The Dark Queen (The Dark Queens Book 5) (4 page)

But as promised, “Uriah” returned to his mirror and mere seconds later there was a quiet knock in the stone wall behind her. A banging echo that caused her to jump and twirl. So there was the infamous hidden doorway, oh the temptation to run to it was great. Immediately her hand rushed to the column of her throat in a nervous reflex.

Mirror nodded for her to answer it.

“Come. Come in,” she breathed, then cleared her throat.

He looked a little different than he had that day in the woods. But Charles still cut a striking figure.

Tall, broad of shoulders and narrow of hips, Fable felt something squeeze through her heart she hadn’t in ages.

Curiosity.

“Charles,” she said slowly.

His look was cursory, but thorough, before he nodded, dropped to a chain-mailed knee and bowed his head.

“My queen. Why have you summoned me?”

Fable

C
lutching at her soft pink colored robe, she curled her fingers tight into the fabric and tried to swallow her nerves, though she knew her voice sounded strained by the emotion.

“Thank you for coming,” she said softly, cutting a quick glance toward the doorway that had vanished the moment he’d stepped through. The tunnel, or staircase—whatever it had been—vanished the moment he stepped through into her room. Freedom was so close and yet so far from her.

Maybe Mirror was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t enchanted to kill her; maybe it would sting a little? But no sooner had she thought it then she knew she was grasping at straws.

Mirror would never lie to her. If he said it was enchanted to kill her, that’s exactly what it would do.

He rose back to his feet, and again Fable suffered a strange roll of emotion. Her heart stuttered powerfully in her chest, and her stomach kneaded with tight knots. She’d not been alone in a room with a man for so long that to do so now felt foreign and almost uncomfortable for her.

Unlike the day in the woods, his look now was open and curious. And she drank in the sight of his handsome face. She’d forgotten just how good looking the male was, when she’d seen him last her heart had been captured by George, but it had been some time since she’d felt anything for George other than quiet detachment.

Now here was a strong, virile male looking at her with a spark in his eye she’d not seen for some time.

“You shaved,” she said, then twitched uncomfortably, realizing she’d spoken her thoughts aloud.

He moved deeper into the room, rubbing his jaw idly, as though unaware of the action.

“Some time ago, yes.”

“Why?” she asked, talking of nonsense until she could gather enough nerve to get to the real reason for why she’d asked him to come see her.

He paused in his walk, cocking his head and looking at her far more heatedly than before.

Nothing inappropriate, but with an obvious flare of curiosity burning in his pretty brown eyes, and suddenly she wished she’d taken greater care with her appearance.

Whenever she was viewed out in public, she would never be caught dead in anything other than a princess gown with her hair done up in a fashionable queue and her face painted with bright, bold colors to highlight the natural dark hue of her skin.

Now she wore only a thin, transparent white slip beneath her thick robe. Her hair hung long down her shoulders, covering both breasts with the very tips reaching to her waistline. And no shoes. She had however painted her toenails a pretty shade of lavender. Wiggling her toes and feeling altogether self-conscious she blew out a heavy breath, ready to turn her gaze to the side so that she would no longer need to look at him.

“I suppose,” he finally said, “that I felt the need for a change.”

She swallowed hard, wishing she weren’t quite so aware of just how big and imposing Charles was. Even with one arm in a sling, he was clearly a powerful man. His skin was firm and unmarred by either wrinkles or marks. He had a very strong, masculine face that was offset by those pretty eyelashes of his.

A wide—though not overly so—mouth with a full bottom lip. She swallowed hard, palming her chest nervously.

As though sensing how fidgety and nervous she was, he thankfully came no closer.

“My queen—”

“Call me, Fable,” she automatically corrected, knowing she broke protocol by doing so, but for the first time in months, she didn’t feel weighed down by the responsibilities of being a queen and all that the title entailed.

She expected him to shake his head and tell her he could not do that. He was George’s captain of the guard and punctilious about the title and position. Yes, she’d watched him now and again. Had seen him roam the halls of the massive castle and grounds, once she’d even spotted him training with his men, shirtless and drenched in sweat in the setting evening sun. It was with some shock that she realized she’d been on the look out for him almost constantly.

Sucking her bottom lip between her teeth, she worried the flesh, suddenly more nervous and anxious than before.

He paused for so long; she thought for sure he’d let out a cry to the castle, telling everyone of what she was about. What she was doing?

Though it wasn’t wrong, suddenly it felt like she was wicked for bringing him into her room. Alone and unchaperoned, Brunhilda would certainly not take kindly to this.

“Fable,” he said then, with a much deeper, scratchy sounding voice than she’d heard him use before. Then tucking his good arm against his waist, he bowed deeply before her.

Feeling the heat of a blush wash through her cheeks, she stuttered, “A...arise, knight.”

When he finally did, she knew the moment of truth had arrived, and she could delay no more.

“The day we met in the—”

“Enchanted Forest,” he finished for her, shaking his head, “I could never forget.”

She sucked in a sharp breath, stomach twisting powerfully inside of her and making her feel strangely ill.

“Oh,” was all she could manage to say for a moment, needing a second—or ten—to gather her wits. When she finally did, she could hear the strain beating through her words. “I...I saw something in your eyes that day. Something I have come to consider often and now wonder if...if...”

She flicked her wrist, feeling suddenly foolish for calling him up to her. What if that really had been nothing more than the flicker of light dancing through his eyes? Why had she called him to her based on a memory nearly ten months old? She was a foolish, stupid woman grasping at straws—

“I tried to warn you as best I could, my queen.”

Her eyes widened, knowing she’d not imagined the truth of it. “Wh—what?”

For a brief second, he closed his eyes, and it was such an odd emotion to feel, but she almost cried out in fear, desperate to keep any form of human contact she could and when he did open them again, she nearly sobbed with relief.

Shaking and trembling all over like a sapling caught in a strong breeze, she shook her head.

Charles glanced over his shoulder, no doubt as nervous as she, before taking another step toward her. Now nothing but ten feet separated them, but it felt so much closer.

Her body trembled with the prickles of his heat rubbing up against her. Fable hadn’t realized how starved for company she’d been until just now.

“My first queen, her death was not...”

His words trailed off, and Fable stuck her thumbnail between her lips, ready to chew it down to the quick from the razor tipped butterfly wings wreaking havoc on her nerves.

“What, Charles? Her death was not what?”

He sucked in a trembly breath, and it was a relief to know she wasn’t the only one feeling nervous.

Again he closed his eyes, this time keeping them shut longer. “I should not speak this.
She
has eyes and ears everywhere.”

Refusing to let him scare himself into not talking, she switched tactics.

“Who is Brunhilda? Really?”

Something had always felt off about the Dowager Queen, and not just because she was clearly a witch of some form. Deep down, Fable had sensed that all wasn’t well within this realm. There was something very wrong, very twisted in it, and all of it centered around George’s mother.

Charles jerked, and the muscle in his jaw twitched rapid-fire, as though he nervously clenched and unclenched his molars.

Eyes flicking toward her, something hard passed over his face. A sentiment or emotion that let her know he’d come to a decision and she was suddenly terrified that he meant to leave.

Taking an involuntary step forward, she held out her arm causing the grip on her robes to loosen and reveal just a sliver of her body beneath.

Heat rolled through his eyes briefly before he turned his gaze down to his feet.

“You have no right to trust me, Fable,” he said slowly, “but I vow to you I am not your enemy here.”

“Then who is? The witch?”

He looked back at her and again a wealth of emotions whispered through his astute gaze.

“I will probably regret this,” he muttered more to himself than for her benefit, and then he was marching toward her with purposeful steps.

Letting out a startled yip, when his warm hand wrapped around her elbow, she couldn’t move. Frozen by fear, doubt, and something far deeper.

Touch.

Though his grip was firm, almost to the point of pain, she shivered into it, desperate for more. Instead of moving back—as she probably should have done—she moved infinitesimally closer. When he breathed, his chest grazed hers.

They locked eyes at the same moment, and something within Fable’s soul shifted. When he leaned forward, so that his mouth rested against her ear, she shivered.

His deep voice filled her heart like angel song.

“Brunhilda is not his mother.”

She sucked in a sharp breath. “Wh—”

He shook his head, cupping the corner of her jaw with his callused palm so that she could not move.

“I only learned of this myself last year,” he whispered quickly. “What I tell you now, none but us will know. Should any other learn of it, we would surely die.”

She frowned, heart beating like horses’ hooves in her chest.

“Brunhilda is a witch,” he said.

“I know—”

“No, you don’t.” He shook his head, and idly she realized that his fingers had begun to feather delicately along her jawline, breaking her out in a wash of heated goose bumps.

“Brunhilda, the real Brunhilda was also a witch. But I know it was not real mother who won George his seat at power.”

She frowned, having a hard time understanding that. “Seat of power? Real mother? But he’s the male heir; the seat should have passed to—”

“No, there was another. The real George, his twin brother. This George wasn’t born George at all, but William.”

She gasped. “Are you saying that—”

He nodded quickly. “Yes.
William
,” he finger quoted, “had a terrible accident the day before he turned eighteen. The day before his brother was to inherit the title and throne. The castle and everyone in it were told to cover up the true details of
William’s
death. That he’d broken his neck falling off his favored Stallion—Devil. The fact was William had eaten of the foxglove berries.”

She shuddered knowing exactly what those were. Berries the color of deepest magenta that could stop a heart cold in less than a minute. Even she, born in Seren, knew to stay well clear of those poisonous little berries.

Fable frowned. “But that makes no sense.”

“We all thought so too. But we were ordered by the then queen mother to silence. For many years, I believed William truly had died, that he’d committed suicide because he’d been envious that George and not he would get to become king.”

A cold chill worked down her spine. She knew there had to be more to this story. “So how did you learn that George and William were—”

“I began to see slight differences at first. George and William were so similar that only those truly closest to them would have ever noticed anything amiss. But where George excelled in math, William excelled in the arts. Most notably the art of seduction. He was a well-known cad and Casanova. George always had his nose stuck in the books.”

She clenched her jaw. “George,
my George
, never reads.”

His look was sad but honest. “I began to suspect that it had been George and not William who’d met his untimely demise. And when I thought that, it wasn’t a far stretch to imagine that William had also been the one to poison his own brother. At first, I thought myself mad. Thought I had to be seeing shadows and ghosts where there were none. It had been so long, and people change. But the more I noticed, the more I began to notice too. Like the dowager—how she too changed in the months following William’s death. I was George’s oldest and truest friend. The differences with her were so slight as to be subtle. Her favorite color, which had once been rose red shifted to black. Her food preferences changed.” He shrugged. “Like I said, small things.”

Though she loved the way he still stroked her skin, she had to look him eye to eye. Pulling back just enough to do it, she searched his gaze for any sign of deception but found none.

“What happened?” Her whisper sounded like cannon fire in her ears and she was sure they’d be caught. But though her knees trembled, Fable would hear him out.

Wetting his lips, he blinked rapidly several times before saying. “One day I spotted Brunhilda working magic.”

“But I thought you said she was a witch.”

He shook his head slightly. “Not magic, Fable. But
magick
. The dark kind.”

She swallowed hard, wondering if he knew that she too worked magick. Though she’d not sold her soul to do it, her powers were more akin to her grandfather’s Hades than a fairy godmother’s.

“Brunhilda did not know magick like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like death curses.” He nodded slowly, as though reinforcing that he did not lie. “The first queen’s death was no accident of fate. It was deliberate and caused by the dowager.”

Her nostrils flared, deep down Fable had already suspected this, but hearing him say it now made her feel scared and terrified. “Are...are you sure?”