She smiled up at her friend and pulled the blanket higher on her father’s chest. “You’ve done everything for me. If it hadn’t been for you, Ronatta would have killed me, like she killed my mother and my baby sister.” Some emotion crossed Rapunzel’s face, there and gone before Ella could figure out what it meant. She assumed it was Rapunzel’s guilt at not saving the rest of her family on that fateful day, and hurried to reassure her. “Don’t argue with me, you kept me alive, and for that I’m grateful.”
She barely remembered the incident, but she’d seen Ronatta try again and again to kill her and Rapunzel step in and block the queen’s efforts with her magic. If it weren’t for Rapunzel, she knew, she’d be dead like the rest of her family.
“Ella, I might not be able to talk to you much longer. I think it’s time you—”
From outside the room Ella heard the click-click of heels on stone.
“What’s this?” The queen swept into the room. Ronatta’s dark brown hair was swept up into a fashionable top bun with scores of tiny braids cascading down, showcasing her long delicate neck and the silver jeweled covers on the tips of her ears. She wore tight, narrow legged jeans leading into short, high-heeled boots, and a fragile bright red silk blouse that dipped subtly down over her flat chest where more jewels and silver gleamed. “You know you’re not supposed to disturb the king.” The face of the nurse poked around the doorframe behind her, the woman’s eyes darting around the room.
Ella gave her father’s hand one last gentle squeeze and got up from the bed. “Your Majesty.” She swept down into a curtsy.
Ronatta’s eyes narrowed. “Ella, don’t you have fireplaces to clean?”
Fireplaces. The anger bloomed anew inside Ella. She pasted a smooth look on her face. “I’m done for the day.”
“That doesn’t mean you can come here. The king needs rest.” Ronatta glanced outside at the late afternoon sun. “Obviously, you have too much time on your hands.” She waved her hand. Ella felt the brush of magic blowing past her face. “There. Now, all the fireplaces you touched today need to be cleaned again. And of course, they must be laid ready for a new fire.” Ronatta’s ruby-red lipstick curved up in a semblance of a smile. “Tonight looks to be a chilly one.”
“I’ve been up since before dawn.” Ella’s fingers tightened into fists, her nails digging into the skin of her palms. Despite herself she took a step closer to Ronatta. “I’ve done all the work I was supposed to do. You can’t do this to me.”
Her stepmother’s smile grew wider, showing her clean, even teeth. “Tsk, tsk, Ella. You don’t want even more work, do you?” The fragile wisp that was Rapunzel reached out and touched Ronatta. She shivered, darting fierce searching looks around the room but not seeing the ghost.
Ella shook her head, forcing herself to back away. “No, ma’am.” She gave the briefest curtsy she could and headed for the door.
“And Ella, don’t come back here. The king is not to be disturbed, not by the likes of you.” Behind the queen, Ella saw the nurse give a fierce nod of support. “And, if I find out that you’ve been here, I’ll figure out a way to punish you that will be so much worse than extra work, you’ll wish you’d never been born.” Ronatta’s pretend smile dropped away. “Don’t think your mother’s spirit will protect you forever. You’re no one now—just a poor serving girl. You should be grateful you have a place here at all.”
Ella’s back prickled with gathering magic. She braced for impact, but it never came. She turned around. Ronatta’s blast of magic streamed at her, spattering against Rapunzel’s shield. Rapunzel had protected Ella, when she couldn’t muster enough power to protect herself.
Ronatta’s face twisted with rage. “Someday I’ll figure out a way to get rid of your mother’s ghost.” She shook a hand at the room. “Do you hear me Enid? You may be reaching out from beyond the grave, but I’m here and I’m never going to give up!”
Shaking, Ella walked as smoothly as she could out the door and down the tower stairs. She burst outside and sucked in lungfuls of the crisp fall air. “I hate her.”
“Me too.” Rapunzel hovered in the doorway, her voice barely audible and her form nearly gone. Between fighting off Ronatta and distracting the nurse, she’d used too much magic. She was bound to the stones of the old castle. She couldn’t even set foot in her own rose garden far below her tower, let alone here, in the kitchen gardens below the old eastern tower where Ronatta had moved the king, or the rest of the massive palace complex that formed the Crimson Court.
“She killed my mother—her own stepsister! She married my father, put Drusilla and Ana into my rooms, gave them my toys, my clothes, my life! And now, all I want to do is see my father before he dies, and she denies me even that. Is that fair? Is that right?” Ella sat on a border stone around the pumpkin patch and wrapped her arms tightly around her knees, holding in the rage that threatened to break loose.
“Ella, it’s getting harder and harder to protect you. At some point Ronatta will realize that I’m not always around. You’re not a little girl anymore. I think it’s time you leave the castle. If you do, maybe you can find a way to get your powers back. Then you could take your rightful place as queen.”
“If I do that, will you be here when I get back? Will I ever see you again?” Hot tears pressed into Ella’s eyes. “You fade a little bit every day, just like my father. If I leave, you’ll both be gone and what would be the purpose of being queen then?”
There was no response. Ella turned. Even the wisp that had been Rapunzel was gone, the strain of using so much power had pulled her back to her tower.
Ella let the tears fall on the wide pumpkin leaves at her feet. With every drop the leaves grew brighter, greener. Soon there were tiny shoots and vines springing off the main vine. Even the small pumpkin hanging off the vine seemed to glow a brighter orange.
She smiled and sniffed back the tears. Rapunzel was wrong. Her Gift wasn’t much, but she loved the way the plants of the garden responded to even her tears. Green magic wasn’t a very royal Gift. It wasn’t like Drusilla’s ability to make every piece of clothing she touched fabulous, or even Ana’s Gift of turning things into gold. No, it was a useful Gift—a peasant’s Gift. And it made her happy. She deserved every drop of happiness she could get, didn’t she?
It was a good thing Ronatta had no idea when the ghost was around. Ella had been lucky to only have her powers bound by her stepmother. Someday, Ronatta would find her when Rapunzel wasn’t there to protect her. Or, the queen would find a way to banish the spirit forever, Ella knew she’d been searching. The only blessing was that Ronatta thought it was Ella’s dead mother who protected her. If she ever found out who truly was her benefactor—Ella shivered. She didn’t know what would happen then. What she did know was that on that day, she’d find herself worse off than being a servant.
She’d find herself dead.
So, she’d steal her moments of happiness, helping the pumpkins grow big and orange, even if they weren’t princess-like moments. Who wanted to be a princess anyway? Not her. Fancy balls, and food, and hours of fittings. Boring. If she could be in the garden and spend every day in the sun helping the plants grow, that would be a life. She got up and headed inside, turning to wave goodbye to the sun as it headed toward the castle wall.
“Goodbye, sun. See you tomorrow.”
Her, a princess? She snorted under her breath. It might be her birthright, but it wasn’t who she was now. She was Ella, the ash-girl. She’d never be a princess again. The queen had made sure of that.
RONATTA STARED DOWN at the king, her husband of nearly seventy-five years. Had it really been that long? She’d only been married to Drusilla and Ana’s father, her first husband, for thirty years, before he’d succumbed to the ‘wasting sickness’. She smiled, remembering how fun it had been to pull power from the dolt and use it to manipulate her stepsister’s royal spouse into an affair. The poor naive queen had been totally ignorant.
Until the end, when Ronatta had enacted her reven
ge and stolen everything from the bitch—her husband, her castle, and her crown.
“All mine.” She brushed a hand idly over the king’s white hair. And frowned. Was his hair getting thinner? She leaned over and examined him more closely.
“There you are, Mother.” Her eldest daughter, Drusilla, entered the room. Drusilla—her pride and joy. This child understood power and what it was for, not like her mealy-mouthed sister, Ana.
Drusilla frowned at the king in his bed. “What are you doing up here of all places? Shouldn’t that nurse be taking care of him? Isn’t that why you hired her?” She dropped into the rocking chair, kicked off her sparkling platform heels, and rubbed the soles of her feet. “I’ve been wearing myself out searching everywhere for you and I find you up here staring at him.”
“I sent the nurse on a break. I needed to be alone for a minute with him. What did you want?” Because, Drusilla always needed something. It was what Ronatta loved most about her. They were two peas in a pod. If that pod were filled with sharp teeth and ruby-tipped polished nails.
“I just wanted to let you know I’m leaving. I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Where are you off to? Didn’t you just get back this afternoon?”
“There’s a party at the Golden Court and you know I won’t miss one of Oberon’s shindigs. It would be the death of me socially.” She tossed her carefully curled brown hair. “Do you think this will do?”
Ronatta barely glanced at Drusilla’s tight, sequined mini-skirt and crop top. “You look lovely.” Of course, her eldest wore clothes totally inappropriate for a castle in the fall, but absolutely the height of fashion for Underhill’s elite. Besides, Oberon’s palace would be heated so that all the women, and most of the men, would be stripped down to bare skin before the night was over. She turned back to the king. “Drusilla, do you notice anything different about him?”
Drusilla cast a bored look at the king. Her forehead wrinkled and she tilted her head. “He’s kind of washed-out, isn’t he? I mean, more than usual?”
Ronatta opened her inner sight and examined the complex web of spells she had surrounding her husband.
“I mean, look at him.” Drusilla got up out of the chair and walked over to the bed. “I think I can see through the tips of his ears. Can you?”
“Yes, damn it! I’ve already cut down the amount of power I’m taking from him. If I cut back much more people will notice I’m weakening.” She crossed her arms and tapped the fingers of one hand against her elbow. “I can’t have that happen. I need power to maintain being queen.”
“Why don’t you start siphoning off his brat of a daughter? I mean, Ella has enough power to be queen on her own, doesn’t she?”
Ronatta resisted the urge to snarl back at the comment. It hurt that her miserable little stepdaughter had enough power in her tiniest finger to do all the things she had to steal power for. Why hadn’t she been born with more magic? Why did she have to constantly take and take and take from others what should have been her birthright?
Her mother hadn’t been powerful, but her father, the man who had ignored his bastard child, had been. She’d deserved that power. If she’d had it growing up, she wouldn’t have had to marry powerful men just to get what she needed in life. Her mother wouldn’t have had to marry her stepfather and Ronatta wouldn’t have had to grow up second fiddle to her stepsister, Enid, the goody-two-shoes who everyone had loved, just because she had a powerful Gift. Enid had even married well, the King of the Crimson Court. But Ronatta had shown her stepsister. She now had all the power. Enid was dead, and soon, her powerful husband would be too, sucked dry by the one person everyone had thought not even worth seeing—Ronatta herself.
“Mother?”
Ronatta let out a short breath. “I’ve told you before. I can’t. Ella has protection. I can’t see it or figure out how, that wretched stepsister of mine did something to protect her little darling. Even beyond the grave she harries me. I’ve managed to bind most of Ella’s powers, but I can’t access them.” She turned and paced the room, her heeled boots clicking on the stones of the tower floor. “We need something else. Someone else.”
She’d love to take Ella’s powers, but every time she tried to do something to the girl, Enid’s ghost protected her. Even from the grave her stepsister was trying to steal what Ronatta deserved. She couldn’t let the girl leave the castle, just in case someone figured out she was the real heir to the throne. And she’d been unable to kill her, no matter how many times she’d tried.
“There’s always Ana.” Drusilla snickered.
Ronatta raised her brows and gave Drusilla a warning look. “Leave your sister out of this.”
Drusilla was right, there was always Ana. But Ronatta didn’t want her oldest daughter thinking she could use her sister—Ana was Ronatta’s spare chess piece, not Drusilla’s.
“I was just trying to help.” Drusilla pouted and sank back into the rocking chair. “Why did you have Ana anyway? Wasn’t life perfect when it was just the two of us?”
She smiled at her daughter. “Yes, it was perfect.”
Before, when they’d had lots of money and she’d thought being a rich man’s wife was enough. She’d had a handsome husband who she’d been able to manage and a lovely daughter. She’d been on her way to share the news with her beloved husband that they were expecting baby number two when she’d discovered the truth—her handsome husband was a liar. She hadn’t been managing him, he’d been managing her.
He’d laughed at her, told her she’d be having the baby in the poorhouse. There was no money, it was all gone, wasted away on gambling and drink and other vices. It hadn’t been easy to get the spell, but she’d sold all her jewelry and anything she could get her hands on. And she’d paid in pain. Ana’s labor had been terrible and the evil witch who had helped her had siphoned off every drop of pain into a tiny vial. In return, she’d given Ronatta the spell.
It wasn’t an easy thing to incorporate human witch magic with her own fae Gift, and she’d made mistakes. She’d killed off her liar of a husband before getting all his magic. Oops. This time, it had gone much better, she’d drained every ounce of power from husband number two.
Ana was her living symbol of all her losses, most especially, her innocence. She was weak, and her magic was weak too. Sure, she could change things to gold, but it was only a neat party trick. Twenty-four hours later the item would be back to normal and the gold would be long gone. No wonder Drusilla, her sweet girl who copied everything her mother did, hated her sister too. Of course, Ronatta had encouraged it. Having her daughters competing for her attention made sure they not only wouldn’t join forces against her, but it also meant that they worked hard to impress her. Wasn’t sibling rivalry a wonderful thing?
“Mother?”
“There must be something we can do.” Ronatta looked back at the king. He’d been handsome once, with a fabulous body and oh so good in bed. She’d enjoyed every minute she’d spent seducing him away from her stepsister. But that had been many decades ago and the magic she’d pulled from him had aged him prematurely. He looked ancient now, the muscles on his face sagging like a rotting melon. “We don’t have much time. He’s fading away.”
“Too bad you don’t have another husband stashed away.”
Ronatta grinned. “That’s it! We’ll find another husband, maybe two.” She crossed over to Drusilla and pulled her out of the chair, dancing her around. “We’ll have a ball, a magnificent ball. We’ll invite all the lords and princes in Underhill, and maybe beyond. We’ll find you an amazingly powerful husband, and then we can suck him dry, just like your dear, beloved stepfather.” She gave Drusilla’s hands a hard squeeze. “And maybe, if we’re good at it, we’ll find one for Ana too. Imagine what we could do with two men as powerful as the king to drain. I—we—would be unstoppable.”
“Why does Ana get a husband? She’s nothing but a drain on us.” Drusilla gave Ronatta one of her most winning smiles.
Ronatta
could do nothing but smile back. This daughter was so like her, she’d have to watch her carefully. Someday, the daughter she was so proud of, would most likely turn on her. As sad as that would make her, she knew it was coming. After all, Drusilla was just like her. They’d both lost their innocence when they’d lost her first husband. Drusilla had learned what it was like to be a cast-off relative, dependent on the previous queen for her goodwill.
“I’m sorry, my dear, but if Ana get’s married, that’s more magic for the two of us.”
“At least she’ll be good for something.”
“You’ve never liked your sister, have you?”
“Do you?” Drusilla had loved being an only child, even if Ronatta didn’t like Ana— couldn’t stand her, as a matter of fact—Drusilla liked her even less.
“My dear, I would never say any such thing. Not even between us.” Ronatta shook her head, a small smile curving her lips. She and Drusilla shared a look, the kind of look that only truly sympathetic souls could share.
“Then that’s settled.” Drusilla slipped her heels back on her feet. “I’m off. Don’t wait up.”
“Enjoy the party, dear heart. But make sure you start hunting for the most powerful men. Only the best for my darling.” And for herself. She smiled so widely her cheeks hurt, but she didn’t care. Her problems were solved. She’d marry off her daughters and suck their husbands dry. And, with all that extra power, she’d find a way to take care of that thorn in her side, Ella, once and for all.
Chapter Two
Finn moved silently from room to room of the townhouse, carefully stepping over the intertwined legs of Lord Carniff’s massive hounds. One of the wolfhounds twitched and Finn froze, foot in the air. Anything could trip him up and he’d be gallows bound.
He waited until the dog settled back into sleep before letting out his breath and moving on, shielding the small globe light from the dogs’ faces and possible discovery.
It hadn’t been hard to get in here, despite the house’s location in a row of well-guarded similar dwellings within the Crimson Court’s outer bailey. His Gift gave him the ability to phase partially out of this dimension, so no one noticed him, even the sensitive fae hounds. But there was a catch. He had to phase back in to steal anything. Hence, the extra precaution of silence. And of sneaking in at three in the morning.
Bespelled: A Fae Fantasy Romance (Fae Magic Book 5) Page 23
