Dedication
To every dreamer
I see you…and I hear you.
A Queen Comes to Power
Copyright © 2021 by C.C. Peñaranda
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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.
Published by Lumarias Press
www.lumariaspress.com
First Edition published August 2021
Map Design © 2021 by Chloe C. Peñaranda
Cover Illustration © 2021 by Alice Maria Power
www.alicemariapower.com
Cover Design © 2021 by Whimsy Book Cover Graphics
www.whimsybookcovergraphics.com
Edited by Bryony Leah
www.bryonyleah.com
Identifiers
ISBN: 978-1-8382480-5-5 (eBook)
ISBN: 978-1-8382480-4-8 (Paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-8382480-3-1 (Hardback)
www.ccpenaranda.com
Contents
Prologue
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
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
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Epilogue
The Story Continues…
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Prologue
Reuben
Darkness. That was all he knew.
The darkness of a cold, barren cell. Of his desolate thoughts. Of a lingering death.
What he dreaded most was the darkness that took his sight as he was led from the prison, his sanctuary. He did not fear the bars that kept him in as long as they kept the monsters out.
Every time they came for him, he was blindfolded but not restrained, as though they knew terror gripped his ability to move beyond the vacant steps he took, guided by a hand that held him loosely. To run or fight—he didn’t have that courage, not even when a childhood friend’s voice urged a response in him.
Nothing was worse than the feeble submission he’d been reduced to.
To grapple onto his fading sanity, Reuben thought of Faythe, of his mother, of Jakon and everyone else he left in High Farrow. He didn’t know how much time had passed since he was met with this terrible fate.
A door opened with a faint creak. More shuffling. He wasn’t embarrassed by his fumbling footsteps; part of him hoped to trip himself, if only to delay the confrontation for a few seconds longer. Then they halted. Reuben couldn’t hide his trembling.
His blindfold was snatched away. He kept his eyes closed for a moment longer, wishing for darkness in place of the piercing light that tried to penetrate his lids. When he found the courage to flutter them open, he blinked rapidly to adjust, and upon spying the waves of flaming red hair across the room, his heart began to pound.
She kept her back to him for a moment, looking out over the clearest waters and purest crystalline snow from the wall made completely of glass. Reuben stood still. Despite the warmth of the room, he felt as cold as the icy sheets that sparkled beyond.
The beautiful fae twisted to him like an elegant wisp of wind, but the fire in her blazing amber eyes was ice-cold as she fixed them on him.
“I have offered you everything,” she said, her voice sending a shiver to make every hair on his body stand. “Everything you could dream of in your miserable human life, for your allegiance to me. Yet still, you resist.” The enchantress floated to him, slow steps that lapped the waves of her gown like a ruby sea. “Why?”
Reuben couldn’t speak. His answer was there, but it was wholly traitorous to her plan. He could not betray the names he chanted nightly in his lonely cell. He could not betray the one she sought the most.
The red-haired fae stopped close enough to touch, and his whole body stiffened. How could such evil lie within such devastating beauty? A combination of the most lethal kind.
She raised a delicate, slender hand, and Reuben flinched. Her fingers curled around his jaw, turning his face to hold her stare when he tried to avoid it, for the color struck him with conflicting emotions.
“You let your fear consume you. It is not your fault.” Her hand caressed his cheek—a loving gesture that held no true endearment. “I really hoped it would not come to this, Reu.” When he tried to look away again, her fingers gripped his jaw with more force. Her sharp nails dug into his skin, and he winced. “I am going to break you,” she hissed so beautifully, but laced with poison. “Only then can I mold you into my own perfect weapon. Only then will you see that I stand to better this world.”
She stepped forward, and he had no choice but to retreat backward while she held him firm. He stumbled all the way until he hit solid wood and became trapped.
Before he could even consider the thought of a possible escape, he felt another presence there. In his mind. A gasp, and coils of shadows were circling his thoughts, searching, listening. They formed into claws, scraping along every corner, violating every private memory. Everything he was surfaced at their command.
Then, without warning, fire erupted in his head.
Reuben screamed, but the echo around the room was swiftly cut off. His cries still rang in his mind, and her hold on his chin loosened to begin a soothing caress of his face once again.
“It will be over in a moment,” she cooed.
Every time one of those shadow talons sank themselves deep, they scorched a new line of searing pain until they nestled in his mind. Again and again and again. They would kill him, each wicked claw taking hold to shatter him completely from within.
He felt the darkness calling. This one he welcomed. A darkness so free and final.
Just before he could fall into that blissful oblivion…everything stilled. He closed and opened his eyes.
Quiet, peaceful nothing.
The stars that scat
tered his vision began to fade. He didn’t fear. He didn’t feel anything. He looked at down at the presence in front of him, and she was the most breathtaking thing he had ever laid eyes upon. Fire with the heat of a thousand suns. He wanted to fall to his knees before such a magnificent creature.
As her touch on his face registered, he felt the need to return it. Slowly, his hand raised to cup her cheek, and she smiled. It wasn’t sweet or kind or tender. It was pure, blazing triumph. Both her hands laced through his hair and tangled there as she brought her face to his. He didn’t object, didn’t want to retreat as he kissed her back. He felt nothing from it. But the way she moved was all he cared about. His kiss seemed to please her.
When she pulled back abruptly, the curl of her rouge-painted lips was nothing short of devastating. Reuben shivered.
“You are mine,” she purred.
“I am yours.”
He would kill for her. He would bleed for her. He would do…anything for her.
Chapter 1
Faythe
As the king’s spymaster hurtled through the bright, wide hallways, the tapestries and sculptures blurred into waves of deep blue and white. The fast clap of her feet against the marble overtook the tempo of her racing heart. Her lungs burned, breathing uneven and short from the exertion of her sprint. In her urgency, she skidded and twisted around the few servants who littered the hallways. They shrieked, attempting to dart out of her way before she could knock them off their feet, and she called her apologies to them over her shoulder, not slowing her pace at all. The tail of her jacket billowed behind her, along with wisps of her half-unbound hair. With her neck on the line, she didn’t have time to consider how frantic she would appear to those she passed.
The few guards she came across were halfway to drawing their swords, their fae ears alerted to Faythe’s fast, thundering footsteps long before she came into view. Upon seeing who was to blame for the commotion, they relaxed, and she winced at their disapproving glares and disgruntled head shakes.
She was already running dangerously late and had decided to take the long route to the council chamber to surreptitiously enter through the back door instead of the front, hoping no one would notice her tardiness. Especially not the King of High Farrow. Sweat beaded on her forehead, and her breaths cut like broken glass in her throat as she stumbled clumsily around the last corner into the dark, narrow passage that led to where the lords’ meeting was due to take place.
Damn rutting Spirits, let it be delayed…
It was all she could do to keep her jittering nerves at bay.
Two royal guards stood posted outside, and Faythe slowed to a walk as she approached, straightening the jacket of her uniform while regaining her composure. At first, she had felt ridiculous when she was presented with the royal blue and silver-accented attire that closely resembled that of the guards. It was far too elegant and formal for her to ever feel accustomed to. The only distinguishing feature the guards had was their shorter jacket and the matching blue shoulder cloak Faythe was spared from trailing behind her all day.
“You’re lucky. A few of the lords are still to arrive,” the guard, Caius, said. He was one of the friendlier fae Faythe had become acquainted with during her three months in the castle. Younger than most, he was the first in the guard to ease her tensions, and she’d even come to consider him a friend.
In fact, she was pleasantly surprised by just how many of the guards had warmly welcomed her into their ranks, albeit she still felt at odds being shuffled among brute warriors. Nothing they could dress her in or title her with would ever be enough to make her blend in, and it had taken a long while to get used to. There was also a large number in the guard who remained uneasy about her presence in the citadel, specifically for her ability, and she couldn’t blame them when they avoided her eye. She was only here for her talents after all, as the king’s reluctant spymaster. It was only natural to be untrusting of anyone with such a title, and they knew that if the king commanded it, she would be at his mercy to invade any one of their thoughts.
“That’s me, just a fountain of luck,” she grumbled flatly. Damn, a loose button. She fumbled to knot it closed, muttering curses under her breath.
Caius chuckled at her flustering as she checked over the rest of the attire she’d all but flung onto her body before flying out of her rooms. The other guard didn’t even try to hide his scowl, and she pinched her face right back at him in irritation.
She was running late thanks to this morning’s training session with Tauria. What was intended to be a quickly crammed-in solo hour in the weapons room ahead of the grueling meeting had turned into an intense combat lesson with the king’s ward who had tracked her down there. They lost the concept of time. Faythe became fully engrossed in learning maneuvers with a long staff instead of steel. It was Tauria’s weapon of choice and apparently a custom in her home kingdom of Fenstead.
One of the most dumbfounding revelations Faythe had learned about the golden-skinned beauty was that above being the King of High Farrow’s ward, she was the sole heir to the Fenstead throne. Princess Tauria Stagknight.
Lost in the action with iron-tipped wood, it was only when Faythe’s wonderful handmaidens Elise and Ingrid came looking for her that she was enlightened to the time. She sprinted to her rooms to frantically dress before hurling herself halfway across the castle to make the congregation on time.
The king never let her forget that her life hung in the balance of his mercy, and it made her constantly on edge that he always seemed to be looking for a reason to go back on the bargain to spare her life. One slipup could result in the end of her days. And not just in the castle.
Caius’s quiet rumble of laugher sounded at her back as she stepped up to the door, creaked it open, and slid in through the smallest gap she could manage. The low chatter of voices disguised any noise from the shallow creak of its hinges and her deliberately light footsteps. Upon discovering the meeting had yet to begin, Faythe sighed a breath of relief that dropped a weight of mercy in her stomach. She noted the few empty chairs yet to be filled.
The king’s council chamber was far smaller than the throne room but still big enough to warrant four guards. They were posted two to each wall, standing formally parallel to each other. A massive deep oak table occupied the center, at the head of which the king was already seated in his grand throne with his back to her. Prince Nikalias was to his left and spied Faythe as soon as she entered, shooting an amused smirk in her direction. She glowered, not paying him any attention as she glided in and took up position against one of the walls, an even space away from the other guards. She stood straight and poised, clasping her hands behind her back, and didn’t dare a glance in the king’s direction to see if he’d noticed her late arrival.
More Lords of High Farrow filed through the door until every seat was filled. Then the ornate main doors were closed so the meeting could begin.
This wasn’t Faythe’s first time being used for her ability. Not even close. The king had several different gatherings with lords, councilmen, war generals, and other members of the royal court on at least a weekly basis. In the beginning, she struggled with morality for what she was doing and had to swallow her revulsion at herself for what she was, peering into the minds of the unwitting subjects. She had learned to live with it by not diving too deep unless there was threat or suspicion. She had to live with it, and she knew she could shoulder the burden of a tarnished soul as long as it kept her friends safe.
Most of the time, Faythe was only forced to listen to her own bored thoughts and the occasional rude remark about the king’s actions and strategies. But Orlon would quickly find her of little use if she never reported anything he didn’t already know. So, while it pained her to do so, she had exposed a couple of councilmembers who were conspiring against him—an entirely foolhardy plan—as well as a lord who sought to gain more power and wealth through illegal trade. She never learned the outcome of their fates, nor did she particularly want to,
preferring to remain blissfully ignorant to her third-party involvement in their probable deaths.
Faythe had become fully acquainted with her ability, and it no longer doused her with dread to use it. Instead, she harnessed it; became the power that hummed in her veins, far more prominent since those first months of teaching with Nik that seemed so distant now. Her time as spymaster had at least earned her practice and taught her self-control. Collecting thoughts had become like breathing air. And the deeper skeletons those in high places often harbored—they were a game to find, something to offer the tedious meetings a little entertainment. While an ignorant eye would glance over the room and see a gathering of highly respected courtly individuals who carried themselves with an air of importance, Faythe saw what they truly were inside: a congregation of greed, adultery, and spite.
There were other stems of her ability she was less acquainted with. Faythe had only been made to use compulsion once, during a vote for the king’s proposal to remove the fae soldiers stationed in the town of Galmire. This would leave the town on High Farrow’s edge, which shared a border with the conquered kingdom of Dalrune, completely defenseless. The king was many hands short, but with a subtle glance at Faythe, the scales miraculously tipped in his favor. Faythe knew Galmire was a fully human-occupied settlement, which made her part in securing the vote hurt like a painful twist of the dagger constantly piercing her chest. It was not something she was proud of, but it was certainly not her place to have a voice on any of the matters brought into the council chamber.
A Queen Comes to Power: An Heir Comes to Rise Book 2 Page 1
