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Chapter twenty

Edmund

E dmund sighed and glanced out the front flap of his pavilion again.

They were late.

“Mother, if you are not ready by the time I finish this sentence, I will go ahead without you,” he warned.

“You wouldn’t dare,” the dowager queen called from behind a canvas partition painted with a mural of misty mountains silhouetted against a starry sky. It was pretty.

Elmoria had outdone itself.

And now Edmund was about to lose his opportunity to outdo himself by making a grand entrance into the ball. There was a fine line between being fashionably late and simply being late , and he was certainly flirting with that boundary.

“Try me,” he muttered under his breath before the muffled thump of his mother’s high-heeled shoes heralded her approach. He turned to watch her maneuver her way across the uneven ground with the help of two maids.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you not even going to compliment my outfit? I raised you better than that, darling.”

Edmund sucked in a breath and cataloged the dowager queen’s chosen attire with a dutiful head-to-toe glance. They were a matched set in the colors of House Hargrave, down to their jewelry. Save for where his mother had a teardrop-cut gem swaying from each earlobe, he had merely the one stud pierced through his right.

Politely, she was even wearing the emerald necklace the Queen of Elmoria had gifted her earlier that morning.

“Stunning. Beautiful. Utter perfection,” Edmund declared and offered her his arm. “Now, let us be off before we lose any more light and stumble into a pit.”

The dowager queen widened her eyes. “Did Her Majesty not send someone to fetch us? A carriage? A cart, even?”

“A carriage?” Edmund echoed with a short laugh. He tugged his mother along, out of the pavilion and into the growing twilight. Their shared entourage fanned around them. “Mother, we’re on Nerina Reef . But perhaps I could find a wheelbarrow and cart you to the ball myself?”

When his mother answered with a mere sniff, he brushed aside her current mood and continued on.

Locating the pavilion that was to be the ballroom for the evening was an easy enough task. It glittered with so many lanterns, Edmund couldn’t help but hesitate just outside while he calculated the probability of the entire thing catching fire.

But when he looked past the pavilion’s entryway and laid eyes on the Queen of Elmoria in all her glory, the matter was decided for him. He stepped onto the sapphire-and-gold rug leading the way into the ballroom and breezed inside.

“Try not to break too many hearts, Mother,” Edmund bid in an aside after leaving her near the refreshment table.

Crystal-studded gauze draped the canvas walls; within the glow of the lanterns, each gossamer panel flared with all the beauty of pure starlight. Wooden planks composed the floor. A company of musicians sat in a corner of the room, playing a lively tune to which the masses danced. All save the queen herself.

No doubt she had been waiting for him.

Or she was still sulking over how his idiotic brother nearly beat her champion to death just that afternoon. It was a miracle the man had lived. But of course Aldric would spoil his fun by placing the Queen of Elmoria in a foul mood from the start. He had hoped she would begin the evening with a smile on her lips.

It would make his vengeance all the more sweet when he ripped said smile away.

Around him, the room rippled. Every courtier he passed paused in their merriment to offer him a bow or a curtsy.

He ignored them all.

Gaze locked onto the gray-eyed beauty across the way, he did his best to keep his gait languid as he cut through the very middle of the dance floor in his quest to bring himself alongside his fellow monarch at last. Here was the meeting he had been anticipating the most.

A chance to truly speak. To gain each other’s measure. To test the sharpness of the other’s tongue.

When he was nearly upon the Queen of Elmoria, she finally stopped pretending as though she was not watching him out of the corner of her eye and turned to face him in full.

Beneath the soft light of the lanterns, it was easy enough for him to overlook her age and simply appreciate her prettiness. He bit back a sigh when he saw she was, indeed, in a foul mood already. That deep frown of hers greatly marred her features.

“Seraphina,” he greeted her as though they were old friends. He smiled enough for the both of them. “The brightness of your beauty dims all others.”

When he extended his hand to claim hers for a kiss, he flinched away from the sight of an usuru of all things striking out at him from beneath the drape of the queen’s chestnut locks. The beast even dared hiss.

He frowned in reply.

Finally, a tight smile pulled at the queen’s lips when she offered her hand to him in return as though nothing at all had just transpired.

Still watching the winged serpent out of the corner of his eye, Edmund took the queen’s fingers without hesitation and brought them to his lips. “I am truly glad we can properly speak at last,” he murmured to her, ghosting the words across her knuckles. His attention flicked to take in the rest of her entourage .

She had an elderly man and woman with her, both dressed in black and silver. A handful of ladies. And two handfuls of guards.

“You flatter me, Your Majesty—”

“Edmund, please,” he insisted when his attention returned to her. “We have so much history between us, after all.”

For a few moments, the queen stared up at him in silence with those wonderfully smoky eyes of hers before she jerked her fingers from his grasp.

More moments ticked past in which Edmund basked in the awkward pause spanning between them. Eventually, though, the queen shattered the growing silence with a frigid declaration of, “Sir Tristan Dacre is alive, if just barely. Thank you for asking.”

Who ? Ah, right. Her champion.

“Yes, you have my apologies for that. My brother can be…”

“Abominable?” the queen suggested, a trace of venom in her voice.

Edmund presented her with an indulgent smile. “Well, I was going to say overly enthusiastic , but we can certainly go with abominable, yes.”

“The Oracle is praying over him now,” she quietly informed him. But even while she spoke, her gaze slipped away and skimmed across the pavilion as if she was searching for someone amongst the courtiers already dancing beneath the faux starlight.

He arched an eyebrow. “If it is my brother you are looking for, my dear, you will not find him here,” Edmund dryly advised. “He has never been one for parties. ”

The queen’s voice was all heat when she immediately denied, “I am looking for no one.”

Edmund shrugged, in no mood to argue over something so paltry. “Will you not dance with me?” he invited her instead. “I can think of no better place for us both to forget the unpleasantness of this afternoon than upon the dance floor.”

When the woman didn’t immediately accept the opportunity to dance with him, his smile turned a touch brittle. “As your honored guest, dear Seraphina, I must insist you dance with me.”

Those words seemed to warm her to the idea at last. But when her hand slid into the clasp of his again, that blasted usuru of hers lifted its head to once more hiss at him from its perch about her shoulders.

Edmund’s lips twisted with distaste. “Must you bring your… wingworm ?” he muttered out of the corner of his mouth.

The way her eyes flew wide in response to his words might have almost been a comical sort of thing if he weren’t so put out by the serpent. “A… wingworm ?” the queen murmured back, sounding bewildered more than anything. “Alyx is an usuru.”

“Oh, I know very well what it is,” Edmund snapped. “But perhaps Alyx might be more comfortable staying with your people?”

“Oh, I think Alyx is quite comfortable right where she is. But thank you for your concern.”

“Is she?” Edmund used his grip on the queen’s hand to twirl her about in a sudden swirl of beaded sapphire silk once, twice, thrice —

The usuru finally took to the air with one last annoyed hiss, and Edmund immediately ceased with his spectacle. As applause rang out all around, he pulled Her Majesty into his embrace and let his fingers glide upward toward the siren’s call of the queen’s bare skin in her low-backed gown.

“What are you doing?” she gasped when his fingertips made contact with the expanse of her mid-back at last.

A smile toyed at the corner of his lips when he bent his head to whisper back, “We’re dancing, remember?”

“This is not the way one dances in Elmoria,” she complained while the fingers of his other hand tightened their grasp around her own.

“What luck, then, that we’re not in Elmoria.”

As a crescendo from the orchestra swelled to fill the entire pavilion, Edmund swept Her Majesty out onto the dance floor in a lively Drakmori waltz. The crowd parted for them. The music shifted to match the pace he set. And together, they dominated the room.

For the first and no doubt the last time.

Edmund pressed in close for their dance and let himself drown in all that was Seraphina de la Croix. The scent of her. The warmth of her. The way her gasp bathed his jaw when he stroked a single fingertip down her spine.

“Don’t,” she warned him on a whisper.

But he pretended to not hear. He had been waiting months for this—an opportunity to vex the woman who had dared toy with him .

And yet now that he had her within his arms, he found the taste of his near victory more bitter than expected. She was beautiful. He was handsome. She was passingly clever. And he was ruthless. What a powerful pair they would have made.

What a powerful pair they could have made.

An abrupt question of, “Well?” from the queen lured Edmund out of his swiftly darkening thoughts, and he looked down to find her storm-gray eyes staring back up at him. Expectant.

His eyebrows knitted together. “Well, what?”

“Are we not going to talk about it?”

A quiet huff escaped Edmund’s nose. But he played coy and twirled Her Majesty about in a renewed swirl of beaded chiffon. “Talk about what, my dear?”

“Don’t play games with me, Edmund,” the queen hissed again when he spun her back into his arms. Her free hand dug into the emerald satin covering his chest, threatening him with the bite of her long fingernails through his clothing.

His smile turned tight as he curled his own fingers into her back, seeking to bruise the tender flesh there. “And here I rather thought you were fond of playing games. Or so my spies tell me.”

The queen stumbled over the unfamiliar steps of the Drakmori dance in that moment, but his tight grip kept her firmly lodged within the frame of his arms. The look she gifted him was particularly venomous.

He basked in it, savoring each and every drop of distaste that oozed off her .

“ Card games,” she corrected, clearly choosing not to acknowledge the revelation there were Drakmori spies embedded in her court. “Not…whatever this is.”

“I believe it’s called engaging in a flirtation, if we wish to put a name to it.”

“I believe it’s called being vexing,” the queen snapped back.

A low chuckle rumbled from Edmund.

But his amusement didn’t last long.

Here she was—the little wench who had made a fool of him in front of all of Avirel. The Queen Who Dodged the Ring . That was what they called her, the bards frequenting the taverns of Falwood. Oh, yes. They had sung a little ditty about his humiliation until they could no longer sing or speak at all.

And now the time for his revenge had come at last. He should be laughing. He should be savoring the moment.

But all he felt was a sudden and voracious… anger .

“You are the vexing one,” Edmund snarled into the queen’s ear while digging his fingers all the deeper into her back. His sudden ferocity lured another gasp from the woman’s lips.

“You’re hurting me—”

The song abruptly ended in that moment and with it, so should have their dance. But Edmund kept the queen locked in his embrace and dragged her along, happy to dance in silence as the musicians sorted out what song they should play next.

Before the music began again, the old man from the Elmorian entourage suddenly appeared at his shoulder, a cane tucked beneath his arm. “Pardon me, Your Majesty,” the elderly nobleman tried to interject. “I had hoped I might beg a dance with the queen—”

Edmund cut him off at once with a terse, “You may not,” before sweeping her further out onto the dance floor and away from any more interference. She glowered up at him in silence as the music from the orchestra stuttered its way back into being.

But he still had words enough for the both of them.

“We could have united Drakmor and Elmoria at last,” he continued for her ears alone. “We could have built an empire to rival even that of Lothmeer. We could have ruled all of Avirel, Seraphina.”

“I fear, Edmund , that your ambitions far outweigh my own. My forefathers might have been conquerors, but that is not the life I crave.”

“Indeed not,” Edmund sweetly taunted. “I doubt you have the stomach for it.”

She lifted her chin, stubborn and defiant to the last. It was a beautiful thing to see. He couldn’t wait to shatter that pride of hers into a million pieces.

“The stomach for pointless bloodshed?” the queen posed, arching an eyebrow at him. “No, you’re quite right. I don’t have the stomach for that.”

“Interesting words from a woman currently embroiled in a little war with Arath—”

“Against my will,” she volleyed back. “I would have never declared war on Arath had I had any choice in the matter at all.”

And there was his opportunity .

Dipping his head, Edmund let his lips brush against the edge of the queen’s ear when he murmured, “How lucky for you, then, that I’m about to give you the means to win your little war and stop the bloodshed at last.”

He wished he could have painted it—the look on her face when she jerked her head away from the threat of his mouth to gaze up at him instead. Her eyes wide.

So full of sweet, na?ve hope.

“Truly?” she whispered. Beneath his fingers, her muscles relaxed. “Oh, Edmund…I’m so glad to hear—”

“Assuming you give me what I want first.”

He watched her hope twist itself into naked suspicion. Her eyes narrowed into calculating slits. The tightness returned to the muscles of her back. Her fingers still resting on his chest dug in their nails once more.

“Very well,” she breathed. “Name your terms.”

All around, applause rang out as the music careened into its final measures, stringed instruments wailing impassioned notes into the night. He gave the queen one last twirl and acquiesced to her demands.

He named his terms.

“A marriage alliance, of course.”

She flashed him a look over her shoulder, trying to keep her eyes on him even while he spun her about. As he watched, her suspicion died and a great resignation soon took its place.

Solemnly, she agreed, “Then we will have a marriage alliance between us. ”

“Oh…” Finally.

Here it was.

Edmund suddenly snaked an arm around the queen’s middle and pulled her into him one final time—her back pressed to his chest. A scandalized gasp rang out from some of the nearby Elmorian courtiers at the sight of their monarch so wrapped up within his embrace.

He ignored them all.

“You’ve misunderstood me,” he whispered directly against her ear.

His brazenness earned a quiet protest of, “Edmund,” from the queen’s own lips.

But he ignored that, too.

“You lost your opportunity to marry me , Seraphina de la Croix, when you tried to make a fool of me before the world.”

She tried to offer another protest, but he spoke over her, cutting her off so that he could finally reveal, “So, if you want my troops. If you want my help. If you want me to continue to side with your little island rather than allying with Arath and declaring war upon your people as well, you will marry…my brother. The Crow of Drakmor.”

Edmund ducked his head to breathe in the scent of Seraphina in all her sweetness one last time before he let his murderous older brother have his way with her. It was almost a shame to snuff such beauty from the world.

But she had made her bed.

And now it was time for her to die in it.