by Kailin Gow
“The Queen is dead,” he said, his voice stone-still.
And then I saw her body, the life flowing out of her and onto me, the dagger lying alongside her body – the familiar seal of the Winter Court etched into the handle.
Kian?
No...
I recognized the blade, then. It was Shasta's knife.
They had gone, now, the two of them, into the dawn, propelled by Shasta's magic...
I saw through Kian's eyes for a moment – he was here, disguised, obscured in the crowd – he had seen them go, seen them escape to safety...
And the blood was beginning to dry on my face.
“Oh my God!”
“The Winter Court!” cried Wort, “has assassinated the Summer Queen.”
The crowd, deprived of its execution, was more bloodthirsty than ever. “Kill them! Kill them all! We want Winter blood”
“Blood! Blood! Give us blood!”
I heard wailing, moaning, terror everywhere around me, closing in around me.
The Queen was dead.
I was the new Queen.
Chapter 21
The knowledge shook me like thunder. I stood motionless as the crowd gathered around the Queen's body, shaking ever so slightly as they came closer and closer.
“Breena!” It was a voice I recognized – one of the servants of the palace. “We have to get you out of here.” She grabbed hold of my hand. “Get you cleaned up.”
In a flash, she and some of the other servants whisked me away, bringing me into the antechamber and then into my bedroom.
“What's going on?” I stammered, but I knew.
Wort was sitting on the bed, waiting for me – surrounded by the other royal advisers. I knew immediately that I did not trust them. It was because of their influence, I knew, that the Summer Queen had driven Feyland into war to satisfy her own agenda; I did not doubt that they would jump at the first opportunity to destroy me. Nevertheless, I was Queen now. The whole crowd had seen me alive and well outside the execution, and it would look terribly suspicious if I suddenly turned up dead...
“My Queen,” he bowed deeply. “The Summer Queen is dead. Long live the Summer Queen.”
“Long live the Summer Queen,” came a murmuring grumble from the other advisors.
“Your people want to see you.”
“Like this?” There was still blood in my hair and on my clothes.
“No, not like this,” he conceded. “Maynad, Thistleflower – have her changed into something more...regal. For the sake of your modesty, my Queen, allow us to wait outside. But we shall see you presently in the antechamber.”
I gave him a sharp stare as the maids surrounded me. The door closed behind them, and then as fast as quicksilver they began undressing and bathing me, washing away all the blood, the sweat, the pain, the fear. The soap they used smelled like honeysuckle, and the water was so cool and fresh that for a moment I forgot what was happening and lost myself in the sensation of cleanliness.
“We must find you something suitable to wear,” said Thistleflower, and dashed off. She returned moments later with the most stunning dress I had ever seen, made of long, flowing, golden silk. “This was from Her Majesty's wardrobe,” she said. “It is yours now.”
“Do you grieve for your Queen?” I asked her.
Her blush made it apparent that she did not. “I am a loyal subject of the Fairy Court,” she said. “My loyalty is to the Queen regnant.”
She helped me put on the dress. It fit me perfectly. I considered myself in the mirror. Although my heart was beating like a hummingbird's and my breath was short within my throat, I managed nevertheless to look the part of a glorious Queen – proud and beautiful. I would be strong, I resolved. I would be Queen.
The Fairy servants led me into the antechamber. There, there awaited not only Wort and his advisers but a whole coterie of fairies dressed in stunning black garb. They were mourning, I knew, but even in their grief they would come to attend to affairs of state – these were the courtiers of the Summer Palace, the most powerful fairies in the land. They all knelt down before me as I passed, gliding over the carpet, my crystal slippers levitating me slightly above the ground.
“My Queen,” they murmured, one after another. “My Queen.”
At last I reached the throne. Its form fit itself to me; I could feel power radiating from the seat and from the legs.
“We, the people and court of Feyland, crown you the Queen of the Summer Court, Empress of Feyland.”
Wort placed a golden crown – studded with rubies – upon my head. From the moment it touched the bristles of my hair I felt its power, the magic of its office filling me with strength so great I felt that I could obliterate the entire palace just by closing my eyes. It was a power of life, of renewal, of fruit growing in the fields and crops warm in the earth, of running streams and germinating seeds. I could feel my soul connect with every seed in every plot in every corner of the realm, and I knew that I was a part of them, now, and that they were parts of me, and that all the Fairies in my kingdom were tied in, inextricably, to my magic and my power.
I heard an applause – studded with weeping and grief – rise up from the crowd.
“I am thirsty,” I said, and my voice was not my own. “Bring me something to drink.”
An attendant – Maynad – came over with a bowl.
“Ambrosia,” she whispered. “The royal drink.”
Drinking from the bowl was like drinking from the rivers of Eden themselves – this tasted not like water, but like honey and roses, passion fruit and the freshest grapes, gold and amber all at once. I knew that this ambrosia would make me even stronger. I gulped it down; I needed strength.
I had to face all these people, all these faces. I had to find Kian – to break the spell on my father, to grow the crops, to stop the war, to find my mother...
I was the Queen, and I felt my responsibilities sinking into my shoulders.
It was time to rule.
Epilogue
That night I slept deeply. The proceedings of the day – from Shasta and Rodney's escape to the Queen's death and my coronation – had taken their toll on me, and no sooner had I been able to escape the throng gathering in the throne room than I fell asleep in the new room now assigned to me – the Royal Bedchamber. I dreamed heavily – of Kian, of my mother, of Logan and Shasta – tossing and turning as nightmares overtook me.
But no sooner had my nightmares dissipated into oblivion than I heard a rough knocking on the door of my bedchamber.
“What is it?” I asked, using my magic to light a candle.
“My Queen,” I could hear Wort's toad-like croak from behind the door. “It is an emergency of State.”
I put on a dressing gown and opened the door.
“We need you downstairs, your Highness. Immediately.”
“Of course,” I said, glowering at him. I had a feeling there were going to be many midnight “emergencies” in the next couple of weeks.
We met up with the other advisers in the antechamber.
“What is it,” I said.
“We have caught the culprit!” announced Wort.
“What culprit?”
“The one who killed the Summer Queen. That foul Winter abomination.” He spat.
Shasta! I froze.
“You found the culprit...you have caught the culprit...” I stammered.
“To be handed over for immediate execution. You know how it is, Your Majesty. The people are baying for blood! And now we have caught him.”
“Him?”
And then I knew – a sure and terrible knowledge – moments before they opened the door, moments before they dragged Kian – bloodied, bruised, broken – before me. He looked up at me and his eyes were full of pain, full of love.
“A hanging?” Wort continued, oblivious to my hidden pain. “Disemboweling? Beheading? How should we execute this treacherous bastard? The people are waiting, my Queen – they are waiting for blood...”
This was no nightmare.
This was reality.
***********************************
Breena, Kian, and Logan’s story continues in
Book 3 of Bitter Frost
Silver Frost
March 2011
Excerpt from
PULSE
Book 1 of 5
kailin gow
prologue
She ran like an animal. Her clothes were wet, sopping, clinging to her thighs and to her chest, hollow and transparent around the curve of her shoulders. Her hair shook out droplets of rain; her cheeks were flushed and she was breathless. He could see her heartbeat throbbing at the side of her throat, see it in the rhythmic panting, hear it from across the street, pounding in his ears, intermingled with the thunder bolting from the sky. He could feel it – it felt like an earthquake to him, shaking his ribs, his shoulders, his legs. It had been so long since he had seen a heartbeat like hers – since he had felt a heartbeat at all.
The skies had opened up – as they so often did in North California – without any warning, without any hesitation. It was as if the smooth blue glass ceiling of the world had shattered all at once, letting the primordial oceans pound down upon the pavement. He could see her consternation, her irritation – she wanted nothing but to get out of the rain, to dry herself off, to curl up into something warm and dry.
But Jaegar loved the rain. He loved the energy – the pulse of life beating down upon the earth. He could hear the scattered raindrops in their rhythmic approach to earth and pretend that each fall of rain was a beat of his dead heart. And she was alive with the energy, too – alive as he had never seen a woman alive, tossing her hair back, running into shelter, and her lips were pink and her cheeks were red. He remembered that his lips would never again be pink, that his cheeks would never again be red.
She was so young.
Humans so often surprised him in that way. They looked no different from him – he could have been seventeen; he had been seventeen for so long – but their youth never failed to surprise him. The way the world was so new to them – that rain could still take them by surprise, when he had seen so many rainfalls.
He could smell her. The wind carried her scent to him like an animal's scent, and it was all he could do to keep his fangs in check. He leaned heavily upon the branch and parted the leaves to get a better look at her. He could feel the blood – stagnant in his veins – begin something like a torpid, sluggish, shift towards life – the closest thing he would ever get to a heartbeat. She was the sort of girl who made young boys' hearts pound, he thought – and they never knew how lucky they were to experience that sensation.
For it was the physical aspect of it, he thought, that humans understood least of all. They romanticized vampires, of course – how terrible it would be to live at night! To drink blood! To prey upon humans! These were things they could intellectualize, understand. Humans had been forced to commit murder. Humans had been forced to bite back their most natural, primal desires – and so they could almost understand, when they imagined vampires, what it was like to feel that insatiable hunger for a woman's throat, her breast, her wrist. But not a human in the world had ever been alive without living, without a heartbeat – and so they took it for granted – what it meant, that constant linear throbbing, clock-like, towards inevitable death. For Jaegar was a vampire, and he was not alive, and the dull ache in his chest where a heartbeat should have been was for him one of the most agonizing things in the world.
They don't know, he thought. They'll never understand.
He had been told that she was the one. He had waited for her until sunset – the sun agonizing upon him, even with the ring around his finger. Vampires were not meant for light, and even the strongest magic could not take away the pain, searing, burning, aching, in his flesh. He was unnatural in sunlight, and only now that dusk was beginning to settle over him could he find relief. He sat perched in the tree, obscured by the leaves, staring at her as she ran down the street.
He leaned in too closely – the birds noticed at last that something was wrong in their midst and took flight; a flurry of wings beat up around him and the branch snapped from the tree and plummeted to the earth below.
It was enough time to make a distraction.
He concentrated, and in half a second he was behind her, so close he could feel the wind blow her hair upon his lips, and then he opened the umbrella above her.
“Miss,” he said.
She startled.
“What the...” She rounded on him.
“You looked wet,” he said. She did not seem amused.
“I'm warning you,” she said. “I know kung fu.”
He had learned kung fu once, many centuries ago. He thought it better not to mention it.
“I'm sorry,” he said. “I was just trying to help.”
She softened.
“Thanks,” she said, lamely. “I'm sorry – I didn't mean to snap at you. But you need to learn not to sneak up on people like that. You scared me.”
Her eyes remained fixed upon the tree from which he had come. A suspicious glare clouded her gaze. Had she seen – was she wondering? He knew she knew something was wrong. He tried to maintain whatever pleasant normalcy he could. The sequoias were tall, after all. No human could survive a jump from them – he knew she knew this. He knew she thought he was human.
From Bestselling Author
Kailin Gow
PULSE
17 year-old Kalina didn’t know her boyfriend was a vampire until the night he died of a freak accident. She didn’t know he came from a long line of vampires until the night she was visited by his half-brothers Jaegar and Stuart Greystone. There were a lot of secrets her boyfriend didn’t tell her. Now she must discover them in order to keep alive. But having two half-brothers vampires around had just gotten interesting…
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