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Chapter forty-one

Edmund

E dmund’s anger flared hot as he stormed his way through the halls of his palace, his Kingsguard struggling to keep pace. But they would just have to catch up if he left them behind.

He had a kingdom to run. Schemes to plot.

And a dowager queen to smother.

“Mother!” Edmund bellowed as he blazed his way into the Scarlet Wing—the entirety of which he had gifted her for her personal use and enjoyment.

Rooms upon rooms stretched before him with so many gilded doors winking within the lantern light, he hardly knew where to start.

“Find her,” he snarled to his closest guard, and his retinue hurried to comply. Doors slammed open as he passed, shouting “Mother!” as he went .

How dare she. How dare she threaten to ruin his carefully laid plans. His plots. All for the sake of her own pride?

He had so carefully maneuvered Drakmor onto the very cusp of victory. He had played his cards exactly right. And now that he was finally about to have it all, she had nearly ruined it.

When Edmund found his mother at last, she lounged on a chaise in her study, looking supremely nonplussed when she peeked at him over the top of the book she was currently reading.

Charlotte Hargrave but arched an eyebrow at him when he first thundered his way inside. Her ladies-in-waiting, however, scattered like so many startled pigeons.

“Leave us , ” he screamed needlessly at the lot of them, given that they were already making haste to do just that.

“Goodness, darling,” his mother dared tut as her attention returned to her book. “Has someone died?”

Edmund crumpled the missive within his hand and launched it at her as he snarled, “No, they have not.” He missed. The ball of paper landed harmlessly several feet away from the dowager queen’s perch. “Against your best efforts, no one is dead.”

Edmund didn’t stop stalking his way toward his mother until he was within arm’s reach. Sneering, he snatched the book straight from her hands and tossed it aside. At last, he had her attention.

She looked up at him with a fire of her own sparking within her eyes when he leaned in close and whispered, “Or are you about to deny that you were the one to hire the assassins who tried to kill both the Queen of Elmoria and my brother. ”

The dowager queen didn’t hesitate in whispering, “I deny nothing .”

“You idiot,” Edmund raged. His hands fisted to keep him from doing something he would regret, though his mother would have deserved it. “How dare you undermine me.”

“How dare you speak to me in this way,” the dowager queen screamed right back, on her feet now as well. He shook his head and walked away from her, too agitated to stand still. But even as he did, she continued to verbally lash him. “After all I have done for you. After all I have done to secure you the throne. To win you allies. To ensure you had the bride you always deserved—”

“Enough,” Edmund snarled, rounding back upon his mother as he did so. “You may have birthed me, woman, but that does not give you leave to go against my wishes. You have no authority. You have no right—”

He didn’t expect the slap that suddenly connected with his cheek in the wake of those words. He probably should have, but he didn’t.

When his mother raised her hand to strike him a second time, though, he caught her by the wrist before the blow could fall.

“I need Aldric alive for now,” he informed her.

Which immediately lured a shriek from the dowager queen of, “You don’t need him at all. You’ve never needed him. And if you had simply made your play with Arath at the summit, like I told you to, we never would have had to engage in this current nonsense in the first place. ”

Edmund sighed through his nose and finally released his mother’s wrist. “ I am the king now, Mother,” he coolly reminded the woman. “I appreciated your counsel before I came of age—”

The dowager queen was quick to hiss with all her usual venom, “You still need my counsel and we both know it—”

But he spoke over her, raising his voice so that he might better be heard when he declared, “—but I am a grown man now, fully capable of making my own decisions. And you will learn to respect that.”

For a time, he was left staring down at his mother, awaiting her response. But all she had for him was a narrowing of her eyes and a deep frown. She asked, “Was that a threat, Edmund?”

He but met that narrowed gaze unflinchingly when he softly reminded, “I am a Hargrave, Mother.”

Her nose wrinkled. “You are just like your father,” she accused him at once.

He sighed and brushed her off, turning to leave. “You are to be confined to your wing for the rest of the day, Mother,” he dully decreed on his way out the door.

To his Kingsguard, he added, “No one shall allow her to pass until I order otherwise, no matter what she tells you.”

“What?” the dowager queen whispered, and he flicked her a look over his shoulder. “You are placing me under… house arrest ?” A disbelieving laugh huffed from deep within her throat. “Edmund, be serious.”

“Oh, I am. I’m being quite serious, Mother. But there’s no need to look at me like that. It’s just for this one evening. ”

“But the Princess Mariana is due to arrive at any moment,” his mother breathlessly reminded him. Her eyes wide, she desperately searched his features.

He shrugged once more and stepped back into the corridor. “Yes,” he drawled, basking in the fresh glare the dowager queen delivered his way. “But our actions have consequences, you know. You should have thought about that before you undermined me.”

“You ungrateful child. I was the one to broker that arrangement—”

Edmund nodded to his nearest Kingsguard, and the man stepped forward to slam shut the door, cutting off his mother’s fresh protests mid-sentence.

She was lucky that he loved her; otherwise, he might have been inclined to place her under house arrest for the rest of the week rather than merely a single night.

“Next time, Mother,” he whispered to the closed door, not caring if she heard him through the wood or not, “don’t hire assassins behind my back.”

He turned away with that. His steps brisk, he strode back to the comfort of his own apartments in silence. His mind whirred through all he still must do before evening fell.

His mother had been right about one thing, at the very least.

His new bride-to-be was due to arrive at any moment.

“I don’t want to be disturbed until Her Highness is here,” Edmund snapped to his Kingsguard once they made it back to his chambers. “Tell me the moment she arrives. ”

He left his guards at the door as he stepped into his sitting room. After a moment, the door clicked shut behind him.

Finally, he was alone.

But now he was in a foul mood.

Letting loose a low snarl, he combed his fingers through his hair and veered off toward his bedchamber. No doubt the stash of vodka he kept within his nightstand might help to improve his mood.

But the second he entered the darkened chamber, he stopped when he noticed a strange lady lounging atop his bed, her eyes closed. As if she had any right at all to be there.

“You there,” Edmund called, his already foul mood darkening at the sight of the stranger. “What are you doing here?”

But when the woman atop his bed opened her eyes to look at him through the darkness, Edmund realized his mistake. That was no lady.

It was a witch.

“Edmund,” the strange woman purred in a voice full of rasp and smoke. Unfurling herself from the rumpled sheets, she rose to her feet and drew to her full height.

Like all Arathian women, she was horrendously tall. And like all witches, she sported those strangely golden eyes, which gleamed even within the muted shadows of the room.

He had never seen a witch in the flesh, but those eyes were impossible to mistake for anything else. “How do you know my name?” He took a step backward toward the still open door behind him. “How did you get in here? ”

The witch ignored both questions. Instead, she whispered, “I’ve waited so long for this moment, Edmund…”

He didn’t care to know exactly what it was this creature had been waiting for, though. “Guards!” he screamed as he dashed back into the illuminated expanse of his sitting room. “Guards!”

Silence was all that greeted him.

“They are not coming, Edmund,” came that smoky voice from just behind him again, and Edmund whirled upon his heel to find that the witch had followed him into the sitting room and was steadily prowling her way all the closer.

Within the light, it was easy enough to see that while she was undoubtedly a witch, she was also utterly beautiful—a creature wrought from obsidian and clothed all in red.

She was glorious.

She was breathtaking.

But not even her beauty could distract him from the sight of that dagger clasped in her hand.

“To the Underworld they’re not.” Edmund tossed out another shout of, “Guards! Guards! I demand you come at once !”

But his blood soon ran cold as, yet again, no one came to his aid. The doors remained shut fast. There was naught but silence from the corridor beyond. Not even so much as a shuffle of footsteps could be heard.

The witch smiled.

“Stay away from me,” Edmund commanded. He continued his retreat, though he was swiftly running out of room. His mind raced. His eyes darted about the space. When he looked back to the witch to track her approach, it was to find she was now frowning his way.

“Do you not find me pretty?” she demanded, and Edmund’s steps stuttered to a stop of their own accord. His brow furrowed at the question.

“What?”

“Do you not like me?”

“I…” Edmund knew the look written on the witch’s features right at that moment. He understood women well enough to recognize when they were fishing for a compliment.

But he wasn’t about to indulge a witch’s vanity.

“You are a witch,” he reminded the woman as he edged closer to the fireplace. He had just remembered where he'd left his rapier, deposited upon a chaise lounge near there.

Perhaps he could make it in time.

But clearly that was not what the witch wanted to hear, given the way her pretty features twisted themselves into a scowl. “I am your wife ,” she snarled back. She rushed toward him, forcing him to dive the rest of the way toward the chaise lounge and the gleam of his weapon lying there.

He lunged for the rapier at the same moment the witch lunged for him.

His fingers closed about the hilt. He wrenched the slender sword free.

When he spun back to face the crimson dervish coming straight for him, he swiped the tip of his blade through the air. The creature shrieked and flung herself backward to keep from impaling herself upon his sword.

His lips pulled back into a sneer. “Mariana?” Edmund hissed into the silence that fell between them. “ You are Princess Mariana?”

The witch arched a single, dark eyebrow. “I am a Princess of Arath ,” she countered at once, her tone far more amused than he would have liked it to be. “What did you expect?”

“Decorum, perhaps?” Edmund bit back. “Or perhaps simply someone who is not a witch? Lord Naari reassured me you were a member of the Lord’s Faithful…”

The words sounded utterly ridiculous now, even to his own ears.

“And you believed him?” the witch taunted before she flung back her head and let loose with a maddening little laugh.

Edmund tightened his jaw and pressed the opportunity presented to him. Suddenly on the offensive, he lunged toward the witch.

But her laughter swiftly died within her throat when she snapped her attention back his way and lifted her own smaller blade to defend herself.

It was easy enough to drive the princess backward with his weapon’s longer reach, though she was certainly holding her own, even armed with a mere dagger as she was.

She danced with all the grace and speed of the wind itself, always staying one step away from the end of his rapier while he pursued her across the room.

“This is not exactly going the way I had initially envisioned, dear husband,” the witch admitted with another of her smiles .

Edmund wrinkled his nose. “I am not your husband.”

She utterly ignored his words. “I propose a truce.”

But the very idea of a truce with such a creature drove Edmund into pressing his attack further. “I decline your proposition.” He lunged toward her yet again, seeking to stab her straight through the belly.

But she danced out of the way of his rapier at the last second. “You are alone,” the witch taunted further, still smiling as if this were all just a game. “I own the guards posted outside this very door.”

“Then I will have them hanged for their treachery after I finish with you.”

Edmund saw a fresh opening, and he took it. For a third time, he lunged in close. His left hand shot out, and his fingers tangled into the locks of the witch’s hair to wrench back her head as he brought the length of his blade alongside her throat.

When he paused, panting for breath, he took in the sight of her smirk and glanced down to find the tip of her own blade poised right over his heart.

“Bite me and I bite you, darling,” she whispered within that nearness, and Edmund’s lips twisted into a frown.

He had a better opportunity to study that dagger of hers now that she was so near, and he didn’t like the look of it. It was dark in a way that metal could never be dark, with an oddly luminescent jewel embedded into its pommel. He had never seen one in person, but he had certainly seen his fair share of drawings.

It was a witchblade .

“So, what now?” Edmund hissed, not seeing any immediate way out of his current predicament, unless the Lord on High sent him a miracle. Or his mother.

But the latter seemed like a grave impossibility in that moment, considering he had just put her under house arrest.

He supposed he was waiting for the miracle, then.

The sight of the amusement crinkling the corners of Mariana’s golden eyes was enough to sour his mood further, though, when she purred, “I believe this is the part where we are supposed to kiss.”

“I will pass,” Edmund declared without hesitation, earning a smile from the witch.

“I came to offer you an alliance today, you know,” the witch soon continued. “An alliance to end all alliances.”

But Edmund was quick to point out to her, “I already made an alliance with your father, woman. You, in exchange for my aid with reclaiming Mysai.”

“Truly a bargain.”

“I am beginning to think your father got the better end of the deal,” Edmund dryly observed.

“What if I let you in on a little secret?” the Arathian Princess asked next.

There was something so very inviting about her smile and the smoky rasp of her voice that Edmund couldn’t help but want her to keep speaking simply so that he might bask within the decadent richness of it just a little longer.

He hated that .

In response to this talk of a secret, she earned for herself a harsher press of his blade against that elegant throat of hers.

But she answered in kind with the tip of her dagger digging into his chest, further ruining his doublet.

The witch continued as though nothing at all had just passed between them, saying, “What if I told you that there is no King of Arath?”

Edmund thinned his lips and cocked an eyebrow at the woman. What did she take him for? A fool? “I’d name you a liar.”

The witch’s smile deepened, revealing a dimple etched into her right cheek.

Edmund hated that, too.

“What if I told you that I am the true power within Arath? That I already hold the throne?”

“I’d name you a liar twice over,” Edmund sneered, swiftly growing tired of this game. “Get to the point, witch. This rapier is heavier than it looks.”

“Marry me—”

“No.”

Her smile finally shattered at his swift rejection, and irritation took the place of her easy amusement from earlier. Before Edmund could even so much as question what was happening, the witch drew in a deep breath, and her eyes suddenly glowed all the more brightly for it.

When next she exhaled, tendrils of smoke unfurled themselves through her nostrils, bathing him in the scent of heat and ash .

“Tell me, Edmund,” Mariana whispered, an even greater rasp to her words now. “How much do you know about witches?”

Not enough .

When silence was his only reply, the witch gifted another of her smiles, though this one was sharper and more dangerous still. “I hold within my lungs the last of the world’s dragonfire, Edmund dear. So, cross me again ,” she breathed against his face and his stomach roiled at the sensation of that heat licking against him, “and I will melt the very flesh from your bones and turn you into a pile of ash. Are we clear?”

Edmund swallowed hard as his eyes ticked from the glow of her unnatural gaze, down to her mouth, and then back up again. He didn’t know if she was telling the truth or not.

But he didn’t think he wanted to call her bluff.

When his silence further lingered on, the witch suddenly dug the tip of her dagger into his chest all the more until he finally bit out a brusque, “ Crystal clear, sweetheart.”

At last, she smiled at him again. “Good boy,” she whispered while pressing in close to send him retreating from her person.

Step by step, the witch drove him backward, her golden eyes full of both threat and promise alike. “Now, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted—you will marry me, Edmund Hargrave. We will unite our kingdoms. And together we will lay claim to Kuni. To Elmoria. To even the Holy Lothmeeran Empire.”

When Edmund’s back finally thumped against the far wall, he dropped his fingers away from the witch’s hair and let his rapier clatter to the floor at his feet. He sought to make himself as much of a non-threat as possible as she pinned him there, her body entirely too close for comfort.

In the wake of all her seductive declarations, though, he shot that blade of hers another glance and swiftly pointed out, “Nonsense. You’ll just… stab me with that dagger and make me into some sort of puppet, won’t you?”

Again, she smiled. “Not if you behave.”

To the Underworld with that, too.

Sucking in a breath, Edmund tried again to call for help when he bellowed out another abrupt, “Guards! Guards! I demand your presence!”

The princess’s smile never faltered while they waited together in a tense and ever-growing silence.

But as before, no one came to his aid.

“What did you do to them?” Edmund finally demanded on a low snarl.

Again, Mariana chuckled. He found it just as infuriating as he had the last time she had laughed at him. “I claimed them long ago. They’ve been mine for ages.”

Well, Edmund didn’t know what that meant. But he didn’t like the sound of it.

“And now you’re mine as well,” she continued on a breathy purr, leaning in a little closer as she did so. Like a lioness about to consume her prey.

Except Edmund wasn’t quite ready to die.

“Why me?” he asked. It was all he could think to ask as he stood there, trapped by that beautiful and utterly dangerous woman .

There were many more things he should have asked, but that was the only question that came to his tongue in the moment.

Clearly, it was the right question, given the brilliance of the witch’s smile.

“Because I’ve been watching you a long time, Edmund,” she whispered, her breath bathing his face with each word spoken. “And I’ve seen that you’re just as ambitious as I am…and just as ruthless in achieving your goals.”

Edmund’s lips twisted again in response. So close to death already, he didn’t see the need to mince words with this woman. He told her plainly, “I take some issue with being compared to a witch, if we’re going to be honest with one another.”

“And yet I meant it as a compliment,” Mariana breathed.

Like grains of sand slipping through an hourglass, Edmund felt the moments of his life ticking away. Here she was, his death come for him at last.

And it was not his brother come to strike him down with his band of mercenaries, nor his mother finally slipping a bit of poison into his wine so she could claim the throne of Drakmor for herself.

It was a witch, wielding a sweet smile and a wicked blade, ready to pluck his soul straight from his chest.

For once, Edmund didn’t know what to do.

“Join me,” Mariana suddenly implored, all purrs and promise. “Our Lady Below’s power grows in the north. Now is the time to strike down the world and bring it under our heel. ”

“Your heel,” Edmund corrected. “No matter what you say now, we both know you simply mean to take me as another pawn the moment the opportunity presents itself.”

“And yet I’d rather have you for a partner, if we’re going to be honest with one another.”

There was his opening.

“Well, then…” Edmund carefully posed, “…there you have it. We are partners.” He flicked a glance down toward the blade still poised over his heart. “So there’s no more need for that, now is there?”

He put on his most charming smile when he looked back to the witch—all warm chocolate and dark promises.

But the woman did not immediately melt into his arms. Quite the opposite, really.

Her eyes but narrowed all the more. “Do you think me an idiot?” she hissed, but Edmund held his tongue. He knew there was no right answer to that particular question.

Blessedly, she didn’t wait for him to answer.

“Gift to me the woman you love most in all the world, and then I will believe what you say, Edmund Hargrave.”

“The woman I love the most?” he echoed. His eyebrows knit together at the notion. “I hardly have time for a lover. There is no woman I love.”

The witch’s laughter in the wake of his words was abrupt and utterly jarring. But a sense of growing unease crawled its way down into his belly when Mariana ceased her laughter just as abruptly to hiss to him instead, “Wrong answer . You may try again, though. ”

Edmund swallowed and glanced aside, unable to meet the witch’s unnatural gaze any longer. There was only one woman in his life. There was only one woman Mariana could possibly be referring to.

Mother.

The very thought of giving his mother of all people to this vile creature made him want to rip that dagger straight from her fingers and plunge it into her own heart. He wondered what that would do. What would happen to a witch if she was struck by her own blade?

He wasn’t in the mood to find out. Too risky.

Just as he wasn’t in the mood to make a gift of his mother to this witch. Of course he and the dowager queen had their differences. They had their squabbles.

But she was still his mother .

Edmund’s thoughts ricocheted off of one another as he hastily scoured his mind for a solution. Several possibilities he rejected outright before finally latching upon the one solution he thought might just work, if he played his cards right.

“Throw the crone in the dungeon and let her rot for all I care,” he finally decreed.

Tipping up his chin toward the witch hovering so close to him, he let his mouth linger dangerously close to hers. He could have very well kissed her in that moment, had he so desired.

He didn’t, though.

And though his pulse raced, and his heart hammered against his chest, threatening to burst free at any moment, Edmund did his best to relax against the wall behind him and drawl, “I’ve grown tired of her at any rate.”

Silence was all that greeted him for a time, but the Arathian princess clearly considered his proposal. Her eyes narrowed. That strange, golden gaze of hers searched his face.

He did his best to meet her eyes stare for stare, as unnerving as it all was, as he awaited her assessment of his latest offer.

“You are a notoriously fickle man,” she decided at last, eyeing him with what he could only interpret as equal parts curiosity and lingering mistrust.

But that curiosity of hers provided him with an opening yet again, and he drove the lazy warmth of his smile into the chink in her armor that opening provided.

“I am,” he agreed readily enough. His pulse still raced as he lingered like a man standing atop a precipice, in danger of toppling off and shattering himself against the rocks lurking in the dark ravine below at any moment. “But perhaps you will finally be the woman to change all that…dear wife.”