“Where have you been, Charlie?” she asked and saw the boy had huge sweat patches under his arms, making the fabric of his shirt stick to his ribs.
“That doesn’t matter just yet, Your Majesty.” The boy was in a great hurry to tell her something. Adele watched incuriously as he dropped to his knees before her on the carpet.
“Your Majesty, I don’t know where the Princess is, but I know who took her from her bed. It was the Prince himself.” Charlie’s voice was low and urgent, and when he reached out to take her hand, she could feel how cold and clammy his fingers were.
Why would he lie to her like this?
“Careful lad, she’s still in shock,” warned General Ohrig. “If what you’re saying is true then...” The General was interrupted by the arrival of Captain Lucky and the rest of the Queen’s Guard. Prince Rainere and Grotto followed close behind.
Rainere. Adele breathed a sigh of relief at his arrival. He would fix all this confusion, and he would help her find Natalie.
“The children and women are all off the grounds and were safely put through the portal, General,” said Captain Lucky. His voice was loud in the quiet of Adele’s head.
Adele found Rainere’s eyes with her own. She smiled and was happy when he came to sit next to her on the couch. Without thinking about the room full of men around them she leaned into him as his arms encircled her. She breathed in his spicy cold scent and felt a warmth spread inside of her. She knew he felt it too.
“Cara mia, I am so sorry,” he whispered into her hair. “She is gone my darling. I did everything I could, but the Spider Empress has her now.”
Wait. What?
Adele’s shock shattered like a glass wall around her, and the real world came rushing in too fast and too bright. She pushed herself out of Rainere’s arms and stood up. She raised his chin with a finger so she could look into his eyes.
“What did you just say?” she asked and her voice was brittle.
“Your Majesty, I really don’t…” interrupted the General, his tone betraying his disapproval.
“Shut up, Ohrig,” snapped Adele and waved the General to silence while keeping her finger under Rainere’s chin. She saw green tears leak from his eyes.
“Cara mia…”
“No,” corrected Adele sharply. “After all of that: you said Natalie was where?”
“With the Spider Empress,” whispered Rainere. “Darling, I did what I could to save her.”
Adele dug her fingers in Rainere’s chin, pinching hard. The Chime Voices began chanting low and intensely in the background behind her gradually stoking rage. “Are you telling me that Natalie is with Spiders? What does that even mean?”
“Cara mia, let me explain,” said Rainere and pulled his chin from her grasp, clasping her hand in both of his.
But Adele could already see the guilt in his dark green eyes and she stepped back to let General Ohrig and his men move forward. As she got further from him, the Prince climbed to his feet. He didn’t seem to notice the swords surrounding him or the glass manacles that General Ohrig proffered at him.
“Your Highness, Prince Rainere, I am arresting you under the authority…”
“Adelena, I need to tell you what happened,” said Rainere, and with a twist of his hand all of her Queen’s Guard were hurled back against the walls of the room, their swords clattering to the floor as they were suspended a foot above the ground.
“What did you do to my Natalie, Rainere?” asked Adele. Her voice sounded as cold as the fear that was spreading through her chest, freezing her heart and making it splutter frantically, then pause for too long.
“He took her, Your Majesty.” Charlie surprised her by jumping between her and the Prince. “He came to the children’s bedroom this morning while they slept. He put something on Natalie’s wrist and kissed her on the mouth. She passed out and he carried her out of the room, through the great wardrobe. Your Majesty, you must believe me, I saw the whole thing.”
Charlie was pale and desperate, but his eyes burned with an intensity that sent the silver rings glittering and spinning about his pupils.
“I have no reason to lie,” he added more quietly and turned to face the Prince. “Stay behind me, Your Majesty. I can defend you from him where your Guards can’t.”
Adele looked from Charlie’s trembling hands then to her Queen’s Guard pinned helplessly against the walls by Rainere’s magic. She almost laughed but it would have been joyless and wasted even more time. Adele didn’t fear Rainere’s power. She could take him down with one hand. An image of the Sandarian Mage in his death throes came to mind.
“I’m waiting, Rainere,” she said.
Rainere moved toward her, but her little bodyguard put up a hand to stop him, the other slipping inside his vest.
“Adelena, please do not blame yourself for what has happened,” said Rainere, his tone pleading with her to understand. “The Prophecy and the actions of those forces of darkness here in Evendaar were all fighting long before High Wizard Ohren brought you here.”
He looked into her eyes and sighed at the confusion he saw there. Rainere sat back down on the couch and ran his hands through his hair, pulling it back and away from his face.
“I have never lied to you, cara mia, but there are things about myself that I have hidden from you.” The Prince took a deep, shuddering breath. “At the very beginning, I was coerced by the Spider Empress, Ka-kik, into helping her bring the Hidden Child of the End of the World Prophecy into our world. She used my blood to fuel her Spell of Retrieval, but what she didn’t know was that the Wizards of St. Lucidis also wanted you and attempted their own Spell of Retrieval at the exact same moment. The Empress’s spell failed with the interference and I was lost among the stars for a time, but when I returned to the world, I saw that you, the woman who had haunted me for so long, was here in Evendaar. The Wizard Ohren crowned you Queen in accordance with the Prophecy, but he didn’t know that the Empress also feels a claim to you and she believes that you will be the one to bring her species back to power. The Spider Empress is evil, but she holds a great deal of power over me, Adelena. The only way I could protect you from her was to marry you and take your Throne from you, ruling as King of Unisia. The Empress and her Spider People would then have the freedom to rise up from their Nest and once again walk in the light. My Oath to her satisfied, you and I would have been free to live as we wished. With the Spider People once more in power, the St. Lucidis wizards would have been so busy defending their precious Golden Palace, that they would not have troubled us again.”
Rainere shook his head sadly.
“But you would not marry me, cara mia, though I begged you to so often. I wanted to save you so much from knowing the terrifying truth about our world. I thought our love was strong enough that you would marry me for me alone.”
“Get to the part about Natalie,” said Adele over the cries of General Ohrig who had renewed his efforts to get down off the wall with louder shouting.
“The Empress gave me until the full moon to convince you to marry me. She wanted to rise on a night when their dark Goddess Lune is at her strongest. That is tonight, cara mia.”
Rainere stood up and came toward her, but stopped a few feet away. She could see his desperation in his tightly held jaw and the vein that throbbed at his temple.
“Adelena, I vowed that I would never give you reason to fear me and I would never force you to bend to my will, so I had to come up with a plan to save you from yourself. In the little black box, I gave you, there was a very special necklace which would have been enough to protect you from the Spider Empress’s poison but Natalie took it for herself. It was imbued with powerful Magic and I couldn’t take it from Natalie to give it back to you so I thought perhaps I could just,” - Rainere took another deep breath - “I disguised Natalie with an Illusion Spell to look just like you and put the Marchant Wedding band, a bracelet, on her. I then put her under a Sleeping Curse so that she would not suffer when I took her undergrou
nd to the Spider Empress. That was what the boy saw me do,” he gestured at Charlie, who tensed at the motion. “I took her down into the cavern this morning and showed her to the Empress, wearing the band, as proof of our marriage, but the Empress betrayed me. I can see now that all along she planned to keep you for her own.”
“She is keeping my Natalie?” repeated Adele.
“Please, my dear heart, do not blame yourself for what has happened to your daughter,” begged Rainere again, his face etched in pain.
Adele felt the cold comfort of shock creeping back over her mind. She clenched her fists and forced herself to breathe. She wanted to listen to Rainere’s words, but the Chime Voices were ebbing and flowing, making her feel lost.
“So you just wanted to marry me to make this Empress happy with you?” she asked, bewildered. “And when I wouldn’t you gave them Natalie instead of me.”
Rainere raised his chin, his eyes flashing with frustration. “Adelena, I love you with every fiber of my being and with every drop of The Blood in my veins. You knew this was true, even before you knew me as a flesh-and-blood man. So, you must believe that I had no knowledge of this Prophecy before the Empress took my blood for her Spell of Retrieval. But when you appeared as the Hidden Child, I knew it was the hand of the Goddess that had brought us together. Neither the Wizards nor the Spider Empress know what we mean to each other, but I couldn’t risk the Empress hurting you in an effort to get to me. I would not risk your life or safety, no matter what it costs me, Adelena.”
He gathered her hands in his own and kissed them gently, his eyes closed to her shocked expression.
“You were scared the Empress would hurt me, so you gave her my daughter instead of me?” she asked. Adelena was asking the same question, but Rainere kept answering it in different ways.
“I made a vow to you Adelena, I vowed on my life to protect you in this world and I would never break that vow. I have little left to me but my honor and I will never be forsworn, my love.”
Adele considered this man who had loved her so passionately and intimately. Rainere’s face was beautiful even with its mask of fear. She had given herself to him body, heart and soul and he had loved her fiercely in return. He had not broken a single one of the promises he had made to her.
But he was completely and utterly insane.
“Release my men,” she said quietly, and pulled her hands out of his.
She heard the sound of gasping as all six of her Queen’s Guard dropped to the floor with a thud. General Ohrig was at her side in an instant.
“Tell me where the Princess is now!” he ordered the Prince.
Rainere ignored him. “Tell me you understand, cara mia? I had to give Natalie up to save you. Even if I had revealed her true identity the Empress would have eaten Natalie and I immediately, and you would still be at the mercy of the Spider People. I saved myself so I could come back to protect you from what is to come in the Days of Darkness.”
Adelena turned to the General and saw his cheeks were pale beneath his weathered color, his blue eyes were clouded with worry and he looked at her as if he had never seen her before.
Suddenly, and sharply, Adele felt very much alone.
She looked at the men surrounding her and every single one wore an expression of fear and what she imagined was disappointment. She was supposed to have been their good Queen Adelena, sweet and helpless, in need of their protection. Her affair with the evil Marchant Prince had destroyed their image of her, and had made her a different kind of woman in their eyes. Only Grotto met her eye and he snarled at her with a glare charged with venom.
Well. Fuck them all. Adele was no one’s saint, but neither was she anyone’s whore. At the force of her anger, the Chime Voices went quiet in her mind and Adele felt a fissure crack open deep within her body. Magic came pouring out from where she had shoved it down deep, flowing through her veins and around every organ in her body, filling her with strength and fanning the flames of her rage.
In a heartbeat, Adele knew that everything she had ever thought about herself was wrong. The insecure, trembling woman, always crippled by anxiety, had only ever been a disguise for her true nature that she had hidden from for so long. The real Adelena was ferocious and wild, and could crush a man with one hand. But the real Adelena was also a mother and now she would show them what a mother was capable of.
“I will only ask you one more time, Rainere, where is Natalie?” asked Adele, as she stepped toward the Prince, shaking off General Ohrig’s warning touch.
Rainere shook his head. “I will not take you there, my love. It is far too dangerous.”
Adele stepped into the Prince and placed a hand at the back of his neck. Rainere leaned down, almost as if he expected a kiss. They exchanged a breath and Adele whispered a word of Command so powerful that it made her tongue burn.
This time there was no gentle throbbing of power, or sweet delicious dive into green magic. Adele gritted her teeth as her power stabbed into Rainere like a blunt metal bar.
“Luckily, that isn’t your choice to make, Rainere,” she said through clenched teeth. “So you tell me where she is now or I will be climbing over your corpse to ask that evil skeleton over there.”
Rainere dropped to his knees, unable to fight her off or even catch a breath. Within moments he fell to his side on the floor. Adele followed him down.
“Let him go!” shouted Grotto striding over to Adele and ignoring the sword that Captain Lucky pointed at him. “You are killing him, you filthy monster!”
Grotto was beside himself with rage and kneeled down next to his Prince, but was too frightened to touch either him or Adele.
“Watch your tongue with our Queen,” snapped Lucky defensively.
Grotto spat on the ground next to Adele. “She is not my Queen, she is not even your Queen,” he screamed. “She is an Abomination!” He pointed a long bony finger at her. “How can no one see what you truly are? You are more a monster than the Spider Empress herself.”
Adele smiled coldly as Rainere silently writhed beneath her hand. “Your Master is dying, yet you are taking the time to insult me?” she remarked. “If you know where my child is, old man, then you had better tell me quickly. He won’t last much longer like this.”
But Adele was lying. She could feel the depth of Rainere’s power like it was an ocean into which she had dipped a straw. The pure strength of him was flowing into her own body and she suddenly understood something important about the Magic she was using. She needed this! Rainere’s Magic was giving her own power the fuel to grow beyond itself.
Grotto paused to glare fiercely at her for a moment before betraying his Master. “The cavern of the Spider People is in the Dark Forest, far beneath the ground. I can take you to the entrance. Now, let him go, witch!”
Adele released Rainere and climbed to her feet. She was vibrating with the churning, swirling power and the feeling was incredible.
“Take me there now,” she commanded.
“No, no don’t,” Rainere protested, struggling to sit up and clutching his shoulder where she had touched him. “Grotto, I forbid…”
“I will take you there,” insisted Grotto. “Master, forgive me when you live through this.”
Rainere wiped the hair out of his eyes and the cold sweat off his brow. He looked like Hell and was trembling all over in convulsive waves, but still he did not give up.
“Adelena, please, cara mia. You will need to kill me before I would let you go into that kind of danger. Your daughter is lost and I will not lose you too. The Empress betrayed me and cannot be trusted. To ask her for anything is to invite more lies.” He climbed clumsily to his feet.
Adele stared at Rainere in disbelief. “I’m not going to ask her for anything, Rainere. I am going to take back my daughter and anyone who gets in my way will be destroyed.”
Rainere swayed on his feet. “You will never find your way through the tunnels,” he protested stubbornly. “And I will not help you on this suicidal m
ission.”
The silence that fell after Rainere’s admission was stifling. Only the crackle of the fire and their breathing could be heard. Adele’s heart constricted as fear squeezed it tightly. Her only hope had been bullying Rainere into doing as she asked.
“I will help you, Your Majesty,” said a quiet voice, and a small skinny man stepped out of the shadows of the room looking directly at Adelena. He limped painfully as he made his way over to bow before her. His sharp shoulders poked out of the fabric of his tattered shirt and his huge eyes were dark with bruises.
Adele narrowed her eyes at the newcomer. “Do I know you?”
“You know me, my Queen, but not in this form,” croaked the little man. He stood no taller than Adele and his head was slightly too large to be unremarkable. A streak of perfectly white hair swept down the center of his head.
“Schiss, no. Don’t! I order you…” gasped Rainere, staggering forward to grab at him, but instead fell on Grotto, who held him back.
“Your Majesty, you saved my life once,” Schiss bowed again, though it obviously pained him to do so. “I owe you a life in return.” He righted himself and sent Rainere a defiant glance before continuing. “I can show you the way through the Nest to the cavern where the Empress is keeping your daughter. But we only have a few hours to rescue her because as soon as the moon rises, the Empress will perform the ceremony and eat the Princess whole.”
Adele let out an involuntary cry and covered her mouth with her hand. “My baby,” she whispered.
“Think of your other babies,” begged Rainere. “Stella and Aaron are all you have left now, cara mia. You must get back to the Belvoir Estate to be with them. The Empress cannot touch you there.”
Adele froze at his words. She heard the despair in his voice. He had given up on Natalie, and now he only hoped to save her, his beloved. Adele’s stomach roiled instinctively at the idea of returning to Belvoir, but if Stella and Aaron were safe there, then she could go after Natalie by herself. She felt the flex of Rainere’s power combined with her own. These men could quail here like frightened birds if they wanted, but she had to rescue her daughter.
The Queen Revealed Page 30
