by Tara Brown
“Your father's family used to rule the entire kingdom—one kingdom. Not seven. Not splintered. It was a time of peace for all the lands. Around five hundred years ago, seven brothers were born to the king. He died and the brothers fought over the kingdom. The eldest brother was the rightful heir, but he was weaker than all his brothers. So in his apathy he let the kingdom split; the largest piece going to himself and the rest, divided by the natural barriers, to the other six brothers. He was the last true king of the entire kingdom. But he was also the weakest of the seven kings. His only saving grace was that he was married to a very gifted woman—a witch. She had dreams of making the kingdom whole again, where her husband couldn't have cared less. So the queen mother focused all her energies on making her eldest son the strongest of all the children in all the kingdoms. But when her eldest son got married, she discovered he couldn’t father a child. So the queen mother used her magic to make his wife do something unheard of—something no one spoke of. The queen mother came to my people and asked the strongest male in our group to lay with the wife of her son. Our people agreed. As the guardians, we couldn’t really say no. The young queen was pregnant immediately. The queen mother brought her back one more time to be impregnated. She birthed two healthy boys. Two healthy heirs for the kingdom.”
“So in some strange way, we are related? Your magical blood is mixed with mine as your ancestor has lain with my ancestor?” I still felt like I was in the dark, none of it made sense until I glanced back toward the village. Then it hit. “But then my mother came here and got pregnant with my brother Edward?” I recalled the glimpse I saw in the witch's memory of my mother walking in the woods in the white shawl. Of course, the man she had lain with in the image was a wolf man. “Is just Edward a wolf?” I sort of knew the answer, but I didn't believe it.
“Michael is also a wolf. Half, plus whatever was left in your family’s blood.” His eyes burned with emotions. He shook his head and bit his lip.
“What about Roland? Surely Father had been able to impregnate her once.”
A new voice broke the awkward silence. “Mother was violated and became pregnant with Roland that way.” I turned my face to see my brother walking up to us. He looked sickened.
“By the wolf?” I whispered. How horrifying.
“No, you fool.” Ed shook his head. “She and Father had been married for several years when it happened. She wasn’t pregnant yet, and rumors were circulating about her inability to bear children. One of his cousins was visiting the castle—a king from another land. His companion that came with him was a duke. No ordinary duke, but one who was soon to be king in his lands. The duke did a terrible thing to her.” There was a struggle on his face and in his voice as though he fought a battle inside himself.
“Ed, deep breaths,” Maddox spoke to him tenderly. He never spoke to me like that. He was always growling at me.
Edward took a deep breath and sat on a log. He looked at me like he was in pain. I felt his pain. What had our mother suffered? No wonder she was so cold.
“So, Roland is from that encounter?” I shivered.
He nodded. I glanced back at Maddox. He looked like he wanted to hold me. I wanted him to, but neither of us moved. We just looked at each other with the burning need and tried to fight it.
“She had Roland and the rumors stopped. No one knew the queen had been assaulted. Except the man you killed yesterday. He was there. He organized it. He made certain your father had gone on a hunt, taking the other king with him. He made certain that part of the castle was empty so the duke might have his moment alone with your mother. The man you killed yesterday knew what had happened to your mother and he allowed it to happen. Your father’s heir was always another man’s son. His loyalty always sat with another family in another kingdom.”
I closed my eyes and wished I had inflicted so much more pain on him. Ed stood and walked away violently. “I can't do this.” He left me there to hear the rest of the horrid story alone.
Maddox continued, “The duke knew your father, the king, was infertile. The king had an affair for years with a woman, before he and your mother married. The woman always plotted to get pregnant and then force the queen mother to marry her to the king. She had plotted to be queen for years. When it didn't work with your father she found herself another man—one who would also be king.”
I gasped. “Herrick's mother.” Her confession made sense. “Herrick’s father was the duke?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
Tears tried to blind me as ringing in my ears tried to block out the sound of his voice. I shook my head, forcing myself to hear Maddox as he continued, “Herrick’s mother couldn’t get pregnant, because your father had always been sterile, so she never got the hand of the one true king. The man you murdered today knew. He knew the secret. He wanted so badly for your father to have an heir that he set it up with a man who had a child already. He wanted your father to be able to show the world he was strong and could produce an heir.”
I shook my head and tried to do the equation in my head. “Herrick and Roland are brothers?”
“Half. Herrick's mother blackmailed your mother into marrying you off to Herrick. She would tell everyone the royal sons were not the king's if you didn’t.”
It was all making sense. Herrick's mother was in love with my father. She would enjoy knowing my mother suffered. They clearly had raised Herrick to know his brother sat on the throne in our lands. They could unite the two lands and maybe the whole kingdom, putting their son on the throne.
I didn’t want to know anymore. I looked at the fading sun and stood. “I have to go.”
Maddox walked to me. He took my hands in his. “Stay.”
I looked up into his eyes and asked the one question I really wanted the answer to, “With you or in general?”
He looked ashamed. “In general.”
The last tiny shred of my heart broke. “I can't stay. I need to process this. I've spent an entire life hating my mother and thinking the worst. She has spent her life as prisoner of the crimes committed against her.” Fire was burning in my eyes. I wanted so badly to cry. I wanted so badly for him to ask me to stay with him.
I walked to Artan and climbed on his back. I looked back at Maddox. “What about me? Where did I come from? Who is my father?”
He looked stoic. “King Henry. You are his only child. The rightful heir.”
I gripped Artan. I felt like I would fall off the dragon. “How?”
He pointed to Artan. “He is like a brother to you. His mother sacrificed her blood and tears to make you. Her blood and tears healed the king and made it possible for him to father a child. A magical seed. One child. A special child. The child written about in the stars. The one who would have fire in her blood and heal the seven kingdoms.”
“You’re lying.”
“It's why you have those bright-green eyes. It's why you heal so rapidly. It's why he can understand you. It's why his mother brought him to you as she was dying. You are his only family. She searched high and low for you, apparently. You're special.”
“What about you and me?” I didn’t want to ask him, but I had to know. “What about us?”
His blank, stoic face took over. “There is no us, Princess. There never can be. I told you that already. I am your guard and unworthy of the role of king of the land.” He believed what he spoke. He believed it all.
I hugged Artan tightly and whispered, “I can't do this right now, Max.” Like he knew what I wanted, Artan jumped into the air and flew me back to the city.
Chapter Seventeen
When he dropped me off on the outskirts, I ran. I wound my way through the streets to the inn, dashing through the tables and up the stairs to my room. Just as I grabbed the handle I sighed.
No key.
I really should have remembered to get one earlier. All I wanted was to be alone and cry in the privacy of my room.
Instead, I turned and walked back down the stairs to the desk. Grayson�
�s evil stepmother sat there writing in a ledger. I leaned against the wood, offering her a blank stare. “Can I get another key, please? I handed mine back last time I was here.”
She lifted her face, doling out a fierce look with her flared nostrils and narrowed eyes filled with hatred. I assumed it was her version of disgust, only more intense than the last time I saw it. Not moving to fetch me a key, she looked back down at the ledger.
I grabbed her hand lightning fast, dragging her across the desk toward me. “Any other day of the week, I don't mind taking that attitude off of you. But not today, all right? You think you’re evil and mean and cruel. I'll show you mine if you show me yours.”
She stabbed her quill into my hand so hard it pushed through to the desk. I held back the reaction I wanted. I wanted to scream because the pain was intense. I wanted to drive my face forward, smashing my forehead into her smug grin. I wanted to do a lot of things. None of which I did.
Instead, I smiled pleasantly as if she’d offered me a drink or a flowery compliment.
She grinned.
I nodded slowly after a moment. “Didn’t realize you wanted to go first.” I let go of her hand, jerking the quill from my flesh and the desktop. I dropped the bent and bloody quill to the desk as my skin healed over.
Her eyes narrowed again but this time she gasped.
“My turn.”
Her eyes widened, which I didn’t think was possible. But I stepped back, holding my hands out. “You won’t see it coming, but you will feel me when I get my turn.”
As if in a trance, she lifted a key from the wall of hooks and passed it to me with trembling fingers and a frightened look.
I turned and walked up the stairs, shaking my hand as the tingling pain started to subside.
When I got into the room I collapsed onto the bed, letting everything sink in.
My father and mother and brothers were a complicated jumble of uncertainty and betrayal.
And somehow in it all, I was something much worse.
I didn't know how that was possible—how a girl could go from so bad to so much worse. Artan and I were brother and sister in a magical sense. Did that mean Maddox, Ed, and Michael were also some strange form of relation?
I turned my head, staring out the window at the dying off of the bright day as birds and clouds floated past high in the sky. The ocean breeze blew in the window, and I made a decision. I had made heaps of decisions but rarely kept the resolve they required. Removing Maddox from my heart had been my largest failure as far as resolve was concerned.
Not that it mattered—I had given up on that plan. I didn't need to remove him from my heart; I just needed to make someone else bigger.
Grayson was exactly the sort of boy I needed. He was the solution and answer to the question of how I would manage to still have a normal life in the end.
Giving up on love wasn't a possibility for me. I needed it. I craved love desperately, not just because I needed the good in my horrible life, but also because I had never actually been in true love. The kind of love where the other person sacrifices himself for you. He makes you bigger than himself in his heart and mind.
I still had never had that and wanted it more than anything. I might never have been a lady, but I had always been a romantic. And deep down, romance seemed like the perfect way to pretend everything else wasn't happening.
And to top it all off, I wanted a normal life. At the end of everything, when I somehow managed to make one of my brothers king, I could end up in a place like this with a guy like Grayson. We could own something like this very inn, just work for ourselves and pretend we knew nothing of the royal life.
The sun was almost completely set when I got up and poured a rinse bowl and managed a quick sponge bath. I was technically the master of the sponge bath. My maids always had to do one before every event as it was guaranteed there was something left from the forest in my hair and behind my ears. Though they griped far more than I did as I scrubbed myself down.
I grabbed the dress I had bought from one of the shops, in a fleeting moment of randomness where a notion had become something enough to acquire a dress. It still smelled like spices just like the store I had bought it from, because I hadn’t worn it in the many months I had owned it.
I dragged my hair back and looked at myself in the small round mirror on the wall.
Not quite.
I rinsed my face once more and scrubbed my teeth with the mint paste I had bought from the herbalist in the market. I slipped my fingers over my pale eyebrows to smooth the unruliness.
When I checked the mirror again I saw a girl. Not a princess but a girl—a common one who could blend into the city. Particularly this city where Herrick was still possibly hiding, seeking me out. This city where Maddox might very well be, lurking in the shadows and watching me. This city where men I needed to kill would definitely be.
But not tonight.
Tonight was for one thing—fun. Just simple fun and easy pleasure, the sort that normal people had. The sort of fun I suspected I needed—distracting and diverting.
My stomach was filled with butterflies as I imagined the possibilities and let the freedom of a night out excite me.
In so many ways I was just a regular girl.
With Grayson I was even more so a regular girl. The distraction of the normalcy he represented was the most desirable thing I had ever come upon. He was a perfect representation of exactly the life I had deeply desired, and in some ways still believed I could have.
My original vision of it had been of Maddox in the woods with Artan. I had seen it so clearly sometimes I could smell the smoke from our chimney or taste the simplicity of our cooking. No fancy spices and no sauces, just meats and breads and vegetables all made by us. Children maybe running about the farm and Artan soaring high above, and no one else the wiser that we lived there in peace.
That dream was a hard one to kill. The freedom in it was too real. I glanced out the window once more, looking out at the darkening city and sighed. The dream wouldn't have to die, but it would have to change. I needed to kill the traitors of my family and cleanse the kingdom, and then I could revisit my plans.
The sun had set on the day and on my dreams regarding Maddox, and it was time to realize a new dream. Something I could look forward to when my family was avenged. Something to get me through the long days and hard nights fighting my way back home.
Because once I reached the doorsteps of my kingdom I knew it could all be over, and then there was a possibility I could end up somehow forced to be queen and rule my people.
I shuddered at the thought.
But tonight still belonged to me.
I raced from the room and down the stairs, tucking my fearful thoughts away and pushing my excitement to the forefront of my mind.
I ran through the inn and out the front doors, stopping as I got outside to wait for him to come.
It was my first real courting or whatever commoners called it. My father never would have approved of me going on a night out with a common barkeep—and my mother—a tear threatened my eyes. I pushed away thoughts of my family and Maddox and the madness that they all created. Here in the city, without the cloak and the swords, I was a regular girl.
A cold regular girl. The night air was cool in a dress. I wrapped my arms around myself and glanced about the street.
“Right on time,” a man’s voice joined the breeze off to the side.
I sighed when I saw him. Grayson looked the same as earlier, but somehow he was handsomer than before. Perhaps it was a trick of the mind that was suddenly open to him.
He offered me his hand, but I just looked at it for a moment. It felt like I was making a life-altering decision if I took it. I forced the brave decision upon myself, and when I did let him wrap his hand around mine, I noted it was different than holding Maddox's—good different.
“A dress?” He leaned in and kissed my cheek.
I blushed. There was no avoiding it, but I had nothing t
o say to add to the statement. How did I defend the dress when I couldn't have felt more awkward in it?
“Why do I feel like this is some sort of special event? Like I need to be aware of the fact you have not only graced me with your presence but also the dress’s?”
A laugh slipped from my lips as I glanced down at the street. “That is exactly how you should see it.”
He nodded, grinning. “You look incredible, but I think you might have worn the drapes, and I would have thought that. Are you ready?”
I looked at him and nodded. “Where are we going?”
“It’s a surprise.” His bright-blue eyes sparkled in the dim light of the torches that lit the streets. “Has anyone ever actually seen you in a dress before?”
“I'm not a dressy girl. My mo—never mind. It doesn't matter. I never really got into dresses or dolls or fancy rouges to make the cheeks glow. I preferred the company of my pet and my brothers.”
“You have your own glow. You don't need anything fancy.” He looked at me like I was everything, and pulled me along the street. “Do you like to dance?”
A grimace crossed my lips before I could speak. He laughed and squeezed my hand. “I'll show you how. Don’t worry about it.”
Of course I started to worry.
The problem wasn't my not knowing how to dance as much as it was my hatred of dancing. I was disappointed that after all the time we'd spent together, a dance seemed like a good idea to him.
He walked fast, dragging me up into an alley.
I heard the music right away. It was loud. It sounded different than any music I'd ever danced to. People were stumbling out the doors when we walked in. The massive room was smoky with the stench of sweat, liquor, and pipe smoke.
It was huge, but more like a cellar with low-hung ceilings and beams. Grayson dragged me inside where the music was blasting. I could barely hear him. It was chaos and uncivilized.
“What is this place?”
He chuckled. “I had a feeling you would like it.”
