The Captive King_A Royal States Novel

by Susan Copperfield

  “The vehicle’s near Scranton. It’s not even damaged, although it’ll need a good cleaning. It has a complete set of pictures of the temple he buried, too.”

  Landen turned his head and ordered, “Retrieve the whole thing. And no, I don’t care what the New York royals say. I’ll bring Montana into it if I have to.”

  “Don’t snap at your nice bodyguards, Landen.”

  “Where’s Dr. Hoover, Summer? I need to have a few words with him.”

  It was a mercy the ground had opened up and swallowed Sebastian whole. The mercury fumes would’ve killed him in a few weeks, but I had the feeling Landen would’ve kept him alive for a long, brutal time. “He suffered from an unfortunate accident, and I may need to verify I used self-defense in court since I accidentally aided in his unfortunate accident.”

  Landen sighed. “What sort of accident?”

  “He cut my wrist, so I dumped him in a pool of mercury, which ate him.”

  More stunned silence.

  “He cut your wrist?”

  I found it amusing and endearing he was more worried about my wrist than he was about mercury eating someone. I held up my right hand for his inspection. “No touch. It’s covered with cinnabar. And no, it’s not poisoning me. It’s just keeping my blood where it belongs right now.”

  Landen cursed, and then he started snapping orders, ignoring my protests when he demanded an ambulance.

  We argued from the instant he ordered me to go to the hospital until our arrival. I’d snarled myself hoarse insisting I was fine while he used my gravel-rough voice, my scrawny figure, my tattered left hand, and my wrist as evidence I was anything but fine.

  The longer we fought, the happier I was about it. I believed he was happy, too, as he kept having to hide his smile.

  “I’m fine,” I repeated yet again, knowing it wouldn’t do me any good. I’d already been dumped in a private room and locked in until a doctor qualified to handle royalty could be called in. One of the ER surgeons had taken a look at me, shook his head, and said I’d be fine during the wait.

  I bet he hadn’t wanted to deal with the zapper cuffs or the cinnabar keeping my wrist held together. In his shoes, I wouldn’t have wanted to deal with it, either.

  “You’re not fine. You have a deep gash across your wrist. You said you’d been cut. That is not a cut. That asshole tried to cut your hand off!”

  “I don’t think he meant to cut me that deep. He’d been convinced he needed me alive to become a god.”

  Landen growled curses and paced around the hospital room. “Damn it, Summer. He could’ve killed you.”

  “He’s dead, Landen. By the way, I win.”

  “You win what? The award for surviving through some of the most insane shit I’ve ever heard of?”

  I glared at him. “He was cursed.”

  Narrowing his eyes, Landen looked me over, his gaze locking on my injured wrist. To demonstrate there was nothing wrong with me, I lifted my hand and flipped my middle finger at him.

  “Please explain why you think he’s cursed.”

  “A ghost told me so.”

  “A ghost told you so.”

  Hmm. Maybe breaking the news I’d talked to a ghost hadn’t been the best move. “Her name was Coszcatl, and she was the owner of the jade necklace. She’s the one who told me he was cursed.”

  “Cos… what?”

  “Coszcatl. Her name means jewel in Nahuatl.”

  “And she told you he was cursed.”

  Faking a sniff, I turned my head so he wouldn’t catch me smiling. “She told me he was cursed. And she also hinted at how to stop the cinnabar and mercury. Go ahead. Make my day, Your Majesty. Have me tested. Then you can grovel at my feet while awed at my rightness. Concede. I’m the winner here.”

  Landen sighed a gusty, patience-tested sigh. “I am but a captive king held at your mercy. Very well. You win. Curses are real.”

  I pointed at the floor at my feet. “If you start groveling now, you might get away with no one witnessing it.”

  His soft laughter warmed me from within. “I’ll get on my knees, but if I do, you’re agreeing to marry me on the shortest day of the year, just like those obsidian bracelets claimed. I may not be an expert in your profession, Your Majesty, but I pay attention when you go off on one of your tangents. I refuse to cooperate on this matter. In Alaska, that’s a pitch-black hell. You’ll be subjected to wearing a gown as beautiful as you are, a guest list worthy of the queen you are, and a honeymoon to somewhere warm and sunny as soon as we chase away all the guests from our castle.”

  “I won’t agree to anything until you’re on your knees and groveling.”

  Landen crouched in front of me, resting his hands on my knees. While I hated hospital gowns, I appreciated I could feel his warmth through the thin material. “My old, tired knees don’t like the cold tiles. Have mercy on your captive king.”

  His playful smirk betrayed him, as I had no doubt he intended to hop to his feet the instant the door opened. “Oh, fine. I’ll have mercy, but only this once, but I have demands, Your Majesty.”

  “Queens often make demands of their kings. I’ve been told to prepare myself for a lifetime of demands from you. I’ve been advised to get used to it and enjoy it as much as I can.”

  “You have a good advisor.”

  “It was William. His wife is very demanding.”

  “Good for her. I bet he hates being told what to do.”

  “Immensely. When she knocks him down a few pegs, I consider myself blessed when I get to witness it.”

  “William’s very nice. Don’t say such mean things about him.”

  “He is nice, but it’s also his job to keep us rowdy royals in check. He can’t afford to be too nice.”

  “Enough about William. I need a replica of the jade necklace made, and I don’t have the pictures of it anymore.”

  Landen rolled his eyes. “The replica’s already being made, and the jade carvers are cursing me. I’ve given them a challenge. I had the metal substituted so Mackenzie won’t get rashes trying to wear it.”

  I blinked. “That energetic woman was Montana’s queen?”

  “Indeed. William has been bugging me about the replica ever since Mackenzie threatened to have his still-beating heart ripped out of his chest if he didn’t get one made for her. The pregnancy hormones have taken over, and if she doesn’t get one, she really might kill him.”

  “Well, that’s my first demand. She loved the necklace, so she should have a copy.”

  “Consider your demand met. What’s your next demand?”

  “I’m not dying, so stop acting like I am, damn it!”

  “Until a doctor confirms that, I’m refusing that demand.”

  “That is really not fair at all.”

  “You’ll just have to accept it. I’m not going to budge on this matter.”

  I recognized a lost battle when I saw one. “Fine. We’re going to go over all of Alaska’s laws from top to bottom and do a complete sanity check on them, and the ones that aren’t sane will be changed.”

  “I’m willing to meet this demand. It’s a lifetime of work, which means you’re never going to be able to escape me or Alaska.”

  I won either way, so I nodded my satisfaction. “The Alaskan dig site is mine, but we’ll need to bring in a few experts to replace the altar I destroyed.”

  “It seems it is a self-replacing altar. I had a team survey the site, and there was an altar in the same spot as the one you had destroyed. The surveyors find the place disturbing at best. A few swear they saw ghosts watching them from the trees.”

  “You get to negotiate with Virginia, because that city site is mine, too.”

  “At least you’re not suggesting I conquer it this time. I’m sure Virginia would be thrilled to have you do research at the site. I’ll even handle the negotiations, especially as I’m safely married now.”

  “Is there a greenhouse at the castle?”

  “There is. Why?”


  “I want to plant a tree. We might have to get one of those tiny Japanese trees meant for the indoors. I don’t think the species will live in Alaska. It’s too cold.”

  “What sort of tree?”

  “A weeping willow.”

  He smiled at me, rose, and kissed me. “I’m sure I can come up with something. If a tree is what you want, a tree is what you’ll have. Is there anything else you want?”

  “Out of the hospital,” I muttered.

  He chuckled. “That’s not happening until you’re cleared for air travel, so get used to it.”

  I hated battles I couldn’t win. They annoyed me. I spent the rest of the wait glaring at Landen, but the longer I glowered at him, the happier he became.

  Men. I’d never understand them.

  Magic held my wrist together, magic no one understood, but the instant I removed the cinnabar, I earned a one-way ticket straight to hell. It took several doctors with rare talents and skilled surgeons to reconstruct my wrist and control the bleeding. While they worked, my immune system packed its bags and headed south.

  While I made friends with pneumonia, Landen planned our wedding and handled ruling Alaska, a feat considering he refused to leave my hospital room. The times he left, it was only because I ordered his bodyguards to get rid of him and return him undamaged, showered, and fed in the morning.

  It bothered me I’d spent longer with Sebastian than I’d thought, tricked because winter had come late to my home kingdom. I couldn’t erase Landen’s two months of anguish, so I did what I could. I trusted him with the wedding he was eager to plan. It gave him something to do while I slept, hacked my lungs up, and otherwise struggled to recover from my misadventures.

  With a little help from some of my professional contacts, Landen set our wedding date for January 7. Following Maya calendar lore, while it wasn’t the shortest, darkest day of the year, it was a day of meanings, the spark of new life, and a place of beginnings.

  I had the feeling he was particularly interested in the spark of new life, hoping the four days he wanted to spend with me prior to our honeymoon, the location a secret everyone but I knew, might expand our little family by one.

  When we finally returned to Alaska, I took my good friend pneumonia with me, although the doctors had mostly vanquished the vile beast. I’d spend the entirety of my time before the wedding in physical therapy to regain what I’d lost or sleeping off the physical therapy, something I didn’t look forward to.

  One thing had changed, and I doubted I’d get used to it. My vision and hearing would never fully recover from the high concentration of cinnabar in my brain; while my temporal lobe had mostly healed, another impossibility according to every single doctor Landen had asked, I suffered from some irreparable damage. I needed glasses, and I’d be stuck asking for people to repeat themselves until the day I died. I considered both a small price to pay.

  My memories were intact.

  We took a helicopter the last leg of the journey to Landen’s castle, and snow blanketed the untouched wilderness. I pressed my hands to the window, making a note to get my new glasses sooner than later. Too much of the pristine landscape was blurred.

  Landen watched me like a hawk hunting a mouse.

  “What is it?” I demanded.

  “Do you like it?”

  Ah. When he hadn’t been busy planning our wedding and working, he’d been overly concerned I wouldn’t like Alaska.

  “I like it, but I refuse to dig in the dirt with that much snow on the ground.”

  “Winter’s long,” he warned.

  “You’ll keep me warm.”

  “And well stocked with blankets and slippers.”

  I giggled. “You can plump me up with hot chocolate. I don’t mind.”

  “I sense a plundering of my hot chocolate stores in the future.”

  “That’s because you’re smart.”

  “Have you decided what you want to do about your PhD? It feels like every damned university on the planet, excepting the one you attend, wants to issue you one. I abused my status as your husband and king to have your transcripts pulled. You’re so overqualified for a doctorate it’s disgusting. I’m married to someone with a far better education than I have.”

  “I’ll think about it. I’ve earned it, haven’t I? I survived a death temple. I’ve been yanked all over the Royal States. I speak dead languages. I’ve spoken in dead languages to dead people. None of that killed me, so I think I’ve earned it. Anyway, the real problem is this: will I have the time to use it? I have to learn how to be a queen, and I don’t need to validate my expertise anymore, do I?”

  “That took you long enough to figure out,” Landen muttered.

  “Shut up, Your Majesty.”

  “Not a chance in hell, my beauty.”

  “You need glasses, too.”

  “Hardly. You were the one who needed glasses before you needed glasses.”

  We argued about who was the most blind all the way to the landing pad outside of the castle. He hopped out first, and I was too busy staring at his ass to watch where I walked.

  Had I been wearing glasses, I would’ve broken them eating snow.

  Sighing from my prone position on the ground, I questioned my life choices, and as there was no way I could win the argument anymore, I lifted my hand and croaked, “Tip your tailor.”

  Epilogue

  I didn’t understand why my wedding dress came with a blindfold, which had started life as an elaborate jade and ruby masquerade mask crowned with long feathers. I recognized the Mesoamerican influences on the piece, marrying how I’d met Landen with the original love of my life.

  As Landen had wanted, I wore Coszcatl’s necklace with my wedding dress.

  I didn’t like crying, but if Landen kept it up, he’d reduce me to a sobbing mess. Were queens allowed to become sobbing messes on their wedding day? Was there anyone foolish enough to tell a pregnant queen she couldn’t become a sobbing mess on her wedding day if she wanted?

  Landen would be disappointed his plans had been thwarted by nature and our inability to keep our hands off each other. I didn’t mind.

  It would make a good wedding present for him, partnered with the crown of cinnabar I’d made for him. Our story, written in Nahuatl with a sprinkling of Mayan and Ch’olti’, was engraved inside the circlet. With a little help from William and Peter, I’d gotten raw diamond material, which I’d used to encase the toxic red crystal.

  A single yellow diamond made up the center stone of the circlet, representing Alaska. As I refused to use a mustard-colored anything as part of anything I wore or had to put up with for extended periods of time, it was a brilliant yellow gem, capturing the vibrancy of gold.

  William had hinted I’d have a crown, too, but mine would be made of jade. I worried we’d be called the Christmas monarchs in short order thanks to our mismatched crowns. William and Peter wouldn’t let me move the wedding date to Christmas to justify the inevitable, stupid name.

  As I had few friends but protocol demanded I have bridesmaids, I selected a handful of women and girls from the castle staff to stand in as mine, and I’d given the maid of honor position to Elise.

  She’d more than earned it.

  Things had changed, and more things would change, but I thought I’d made a difference, if only to them.

  I wanted to the ceremony to be over so I could continue to be happily married to Landen, but one thing kept nagging at me.

  Why the hell did my wedding dress have a blindfold?

  More importantly, why was I going along with it? What sort of queen got married while blindfolded? There was no way in hell I was saying any vows while blindfolded. I’d rip the mask off and beat someone with it.

  I blamed the pregnancy hormones for my desire for violent retribution.

  I also blamed the pregnancy hormones for being cranky I’d been evicted from my own bedroom, as Landen wanted to uphold the tradition of not seeing his damned bride until I walked down the aisle.


  While blindfolded.

  He’d already gotten me pregnant, although to be fair to him, he hadn’t been told yet. I’d even been careful to hide the evidence. I didn’t have morning sickness.

  I had whenever Landen wasn’t around to catch me sickness. I also had a helpful accomplice, and Dr. Andrew played along to keep me from murdering him. Per his orders, the gig would be up by the end of the day, but he’d offered a variety of excuses for any unusual behaviors. Pneumonia took the brunt of it, as did physical therapy.

  And when I’d wanted a grilled cheese and pickle sandwich, my parents had unknowingly come to the rescue, as they’d been feeding me the damned things since I’d discovered the existence of cheese.

  The problem was I couldn’t stand the sight of pickles anymore, and for the past week, Landen had been insisting on bringing me grilled cheese and pickle sandwiches, convinced they were my favorite thing on Earth.

  Until he’d gone and gotten me pregnant, they had been. The sight of one was prone to send me into a castle-rearranging rage, which took a gargantuan amount of effort to contain.

  Dr. Andrew found the entire situation hilarious.

  I still craved the cheese. Cheese would never betray me, I was convinced of it. Once I told Landen, I wouldn’t have to worry about pickles. I could just have the cheese.

  Worrying about my midnight snacks made it easier to deal with the wait, which dragged on, as I’d beaten the estimated time to prepare by at least an hour. I’d enjoy telling the entire wedding planning staff I’d been right.

  When motivated, I got dressed in a hurry, I could sit still like a champ, and I really didn’t care if any of my hair escaped. It was still too short to do anything with anyway.

  I fidgeted while I waited, and if I kept twisting my hands around my bouquet, I’d break it, which would inevitably make the florist cry.

  “Relax,” Elise chided me. I’d lost count of the times she’d told me to relax. “You’re going to make yourself sick at the rate you’re going.”

  I should have thought of nervousness as an excuse for getting sick. “I’m going to trip over my own feet trying to walk down the aisle. I’m going to hit one of those damned tassels edging the carpet and land flat on my face. I’ll ruin the bouquet, the florist is going to cry, and Landen’s going to cry, but he’s going to be crying from laughing so hard. He can’t help it. He always laughs when I’m clumsy.”