Forbidden (A New Adult Paranormal Romance) (2 page)

“And?” the Queen inquired politely.

Her cheeks flaming, Snow White turned heel. With her head held high, she padded out of the parlor, the Queen’s eyes burning a hole in her back. Snow White’s heart pounded with every step – thop, thop, thop – a lead ball being struck by a mallet into the depths of her shoes.

She passed Tom Cherry, who opened his mouth to say something, but she silenced him with a palm like an exorcist warding off a demon.

“Bah!” he called after her in an injured tone. “You were always rude and spoilt but now you’re getting worse!”

His truthful remark ringing in her ears, she fled to her bedchamber, her pulse drumming up such a beat that she forced herself to slow down. As always, after a frenetic run, she gasped in lungfuls of air. Bright green stars zigzagged across her eyes.

She burst into her bedroom at the top of the East Tower. The walls and bed were covered with layers of red beads mottled with tiny black spots.

“Code Seven,” she said. The layers dissipated, breaking apart into thousands of ladybugs. They spilled onto the floor to reveal an elaborate corkboard map of Europe on a wall. Green darts covered massive areas of it, Hungary and Austria included. At the bottom right corner was a symbol of the Bavarian crown.

Snow White grabbed several darts off her dresser and hurled them into the map. Thuck! One struck Bavaria. Thuck! Another struck the crown, dead center.

“Arggh!” Snow White cried and flung herself onto the bed. The ladybugs scattered before her bulk could quash them against the green and purple coverlet.

She clasped her knees to her chest and rocked herself slowly, the way she used to do as a child. She mumbled, “I’m such a disappointment.”

Then she buried her head between her knees. “I’m awful, awful! It’s no wonder nobody likes me!”

After a while, she poked her head out and said with more heat: “People are such a disappointment.”

Her eyes softened as she laid her upturned palm on the bedspread. Several ladybugs climbed onto it. “That’s why I far prefer your company,” she said.

Outside, the ball of sun sank into green and yellow foothills of the only home she’d ever known. The sun’s rays lighted up a large gold beetle on her bedside table.

“Scarab, little scarab,” Snow White murmured. She gently picked it up. It was the size of her palm. Its bright wings were beaten gold wafers realistically structured with veins, and it smelled of metal and forge embers. Its multifaceted eyes stared into Snow White’s.

“It was my real mother’s,” Snow White said to the curious ladybugs. Her heart swelled with unaccustomed emotion. She felt all soft and bruised inside, an apple fallen off a cart. “There’s a curious story attached to it. See this?”

She fingered the beetle’s little stinger, a short, sharp golden needle. “This stung her, and her blood fell onto the snow as she sat by the window which had an ebony wood frame. I don’t know whether to believe if this golden beetle was alive once.”

A trail of black ants climbed from the floor to her bedspread.

“Oh, hello,” she said, a little surprised. Ants weren’t usually as forthcoming as ladybugs. They tended to be absorbed in their tasks, pretty much like herself. “Do you have something to tell me?”

The ants moved as though her bed was heated. She noticed a large cluster of them on her floor – a spectacle that would have sent Hanna Cherry leaping to the top of a closet. Her gaze followed them to where they massed, almost dripping off, on her ebony-framed, body-length mirror. The ants were avidly trying to form an image on the glass. Since the surface was smooth, some had difficulty clinging on and fell off.

“Mirror,” Snow White remarked. “That’s what you’re trying to tell me, right? Something to do with a mirror.”

From the floor, ants climbed to the corkboard map. They circled the crown symbol.

“Crown mirror.” Snow White frowned. “You’re losing me. What’s a mirror got to do with – ?” She paused. “Oh. I wonder . . . I just wonder . . . ”

She sank back into her pillows. The ants and ladybugs scurried out of her way. Her eyes wore a faraway look.

“I wonder if I shall do a little sleuthing.”

#

One of the stars that hung in the deep blue bowl of Bavarian sky was a sun to a planet called Spora.

Its surface was rocky, pitted and harsh, but pockmarked with a dazzling array of golden buildings which resembled silos. One such silo housed a very important chamber called the Redwood Room. It hosted the most precious commodity in the planet: a cut slice of a massive redwood tree.

Aein lay on his belly in the tight crawlspace of the Redwood Room’s air vent. Trepidation roiled in his belly as he raised the irregular piece of pink
Rearndt
crystal, as rare as trees on his barren home planet. It immortalized images frozen in time – people, places, life and laughter, sorrow and contempt.

Contempt was what he aimed for today.

He intended to immortalize the four perfectly formed Sporadeans who sat around the Table. Their wings beat in a slow, almost lazy tempo, and their bodies were blood red and perfectly muscled. The segments on their abdomen glistened, and they waved three pairs of strong, elegantly serrated legs as they rolled around in mirth. If anyone from Earth were to look upon them, they would have resembled winged insects. They were at least a head taller than a grown man.

Three of the four had no right to be there.

“Come on now,” Aein murmured softly, “nicely does it. Don’t move, you critters.”

One for the road, he thought in satisfaction as he tapped the crystal’s side. The crystal misted like the pupil of an eye clouding over, and turned ruby red. An image imprinted forever.

Desecration of the Redwood Table had its price: public flogging. It was on that very dare that these Sporadeans, Aein believed, casually placed their lowermost limbs on the Table, a major insult to everything it represented. The crystal was evidence, but Aein did not intend to use it that way.

Dimynedon, his much hated cousin, was among the four.

Aein shifted from his prone position, taking care not to make a sound. If they knew he was up here, making images . . .

Dimynedon was a magnificent creature, with a wingspan far larger than Aein was long. Green, gold and red veins ran shimmering through his translucent wings. It was so unfair. Aein gripped the crystal so tightly that it bit into his flesh.

“And they’re sending,” Dimynedon said to his companions, “a cripple to the Blue Planet. A cripple, would you believe?”

His companions laughed, their wings shaking back and forth. Aein’s mandibles clenched. His own single wing lay curled behind his back, drab and grey in contrast, malformed since the day he was born.

“Just because he’s a Prince of the Blood.” The sneer was unmistakable in Dimynedon’s voice.

“He can’t even fly,” one of the companions agreed.

“He’s a Crawler,” said another. “Once a Crawler, always a Crawler.”

Every inch of Aein’s body fought to claw out of the vent and rip into these vermin. Crawler was the basest insult one could give a Sporadean, who were aerial beings for as long as there had been science. Keep calm, he told himself, trying to slow down his thundering heart. They’re jealous because they’re not one of the chosen Five.

“Hey,” Dimynedon said, “did you hear something?”

Aein held his breath. It wasn’t just about sound. Dimynedon had uncanny scent perception, the best among all the Sporadeans. Dimynedon was the best in everything – the aerial fighting arts, the races, the sky acrobatics – all which Aein could only watch longingly from the sidelines.

“I daresay,” Dimynedon said, confirming Aein’s worst fears, “that we have an eavesdropper, and there’s only one place his stench is coming from.”

Aein tried to crawl backwards but the Sporadeans in the chamber were far more agile. They leaped up and tore off the gold mesh that covered the vent. He flailed as they grabbed hold of his upper limbs. Aein tried to hook the duct walls with his lowermost feet, but Dimynedon wrapped a limb around his neck and pulled him out as one would extract a thorn. Aein struggled in their grasp, kicking, but they were four and he was a wingless cripple. The crystal scuttled to the floor.

“Oh look,” Dimynedon said, picking up the crystal. “He was planning on tattling.”

“You have no right to bring your goons to the Redwood Table,” Aein said hotly.

Dimynedon leaned close to his face. Aein saw himself magnified a dozen times over in his cousin’s multifaceted eyes.

“I’m a Knight of the Table,” his cousin said with an unmistakable edge, “something you never will be. How does it feel to be the only one in a long line of royals who didn’t make it to the Table?”

“If I had your wings, I would be a Knight,” Aein shot back.

Aein braced himself for pain as they threw him sprawling onto the Table. His carapace was as hard as theirs, but even he could feel his muscles juddering beneath it. Three of his captors pinned him down while Dimynedon sprang up with one beat of his majestic wings to hover above him.

“The last time we caught you like the Crawler you are,” his cousin said, “we hung you from the Emerald Spire. Took them a whole day to find you.”

Aein strained all his limbs, and it took his captors every effort to hold him down. “You were going to rape that poor Karsissian slave.”

“It was none of your business.” With a graceful movement that belied its strength, Dimynedon struck Aein’s face. “If you weren’t a Prince of the Blood and my aunt’s youngest son, I would have killed you.”

“I dare you to kill me now.” Aein tasted blood in his mouth.

“Foolhardy, aren’t you, Crawler? But you don’t want to die. You want to scurry on your six legs to that Blue Planet of yours, the world of the creepy crawlies.” Dimynedon turned to his companions. “The dominant creatures there walk upright on two legs, can you believe? It will suit our friend Aein here to debase himself. He’s had plenty of practice all his life.”

“Where I’m going,” Aein said evenly, “has nothing to do with flight. Duty awaits those who have been
born
unto the privilege.”

It was Dimynedon’s turn to flinch. Dimynedon was not First Family and no amount of furious wing beats would ever make him so. As envious as Aein was of Dimynedon, his handsome cousin was more envious of him, especially on the eve of this journey.

If he survived today.

Gritting his mandibles, Dimynedon struck Aein. Again. And again. Aein tuned himself out. I can survive this, he thought, letting the pain flow through him into the redwood. When that didn’t work, he tried to think of everything else but this.

The waves of dizziness that washed over him were so profound that he only half-heard the hiss at the door: “The Supreme Commander’s coming! Quickly, we have to go!”

His fleshy manacles vanished so suddenly that he barely noticed them. Aein opened his eyes. He was alone, cut up and bleeding on the Redwood Table. The wood scent filled his sensory spores with a sickly sweet smell.

Thulrika. Not good. She was Supreme Commander of the Hive armies. He would be forced to explain, and he was so phenomenally
bad
at explaining.

The door swung open. He glimpsed the airiness of the Hive walls outside.

“What is the meaning of this?” he heard Thulrika’s thundering voice. “What are you doing here?”

Aein shook his head to clear his swimming brain. He crawled onto his belly, his natural position. The Supreme Commander’s wingspan was larger than everyone else’s. She hovered above the floor, imposing in her height.

“It’s nothing,” Aein muttered, “I was just – ”

Again, he was tongue-tied. Lying was something as difficult for him as nibbling the far end, pointy tip of his abdomen.

“Whatever it is, I’m not interested, because we have far more important things to discuss.” Right to the point, as always, without niceties. Thulrika was a severe-looking female. Unwed. More butch than the whole Sporadean army put together. “I’m not sure you’re up to the journey tomorrow,” she said.

“It doesn’t matter if I’m beat up,” Aein argued, “I’ll be metamorphosing in the new carapace anyway, and – ”

“Yes. Let’s talk about the world you’re going to. The Blue Planet.” She paused for effect. (Though Aein had never known Thulrika to pause for anything but effect.) “Rich with trees, vegetation, spices, wood, everything we need.”

A moment passed between them. Aein nodded.

“It doesn’t matter what the Laws passed down from Fytenach the Fair say, and it doesn’t matter what the Council says,” Thulrika went on. “You have to make a choice for the greater good. We
need
this world, this place the natives call
Earth
, and every vote . . . your vote . . . counts.”

Again, his conscience prickled. The subtle
request
from the Supreme Commander, the most important personage in Spora after his mother – to go against the sacred laws he had pledged to uphold.
To sacrifice his honor and credibility.