ALLERLEIRAUH
CHANTAL GADOURY
PRAISE FOR CHANTAL GADOURY
"Grabs your soul from start to finish."
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"If this book was a feeling-I'd surely see it as hope."
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"Beautifully written, definitely an author to keep an eye on."
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* * *
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Copyright © 2018 by The Parliament House
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Edited by Shayne Leighton
ISBN: 9781537868608
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The Parliament House
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Prologue
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Part Two
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Epilogue
About the Author
A Royal Invitation
Acknowledgments
A Special Sneak Peek
One
Two
Three
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PROLOGUE
“If you ever decide to remarry, you must marry someone who has my golden hair.”
The words echoed in my ears as my mother murmured them to my father. The entire court had gathered there with us in that darkened room with stone walls covered in old tapestries of red and golden threads, watchful eyes of men and women looming over us from the walls.
My mother, the Königin, the queen of Tränen, was dying.
Servants had lit candles across the room, creating a gloomy, death-like ambiance. The only source of light came from the flames, curling out like a snake’s tongue from the fireplace. Many of my father’s councilmen stood murmuring while they waited for the queen’s end to come. They waited for death’s dark cloak to wrap around her like the cape of the goddess, Nótt.
Mother lay in her bed, her form still as her breaths became shallower; her lungs becoming less full of air. Her hair, like spools of golden thread, clung to her pale skin. My father’s hand brushed over her forehead, pushing the strands away. She lifted her hand, touching his, seeking an answer from him.
The contrast of her skin against his was shocking. She was pale—corpse-like, the tips of her fingers already turning a frosty shade of blue. My father kneeled, dressed in a white tunic and tan hunting trousers. His light brown beard seemed thicker than usual. His tired blue eyes, the same eyes that others often commented reflected my own, gazed upon my mother.
He was a handsome man for other women to admire.
He carefully grazed his lips over her knuckles. I could hear his soft murmuring.
“My wife. My poor, lovely Frau.” There had been talk that he had been by her bedside for majority of the night and all through the morning, while I had been kept in my chamber. I was to wait until the end was nearly at an impasse before I was to bid my mother farewell. He had waited upon her on bended knee. It was an unexpected display of affection. My father had never been the affectionate sort, and especially never with me in all my nineteen years.
His gaze drifted toward the line of young maids surrounding the queen’s bedside, all waiting for an order or request. He lifted a hand and beckoned one of them closer. With reddened cheeks, one of the maids took a step toward the bed, offering a warm, wet rag for my mother’s forehead.
My father’s eyes seemed to taunt the maid to come closer as they glittered in the candlelight, a small, amused smirk on his lips as he held out his hand. He knew his effect on women, as did my mother. My father seemed to have always found a strange delight in tantalizing the young women of the court right under my mother’s nose–especially the young maids of the castle. His wandering hands had been an unacknowledged topic between them, and yet had most haunted my mother in her own private chambers.
As I was guided away from my tutoring lessons earlier in the afternoon, I found many of my father’s councilmen murmuring in the hallways. Their conversation had rattled me as they spoke of the queen’s declining health, proclaiming quite loudly their uncertainty of the future of the Königreich, the kingdom. With no male heir, there would be no one with my father’s bloodline to carry the crown. If he were to die, the succession would be uncertain, leaving the kingdom without a König, and I would be left with nothing.
There were a few young girls my father had bedded over the many years of his rule, all of whom had come to his knees, begging for acknowledgement, money, or a future for their child. Many of the children were male, all of which my father craved to take under his wing. But as the string of his lovers began to unravel before my mother, she’d quickly banished them and their children from our courts.
“Any male that is not born from me will never be König,” she insisted. My mother feared of finding herself replaced by a younger, more beautiful woman, who would give the king something she could not . . .
A son.
I had been told my mother looked to my father with apologetic grey eyes on the day of my birth. The wet nurse had lifted me, the accursed girlish bundle into the arms of my father as my mother promised, “A son I will give you next time.”
As I grew older, I could see the desperation in her eyes as my father drifted from maiden to maiden, leaving a trail of bastard children in his wake. All while she remained infertile.
As a girl, I was no use to my father. Without a son, the marriage with my mother would always be a failure in the eyes of his court. Because I had not been born a boy, I rarely saw my father. I was only granted permission on special occasions.
My mother hardly paid attention to me either; I was a constant reminder of her failure, her misery, her curse. I had only been permitted to receive an education in writing and reading, and brief history lessons about the kingdom and surrounding countries. I excelled in learning and did what I could to avoid all the other womanly lessons I was expected to learn. I hated the mundane tasks that were deemed appropriate for the fairer sex.
My mother did everything she could to keep me tucked away in the castle, out of sight. I was never permitted to join the court for festivities. My mother preferred me to stay in my room or the library, like the castle’s ghost. She wished to pretend I didn’t exist. As my youth began to pass before me, I wondered if I would spend the remainder of my years hidd
en away behind the stony walls of my father’s castle. I wondered whether, if my mother finally had a son for the king, somehow his birth would release me from the prison which cradled me in my own home.
“Promise me,” my mother hissed at my father presently, as she grabbed his hand. She pushed herself up in the bed with a grunt, to look at him more closely.
I watched them as I clung to the red velvet bed drapes. I could feel myself grow light-headed from the warmth in the room and the array of eyes and voices behind me as they murmured their fears and prayers.
“Promise me,” she begged, her voice cracking as he tucked another golden curl behind her ear. “She must have golden hair, like mine.”
As I watched her glossy strands circled around his fingers, I touched my own loosened curl. My hair was tied back with a black ribbon to match the black gown that Myriah, my nursemaid, dressed me in—a symbol of mourning. And yet, I felt nothing like how a daughter should feel while watching her own mother die.
Perhaps my mother thought her eager demand would bring her peace in the grave. I understood. If she could not be a proper wife, who’d brought him honor with a prince, perhaps her golden-haired replacement could be.
Fear surged cold through my hollow ribs as her last breath slipped between her lips, her hand slowly falling from my father’s firm grasp.
A cold shiver ran up my spine as I heard my father’s reply.
“I promise.”
His gaze lifted to me in the quiet moments after. I was my mother’s reflection and her only true legacy.
And I knew the king’s promise would become my curse.
PART ONE
1
KÖNIGREICH OF TRÄNEN
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THE DAY we buried my mother, the earth was grey and wet. Snow had fallen heavily upon the kingdom, making it difficult for the gardeners to dig a deep enough hole in the ground for her casket.
My father ordered a grand stone to be placed upon her grave with engraved words honoring her forever as his queen. The kingdom’s crest, a large eagle with a curling tongue, encompassed in a great shield, was engraved along with her name.
Each time I came to visit her grave since, I found my fingertips itching to graze the smooth surface, but something always stopped me, forbidding me from closing the distance that once lingered between my mother and me for the entirety of my life.
The hiss of her words still haunted me: “Promise me.”
I wondered if my father, too, heard her plea echo around him with each gravesite visit. We hardly spoke to each other, even when we went to the grave. He’d grow restless as he stood over the stone in winter and spring, his hands fidgeting as though he could not get away soon enough. As though he could not wait to return to the line of maidens awaiting him back at the castle.
Always a short distance away from my father stood his advisor, Lord Haven.
They’d known each since my father was a child. As my father grew into his position as König, he listened to the guidance of Lord Haven, whose father had once served as an advisor to the König before him. My father rewarded his continued assistance with an abundance of power, titles, and land. It was rumored Lord Haven had a helping hand in arranging the marriage between my father and mother. It was said she had come from a foreign land—a kingdom across the sea, where riches of jewels and gold were plentiful. All of which my father’s lands were lacking.
At the suggestion of Lord Haven, my father held a ball in hopes of finding a suitable bride. During at which time, Lord Haven took the opportunity to invite the exotic princess, my mother, to Tränen for an introduction between the two.
Myriah, whilst telling me the story of my parents’ meeting, said my mother knew how to wear seduction in the corner of her lips. All men who gazed upon her desired her.
She’d arrived at the ball dressed in a gown of reflective gold. It was said she held the ability to turn normal thread into pure gold by magic. My father had been drawn to her instantly, and my mother to him, drawn into the attentions and enormous power he could bestow upon her. Myriah recalled that my mother had made a scene by tracing her fingers over his body as they danced. She’d fed him fruit and exotic nuts from the tables and laughed at his jokes. She knew exactly how to entertain and enchant him with laughter and seduction, and keep his attention throughout the night. Myriah tried to shield me from the circulating stories around the court, which condemned my mother as a witch who manipulated my father with her magic love spells.
Myriah was like a second mother to me. She knew everything. She had grown up in the castle. At the age of five, she was sold to the palace as a servant in exchange to pay off her father’s debts. Her father was once the town baker, and with the plague taking over the villages for years, and harvests doing worse each year, he’d lost his bakery, and almost his home, until he sold Myriah.
She told me stories of her early childhood, milking cows and harvesting grain. When she came to the castle, she began with the daily household chores: washing and mending, sweeping and mopping. She once had worked as one of my father’s maids. I knew there were many things she never told me about that time–things she felt were better left secret. But she did her best to quench my curiosity of the king and queen.
Women of the court started rumors of my mother pouring white powders into my father’s drinks shortly after their engagement. Her magic was allegedly used to keep his attentions centered upon only her, despite her cruel and cold heart. She would dress improperly, exposing the crest of her cleavage for all to see. She would adorn her face with too much rouge on her cheeks and lips. But after the birth of a daughter, my father’s interests began to drift to the younger, the more beautiful women of the court.
My father’s desires lingered with young maidens who knew little of the world or of men.
My mother had her own escapades with men of the court, tempting them with the rising hems of her dresses. After my birth, love nor lust lingered between the king and queen.
I heard too many of these stories behind the closed doors of the library as I’d hide under the tables when servants entered. I’d cling to the books at my chest and listen to them giggle at the news of the latest affair of my mother or father.
“They have always been envious of me,” my mother said once, catching the gossiping women in the library. She snagged me away, gripping my arm too tightly with white fingers.
“They will say anything to win the König’s favor, Aurelia. But they are lies. All lies!”
“Are you truly a witch?” I once asked her. The slap of her hand against my cheek had been her reply.
We all knew the stories of what happened to those who did not speak favorably of my father—those who spoke about the sort of indecent things he’d do to young women.
As I had been escorted back to my room one afternoon, I witnessed a bout of his misconduct for myself. A sharp cry rang out in the halls, echoing as a trail of disparaging wails resonated down a long corridor. A cleaning maid sobbed as she raced away from my father; the back of her gown open, revealing bruised and reddened skin. My father stood in the doorway of his chambers; his dark eyes appeared to be watching her as his hands adjusted his trousers back into place. His slow movements told enough of what he had done to the maid in the privacy of his rooms.
As our eyes met, the fear of what my father could do grew deeply inside of me, much like a tree’s roots. I was never able to forget the maid’s face; she seared a fear in me that was irreversible that made my blue eyes burn and my stomach twist with disgust. The hair on my arms rose as I tried to regain my balance. The fear sent me running to my chamber, where I vomited as soon as I entered the room. At dinner, I couldn’t stop hearing her sobs or seeing her face in my mind, almost like a bad dream. Distractedly, I pushed the stew in my bowl around and around, until Myriah pulled the cold mush away.
The next day, I watched from a window as she was carried away in a carriage. Myriah heard murmurs of her being sent off to a new establishment with a Lo
rd and Lady. I could only hope it would be a better situation than the one she had found in the castle.
“If only you were a son,” my mother would remark bitterly in passing to my tutoring lessons. “Things would be different.” Of course, with a son, there would be reassurance for the kingdom as to who would inherit the throne. With the passing age of my father, there would be no fear as to who would rule after him.
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