Page 68 of Of Blood and Banes (The Arterian #2)

HER

I ’m in The White.

It’s hard to mistake, with the blinding light surrounding me and lack of sensation.

A black figure emerges from the mist. Her long, lavender-colored dress drags through the fog, sending it scurrying into various directions.

But rather than having a rip as it did back in the coffin, the fabric is one. Free of stains.

Queen Elara.

The air about her is palpably regal. She holds out an open hand to me, a faint white circle around her ring finger where there should be one.

I flick my eyes back and forth between her piercing blue eyes and hand.

Marge warned me not to touch anyone in The White. But she also prompted me to follow my intuition.

I take a step forward and reach out, and as soon as my hand touches hers, her eyes flash into an endless expanse of white before my vision is sucked into a slate of black.

I race to the bathroom, my head swimming at a nauseating speed.

Barely passing the gold-trimmed door frame into the room, I stumble, my knees colliding with the polished marble floors.

My stomach tightens into a painful coil, a live fire burning in my throat until I heave vomit onto the ground, unable to quite make it to the sink.

My arms shake beneath me as I push myself up off the floor, then double back over at the putrid stench of my bile. I manage to drag myself to the sink and splash cold water over my face as I look up into the mirror.

My skin is as white as porcelain, my blue eyes dull and sunken into my skull, leaving behind deep bruised grooves above my high cheekbones. Every part of me is withering away, bit by bit. I’m starting to not look like myself…and the only thing that scares me more is other people noticing.

“Queen Elara?” Emerose, my lead maid, calls out from the bedroom.

I quickly brush my sweat-drenched blonde hair back from my face and suck in a steadying breath before turning away from the sink.

Emerose knocks at the door moments before she sweeps in, her dark eyes widening in shock and bouncing between the vomit and me. She rushes over, her small hands bracing me. “Oh, my Queen! Are you alright? You look?—”

“I’m fine,” I say with a small smile.

This is unfortunate if I’m trying to keep my illness a secret.

I can’t afford anyone else knowing I’m indisposed.

It will only put a bigger target on my back, considering we’re already starting to see a rebellion bloom after my brother, Aaric, married the Helmbrook southerner.

Had he simply stuck to our original plan and been led by honor instead of love, we wouldn’t be in such a predicament.

I see the hesitation in everyone’s faces.

Even as I pass them in the halls or share meals with them.

They think I made a mistake. Think I’m too weak of a woman to command her own brother to fulfill his political duty.

And my husband? Our relationship had already been one of tight conversations and brief meetings.

But after my leniency with my brother, he’s shut me out completely.

But I just couldn’t. I couldn’t force my brother into such a thing. Especially not when I saw the light on his face when he spoke of the woman he loves, the desperate adoration in his voice. The things I longed for from my own husband, and yet knew I would never get.

Aaric had never bonded a dragon, and therefore forfeited the throne.

I spent so long trying to regain his love and trust, and when I was faced with the decision of shackling him to a loveless, political marriage or a lifetime with a woman who held his heart in her hands?

I felt it was the best gift I could ever give him.

I didn’t need anything further to come between the two of us.

And I only wanted to repair what was once whole.

“But…my Queen.” Emerose motions toward the vomit.

I turn a stern look onto Emerose. “I am perfectly fine. It must have been the scones. Discard the rest of them.”

She throws me a confused, hesitant look when I demand she leave, saying I’ll clean up after myself.

Lucky for me, being in such a grand position of power doesn’t allow her to argue.

Afterward, I fix my hair in front of the bedroom vanity and stare myself down in the mirror as I brush the wrinkles in my dress down my body.

I pull a fierce mask of cold contempt over my features. They’ll never know of my sickness.

They’ll never use it against me.

Black swarms over the mirror until my entire vision is filled with it. When I blink, my eyes open to a new scene.

I sweep all the pages off the ornate wooden desk with an enraged growl, anger heating my face to a blistering level. The pages glide and flutter to the floor, and I knot a fist in the hair at my temple.

The family of Cordelia are going to pull their dragonblade trade from us, as we rescinded their daughter’s betrothal to my brother.

While I hadn’t had much use for it, I can’t ignore how many they’ve produced.

And if we don’t have it, who will? The threat of rebellion has been simmering beneath the surface for years, and each week that passes flirts with the possibility we may see a civil war.

And now the realm’s biggest producer of dragonblade is cutting their trade relationship with us?

“Elara?” a voice calls.

I look up, my hand still clenched around one crumpled letter I couldn’t quite let go.

Aaric stands in the doorframe, uncertain whether he should enter, his gloved fingers resting against the door. His sandy blonde hair sweeps back from his face in waves, accentuating his sharp, clean-shaven jaw. Those golden eyes regard me with a mix of respect and caution.

“Aaric, thank you for coming. Please, take a seat.” I motion down to the chair opposite of me at my desk.

He dips his head, eyes down as he complies. His eyebrow tips up his forehead as he notices the papers strewn across the floor before sitting back in the chair and crossing his arms over his chest.

He already knows where this is going to go.

“The Baydens are going to revoke their dragonblades,” I state.

He nods slowly, eyes scanning my office and looking anywhere but at me. “What use do you have for it, anyhow?”

“It’s not that I have use for it, but a rebellion is only a breath away.”

He snaps his attention to me. “There have been whispers of a rebellion long before you and I were born. Father told us of it many times.” He pushes up out of the chair and stalks over to a painting framed in gold, regarding it with faux interest.

“Perhaps…but times are different now, Aaric. I can feel it. Something is coming, something is changing…”

He turns back to me, eyes a hard set of yellow. “Why have you brought me here, Elara?”

“Because you might be able to fix this…” I pause, eyes searching his.

He shakes his head, jaw clenched in determination. “No. No, I can’t. I’m a perfectly happy, married man, Elara. And I refuse to go back on my vows to the woman I love.”

I sigh, knowing that’s what he would say but having to exhaust the option all the same. “This is just as difficult for me as it is for you. But I command you?—”

Anger flares in his features, his lips peeling up into a scowl. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you do that again. This is not about you?—”

“You’re right. This is about more than me, because it’s about our entire realm?—”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass, Elara! I love her! What do you not understand? Just because you’ll never experience what it’s like?—”

A new wave of rage washes over me, and I throw the crumpled paper back onto the desk before I push out of my chair and stalk forward, stopping a few inches from him. “How dare you.”

He holds my stare, not backing down. “You know it’s true.”

“You’ve only known this woman for months?—”

His nostrils flare as he inhales deeply. “That’s where you’re wrong. You have always been so focused on yourself, this throne, and your dragon that you have never stopped to pay attention to me .”

“Are you so simple-minded you need my attention ? Brother, look around.” I motion to the room with both hands, though it does little to convey all that weighs on my shoulders. “I am the queen. I have a plethora of responsibilities all warring for my attention!”

“You are an aunt, Elara!” he roars.

I flinch, my breath caught in my throat, before I narrow my eyes. “You are not serious.”

He continues, “She was born last year. The reason I was so desperate to go on the trip to Brookvale year after year was because the ‘friend’ I wanted to visit there was Avice . My wife . I have loved her since the second I laid eyes on her. Five fucking years ago.”

My hand covers my mouth, and I stumble backward until I bump into the desk. Five years…five years he’s been courting this woman? All this time I only thought he went to get drunk with a close friend of his. Maybe visit some brothels. “And why couldn’t you have told me this years ago, then?”

“Because I knew you wouldn’t bless our marriage.”

“You have such little mind for me, brother,” I growl. “Even if it puts me in the most precarious political situation, I still blessed your marriage.”

“And now you’re trying to break it.”

The silence between us is filled with our heavy breathing as we stare each other down. I long for the simpler times, before politics tore us apart.

My heartbeat slows, and I whisper, “The…the girl. Where is she now?”

“Since you originally blessed our marriage, her and Avice moved here, just outside of the palace.” His anger flickers, his jaw relaxing slightly. “You…you can meet her. If you’d like. She’s been asking to meet you, but I was waiting for the right moment.”

I shake my head, folding my face down into a hand and rubbing my temples, focusing on the black behind my eyelids.

This changes everything.