the infirmary. We had to see if Aisling was able to glean any more information from Valin. Thank the gods Liana had the sense to do a bit of investigating herself, or we wouldn’t even have this possible lead.

  Kade and Alaric were in her royal chambers, pouring over maps of the Wastes—and trying to come up with some sort of excuse for her absence—again. I didn’t envy them. The moment we’d returned to palace, we’d headed straight for Valin’s chambers. But even entering through her terrace, seeing her rumpled sheets… gods the smell of her everywhere. It was almost too much to bear.

  “If she asks about Liana, don’t say anything. Just change the subject.” Finn warned, and I nodded. Until Alaric and Kade decided, we couldn’t answer any questions about Liana’s whereabouts. Captains orders.

  He had been overwrought after we’d searched Valin’s chambers. I’d never seen him so frantic. Alaric could be hot-tempered, yes, but never like that. Maybe it was that we’d found almost nothing to incriminate the lost war hero. Save for a small flask of Kiraal in his bedside table.

  I knew the smell of it instantly. Like a perfume, thick and rich and cloying. Like a rose on fire. The one who ingested the extract would be put into an entranced, almost paralytic state. I knew the feeling well.

  The plants needed to make the extract grew wild all around my uncle’s home. I had used Kiraal to escape my own demons for a time. Those nights when I felt all alone, like a weathered tome in my reclusive uncle’s pristine library. Only there to be observed and then shelved.

  Kiraal was my escape… when I was younger and more naïve. But it had other, more malicious purposes, too.

  “Finn,” I began, needing to say it out loud. The thing I knew all of us were thinking, but not saying. What if Liana was already dead? A dagger of ice shot through my core just to think of it as a possibility. “What if—”

  “Don’t,” the Draconian said, not leaving any room for argument, “Don’t even think it,” h
e spat, surging ahead of me down the long corridor.

  He was right. I couldn’t let myself think like that. Liana would be alright—she had to be. The Night Court was my home now. And it was more of a home to me than anywhere else had ever been in my one-hundred twenty-five years on this land. The feeling was foreign and yet so consoling. It was belonging. And acceptance. And family.

  I wouldn’t let anyone take that from me—take her from me.

  From us, my mind corrected. Because she was as much Finn’s and Alaric’s and Kade’s as she was mine.

  Finn and I marched into the infirmary and found Loris alone, tending to three Fae males with injuries indicative of brawling. Likely they were at the memorial. Things had just started getting out of hand when we left. Too much drink and little food or sleep always led to such things.

  “Loris, we need to speak with Aisling, if you’ll allow us through,” Finn said, not so much asking for permission as he was telling the old crone what would happen.

  She huffed, throwing her hands in the air, “Wouldn’t that be nice. I’d sure like to speak to her, too. The little brat hasn’t shown her face in near two days now. Spoiled girl—”

  Finn and I halted mid-step, turned back to her, “You’re saying she isn’t here.”

  “Do you think I’d be tending to these fools if I had my apprentice here?” she said, as though she was above such a novice’s task.

  I clucked my tongue, “Where is she?”

  Finn and I shared a look, and I wondered if he was thinking the same thing I was. The healing Grace was rare. And one that the Mad King would look to collect.

  The female went back to tending the wounded male lain out on the table before her with a little too much force, “I’ve already sent a rider to fetch her. She’ll be with her family. It’s the only other place she goes.”