The Queen's Mark

by Tori Smith

  The roots literally eased into the soil, the ground like a bed for it to make itself home. Sliding into the rock, it nestled and soon the flower was reaching toward the sun, as if it had never been tampered with, as if it had always been there, no other alternative.

  “What’s the other way?” I asked him, awed. He said there was another way to harness the power and I looked at him, his eyes still that flourish of bright light. He was happy for some reason, happy looking at me.

  From out of his pocket, he pulled out something and I sat back until I realized it was a standard ballpoint pen.

  “Everything around us is energy,” he said, his fingers suddenly illuminated with familiar blue and purple waves. “From the bench you’re sitting on to the ground below us. We’re all energy, even people, buzzing atoms just ready and waiting to be harnessed.”

  I suddenly channeled my days in elementary school, but what he was doing went well beyond my science classes. From Elia’s fingers blasted a powerful surge of light and into the pen it went, the casing filling up, as Elia pushed waves into it.

  “That’s how it works,” he said, lifting the pen. It glowed an intense silver. “We pull energy around us and do to it what we wish. It’s nothing more than science.”

  Science… and a little magic, which he left out.

  Grinning, Elia pulled that energy right back, guiding it into his fingers. The pen’s dark color returned and once it stopped glowing, Elia slid it back into his pocket.

  He took my arm without request.

  “Allow me to show you?” he asked guiding me to stand. He exposed my mark. “You can do this too. I promise you.”

  I didn’t even get a chance to nod, entranced from everything he’d done to everything he was doing, his hands on me and bringing me closer. Her brought me almost fully to his chest, his quite literally powerful body enveloping mine.

  “This is the basis for which you receive power,” he said, the haunting glow of his green eyes like a beam in the night. I felt like a moth led to a flame I needed to stay away from. He brushed my mark with his fingers as he spoke the words and my body charged, a familiar sensation humming beneath my skin, which captured my next breath. I’d felt this only one other time and with another man entirely.

  Another man I could see.

  Lucas scouted the area nearby, his heavy footfalls solid into the earth. Deep within the confines of my mind’s eye, Lucas’s steps stopped the minute Elia touched me.

  But he wasn’t the only one to discontinue something.

  Derek had been… pacing, traveling back and forth across the house’s living room. He’d been moving pretty quick, but that all came to an abrupt end mid-step. He ceased his pace and I knew that fact just as well as Elia’s heart raced in front of me.

  He was like a buzzing atom, intense and rogue with his flourishing wave. His eyes also enhanced with a light I’d seen bright before but was ten times over now, his aquatic green glow blinding and I squinted but not from its radiation. A warm burn encased my own irises and at the itch, I closed them.

  Elia guiding my chin up caused me to open them, a soft light honing over his skin the instant my lids opened. Something told me he could see the exact same light I could see in his eyes. Only they weren’t—his eyes.

  They were mine.

  His thumb brushed my jaw in a way that ignited my entire existence, his touch rough and wonderful against my skin.

  “Your mark acts like a beacon, Your Highness,” he said to me, dampening his lips. “You use it to pull in energy. You use it and you’re unstoppable.”

  He said the words without an ounce of reprieve, as if they were law, as if they were destiny. I was destined to have this power. I was destined to be unstoppable as he said.

  His hand moved from my jaw, but in such a small movement away a light felt like it was dying inside me, like someone was ripping me away from everything happy and good. I physically felt every inch of his retreat and desperate, I grabbed Elia’s shirt to stop the sensation.

  Elia didn’t fight me.

  Pressed against him, I felt him immediately, his hand on my bottom and his cock solidified steel as it hit my tummy. I gripped his shirt, on my toes, but Elia forced space, something of a groan leaving his lips, as he closed his eyes. His forehead touched my crown, like he was trying to contain himself and my eyes closed too, not understanding any of this.

  “What is this?” I asked, whatever pull I had to him overwhelming me. “Why do I feel this way?”

  This man… a stranger, as well as the others like him, and I noticed something else each time I was or wasn’t in their presence.

  I shouldn’t be aware when one of them wasn’t around and know, know when and where they were. I shouldn’t like how it felt when one of them touched me, my mark specifically, and I shouldn’t like this, Elia’s hands on my hips and his body so close.

  Bringing his hands up, Elia caged my face, his thumbs pulling softly across my cheeks.

  “Highness,” he said, his gaze seeming to search my entire being with one glance. “Your Majesty.”

  “Arden,” I corrected for him but his reaction to that had been limited.

  I thought ours both had.

  It was as if someone shot an arrow through my brain, my arm buzzing and my irises burning as if I had stared directly into the sun. Awareness of Elia and even the other guys hazed temporarily, but then suddenly…

  “Ehh,” I groaned, holding my head. My arm blasted in full light and the shine was brighter than I had ever seen. From above me, a panicked Elia grabbed my arm, but then his gaze panned over me. He stepped back after that, letting go with his wide berth, and even though he placed space between us, my awareness of him didn’t dull.

  If anything it got stronger.

  The sensation of him grew in bounds as well as the others.

  So many others…

  I could feel them, Derek, Lucas, as well as someone else.

  I held my head, the feeling overwhelming me down to my bones.

  “Arden.”

  The sound of my name actually broke through all the noise and I saw him when I lowered my hands, a man standing between Derek and Lucas. The pair had come outside for some reason and they came with him, the man’s hair a handsome red and with a build as steady and strong as the men around him. He approached me, a slowness to his stride, and it was hard to deny the way he looked at me.

  As if he’d seen me a million times.

  A similar sensation I felt within my body, a familiarity with no thoughts or recollection to support it. I knew this man at least my body did and he knew me, stopping in front of me.

  Elia clasped my shoulder from behind. Perhaps he was still there from before, perhaps not. Either way, he was guiding me toward this man.

  “Our queen, my brother,” Elia said presenting me and that feeling, that completeness surged again with the announcement of who this guy was. He was something to me.

  And I was something to him.

  A visible light touched the man’s clear blue eyes. He bowed slowly.

  “My sweet queen,” he said, causing every inch of my body to hum just as brightly as my mark. It’d been in a steady glow since the man appeared, since they all appeared out here with me. Guiding his hands into mine, he brought me closer.

  “I’m—”

  “Like them,” I finished for him, making his eyes flash and when he looked around, I did too.

  I looked at them all.

  A unified force stood around me, men with power and energy I shouldn’t feel but had and continued to do so since that initial night with the purse-snatcher, an almost mood-altering experience occurring within the presence of each one. The pull had been powerful with Lucas and Derek and even more so with Elia.

  And now with this guy…

  A stoked flame burned less bright, a true awakening I’d never felt at all in my entire life let alone surrounded by four men, strangers.

  Something told me I wasn’t the only one.

>   They crowded around me as if I was the center to their universe, my position as their presumed queen the possible reason, but I wasn’t sure. Call me what you want, but I’d seen more than one rags-to-royalty chick flick and the guards had their position to the queen or princess, yes, but not like this. The men’s gazes cast on me in a way that made me feel like they could see into me, right through and even—all over me.

  It’d been the fourth man who arrived to raise his hand. The ring of men seemed to shrink into its nucleus, shrink into me, but when the man lifted his hand, Derek, Lucas, and Elia stopped their gain on me. I hadn’t even realized they were getting closer.

  I hadn’t seen it at all.

  The three stopped as if ordered, the new guy seeming to be the reason. They all stared at him.

  He faced them, frowning.

  “I think my brothers have failed to mention something to Her Majesty about her protectors,” he said to them, his eyes narrowed before navigating to me.

  “We should take this inside,” he said. “I think there’s a lot you need to know before we all move forward.”

  Ten

  Arden

  The man with the red hair introduced himself as Wesley, his hand out as he guided my way into the house and I had to say, it was rather interesting how the other men regarded him, a clear respect in their gazes as he took the reins on all this. I actually felt more… at peace with him around, but I wasn’t entirely certain that had anything to do with him. There was a harmony to the others and even me with him joining us, like a missing piece to the puzzle.

  Missing piece to the puzzle.

  I felt in a constant state of throwing out everything I knew up until these events occurring in my life, but as there had been too much evidence—too much proof, too much everything—of another life outside of the one I had, I couldn’t help playing into it finally. Especially, with the photo I had on me since we arrived here.

  The picture of my… parents I held onto but I refused to refer to them as my host family. They had been my family and if they’d always been mine, I had always been theirs. Forever.

  The men silenced upon crossing the threshold into the living room, looking to each other before looking at me and the conjoined sympathy in their gazes had me averting my eyes.

  “Is that the something you want to tell me?” I asked them all, choosing the couch. “Can you read my thoughts?”

  They said nothing, only choosing to take their seats. Lucas sat close, on the couch right next to me and I wasn’t surprised. He always seemed to be just a literal touch away, his hand coming out and I noticed right away the air of the room shifted, the energy—changing.

  From his fingertips glowed purple and blue light and soon my feelings surrounding my parents dulled, the sensations his fingers emanated like a calming blanket directly into my arm. He only stopped when all the men cut him a look and Wesley, with his chiseled jaw and auburn scruff on his cheeks, pinched his lips together.

  “Not exactly, Your Majesty,” he said, leaning forward. He sat where Elia sat before, on the easy chair. “But there is an element close to that we’d like to explain. I’d like to request of Her Excellence—”

  “So we’re going to knock that out right now,” I said sitting up. I faced them. “I’m here. I believe I’m here. I also believe you’re warlocks, and though I’m not exactly sure I believe I’m a witch, I do believe I am a part of something worth discussing.”

  Like I said, there had just been too much evidence, but that didn’t mean I was going to continue entertaining the fact I was their queen and until I had more time to process that element of all this we weren’t going to be having the “majesty” and “eminences” thrown around.

  “I also believe you believe I’m your queen, but as this is all new to me, I’d like you to call me by my name—Arden. Because pardon me, anything else is just weird AF right now for me.”

  And yes, I said AF, the “as fuck” assumed.

  Wesley’s lips twisted together. I wagered to resist internal laughter with the tightening of his cheeks.

  “Noted,” he said, guiding his gaze to the others. They all acknowledged the direction so quickly with their nods I wondered if I really was their queen. But then again, it had been Wesley to give the order.

  He put his hands together. “I’d like to know how much you know about everything, and pardon me for the catch-up. I just don’t want to repeat anything you’ve already heard.”

  Understanding, I sat back. “Okay, well I guess Elia mentioned something about a New Realm? I guess where we came from?”

  “And where you ruled for many years,” he said, acknowledging that with a nod. “As well as your mother Queen Odette before you.”

  My heart lifted at words of family.

  “My mother?” I asked, smiling a little. “Was she sent here too? And my dad? You didn’t mention him. Is he here?”

  Though Franklin and Norma were and would always be my parents, I’d love to venture into this world of make-believe if only to fill in some of these blanks in both my heart and mind, voids that tragically opened with the sudden knowledge of not knowing who or where I came from, but as I let my heart actually reach for that, the possibility, that sensation ruptured my insides again.

  An air of feeling captured my emotions, an infiltration of others that wasn’t my own, and when the men averted their gazes again, I believed I had my answers about what happened to the possibility of parents in another world and time.

  “Tragically, your father, King Josiah, was lost to the many civil wars in our realm,” Wesley said, frowning. “And your great mother, our dear queen not many years after that in what was known as the Great War in our realm. You were only thirteen at the time. It’s when you officially became our queen.”

  Queen… Queen at only thirteen years of age. How had I been able to handle that back then? I was still coming to terms with the adulting I had to do today and I was twenty-four.

  My brain reached as if I could find them, these parents and a life I’d been told I used to have. None of it at all sounded like me, as I had never been the one to lead anyone. Especially at thirteen.

  “Arden?”

  I looked up not only to find Wesley’s eyes on me, but the entire room, and when Lucas’s hand reached out to me, colorful waves circulating on his fingertips again, I stopped him.

  “I know what you did before,” I said forcing a smile at him. I shook my head, denying him this time.

  Leaning back, he nodded, but the sadness in his bright blue eyes was evident. He wanted to help me and even I wanted him to, more of that conundrum, my need for these men in various ways both unusual and unsettling. Like they knew, they faced each other again, but Wesley said they couldn’t read thoughts. They could do something else, though.

  I could feel it.

  A throat cleared and Derek looked as if he wanted to leave the room. His arms falling from the hug of his arms, he mumbled something about checking the perimeter again before kicking off the wall he’d been leaning on.

  “I’m assuming she doesn’t know about the bond?” Wesley said his eyes facing the floor and Derek stopped, frowning.

  “Only due to time,” he said. “For the last few days, our queen has been—”

  “Under the weather,” Elia finished for him, cutting him a look before facing Wesley. “We’ve only been able to do more explaining today. We wanted her to take it easy. This is all new.”

  Another exchange and Derek agreed with him, lounging back against the wall and I wondered why. He could have easily thrown it out there that I had essentially been hiding from all this—them.

  But he chose not to.

  Nodding, Lucas agreed with the pair and Wesley lifted and lowered his chin.

  “And I apologize for my absence, Arden,” Wesley said, actually liking the way it sounded when he said it. “I was traveling from the west and making my way to you after—”

  Upon dampening his lips, he chose not to say, smiling instead
.

  “We’re your protectors, Arden,” he continued with. “Your dutiful servants through both time and worlds. You became our charge at thirteen in the New Realm and we are your royal guard. As your guardians, it’s our job to protect the crown, something we continued to do when you were sent here to man’s twenty-first century Earth for your safety.”

  But safety from what? That was something they continued to be vague about. I was sent through time to protect me from witch hunters? Well, those were here too, though, right?

  And what of this bond he spoke about before?

  I sat there in silence and it’d been Elia to say I was probably overwhelmed.

  “I told her a lot outside,” he said, hushing his voice in the direction of Wesley. “She probably should rest and everything… everything else for another day.”

  “But she already feels it, Elia,” Wesley said, not regarding me when he looked up from his hands to him. “That ‘everything else’ you speak of? You know she does firsthand as well as the rest of you.”

  They all averted their eyes at that and Derek tipped his chin at him.

  “You’ve escaped all this out of pure convenience,” he said, his dark eyebrows narrowing. “Had you been here you’d be just as prone as all of us.”

  “Which is why she needs to know,” Wesley challenged. Fed up, I lifted my hands.

  “You guys can continue to speak in code but leave me out of it,” I said standing up. “I might as well not be here with the way you’re talking about me without actually talking to me. I’m good, so goodnight.”

  Lucas lowered his leg from the coffee table when I passed him, but I didn’t turn when he said my name nor when various others did. It wasn’t until I felt I was being ripped away at, a sudden defiling as if a limb was being severed from my body did I stop. The sensation absolutely pulled at me and I turned around, finding all men on their feet and staring at me.

  “You do feel it too.” Derek had been the one to say it. His sigh massive, he collapsed his big body to the arm of the chair, facing the group. “She does, just like the rest of us.”