The Passionate Queen (Dark Queens Book 2) (13 page)

Crossing her arms in front of her, she dipped her head, speaking in the gentle cadence of hers. “They left when the dragon appeared, my queen. Scattered to the four corners of the wind.”

Sniffing, feeling absolutely dead inside and irritated by the fact that I wanted to see Ragoth again, if only to slap him one more time for making me appear weak before my people, I nodded. “Find the groundskeepers. Tell them to bury the king with due haste. Night falls soon, and I wish to be far from these haunts when it does.”

Nodding, she twirled on her heel and began barking orders to my valets.

“Well, you heard the queen, make haste!”

The few remaining attendants scattered to do my bidding, but Dru remained behind. Without the eyes of court upon us, I settled into the comfortable familiarity with her we shared when behind closed doors.

“Zelena,” Dru breathed, wrapping me up in a tight hug. “What in the devil was Ragoth doing here?”

Almost crumpling into her arms, I shook my head, feeling a suspicious heat creeping up behind the corners of my eyelids. “I don’t know, that bastard. I don’t know why he came. Or what he wants. Other than to call me a whore.”

She gasped, pulling away to stare deeply into my eyes. “He didn’t!”

I couldn’t help but give a pitiful smile at her fury blazing scarlet across her cheeks.

“The bastard, I’ll take my blade to him should he dare to—”

Tsk-ing, I patted her cheek and stepped away, attempting to gather myself. “Do not worry your pretty little head about him. I doubt we should ever see him again.”

In an hour of weakness, a year ago, I’d confessed my love for the dragonborne to her. I’d been in a low place that night and drinking far too heavily. It’d been the very night I’d been forced to witness the execution of the farmer I’d declared a thief.

The shame of my decision to let the people dictate my actions had led me toward the bottle, and after hours of heavy drinking, Ragoth’s ghost had come forcefully to the fore and Druscella had learned all there’d been to learn about my past obsession with
my
dragon boy.

To her credit, she’d kept my confidence and ever since I’d considered her the only person in the world I could truly trust.

Holding up a finger, Dru rushed to my carriage, grabbed a large blanket and returned in moments, smoothing it down onto the ground. “Sit”—she pointed—“and let’s talk.”

I sighed. I knew what she was going to say. Ever since Charles had come down with his mysterious illness, we’d been skating around this issue.

“Dru,” I said sharply, with a warning tone in my voice.

But she was like a rabid little bunny, all sweetness and smiles on the outside, while inside she was the very devil incarnate. Casting me a haughty glare, she tapped her dainty slippered foot and said, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way, but you’re not getting out of this discussion again. You know we need to do this, so let us just get on with it already.”

Growling, wanting to bite her head off for being such a forceful shrew right now, I plunked myself down onto the blanket. “I loathe you, woman.”

She scoffed. “You might. But you know I’m right. And this is as fine a chance to talk as any. There is none about, a rarity for us.”

Rolling my eyes, I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Well.”

Sitting beside me, she tossed up her hands. “Well, is right. What are you going to do, Zelena? Your powers grow weaker every day, and now that Charles has died, you’ll grow far weaker still. If you’d been at full strength no matter what Ragoth had done, he’d not have been able to snatch you up against your will. We must—”

I hissed. “I’ve only just come out of a marriage. One I loathed with every fiber of my being. Let me at least enjoy my time without the hindrance of a man behind me, even if only for a month.”

“But you don’t have a month,” she pressed on aggressively. “You know this as well as I do, and once the people discover your weakness, what do you think they’ll do?” She nibbled on her bottom lip, and her gray eyes suddenly shone with anxiety.

I knew what she was thinking, and what she wouldn’t say. And the fact was, I felt it too. That fear, the knowledge that perhaps Charles’s and my heavy hand upon the people had made us less than likeable, was almost a certainty of fact.

I’d been young and inexperienced, trained by a woman who was as evil as the day was long to despise and hate others, but that was hardly justification enough for the way I’d handled matters. As I’d matured I’d begun to slowly accept the fact that ugliness only beget more ugliness—that my people weren’t loyal to me because they loved and respected me, but because they feared my reprisals. That lesson had finally struck home with the death of Alerid.

That truth was unsettling and frankly terrifying to me. I was a morphling with no power to draw from anymore. Charles was dead, which meant the power in his ring was also dead to me.

In order for me to regain my full powers, there’d need to be another king. But the thought of allowing another man to rule beside me, to possibly even share my bed, let alone my body, made me want to wretch.

I’d handled relations among my people so poorly, but I didn’t know how to make any of this better. I didn’t even know where to start.

Dru grabbed the hand I had draped across my lap and squeezed gently. “Zelena, I am loyal to you, and I will always remain loyal to you. But if I may speak frankly?”

I snorted. “When haven’t you spoken frankly?”

She stuck out her tongue at me, but then the laughter in her eyes dimmed. “I see you in a way no one else does. The real you. The person behind the crown. The caring, sometimes unsure monarch, and while it is a privilege and an honor to know you thus, I must admit that I too am fearful for my own safety. My queen, I know you’ve been wanting to change how you deal with your subjects for many months now, but I fear that without the power of the stone behind you—”

“The people will sniff out my weakness and overthrow me. Yes, Dru, I know.” That same fate had happened to many of the Heart’s clan.

She thinned her lips.

And I knew her thoughts without her even speaking them. I would never get to be a queen unchallenged, never get to change the course of how I ruled my subjects on my own. Maybe if I’d been compassionate and caring, maybe if I’d been more quick to listen and less hasty to make snap judgments, I’d not be in this situation now, but I couldn’t roll back the hands of time.

I couldn’t undo the damage I’d done, the discord and distrust I’d created. I could scream from the tops of the mountains that I aimed to make this a new wonderland, that I was no longer the queen I’d been just a few months ago, that now I’d seen the error of my ways. But words were simply words. They meant nothing without the action behind them to back them up.

Staring at the nature surrounding us, I finally saw the wild beauty of wonderland. Finally understood what it was I stood to lose if anyone discovered my weakness.

We sat in a graveyard full of rolling curls of fog, with crooked and antiquated headstones poking up from the ground like withered fingers. Surrounded on all sides by stomping willow trees that would smash you if you walked too close to them. I heard the ghostly cries of wailing birds that sang the song of the dead each and every night.

The skies were aglow with fairy light, and leaves the colors of spun sugar waved down at me from gnarled and twisted tree branches.

It was all such lunacy and madness, but there was beauty in it too. A comforting presence I’d taken for granted for far too long. And only now that I stood to lose all of it, did I finally understand just what I had.

Dru scooted into my side and draped an arm across my shoulder. “All is not lost yet, Zelena. We can still fix this.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. “But what if I shouldn’t lead anymore? Have you considered that? Perhaps I am the wrong woman for this job. Perhaps it is time for me to step away from—”

“No.” She said it with such vehemence and passion that I looked up at her. “I refuse to accept that. Because I see the difference in you, I see the woman you’ve slowly become. You love this land, as I do, as all the landians do. I believe in my heart that you’ve never been impressed by power or wealth, and that is exactly what we need. Someone with a firm,
yet loving
, handle on her people. That is you, Zelena. You only need a chance to show the people that.”

Worrying my bottom lip between my teeth, I inhaled deeply. “I’ve made such a mess of things.”

“The great thing about messes”—she grinned—“is that you can always clean them up.”

With stomach rolling, and my heart trapped like a struggling, helpless bird inside my throat, I whispered words that felt like death to me, “Prepare the banners then, Dru.”

And getting up, I wandered off deep into the graveyard, wishing a shade would grab me up now and drag me down to the fiery depths of Tartarus with it.

Ironically, the ghosts left me be this eve.

Ragoth

I
reached for a strand of Aphrodite’s golden curls that just so happened to be nestled against the curve of her delicious looking breast, ready to whisper words of my undying devotion to the goddess of love, when she smacked my hand away and glared at me. Causing the glittering pink specks in her eyes to glimmer frostily.

“Stop that, dragonborne, you shame yourself.”

I snapped my fangs at her. I’d come to a bar to drown my sorrows in dragon brew. I hadn’t gone whoring, hadn’t gone and razed a town (though every inch of me had screamed for a release to this horrid violence I felt curling through my bones). No, instead I’d played nice and come here to drink, get drunk, and hate the very idea of Zelena Hermosa.

Problem was, after seven drinks I was still far from hating her, and now Aphrodite somehow found me and began wagging a finger in my direction.

“What is it you want then, woman?” I barked at her.

Yes, probably not wise to anger a goddess. But I was a dragonborne with far too much drink in his gullet to think sensibly at the moment.

Blessedly, the bar was a tiny hovel with room enough only for ten to sit comfortably inside its stone façade. If it’d been bursting with drunkards war likely would have broken out when the goddess undid her silver-dusted cloak, draping it gently across her arm and revealing herself to be completely bare save for strategically placed swaths of diamond-dusted nude-colored fabric across her nipples, crotch, and bum.

I lifted a brow, taking my time to look my fill.

She stomped her foot. “Look me in the eye, you filthy miscreant and tell me why you are here and not back in wonderland.”

I frowned. Why was she bringing up wonderland? Aphrodite worked on Olympus and Earth, not Kingdom. “Why do you care?” I growled, knocking back the rest of the dragon brew and then smashing my empty tankard onto the bar to let the keep know I was in need of another.

The goblinish fellow (truly, he was a goblin. He had green skin with reptilian scales gleaming iridescently around his throat and jaw, black beady eyes and coarse inky-colored hair that ran in a razor-sharp line from the crown of his head down his back to the base of his spine) sauntered over, gave me a snarl of disgust that showed off his two front gold-colored teeth, before quickly refilling my now chipped tankard with the bloodred brew.

Tapping a long, black-clawed finger on the bar top, he said in a sibilant hiss, “Ten drachmas,
sssnake
.”

I briefly considered severing his spinal chord for the insult. He knew I was no snake, but I found the idea of bloodying my hands at the moment less than appealing.

I did however let my dragon flame burn through my eyes for just a moment, long enough to blind him. Though not permanently.

“Call me snake again, and I’ll eat you, meal worm.”

Then fishing into my coin purse, I tossed much more than ten drachmas at him. I planned to drink here for several hours tonight, possibly even several days. I hadn’t quite decided yet—

“Grr!” Aphrodite growled, then latching her pretty little hands into my vest, yanked me up off my seat, lifting me above her head.

“You’re stronger than I’d suspected.” I grinned, fairly certain I was far more drunk than I’d first imagined myself to be.

Her pretty blue eyes sparkling with bands of pink, and her long blond hair, those luscious lips, and her heart-pounding beauty should have made it impossible for me to focus on anything else. Except she was shaking me back and forth like a rag doll.

“Stay married to Hephy for a couple millennia, and believe me, you’ll develop muscles in places you never thought were possible.” She smirked, but it wasn’t a sexy smirk. It was an angry smirk.

I snorted. She was still impossibly cute, even if she was deceptively strong.

“Are you mocking me, dragonborne?”

There was a note to her voice that should have made me not say what I did next, but I was far too drunk to think things through clearly.

“You know, you suddenly remind me of a yapping chihuahua. So cute, but far too—”

I did not get to finish that thought.

I was suddenly tossed to the cold stone floor, and her bare foot had somehow lodged itself against my trachea so that all I could do was wheeze. The fire pouch in my throat felt like it would suddenly burst into my lungs. And that flash of pain was as good as getting an ice-cold bucket of water flung into my face. Instant sobriety consumed me.

“Dite,” I gasped, “can’t breathe.” I clutched at her delicate ankle.

She really was so dainty to be so mighty. But this time, I kept that thought very much to myself.

Her dazzling features were full of fire and fury. Bending over me, she snarled, “I don’t even know what that chit sees in you. And were it not for the fact that your people guard my father’s orchards, I’d not even bother with you, pissant!”

Hmm. I’d never been on the receiving end of a goddess rage. I found I wasn’t quite fond of the position. Feeling humbled and suddenly stupid, I wisely kept my mouth shut.

But... “What chit? Zelena.” I shook my head. “She loathes the very sight of me.”