The Dark Queen (The Dark Queens Book 5)

by Jovee Winters

  “It’s a deal, my love,” she said in a husky voice herself, then wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled his face down to hers, “now about those carrots...”

  ~*~

  Fable

  It had been two days since Brunhilda had come to threaten Fable. And in those two days, George hadn’t come to visit once.

  Which she was beyond grateful for. Maybe it was to “teach” Fable a lesson or simply that George was sick of slacking his lust on his “bride,” and not one of his whores.

  Rumors reached her ears even here of another dark-haired beauty now laying claim to his time and smiles. Her skin was said to be dusky and her eyes green, but Snow said the woman was nowhere near as pretty as Fable.

  Not that Fable cared.

  George could spill his speed in a cow if he wished to, just so long as she no longer had to suffer it.

  The sun was still several hours away from rising, and Galeta had left her only three or so hours ago, but she couldn’t sleep.

  For days, Fable had practiced that killing curse and finally could say that she’d mastered it. She had no intention of using such a curse, but there was another one she’d like to look at.

  “Ignis,” she intoned, flipping her palm over and immediately a hard curl took the corners of her lips as she gazed transfixed at the fireball glowing on her palm.

  Blood tingling with a rush of raw power, she knew that she was so close to the end of this nightmare that she could practically taste it. The anticipation of the end, it lingered on her tongue like the sweetest aroma.

  Only a few more weeks, enough time to make sure she was stronger than Brunhilda, to break the cuff on her wrist and then she would free herself. Herself and Snow. She’d return to Seren, to father, and she’d never leave again.

  They’d be safe and sound and never again have to worry about the wolves that lived and breathed in this wretched, horrible world called the above.

  She might even find a new love someday.

  “My queen,” Mirror hissed urgently, “someone comes!”

  She frowned, as immediately his mirror went dark. So lost in her head and her future plans that she’d forgotten to quell the flame in her palm when her door was suddenly slammed open, and there stood the king, the dowager, Charles, and a handful of royal guards.

  Too terrified to make a sound, she held as still as field mice scenting danger, staring at the lot of them wide-eyed and disbelievingly.

  Brunhilda wore a cruel smirk. George stood beside her looking bored. It was Charles’s look, which finally caused the numbness in her brain to scatter.

  His look was one of tortured regret.

  “Charles?” she whispered, but the lead knight turned his face to the side and refused to look at her.

  Brunhilda pointed a finger at her. “There, a witch. I told you! Burn her at the stake.”

  “Wait! What?” Fable jumped to her feet, finally quenching the magick, and clutched onto the edges of her robe with nerveless fingers, shaking her head. “What are you going on about? George, what is this?”

  His lip curled into a look of disgust. “I will not harbor a witch in my presence. Behead it and burn it at the stake.”

  Jaw dropping; Fable couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Or seeing.

  Suddenly everything was moving too fast to process. The guards came pouring through her door, surrounding her in a circle. Their faces sharp, angry, and cold.

  Charles led the pack, and he looked anguished and terrified. For her.

  Blinking, trying to piece the fragments of this mad puzzle together, she backed up, until her back pressed against the stone wall and she could go no further.

  Nothing made any sense. Why were they in her room? Why was Brunhilda calling her a witch as though it were a bad thing when the dowager queen was one herself? None of this made any sense.

  “What is this!” she cried again, tongue feeling swollen and thick, throat too tight with fear so that it was hard to breathe.

  Brunhilda wore a lecherous grin as she said, “We do not harbor witches in the Enchanted Forest. Do you not know your own tales, Darkness?”

  Blinking, unable to believe this could really be happening, she shook her head. Mouth flopping open and shut like a dying fish on land. “But...but...”

  Tossing her head back, the witch cackled, the sounds of which seemed to echo like madness through the rafters.

  Why was everyone standing around looking at Fable as though she were the villain? Couldn’t they sense the madness, the evil in the dowager? Or did they simply not care?

  “You were supposed to give him an heir. Instead, you turned yourself sterile, you think I don’t know. You reek of dark magick, the little fairy told us everything, do not think to lie to me again,” she said it with far too much pleasure in her voice.

  The little fairy?

  There could only be one.

  Fable’s heart sank like a rock to her knees.

  The Blue had betrayed her.

  But why?

  “No.” Fable gripped her robe tighter, shaking her head and knowing she was still in shock. Desperate to believe this was nothing more than a dream, a strange, awful, and terrible dream. “No. You’re a witch. You, not me. You!”

  Brunhilda’s face was transforming, literally before her eyes. Turning from the smooth-faced matronly beauty into the twisted and macabre mask of an ancient crone with withered flesh and a beak’s nose.

  “Me, a witch!” She cackled in a voice that seemed forged in the fires of the Underworld itself. “She is the witch.”

  She pointed a gnarled finger at Fable. And Fable felt the tightening of dark, ancient, and terrible magick pulse through the confines of her tower.

  Saw the way the guard’s irises flared so darkly that the entire color of the eyes now bled through with black so deep it seemed bottomless.

  “George, look at this. Look at her!” She cried, shrinking in on herself, desperate that Charles be proven wrong. That for once the man she detested with her whole heart and soul might do one act of kindness in his whole, miserable, pathetic life. “Look at her!” she screamed.

  But her king merely shook his head. “I know who she is, and who are you, Fable. You thought to make a fool of me, but no more. I do not want you, and I do not need you.”

  He snapped his fingers and instantly the guards were on her. Even Charles.

  Their hands latched cruelly onto her arms, her legs, her waist, her hair; anywhere they could grab hold of. Yanking, tearing, squeezing so hard that tears rolled in great large clumps from the corners of her eyes.

  “Stop”—she kicked and screamed, flailing pitifully—“Let me go! Don’t do this, don’t do this, please. I would be a good wife to you, George. I would be—”

  “Burn it,” he said again, and then turned on his heel. Brunhilda notched her skeletal chin, sneering maliciously, and something inside of Fable snapped then.

  She’d never wanted to hurt anyone.

  She’d only wanted her freedom.

  Freedom from their pain, their abuse, from their tortures. Snapping her fingers, she slammed the doors shut, locking them tight so that not even dark magick could reopen them. Outside the remainder of George’s men pounded on the doors, their cries of desperation to reach their King echoed through her chamber.

  “Ignis!” she cried, and this time, fire didn’t simply erupt from her palm, but from every inch of her.

  George ran to the door, trying to open it, but it was no use. He kicked and screamed, demanding his Knights open it. But not even Brunhilda could undo what she’d wrought. Instead, the witch had jumped in front of the King with her arms spread wide and glaring hate at Fable.

  Flame so hot it melted flesh on contact spread out from her body like a creeping vine. The guards screamed, dropping her instantly.

  “Fin!” Brunhilda roared back, and the fires that had been reaching for her and George like ravenous fiery claws immediately ceased.

  But the men continued to burn on
; the magick once lit wouldn’t stop until it had consumed them. They dropped her, scattering to all corners as they writhed and wailed, begging her to cease their torment.

  Brunhilda’s eyes burned hate.

  Body aching, Fable pushed her way up shakily to her feet. But she knew she was still far from safe.

  “Stop this,” she squeezed out, unable to believe that that pitiful whimpering voice had been her own. Breathing hurt, her ribs were bruised, and she felt blood—her blood—oozing down from the countless wounds the guards had already inflicted upon her. “We don’t have to kill each other.”

  Brunhilda’s shrunken lips curled in disgust. “Of course, we do. You will rot in Tartarus for what you’ve done today. The sins you committed. Take a look around you, Queen of Darkness, and see the evil you’ve wrought.”

  And suddenly the entire world moved as in slow motion. Fable saw the crone lift her palm, and her months of studying under Galeta’s tutelage helped her to see what she might have missed before. The spark of dark magick that suddenly flared to life on the aged crone’s palm, the malevolent whisper of terrible power that squeezed the oxygen out of the air.

  Brunhilda was going to throw not just any killing curse on her, but “the” killing curse. The sphere of ebony power gathered and grew, and there was only one shot of making it out of here alive.

  She had to be the one to throw it first.

  There was no time to form it into a tight sphere, no time to make sure that she harmed none but her intended, Fable opened her mouth and said the words she could never take back.

  “Occidiere maledictio.”

  The ground shook, the wind shrieked, and the bolt of raw, primal magick blasted straight toward them.

  No sooner had Fable released it, she wailed, desperate to take it back. She was no killer, not even to a wicked witch such as Brunhilda.

  “No!” she cried, but it was too late. It was far too late.

  Once released, the curse had to strike. And it did but in the worst possible way.

  The doors were suddenly rammed open, giant splinters of wood erupted all around like tiny wooden projectiles, one of them catching Fable in the cheek and tearing her open.

  George, who’d been somewhat hidden behind Brunhilda, was tripped by the blast, knocking him forward, directly into the path of the ebony bolt.

  The magick took his head clean off, dropping him like a sack of stone to the ground. Instantly dead.

  And Brunhilda, she wasn’t safe from the blast’s path either, she’d not gotten a direct blow, but the javelin of darkness pierced clean through the left side of her chest, opening a giant, gaping sucking wound.

  She too dropped, eyes wide and staring at Fable with an incredulous shock. “What?” Was all she managed to whimper.

  With a cry of alarm as the truth of what she’d finally done had dawned on her, Fable ran to them, dropping to her knees. There was nothing she could do for George, but maybe she could still spare the witch.

  She grabbed Brunhilda’s ice-cold hand and shook her head. “I didn’t mean this. I didn’t.”

  There was no love lost for the witch, but Fable was not a killer. A monster. An evil queen.

  She wasn’t.

  She wasn’t a villain.

  Her soul trembled as the smells, and scents of blood and charred flesh filled her nostrils. The horrors of what she’d done were now crashing down on her.

  “No. No. No,” she whispered, shoving her hands against Brunhilda’s chest to try and stem the bleeding, but it was no use.

  With each pump of her heart, the witch bled out bucketfuls.

  Brunhilda’s face was an ashen, colorless white when her eyes finally opened. Her gaze was cloudy and drugged looking, and using the last bit of her strength she panted out three words that Fable knew would haunt her all the rest of her days.

  “You. Did. This.”

  Gasping, she dropped the witch’s hand as though burned, bringing her hands to her mouth she covered it as a strange, wild sound climbed out of her throat.

  “Leave her.”

  The overly cheerful and exuberant voice of Galeta the Blue suddenly echoed like sunshine in the room. The happy, sunshiny tone was so wrong that it finally pierced the veil of Fable’s shock.

  Gasping, and shaking with tears and pain, Fable couldn’t gather her words or thoughts into any sort of coherence. The only thing she could whisper was, “Why, Galeta? Why? Why did you betray me?”

  She was so cold. All over. And rather sensed she was deep in shock, and that when it finally wore off all she’d be capable of feeling was fury and hate for what The Blue had done.

  A few more days and she’d have been free of this torment. Only a few more days.

  “Why?” Her voice shook, and her body trembled.

  Galeta patted her head with her tiny hand, her sharp, fang-like teeth poking out menacingly from her curved lips. “Because we had a deal, Darkness. Did you think I’d forgotten?”

  The patronizing manner with which she treated, Fable, caused her to grit her teeth and jump to her feet. Wiping her stinging eyes with her forearms, she shook her head.

  “You said my blood. You’d take my blood. This was not our deal.”

  “I said, no such thing,” Galeta chuckled the words, looking heartily pleased with herself. “I said you’d pay me in blood. And you have, sweet girl. You have.”

  “No.” She hugged her arms to her chest, feeling a soul-sucking void of numbness begin to sweep over her consciousness. This couldn’t be real. None of this could be real. This hadn’t really happened.

  “Why did you teach me something so vile? Why?” she muttered.

  Galeta, who still smiled, was now humming cheerfully to herself as she reached into a pocket tucked into her gown and pulled out a green glass vial. Tipping it toward Fable, she winked.

  “I told you why. And now I do believe that payment can be rendered. I needed the blood of a powerful witch you see, and since they’re so selfish about giving that type of thing up, well...the end justifies the means, does it not?”

  Flitting toward the now deathly still and silent Brunhilda, Galeta reached forward and dragged the vial through the ocean of red covering the fallen witch’s chest.

  “You’re evil,” Fable whispered as she watched the little fairy practically gleam with joy as she played in the blood.

  “What’s that?” Galeta turned to her, her glacial blue eyes cold and frosty. “Evil you say. Yes, well. I might be a tad bad, Darkness, but I’ve never destroyed an entire kingdom, now have I? You were very thorough, my dear.”

  “No. I didn’t—”

  A tiny feminine gasp had Fable’s skin instantly crawling, heart pounding, and chest aching. She knew without even looking up who it was, and the minute her eyes landed on Snow’s face, she went absolutely still.

  Blue, blue eyes rimmed in red and crying large tears looked back at her. “You did this.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  “Snow, I—”

  She reached out a hand, but the child screamed, and instantly a guard snatched her up, shoving her behind him and glaring hotly at Fable as though he meant to snuff the life from her.

  But not a one of them moved. All of them were terrified; the emotion was clear in their wide and petrified gazes.

  “I didn’t mean to do this, Snow. I didn’t. I—”

  Galeta snickered. “Yeah, well, tough titties, oh evil one, cuz ya did. By the by, I’ll be seeing you around, Darkness, you can count on it.”

  The fairy vanished with her prize in a puff of glittering blue.

  The guards lifted their spears and Fable knew she would be transformed into a true monster in Snow’s eyes now.

  Shaking her head, and with giant tears rolling down her cheeks she whispered, “Lay them down.”

  But she’d unlocked her powers again, and the words were full of magick.

  Immediately the spears were flung from their hands, clacking loudly against the stonewall before dropping to th
e ground.

  “Go away!” She screamed, flinging them all from her sight. Careful not to toss the girl around, but needing those censorious eyes away from her.

  The moment she was alone, she looked at what she’d done. The charred, crisped bodies of the knights, curled in fantastical poses of writhing agony as they’d succumbed to their deaths.

  At their center, and closest to her side was Charles. Fable clenched her eyes shut, forcing herself to breathe in and out as suddenly her stomach heaved with the violence she’d committed.

  Numb, still in shock, she walked in a daze over to Mirror. And gasped when she viewed herself.

  She’d felt the aches and pains earlier, but had had no idea the violence that had been done to her.

  One eye was almost completely swelled shut. Blood had matted her hair to her forehead and neck. Her dark flesh was covered in oozing slits of deepest crimson and already she could see the mottled purple tones covering most of her skin.

  Fingers trembling she covered her mouth with her hands, that was how Uriah found her.

  His dear face filled the looking glass so that she no longer had to look upon herself.

  Scanning the room quickly, he then looked at her. “You had no choice, my queen. They meant to end you.”

  “But Snow White,” she gasped, starting to shake violently now and having to clutch onto the wall for support.

  His look spoke volumes. The girl would hate her forever.

  “The effects of this night, I fear,” he said quietly, “has only just begun, Fable. You must rule this kingdom now.”

  “After what I’ve just—”

  “Regardless,” he said gravely, “you are their queen, at least until Snow comes of age.”

  Tears blurred her vision. Fable latched onto his words like a lifeline. “Maybe if I stay, I can prove to her that I’m not evil. That I was simply defending myself, that—”

  “Perhaps, my queen. Although I should tell you, our little Snow has escaped.”

  Heart gripping with fear, she clutched at her breast. “Escaped where! Stop her! She’ll be hurt, injured, or worse. Please, Mirror, don’t—”

  He shook his head sadly. “I fear, my queen, that my reach can only extend through these castle walls. I simply do not know where she goes to now.”