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Queen of the Unwanted

Page 62

by Jenna Glass


  “I’ll tell them,” Alys said, hesitating a moment before speaking so that the lie would not be so obvious. If Corlin was serious about this, if it wasn’t just a momentary impulse, then they could fight about it later. When he returned home.

  Corlin accepted the lie with a sigh. “Good. I’m sorry I’ve made everything so much more difficult for you. I’ll try to do better.”

  Knowing full well he would not appreciate it—Corlin had been uncomfortable with displays of maternal affection for at least five years by now—Alys moved to the seat beside him and drew him into a hug, her heart near bursting.

  “I love you so much,” she choked, holding him so tight she was probably hurting him. Corlin endured the hug with the stoicism of a teenage boy and even returned it, if a little stiffly. “I’m going to miss you more than you can possibly imagine.”

  “I’ll be home before you know it,” he mumbled against her shoulder, then finally squirmed in such a way that she knew she had to let go.

  It took more courage than she knew she had to finally step back out of that carriage.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  The first thing Delnamal noticed was a pounding in his head so fierce he thought he must have worked his way through an entire keg of brandy. The next was a queasy churning in his stomach, followed quickly by a dozen more aches and pains of varying intensity. The bed seemed to lurch beneath him, and he groaned and opened his eyes.

  He blinked in a dimly lit, unfamiliar room. The bed lurched again, his stomach going with it. As he fought to keep his gorge down, he heard the creaking and groaning of wood, as well as the splash of the sea.

  The lurching of the bed was not his imagination after all. He was on a ship.

  Delnamal barely found the strength to turn to his side before he was thoroughly and miserably ill. He squeezed his eyes shut and retched helplessly over the side of the bed. He heard hurried footsteps, then felt the touch of a cool hand upon his forehead followed by a soothing feminine croon.

  The heaving stopped—or at least paused for a moment—and he opened his eyes, trying to remember where he was and what he was doing. Why was he in a ship? And what had he drunk that made him this ill and achy?

  He blinked to clear his watering eyes and saw that someone was holding a basin under his chin. The basin was splashed with something thick and black and stinking. He’d suffered enough nights of overindulgence to know that whatever his stomach had brought up, it was far from normal.

  His eyes went in and out of focus as he followed the hand that held the basin, using the arm like a climbing aid until he finally found a face staring down at him in concern. His mind felt so thick and wrong that it took him a moment to remember to whom that face belonged.

  “Mother?” he rasped as his stomach turned over again.

  The dowager queen set the stinking basin down, covering it with a cloth that did little to contain the reek. There was a slight greenish cast to her skin, and there was no missing the misery in her eyes. The ship continued to bob and rock, doing Delnamal’s stomach no good—and Xanvin’s either, judging by the look on her face.

  “What’s happening?” Delnamal asked. “Where am I?” He groaned again and flopped onto his back, the effort of supporting his head on his neck too much. “My head is killing me,” he complained, closing his eyes as if that would dull the pain. “Fetch me a tonic before I go mad with pain.”

  He raised his hand to his face, intending to cover his eyes, but something felt…wrong. Strange.

  He squinted his eyes just enough to see the hand that hovered before his face, and his stomach howled at what he saw. He quickly lowered the twisted ruin of his hand until it was out of sight.

  “The healer did the best he could,” Xanvin said softly. “When he first saw you, he told me you could not survive. What do you remember?”

  At first, he remembered nothing. It seemed like an accomplishment that he had remembered his own name and recognized his mother. But then memory stirred within him, painting a terrifying picture.

  It felt like both more and less than a memory. Like he was an observer sitting off to the side and watching himself as he made fatal mistake after fatal mistake. Allowing the witch to try her spell on the Well. Tasking Melcor with finding a willing sacrifice when he was so hated by the women of the Harbor District. Allowing that woman to hold a knife when there were no guards around and no one else was armed or prepared. He watched as Iris stabbed his secretary and the two tumbled into the Well. Then he watched Mairahsol throw herself in after them. And at last, he saw the wall of Kai hurtling toward him as he tried to flee.

  “Oona and I found you before anyone else thought to look,” Xanvin said, for she could apparently tell from the expression on his face that he remembered. “We took you away and hid you with the help of a couple of loyal soldiers and a healer.”

  “Hid me?” he mused, uncomprehending.

  Xanvin shook her head at him. “We knew what must have happened, what you must have done. You were not especially discreet in your criticism of the council and its resistance to allowing the abbess to try her spell. And the results prove that they were right.”

  Delnamal would have liked to argue, but not while he lay maimed and weak in the hull of a ship, vomiting black goo.

  “If anyone but us knew you survived,” Xanvin continued, “you would have been tried for treason against the Crown.”

  He growled, though it was hard to sound intimidating under the circumstances. “I am the Crown.”

  “No, you are not,” Xanvin snapped. “You never were. The king represents the Crown, but the Crown is bigger than any one man. You are not some uneducated peasant. History is littered with stories of kings who overreached and were condemned.”

  Even in his misery, Delnamal felt a sudden burst of righteous indignation. “I was the only man in all of Aaltah who had the balls to try to reverse the Curse!” he protested. “My council—”

  “Knows only that you very publicly made it known you wished to allow the abbess to access the Well and also very publicly refrained from calling a vote because you knew that it would not pass. The Well is damaged. No one knows how badly or if it’s permanent, but that wouldn’t matter at your trial. You would be attainted, and it would be the ruin of all of us. You would have taken me and Oona and my grandson with you. I could not allow that.”

  “Where are we?” he demanded again, unable to wrap his mind around the enormity of what his mother was telling him.

  “We’re on a ship,” she answered unnecessarily. “Bound for Khalpar. At the moment, I’m not entirely sure how I’ll manage it, but I will convince Khalvin to give us sanctuary. And to keep your survival a secret. As furious and vengeful as the council is, I don’t believe they will try you in absentia. Not when they can put your infant son on the throne and sculpt him as they’d like.”

  Delnamal stared at her, aghast. “You left my son to be ‘sculpted’ by that council of hand-wringing old women?” he snarled. Not that he had managed to form any true attachment to the infant over the time he had been a father, hard though he had tried to convince himself to love the bundle of screams and shit and piss. Even the smiles and coos were disgusting, accompanied by drool. The best he’d been able to manage was to feign paternal pride while hoping he would someday figure out how to become a father in more than just name.

  “He will have a good life with a loving mother, and he will one day take his rightful place as King of Aaltah,” Xanvin said. “That was the best I could do for him. And maintaining the illusion of your death was the best I could do for you.”

  Delnamal closed his eyes once more so he did not have to see the self-righteous, superior look on his mother’s face. She’d had no right! He was the King of Aaltah, not some pathetic fugitive bound to live the rest of his life in hiding!

  His stomach heaved once more, and this time he could no
t hold it down. He turned to find the basin ready as more thick, black, oily liquid spilled from his innards, seeming to take the remainder of his strength with it.

  When he lay back down, trembling and sweating, he finally realized that the customary bulk of his chest and belly was considerably less than he remembered. He shuddered.

  “How long has it been?” he asked.

  “It’s been three weeks since we found you,” Xanvin said. “We wished to see you healthier before we set sail, but there was only so long we could wait. You’ve awakened briefly before, but this is the first time you’ve been coherent.”

  She shook her head and glanced anxiously at the basin and its revolting contents. “The healer isn’t sure what’s wrong with you. Your wounds all seem to have closed up and your bones have knitted as much as they’re going to, but…”

  “Am I dying?”

  The question was asked with little inflection, and no true feeling behind it. Something was clearly horribly wrong with him. His injuries should not have kept him unconscious for so long and could not explain why he was vomiting some mysterious black substance. And yet he didn’t feel especially frightened.

  “The healer can’t say,” Xanvin answered. “He fears that something more than the obvious may have happened to you when the Well…did whatever it did. He says there are shards of what looks like Kai in your vomit, though they dissipate almost immediately. He’s never seen anything like it.”

  Not surprising. No one had ever thrown a mote of Kai into the depths of a Well before. At least, not that he knew of. Maybe what had happened was the Well had tried to vomit that Kai back out and Delnamal was doing the same in unwilling sympathy.

  It was strange not to feel frightened, Delnamal thought as he let his eyes drift shut again. But to be perfectly honest, after a few blips of reaction, he now felt next to nothing. His throne was lost. He was destined never to see his wife or son or homeland ever again. His body was maimed, his hands a ruined mass of misshapen flesh and bone. And he seemed to be wasting away from some mysterious, possibly magical illness.

  And yet he felt numb. Almost peaceful. Whatever was happening to him, he had no power to fight it. Honestly, he wasn’t sure he truly wanted to. The numbness was surprisingly pleasant. He’d spent a very long time feeling angry and frightened and bitter and unworthy.

  He was still alive, at least for now. And if he could live what was left of his life without all that fear and anger and bitterness, then he was satisfied.

  The darkness rose in his throat again, and he thought about turning over to spill it out into the waiting basin. But that seemed like too much trouble. So instead he lay still.

  And the darkness settled back into his center, seeping into his flesh and into his blood and into his spirit, where he made it welcome.

  To all the women who’ve had the courage to say #MeToo. The world is changing—albeit slowly—thanks to you.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  No book is written in a vacuum, and this book is no exception. I’m extremely lucky to have a wonderful husband, Dan, who is my first reader for every book. He’s also chief cheerleader and impromptu therapist, which is something I think every writer should have.

  As always, I must thank my fabulous agent, Miriam Kriss. She’s always there to help me through the ups and downs of this crazy career. Thanks also to the entire team at Del Rey, who’ve been unfailingly supportive. The list includes, among others, Scott Shannon, Keith Clayton, Tricia Narwani, David Moench, Mary Moates, Julie Leung, Ashleigh Heaton, David Stevenson, and Alex Larned. And most importantly, I’m incredibly grateful for my editor, Anne Groell. This would have been a very different—and nowhere near as good—book without her insight and suggestions. She is the master of constructive criticism, and I couldn’t be more grateful for her.

  BY JENNA GLASS

  The Women’s War

  Queen of the Unwanted

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JENNA GLASS made her foray into epic fantasy with The Women’s War, but she wrote her first book—an “autobiography”—when she was in the fifth grade. She began writing in earnest while in college and proceeded to collect a dizzying array of rejections for her first seventeen novels. Nevertheless, she persisted, and her eighteenth novel became her first commercial sale. Within a few years, Glass became a full-time writer, and she has never looked back. She has published more than twenty novels under various names.

  jennaglass.com

  Facebook.com/​JennaBlackGlass

  Twitter: @jennablack

  Instagram: @jennablackbooks

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