Chaos (10 page)

Chapter 18

T
he Pirate Lord was nice enough to let me choose my weapon. I would have to thank him for the boon before I carved his heart out. He’d unknowingly made a wager that he did not have a hope in hell of winning. At the end of the day no matter how good he thought he was, he was human and I was fae. My strength, speed, and reflexes easily outmatched his.

His men formed a semi-circle around us on the top deck of the ship. Zander stood sandwiched between two of them with his hands bound behind his back. Apparently the Pirate Lord saw him as more of a threat than me.

I balanced my weight evenly between my feet and sank back on my heels into a defensive stance. I held the identical short blades with serrated edges I selected at the ready.

The Pirate Lord bowed mockingly to me before smirking, “After you, My Lady.”

“Fine, have it your way,” I shrugged.

I launched myself at him not bothering to use glamour to conceal the speed with which I moved. He had well and truly pissed me off and I wanted him and all of his men to know the grave error they’d made in kidnapping us. We did not have time for the shit.

I struck out in one quick and efficient motion that none of the eyes around me were able to track. I stepped away from the Pirate Lord and stared into eyes wide with shock. A split second later his knees buckled from the agonizing pain he felt and his body crumpled to the ground. To his credit he tried to stand again but midway through the attempt he ended up back on his knees.

“I bet you never thought you would kneel before a Lady,” I mimicked his tone.

He clutched at his torso, trying in vain to hold the flesh together and keep his insides from spilling forth.

“You tricked me,” he rasped. “What are you?”

“A
girl
you never should have messed with,” I tsked down at him. “You offered to let me live by way of excruciating pain so I suppose I will return the favor. I purposely missed nicking any major organs. You might want to get that put back in and yourself stitched up though,” I said glancing down at a portion of his intestines peeking through the deep horizontal gash I inflicted. “You know before your near disembowelment becomes fatal.”

Chapter 19

T
he Pirate Lord held to his word. Zander and I were escorted immediately off the ship and provided a small lifeboat to leave in. I did not relax until we were far away from the damned pirates and their schemes of abduction.

“You were curiously quiet for most of my exchange with the Pirate Lord,” I eyed him suspiciously as I rowed from one end of the boat while he did the same from the other. We sat facing one another.

“I trust you,” he said in earnest. “You appeared to have things under control so I let you work your magic.”

I stared at him contemplating the weight of his words.

“Really you trust me?” I asked. “After everything-- all of my deceit and the many reasons I have given you not to?”

He answered without needing to think about his response.

“Yes, I do. You had your reasons and I understand them. I wouldn’t have gone about things the same way if our positions were reversed, but I don’t fault you for your actions. You acted with good intentions and for the good of an entire realm.”

His acknowledgement lifted a weight from my chest that I did not even realize bore down on it until I began breathing a little easier.

---

We made it to Decretum by daybreak. The humble kingdom was nothing like Anthame, whose lands sprawled across hundreds of miles and were comprised of all different manners of bustling, thriving cities. Its only city was also its namesake. It consisted of a modest town by the sea and an equally modest palace that sat on top of a hill not too far away from its shores. The rest of the territory claimed by the Queen of Decretum consisted of largely uninhabited expanses of land peppered with antiquated little villages here and there.

  Our plan was to talk to Decretum’s townspeople and hope we came by a myth or a legend that would point us in the general vicinity of where we should start looking for the supposed sorcerer. From Kade and the con man’s accounts, it did not seem it would be too hard to get Decretum’s people to talk.

We did not get very far. Men who looked to be members of the Queen’s Guard from their groomed appearances and matching uniforms intercepted us outside of a boarding house we were about to enter.

One of them rode slightly in front of and a part from the others. His offset position was one thing that gave him away as the Guard Captain. The other was the color of his uniform. Whereas the rest of the men on their horses behind him wore silver with midnight blue embellishments, the color scheme he wore was inverted—midnight blue with swaths of silver. For a trained soldier, he was strikingly handsome with boyish features and unhardened edges. Yet, when I looked into his ice blue stare I knew I was looking into the eyes of a born warrior. They reflected an unyielding determination to protect that which it was his duty to at all costs or to forfeit his life trying.

Our greeting party came to a halt and its leader tipped his head toward Zander in a slight nod of deference. Zander may not be his Queen but he was still royalty and would be afforded the respect the title was due in any kingdom.

“Queen Ainsley sends her welcome and requests an audience.”

He phrased his statement as a polite request but all parties present knew it was not.

If we refused, the Queen would take it as an affront, and we had bigger problems to deal with than the fallout it might cause.

“Of course,” Zander answered as poised and regally as ever.

Irritation flashed across his face that I curiously wondered at the cause of. I soon found out.

---

“Prince Edwin how delightful it is that you are visiting Decretum. I admit I was a bit put out when you did not immediately make your way to the palace upon arriving, but gossip travels fast I suppose. Of course you wouldn’t come to Decretum and not say hello. We were once almost betrothed,” Queen Ainsley spoke only to Zander, completely ignoring me as if my presence mattered not.

It made me want to knock her perfectly pouty lips off her face. As did the too familiar way in which she brushed her hand against his arm.

“I meant no affront,” Zander said diplomatically. “My betrothed and I are on a time-sensitive quest of sorts for something rumored to reside in your lands. Of course, I would have stopped by the palace to say hello before our departure.”

“Of course you would have.”

The Queen’s self-absorbedness allowed her to easily believe what was so clearly a lie of diplomacy.

“Well now that you are here, I will not allow you to leave before dining with me. It will be just like old times.”

Again I did not miss the familiarity in her words or the whimsical manner, like a girl gazing dreamy-eyed at her first crush, in which she looked at Zander.

“We cannot,” I declined for him, sounding more testily than I intended to. Okay, maybe I admittedly sounded exactly as testily as I intended to.

The Queen finally deemed me worthy of acknowledging.

“I believe I asked Prince Edwin, not…who are you again?” Her eyes narrowed at me in catty dismissal.

I rolled my eyes. It was like dealing with Iliana all over again.
Did the universe hate me so much?
Was this some cosmic joke it kept playing on me? Did it enjoy placing shallow pretentious bitches in my path and watching me have to restrain myself from strangling them?

I took a calming breath before I did something I would later regret.

“I’m not Zander’s
almost betrothed
.”

I used her words to spite her. It was childish and petulant and I couldn’t care less.

“I
am
his betrothed. I’m surprised you haven’t already heard-- you know with gossip traveling fast and all.”

Her eyes sparked with jealousy, but she held her queenly composure. Too bad she couldn’t hold her tongue. Or choke on it.

“Tell me about this object in Decretum you are seeking. I am curious to know what you think is so valuable in my lands?” The Bitch Queen abruptly changed the subject.

Zander looked at me in silent question of what and how much of it we should divulge.

“We might as well tell her what we are in search of.  If she knows something it may save us some time.”

“We heard that some of the people of Decretum whisper of a legend of a possible sorcerer dwelling in the uninhabited mountains. We seek to discern if there is any truth in it.”

I expected the Queen to look at us in derision or maybe even throw back her head and laugh out right, mocking us for setting out on a wild goose chase that was nothing more than a story parents told their children to warn them of the dangers of wandering into that which is unknown. Instead, her face closed off just before a flicker of suspicion passed over it.

“Why? What have you heard about the mountains of Decretum?”

“Very little. It is not the mountains we are concerned with. We wish to know if there is any truth to the legend of their inhabitant,” Zander told her in a mollifying tone.

He must have gotten the same impression from her as I did.

Queen Ainsley eyed him cautiously, weighing her next words. I could practically see the wheels of calculation turning in her mind. Perhaps she was not as completely vapid as she came across.

“I believe the legend you speak of to be true, though I have no definitive evidence,” she finally spoke. “I have sent men to a particular region of the mountains for reasons that are the concern of Decretum and Decretum alone, but I will say that most I send fail to return. I do not believe there to be an ordinary explanation that exists for the phenomenon.”

Zander hit her with a high-wattage smile, attempting to charm the information out of her that she so clearly evaded telling us.

“Can you give us the location of the region of which you speak?”

She momentarily went starry-eyed again, but then glanced at me and shook off its effects in a huff. 

“No I cannot,” she said with a pout. “But I can have my Guard Captain accompany you there. Decretum is nothing if not hospitable.”

I saw through her
hospitality
for what it really was. A means not to refuse Zander’s request outright and to also keep a close watch on us and our interest in the mountain. I did not know what her interest was, but her knee-jerk reaction to our mention of it made it clear she did not want us finding out. Pure curiosity made me wonder at it but I mentally shrugged it off. I already had one too many unresolved questions crowding my mind.

Chapter 20

“
S
o you and her were
almost
engaged huh?” I asked Zander as we rode toward the steel gray mountains that loomed in front of us.

We rode in companionable silence during the first part of our journey, even with the terse Guard Captain slightly ahead of us leading the way. I wanted to ask the question the minute we left Ainsley’s palace, but I held off not wanting to seem like I was too bothered by the knowledge.  I kept my face impassive and nonchalant as I waited for him to respond.

The amused twitch of his lips told me my faked indifference wasn’t fooling him.

“She likes to over exaggerate.  Our fathers briefly considered a possible union between us before the King of Decretum passed. The kingdom has always longed for Anthame’s considerable military strength and a share of its lucrative exports while my father seems to think there is a vast fortune of gold hidden within Decretum’s mountains.  Anthame’s mountains are where we mine our own precious metals from and Decretum’s have never been explored. My mother wouldn’t hear of it. You know as well as I do how she is about tradition. The bride for the Heir of the House of Roth is
always
selected by the Competition. Besides, Ainsley may have a royal title, but it only bequeathed her sovereignty over lands my mother considers insignificant to put it nicely. Tradition aside, she never would have approved of Ainsley as a suitable pairing for me. My father is putty in my mother’s hands. The Queen of Anthame is the monarch who really holds the final word.”

“Oh,” I said lamely still pretending that I didn’t care if he had been betrothed before me or not. “If a future Queen wasn’t enough for your mother, and your father failed to convince her, how in all hell did you get her to agree to me?”

I was purposely sort of changing the subject but I was also curious.

He grinned at me conspiratorially. “I’m the Crown Prince remember. I have ways of getting what I want. Especially when it is something that I desire so fiercely, the very thought of her not being a part of my world makes it too dull and agonizing to continue living in. “

“I bet you say that to all the girls,” I teased him.

All playfulness drained from his eyes. They bore into me intently.

“No just you. Always and forever and only you.”

There were those words again.
Always. Forever.

They were the same one the boy that resembled Zander spoke in my visions to the girl that resembled me. When he spoke them to her, she always had the nagging sense that they were not entirely true. They were well-intentioned and even yearned for, but not the truth. When Zander spoke them to me, in that moment there was no doubt in my mind that they were. The finality and sureness of them settled in my heart like a soothing balm. It warmed me from the inside out and put me at peace about one worry I had been secretly harboring since the visions began. Zander would not leave me like he left her.

Not intentionally anyway
, a sinister voice attempted to invade on my bliss.
He could be ripped from you.

The vision of Zander lying dead with the hole torn into his chest on the steps of the palace in Faerie began to creep into the edges of my consciousness. I forcefully shoved it away. Whatever that particular part of the visions meant, we would face it head-on and find a way to tell fate she could shove her pre-determination back up her ass. I would not lose him and he would not lose me. Unlike the couple in the visions, always and forever is what we would have.