The Captive King

by Susan Copperfield

He glared at the gathered men in the audience chamber. “I want all of you out, and I expect you to either be here in the morning ready to work or in prison waiting for your trial. Don’t attempt to escape justice. I will find you, and you will regret your choice to run.”

  The audience chamber cleared except for a quartet of guards, a middle-aged man in a dark blue suit and a smug, satisfied smile, and Stanley Hauser, who was still trapped by my magic.

  Landen’s attention locked on the old man. “While I’ve believed, for a long time, there was something not quite right about you, Stanley, I never thought your duplicity would go so far. When you had promised me you’d take care of Summer, I had trusted you. I had trusted you to see to her. You lied to me, you betrayed my trusts, and you have betrayed Alaska’s interests. You knew my intentions. You were the first I told. Why is it you had my future queen locked in a dungeon? Why is she still wearing the same clothes she’s been wearing since after we were picked up?”

  “Rescued,” I muttered.

  Landen scowled at me for a brief moment before his attention returned to the old man, who made choked sounds and squirmed in his chair. “If I could, I would bend you backwards over your seat and have her carve your still-beating heart out of your chest. Fortunately for you, that isn’t legal, and unlike you, my integrity is worth a lot more to me than the satisfaction of watching you get what you deserve in a brutally horrific way. Instead, I’m going to watch while you’re ruined, witnessed by the entire kingdom. I had trusted you. There’s a word for men like you, Stanley. It’s traitor. Guards, make certain he’s locked in a maximum security cell. There will be no mistakes, accidents, or escape. Mr. Hauser will live to stand trial for his crimes, and his victims will have their satisfaction. Summer, if you please?”

  I didn’t please, and like with the guards, my talent agreed with me, fighting against me when I meant to release him. I clenched my teeth, and to appease my rebelling magic, I left stone shackles around his ankles and wrists, and bound together with heavy links.

  I hoped the weight dragged him down so much he needed dragged—face down—to his cell.

  “I may have broken your cells downstairs,” I admitted.

  “Those cells aren’t meant for anyone to be held in. They’re dusted once a month and checked for leaky pipes, throwbacks from the collapse of the United States and the resulting civil war. You shouldn’t have been there in the first place.” Landen’s cheek twitched. “Stanley informed me you were in the care of one of his doctors. Another lie, I see.”

  The old man gulped. “Your—”

  “Shut up, Stanley. If I could, I’d cut out your serpent’s tongue and feed it to a dog. Get this traitor out of my sight. I don’t want to see him unless it’s in court.”

  The guards hurried to obey, leaving us alone with the smug young man, who watched from his seat in the row nearest Landen’s desk.

  “Are you all right, Summer?”

  “I’m mad.” Too many emotions roiled around within me to make sense of them, and my stomach voiced its complaints over its mistreatment.

  “As you have every right to be. Please know I had no idea he’d done that. I trusted him. I trusted him with you.” Landen’s expression darkened. “I won’t make such a mistake again.”

  Some problems were bigger than the others, and I decided I’d take the most serious of them first. “You’re a king.”

  “I shouldn’t have hidden the truth from you, but I didn’t want you to leave because of what I am.”

  The pain in his voice drew me up short, and I reconsidered my approach. “It’s an accident of birth.”

  “One that creates a great deal of responsibilities. I’m sorry. I should’ve seen what was right in front of me.” While his expression remained surly, his eyes bore the weight of regret. “I suspected, but I couldn’t confirm.”

  “And your kingdom has rules about false accusations. I guessed as much.”

  “It does. Rules that protect the accused more than it does the victims. It’s something I’ve known for a while, but it’s something I’ve been unable to address.”

  “Because the majority of your lawmakers are sexual abusers.”

  He flinched. “So it seems.” Sighing, he turned to the man waiting in the first row. “Andrew, once you’re busy gloating because you’ve been proven right, can you see to her?”

  “My first recommendation is to take her to your suite, let her take a shower followed by a long soak while I go to the kitchen and have someone make her something appropriate to eat. I’ll do a basic examination here, but I’d be much happier taking her to the hospital for a full round of tests.”

  “Get on the phone with Dr. Clemmondale and have him send Summer’s medical file. If he gives you pushback, I’ll get on the phone with Jacques and take my temper out on him for a while.”

  “Jacques?” I asked.

  “Nevada’s king. His wife would send me to my room if I tried anything like that with her, so I have to go through him instead.”

  Andrew, who I assumed was a doctor, laughed. “Her Royal Majesty wouldn’t send you to your room. She’d demand your lady’s life story and gift wrap Dr. Clemmondale for you, send him here, and come with him so she could be the first to meet your blushing bride.”

  My face heated, and I spluttered, “You need a queen, not a queen bitch!”

  “You’re exactly what I need.” Landen placed his hands on my shoulders, turned me to face the hole in his audience chamber, and pushed hard enough I needed to walk or I’d trip. “When the doctor says I need to take you to our room so you can have a bath, his word is law. And I don’t care what anyone else says, you’re welcome to trail as much dirt through my castle as you’d like. I don’t mind.”

  “I made a hole in your wall.”

  “Shh,” he soothed, rubbing my shoulders. “You can redecorate the walls later, or I can install a new door. Andrew will take care of arranging something for you to eat while you get cleaned up. I’m not worried about the walls. Just don’t take out any of the load bearing walls. I can patch holes. I’d have a harder time repairing rubble.”

  I wanted to cry, and I wasn’t even sure why. “I can fix it.”

  “You can fix it later. You’re right to be angry, and you’re completely justified in rearranging my castle walls. I trusted Stanley to take care of you. He did so in the way I did not mean. He will regret his decision.”

  The vehemence in Landen’s tone promised a fate worse than death waited for his advisor—former advisor. “Those women—”

  “Will be taken care of, and I’m grateful you involved yourself. I suspected, but I had no proof. And with the laws as they are, I can’t act without proof. No one can—and unless someone tells me, directly, I can’t even request someone with the right talent to evaluate the situation. Now I can.”

  “Your job sucks.”

  “It’s definitely not as glamorous as digging in the dirt looking for buried treasures. I just hope you’ll forgive me when this is all said and done. I meant what I said, and I’ve already broken my promise to you.”

  “I’m pretty sure that Hauser scumbag did the promise breaking, not you.” I tried to dig in my heels, but momentum and Landen kept me on the move. He marched me through his castle without even slowing whenever I tried to apply the brakes. “There’s nothing to forgive.”

  “I promised you a warm bed and being loved, like you deserve. That’s not what happened.”

  “Shit happens.”

  “It’s not supposed to happen to you.”

  “Earth to Landen. The whole probably cursed thing, remember?”

  “I’ve already made inquiries about acquiring the second necklace. However, it seems the necklace has disappeared.”

  “What?”

  “The second necklace disappeared. Stolen, probably. It seems your university intended to put the blame on you, but as it’s been confirmed you haven’t been to the site since we met at the auction, it’s impossible for you to have done it.”<
br />
  “When did it disappear?”

  “Two nights ago.” Landen shrugged. “If there is a curse, we’ll figure something out—and I’ll talk to the other kingdoms to see if there’s someone who might be able to correct it. If there’s a curse.”

  “You don’t believe in curses, do you?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it. I believe in magic, which explains how you’d be transported from Mexico to Nevada to Alaska, but I don’t think it’s a curse.”

  “Why not? It’s not exactly beneficial magic.”

  “It could be a punishment, it could be a test, it could be a lot of things, but magic isn’t evil. Only those who use it are capable of good or evil. Call it a curse, call it magic, call it whatever you want, but whatever it is, we’ll break it. And if I have to chase you all over the world because you get transported somewhere again, so be it. I need you.”

  “Why do you need me?”

  Landen sighed. “It took you five minutes to do what I’ve been trying to accomplish for a decade. That’s why. You can break the system so I can rebuild it. I just wasn’t expecting you to do it quite so quickly. I just hope that by the time you’re done running through Alaska like a wrecking ball, you’ll help me put it back together again.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “You need to work on your hostile takeovers,” Landen murmured, marching me into a suite I expected from someone wealthy but not a king. I couldn’t spot a single speck of gold leafing anywhere, and he had a preference for warm colors.

  The sitting room was spacious enough for ten to sit comfortably, and the television mounted on the wall defied gravity and sane expectations. I pointed at it and blurted, “How big is that thing?”

  “Eighty inches. There’s a reasonable one in the bedroom. Honestly, I only use this when I need to watch a news broadcast and I’m not in the office. I spend a lot of time in the office. I’m hoping to spend a lot less time in the office now that you’re here.”

  “You’re scoring some good points with the bedroom so far,” I admitted. “It looks comfortable.”

  “At the risk of sounding desperate, if there’s anything you want to make it more comfortable for you, ask. I meant everything I said. If you’ll still have me after what has happened, I’d turn you around and marry you right now to make sure I can keep you. I might even consider underhanded methods of tricking you into signing a marriage certificate.”

  Hello, temptation. I twisted from beneath his hands, turning to face him. “You think you can trick me into signing a marriage certificate.”

  “I don’t think I can. I know I can.”

  “I just stormed into a meeting and wrecked the entire thing, and you want to try to trick me into signing a marriage certificate.”

  “I’m sure I can find a judge or a preacher somewhere who’d handle the paperwork for us right now.”

  He could. He was a king. While limits existed, he probably treated most of them as minor inconveniences or challenges to overcome. Worse, he was a king who wore socks with holes in them. I narrowed my eyes and pointed at his dress shoes. “Take your shoes off,” I demanded.

  Landen’s brows rose, but he kicked his shoes off in the direction of the entry. “I think it’s fair if I have to take mine off, you have to take yours off, too.”

  When I launched mine in the direction of the doorway, dirt rained down on the polished stone floor. My socks reeked along with the rest of me, and I slumped my shoulders and bowed my head. “I stink.”

  “My shoes are off. Was there a reason I took off my shoes?”

  “I wanted to see if there are any holes today.”

  He laughed. He laughed so hard he sat down on the couch, bent over, and ran his hands through his hair. “I’m waiting for you to tell me you hate me, and you’re worried about if I have holes in my socks?”

  “When you say it like that, it does seem a little weird I’m asking about your socks,” I admitted. “I just liked that you wore socks with holes in them. It made you real.”

  “I’ve always been real, Summer.”

  Landen lifted his leg and showed me his foot. Sure enough, he had a hole near his big toe. “I need to replace my shoes, but I’ve been busy, so they chew holes through my socks. Since I don’t like replacing my socks every week, I cheerfully accept the holes.”

  “You’re going to give yourself blisters if you keep that up.”

  “But I like these shoes.”

  “Okay. But if they give you blisters, I’m burying them in a rock and dumping them in a lake.”

  “That’s a little better on the hostile takeover front. Any other demands?”

  I had a long list of them, but no matter what I said, it’d come out as a whine. I opened my mouth, closed it, and a sniffle slipped out.

  Landen got to his feet, closed the distance between us, and put his hands on my shoulders, turning me around. “You’ll feel better after you’ve had a chance to shower that muck off. While you shower, I’ll run the bath so it’s ready for you.”

  “I just have one question.”

  “What?”

  “When were you going to see what had actually happened to me?”

  “Tomorrow morning. Stanley played me; after we got in from the crash, you were dead on your feet. You don’t make a very good zombie, just for the record. Anyway, I started showing signs of a cold, and he capitalized on it. He said I’d make you sicker, so he advised I stayed away while you ‘recovered.’ As I’d been under the impression this was probable, I didn’t question it. I should have.”

  The thought of someone convincing him he’d get me sick hadn’t occurred to me, and I was grateful I’d reserved judgment. In his shoes, I would’ve done the same exact thing. “So, let me get this straight. You’re worried I’m going to be mad because you were trying to be considerate.”

  “No. You should be mad because I abandoned you.”

  “Are we really going to have a fight because I’m not mad at you over something you didn’t even do?”

  Landen sighed. “That’s not fair.”

  “To who? I don’t want a fight. I want a shower.” I was too tired to contort to reach my back, and as I had a perfectly good man available, I’d scratch more than one itch. “I want a shower with someone who will scrub my back for me because I’m too damned tired to do it myself. Otherwise I’m skipping the shower and making your tub scummy.”

  “You really don’t care.”

  “Seems like you’re doing a perfectly good job of punishing yourself over what someone else did. Come scrub my back, then you can join me in the tub. You can explain the situation to me, because I don’t want to jump to the wrong conclusion. I’ve jumped to enough conclusions for one day, and damn it, you’re the first man I’ve trusted in a long time, and I’m not going to let some old goat ruin that for me.”

  Nothing ever worked to plan. It was a universal rule I needed to have tattooed to the back of my hand so I’d remember it for the rest of my life. Sometime between my much-needed shower and sliding into a bubbly, warm heaven with a bloody king, I received the bill for my every sin.

  It began with a skull-splitting headache and went downhill from there.

  No matter what Landen said, I believed in curses. Magic had played a role in contracting a serious case of mercury poisoning, but only a curse could explain how all the residual cinnabar had migrated to the center of my brain.

  During my more lucid moments, I gleaned from the conversations around me that the cinnabar had spread equally throughout my system according to Nevada’s various tests and scans, with the exceptions of my lungs and kidneys, which had been cleansed with a mix of earthweaving and leeching talents.

  Getting to the cluster of cinnabar was only part of the problem. Getting to it without it killing me outright took the top spot. Removing it without doing irreparable harm to the temporal lobe came in second.

  Removing it before the mercury poisoning killed me came in third.

  From top to bottom, I was scr
ewed.

  I found it ironic, in the times I wasn’t drugged so much I couldn’t remember my own name, that the cinnabar had taken up residence in the part of the brain most likely to be destroyed by mercury poisoning.

  If left untreated, I really wouldn’t be able to remember my own name, with or without the influence of medication.

  I could tell when the doctors wanted my input; they let the drugs wear off. That I had four doctors all to myself worried me.

  One of them was Dr. Clemmondale, and I waved at him with my left hand so I wouldn’t pull the IV catheter out again. “If I’m dying, I don’t want to know about it.”

  All four doctors sighed. I regarded them, and I pointed at the young doctor I recognized from Landen’s castle. “I think your name is Andrew.”

  “It is, Your Majesty.”

  “My what?”

  Andrew sighed. “Majesty.”

  “Damn it, did he actually trick me into marrying him already? That’s not fair. Aren’t you doctors supposed to stop your patients from doing stupid things like that while under the influence? That’s really not fair.”

  Completely unfazed by my complaints, Andrew smiled. “His Majesty had told me about the little challenge between you.”

  “Little?”

  “He was hoping to tease you before revealing he’d already tricked you. He waylaid one of his advisors, a judge with a good reputation. You were quite tired, and you rather happily signed your soul to the devil. Those are your words, in case you’re wondering.”

  “Damn. That’s sneaky.” I’d have to either punish or reward Landen later, and I wasn’t sure which—or both. Both sounded nice. “I think he got a losing proposition, Dr. Andrew. My head’s going to pop open like a grape.”

  “Not necessarily. The cause of your headache is due to pressure in the temporal lobe of your brain. The cinnabar cluster is acting like a tumor. The idea is to relieve pressure by drawing the cinnabar out. We’d do this slowly, using an earthweaver who will essentially pollute your blood with cinnabar. A leech will then, with the help of the earthweaver, draw the tainted blood out of your system. There are two problems, however, and we need your consent with both issues.”