The Bloodtruth Series (Box Set: Heiress of Lies, The Queen's Betrayal, Trials of Truth, A Heart's Deceit)

by Cege Smith

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Malin Baford was in trouble, and he knew it. As he cradled his broken hand in the crux of his arm, he hurried toward his quarters and tried to reason out any plausible way to contact Angeline. Healer Hand had offered him some herbs to deaden the throbbing pain that seemed to shoot darts of fire up his arm every few moments, but Malin couldn’t afford to have his mind befuddled by drugs. He had a mission, and a secret that would take care of his hand in the process.

  He thought briefly about going to Rhone and telling him that the Queen had fallen under a spell that was making her do rash things, but he needed Rhone focused on the vampire problem within the city walls. He was fighting a war on two fronts, and that made his own situation all the more precarious.

  He knew that, by association alone, he looked guilty as sin. Sophia, Angeline’s ancestor who was supposed to be dead, was very much alive and on a rampage of revenge. Posing as his sister, Corrinda, she had skillfully infiltrated the palace and had been feeding him information that he thought came from the Clan. The only reason he knew that Angeline had arrived safely in Tanagor at all was that he saw the vision of her inside Tobias’s study. He felt sick thinking of how innocently they had asked Sophia, thinking she was Corrinda, to open a portal to transport Angeline and Connor to the Clan.

  She could have sent them anywhere, including to their death. But for now, Angeline’s existence served some purpose in Sophia’s grand scheme, and so he thought she was safe. Sophia might also believe that the Clan would do the messy work of removing Angeline from the picture for her, which was also possible. Malin had to find a way to warn the Queen, and do what he could to stop the imposter at the same time. He had his work cut out for him.

  He arrived at the door to his quarters without mishap and said a small thanks to the gods above. The palace passageways were quiet, too quiet, and he assumed that the nobles were gathered in the public areas on the first level. He shook his head ruefully. The murder of Lord Redley was the least of their concerns, but they didn’t know that yet. True monsters were coming unless he could find a way to stop them.

  Rhone wanted to tell the people of Altera that vampires still existed, thus setting Angeline up to be their savior and secure her hold on the throne once and for all. It wasn’t a bad plan, except that Angeline wasn’t the one in charge at the moment, although Rhone didn’t know that. Malin knew that if Sophia decided to go along with Rhone’s plan, he wouldn’t have much choice but to support it. She had been very clear in her threat to him. He ceased to be useful the moment he publically went against her. Which meant he would have to plot against her in secret.

  The good thing for Malin was that he was an expert at deception and keeping secrets. He had been doing it his entire life. As the Chief Advisor for the Robart sovereign while still balancing his role as the Clan’s intermediary, truth and lies were synonymous in his world. He often forgot where one ended, and the next began, and until he recently realized that he had fallen in love, he hadn’t cared one wit about his lack of a moral compass when it came to the people of Altera.

  Inside his room, Malin strode to the cabinet on the far wall. It was difficult moving the clothing aside that hid the secret compartment in the back with only one good hand, but after a few moments he finally dislodged the small piece of wood in the back paneling. He reached inside and felt around, grimacing at the sensation of the cobwebs fluttering around his fingertips. He hated things being dusty and out of place. His fingers finally perched on what he had been searching for in the very back, and he dragged it forward.

  He grasped the book pulling it out into the light. Alair Robart’s name, embossed in gold filigree on the cover, was still visible through the heavy layer of dust. Then he took the book over to the table next to the fire and dropped it, letting the parchment pages open at will. It was a trick he learned from his father. Although his blood was not inclined toward magic, there were small moments where something clicked inside his head, and he was able to make things happen around him. Theodora scoffed and called them parlor tricks, but he learned long ago that things his mother critiqued were often things she didn’t like or understand.

  This was one trick that was particularly useful. He simply needed to focus on what he wanted to find within the pages of the book, and the book found it for him.

  Three hundred years ago, the Clan required Alair to offer up his daughter to the vampire Master Alron to end the war. Alron agreed to a pact of peace. The terms of the agreement said that as long as Alron took his coven and disappeared, the Clan offered him knowledge and power for the rest of his eternity. Alair, for his part, was to leave the vampires alone and in turn, became a legend. His legacy still lived and breathed three hundred years later in the form of Angeline Robart.

  Malin wondered how Alair’s twin brother, Treven Robart, could have so callously offered up his own niece as a bargaining chip in the pact, but he had to admit that it was a moment of sheer brilliance. Combined, the Clan and the humans should have been able to snuff out and truly exterminate Alron and his vampires. But then Alron unleashed wraiths into their midst and the rules of the game changed. The Clan brokered peace, and the rest was history. Until today.

  He scanned the journal page to find an entry about Sophia. Then he used his parlor trick to find the next entry and the next. Sophia was only seventeen years old when the war came to its epic conclusion. Alair’s commentary on her transfer from the palace to Alron’s coven and then the dissemination of the cover story that she died during the last battle was dry and matter-of-fact. Malin thought that Alair Robart had to have been a bastard without any feelings, but then he remembered his own mother. To people who desired absolute power, children became little more than pawns in their game to be moved around at their whim.

  It was no wonder that Sophia harbored a hatred of her bloodborn kin. No one had tried to save her. Her father left her to be tortured or worse by monsters. She was condemned to a fate that she surely thought was worse than death.

  Malin slammed the book closed and hurled it across the room. Alair Robart was no help to him. The book made a booming noise as it slammed against the far wall, and as he watched it fall to the floor, he realized that he had lost control of his emotions. That simply was not done. The Clan remained in control of their actions and behaviors at all times. He slowed his breathing and closed his eyes. He waited for what seemed like several long moments until his heartbeat slowed. And then he focused his thoughts again on his need. He needed to know anything and everything about Sophia Robart once she was given over to Alron. Then he had a moment of clarity, and he knew where to find the answer.

  He looked over at his bookcase and almost slapped his forehead. He was looking in the wrong place. Once Alair let Sophia go, she was dead to him whether she lived or not. He had no further need to record her movements or activities because the ones that he hated most in the world had tainted her. Malin wondered if Alair had even mourned her loss. He had been a great king, but Malin often thought that Alair was far more Clan than human.

  In order to continue to keep the peace and ensure that there was never another war in Altera again, the uneasy truce between the human and vampire realms still required monitoring. That interaction, on behalf of the Robart sovereign, was designated to be carried out by the Chief Advisor. Generations of Bafords made the annual pilgrimage to Alron’s coven and discussed matters of state. Malin had made the journey four times himself since taking over the position from his father.

  Where Alair would have dismissed any further mention of his daughter, Malin was sure that his own ancestors would have been paying close attention to Sophia’s fate, primarily because the Chief Advisor also served as the eyes of the Clan.

  He thought about his brief conversation with her once she had revealed herself to him. Sophia said that she had faked her own death a hundred years before. He went to the bookcase and pulled out the journal of his grandfather, Bartrem Baford. There was a prescribed time each year that the visit
to Alron’s coven took place. It was always in the dead of winter at high noon three days after the winter solstice. Someone from the Clan arrived at the palace and escorted the Chief Advisor to Alron’s chambers through a magical portal so that the absence was brief. Thus, the three races ensured the delicate balance of the peace treaty over the years.

  Although it was awkward shuffling through the thick journal with his injured hand, Malin found the date that he was looking for a hundred years prior. As he read the passage, he sat down in his chair next to the fire pulling the book into his lap. As he reread his grandfather’s words, he quickly forgot that he was in any pain at all.

  “We arrived at the appointed time, but Alron was nowhere to be seen. I immediately suspected foul play, but my Clan escort assured me that if anything were amiss he would have been able to sense it. We waited for some time in Alron’s chamber before deciding to make our way into the daily living quarters of the coven. During previous visits, we were only allowed outside Alron’s chamber when he approved it. He has taken on a formal title of ‘Master’ and I wonder how many of his evil children know his real name at all. I think he’s hiding something by keeping us away from the rest of his flock, but the Clan escort keeps trying to reason with me that if the situation were reversed, I wouldn’t want Alron parading around the palace either. It does make some logical sense, but that doesn’t mean that I like it.

  We hadn’t gone ten steps before Alron’s Chief Deputy, a man called Monroe, appeared. It is curious to me that, over the years, Alron appears to have gone out of his way to imitate the court at Brebackerin. The Chief Deputy role is similar to my own, except it has an enforcement aspect as well. Monroe is infuriating to me, acting as if he were on the same level as one of my station. It amused me to hear him spout off that we weren’t supposed to be ‘wandering around unsupervised’. It was annoying when he ordered us back to Alron’s meeting chamber, but we complied.

  We waited another hour before the buffoon re-appeared and told us that the meeting would have to be postponed. This is unprecedented. Alron assumes too much these days. The Clan’s leash is loosening, and I am sensing that this uneasy truce no longer has the same sway that it once did. I must speak with Clemson about this.”

  Clemson Robart was Angeline’s grandfather. Malin was startled at Bartrem’s entry. As far as he knew, the annual meeting of the trifecta had never been canceled in the entire three hundred years since it had been created. He flipped forward several pages until he saw another notation about the annual meeting with Alron.

  “Received a missive today from one of my spies in the coven. Alron’s ‘wife’ died in childbirth on the day of the meeting of the trifecta. May the soul of Sophia Robart finally find peace on the other side. I can only imagine the horrors that girl endured during her long confinement with the coven.”

  Sophia had obviously gone to great lengths to cover up the fact that she had not died at all. Malin could only imagine what the young princess endured during her time with the coven. She had been raised a Robart with all the prejudices and hatred that came along with such a legacy. Her father cast her out and then turned a blind eye that she existed. Alron might have turned her into a vampire and made her his queenly figurehead, but if Malin had learned anything, it was never to underestimate a Robart.

  Alron no doubt believed that he broke Sophia’s will. Becoming pregnant with a pureblood vampire child would surely have been, in her mind, the mark of true damnation.

  He drummed his fingers against the pages and tried to reason out what she could possibly want now. Rubbing his fingers against his eyes, he realized that by asking her to take Angeline’s place they had likely given her the perfect opportunity to raise chaos in the very home of one of her enemies. Before that, she had been lurking and biding her time. Something caused her to confess her true identity to Malin. He just couldn’t reason out what that would be. He was going to have to get closer to her to try to find out the reason and what other threats she might have in store for the kingdom.

  The thought gave him a headache. He stood and moved across the room to the cabinet that held countless bottles of prized liquor that he had been saving for years. He pulled out a thirty-year-old bottle of whiskey and thumbed the cap off with his thumb. The long draught from the bottle burned all the way down, but as it warmed him it felt good too.

  He considered his options. He had no way to contact the Clan or get a message to Angeline. He had no idea when she was coming back. If she truly had embarked on the Trials of Truth, it was possible she wouldn’t come back. As far as Malin was aware, no one ever survived the trials.

  The idea of a world without Angeline in it made him want to hurl the bottle against the wall. He had been a fool. He thought that he could still do his job and keep control of his emotions where she was concerned. But feeling the race of his heartbeat thudding in his chest and the sweat on his palms, he knew that he was nothing more than a slave to his emotions after all. And he had committed the ultimate act of betrayal against the woman that he loved with his involvement in her father’s murder. She would never trust him again if she ever had. She would never look on him fondly or with kindness in her eyes. Her heart, that he once thought softened toward him, was now little more than ice.

  It was all his fault, and he had no one to blame but himself. He had pushed her away and convinced the King to send her to the Sisters of St. Abath for her last years of schooling. If she had stayed in Brebackerin, she wouldn’t have been kidnapped and met the vampire, Connor Radwin. There would not have been another contender for her heart.

  His chin fell lower and lower until it tapped his chest. The pain in his hand resurfaced in his consciousness. He knew that he needed to take care of that soon, but he didn’t have the energy yet. He wasn’t sure if he had ever felt so dark and lost in his entire life. A Clan member supposedly always knew what to do, but he had straddled the two worlds for a long time. Then when given the option, he did the unthinkable. He jumped wholly onto Angeline’s side, betraying his ancestors and his Clan. Once his mother discovered his treachery, she would probably kill him.

  He had no idea how long he stood and pondered the bleakness of his situation, but the bottle in his hand slowly emptied as he contemplated his fate. A pounding on the door brought him out of his stupor.

  “Chief Advisor! Chief Advisor! Are you in there?”

  Malin considered not answering the door. But then Sophia won outright, and he would be damned if he gave her that satisfaction. He made his way to the door, trying to walk in a straight line although it was difficult. When he finally reached it, he threw the door wide open. Outside, a young guard whose name he thought was Paul stood with his fist raised to pound once again on the door.

  “Stand down, soldier. I’m right here,” Malin said. He hoped that Paul didn’t notice the slight slur of his words. His thoughts were slightly hazy, and he found that he wasn’t that displeased about it. It took the edge off of his turbulent emotions. “What is it that is so important that you are disrupting me by beating on my door in the middle of the night?”

  “Sir, it’s the Queen,” Paul said. His eyes were wide with fright.

  “What about the Queen?”

  “She’s on top of the turret in the west wing.”

  Malin remembered that the last time he saw Sophia, she said that she was going to go visit the battlements on the palace walls to show support of the guards. It was something that she said Angeline would do. “I don’t think the Queen walking the battlements is cause for this kind of alarm.”

  Paul’s voice dropped to little more than a whisper. “It’s just that she’s…she’s threatening to jump off of it.”

  Immediately, Malin was sober.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Angeline sat in the chair closest to the fire trying to get warm. She felt detached now, having wrung every last tear and sob from her body over the course of the last hour. She heard Connor speaking quietly with Marcus at the door. If she had been completely h
uman, she wouldn’t have been able to hear the low exchange. But she was a wraith, and her hearing was better than even a vampire’s.

  “Are you sure everything is all right?” It seemed that Marcus questioned everything. Angeline saw the value in that kind of attitude, but tonight she simply wanted the man gone. “Several servants passed by in the main hallway, and I am certain that they heard her screams. I’m surprised they haven’t sent someone yet to inquire what is wrong.”

  “To do so would prove that they are deliberately keeping an eye on the queen. Everything has been quiet for the last hour. I doubt we’ll be disturbed. If anything, the Clan will take this as a signal of the Queen’s unbalance and try to use that to their advantage the next time they meet.”

  “So I ask again, is the Queen all right?”

  “I’m sitting right here, and I’m fine,” Angeline said wearily. She didn’t look behind her at the two men. “You can go back to your post now, Marcus.”

  “Of course, Your Majesty.”

  She heard the door close moments later, and then Connor moved into her line of sight. He looked different, and she realized then that it was because he was in a state of undress. He wore only an open-necked shirt with his pants.

  “I’ve requested a change of clothes,” he said, reading the line of her gaze. “I do not wish to offend you any more with the remnants of my escape.” He took his jacket that was slung over the back of the other chair and tossed it into the fire. The flames leapt up with a roar. They both watched the fire eagerly digest the blood soaked material.

  “We don’t have much time,” Angeline said. “I need to know everything of your capture and escape. I’ve heard several confusing things as well that I need to ask you about.”

  Connor settled into the chair across from her. She thought that he looked tense, and she assumed it was because he didn’t want to divulge the details of his escape. She thought that he knew by now that she wouldn’t judge him for what he was, but he still took pains to hide that side of himself from her. Today though, it had been fully flaunted in her face. She needed to know more about what happened before she felt as if she could form an appropriate opinion on his actions.