Conquering the Queen (2 page)

Xander turned from the window to face his father. He did not have to ask from where this deep hatred sprang. As stunned as he’d been by Avin’s betrayal, his anger had been a shadow to that of the man who’d worked so tirelessly to join the houses of Ravenscroft and Windbourne. If he had a gold coin for every time his father had wished Avin dead, he could build a house for everyone in the kingdom.

“Let us not repeat her mistakes in our rage, Father,” the king said. “After months of hardship, the people need security, not a display of cruelty. Avin’s head on a pike would satisfy the anger of a few, but the majority would be unsettled by it. Say what you will, they did love King Leon, and she is his daughter.”

At the mention of the former king of Windbourne, Lord Reginald spat on the floor.

“If I may offer my perspective.” The voice that spoke was soft, and commanded attention in the way loud ones rarely do. As the owner emerged from the shadows, both men turned to give him their full attention.

Cynric Blane had been advisor to House Gawen since before Xander was born. A soft, balding man with a middle-aged paunch and effeminate features, he only spoke when he had something instructive to add.

“Xander is quite right in this case, my lord. To kill Avin of Windbourne would be to sever the line of a beloved king. But for the King Xander to take the woman they believe betrayed her father’s legacy through misrule, to
master
her before their very eyes, to teach her… well, this will elevate Xander in their eyes as a father figure not unlike the one they lost.”

“King Leon was as much a backstabber as his daughter!” Lord Reginald was on his feet, his voice booming through the hall. “He took our lands and drove us into the south.” Reginald was pacing now, growing more and more agitated as he spoke. “And the next thing you know, he’s dead and his daughter ascends to the throne? Oh, that part I’ll wager he didn’t plan, but I’ll take no pity on him. He was a false king who begat a deceitful daughter.”

“Don’t worry that Avin will escape punishment, Father,” Xander said. “I plan to see that she lives in a state of obedience.”

Lord Reginald glared at his son. “Perhaps if you’d instilled proper obedience during your courtship, she’d not have dared join her father’s scheme,” he spat. “She used your love to weaken you.” He sat forward, his mouth a grim line in his wrinkled face. “How can you not be sure it won’t happen again?”

Xander wanted to tell his father he had never been weak with Avin, that he had been teaching her to be obedient, that he’d seen her quivering submission, had tasted it, that to this very day he could not understand how or why things had gone the way they did. But he did not feel like explaining. He had an official coronation to arrange, and a kingdom to run.

“I can be sure,” he said firmly, “because I love her not. What she did killed my love. It was buried under winter’s frost the day she took the throne, and no spring can thaw it. She cannot weaken me.” He paused. “But I will weaken her.”

“See that you do,” Lord Reginald growled. “I want to see her broken. Harden your heart, Xander. Bring her to heel.”

Xander responded with a curt nod, but then left the room before he was forced to remind his father who was king.

He walked out onto the covered archway connecting the throne room to the castle’s living quarters. Pigeons fluttered and resettled on the beams above his head, cooing softly. Down below, workers were repairing damage done to the outer walls of the courtyard during the long military campaign. Servants with carts of food navigated their way around the construction and puddles of water created by the rapidly melting ice. More produce was arriving from the south, grown in the warm spring that had finally reached Windbourne. Soon planting would begin in the fields beyond the castle walls. When the cold came again, the storehouses would be full and the citizens would weather it in comfort and peace.

“A word?”

Xander turned to see Cynric approaching, noting how quietly Cynric moved despite his rotund build.

“Quiet as a cat,” the king observed. “And as cunning.” He shook his head. “Let me guess. You’ve come to repeat my father’s advice.”

“Not to repeat it. Only to refine it.” The advisor sighed. “He’s right, you know. The captive queen must be tamed. You must be careful with your feelings, however.”

“Save your warnings, Cynric. As I told Father, I no longer love her.”

Cynric smiled patiently. “I’m not talking about love. I’m talking about anger. If you do not tame the beast within yourself, you’ll never tame her. You’ll only humiliate her.”

An image flashed through Xander’s mind. Riders approaching with news of an attack. His best knights—loyal men—ambushed and dead, buried on what was to have been his wedding day. Spires of smoke as he and his surviving soldiers had been forced into retreat. The small painting of Avin he’d thrown into the river the day he’d learned she’d become queen.

“Doesn’t she deserve humiliation?” Xander asked.

“Of course,” Cynric said. “Especially after what she did to you. But what satisfies your anger will starve your goal. Obedience cannot be forced, not on a woman such as she.”

Xander thought Cynric would say more, and was surprised when the bald head nodded in a bow and the man moved on, his saffron robes swishing in his wake.

The new king frowned. He respected Cynric, but told himself that the advisor didn’t know everything. And he was quite sure that when it came to women, Cynric knew nothing. Xander turned. There was some advice he would take, but when it came to handling the deposed queen who’d betrayed him to gain power, he needed no counsel. He knew Avin, and he knew exactly what needed to be done.

Chapter Three

The bath had not been a pleasant experience. First the two nurses had dumped bucket after bucket of cold water over Avin’s head as she stood on an iron grate. She could hear the water hit the flagstones below as it slid off her pale body.

Next came the scrubbing. She knew the rough brushes they used were from the stables. She knew this was intentional. Avin could see the women exchanging satisfied grins as they scrubbed her delicate skin until it was pink and pained.

Next came her hair. The long blond tresses fell to the middle of her bottom, and Avin had to restrain herself from pleading when the nurses debated chopping it off. When they reluctantly decided that doing so might anger their king, they sat on either side of Avin and yanked the mats out of her tangled locks.

After that, a tub was brought in and Avin was allowed to soak. She was even given a real cake of soap—not because she deserved it, one nurse pointed out, but because she was to be presented to the king, and it would not do to have her smell like a garbage heap. They’d laughed at this.

Despite the warmth outside, the circular tower room was cold, so a fire was built. Avin was wrapped in a woolen blanket as her hair dried. The nurses were to the side of the room, listening as they fussed over which gown to select. Nothing too fancy; she was no longer queen. Nothing high-necked. Her collar must be visible at all times. No undergarments. Xander had been specific. They giggled over this, too. He’d made it clear that should he want to beat her bottom, nothing should be in the way.

Avin turned her eyes from the spiteful women to study the room she would now call home. Her furnishings were Spartan. There was a simple feather bed with a small table beside it, a plain oak wardrobe, and a stand with a wash basin and a privy.

No tapestries adorned the stone walls of her new quarters. No rugs warmed the stone floor. The stool she perched on was the only seating.

As a child, Avin had known this room at the top of the tower existed, but never felt the desire to visit the chamber that served as removed lodging for disgraced royals, highborn prisoners, or the occasional eccentric cleric who preferred solitude. When she was six, a childhood nurse had told her of a maid who’d flung herself from the room’s single window after being impregnated and abandoned by a knight of the realm. Two years later, Avin had been playing in the courtyard when she’d glanced up at the tower to see what she thought was a sad, pale face staring down from the window. The specter had disappeared, and ever since she’d been afraid of the room, imagining it as dark and frightening and full of sadness.

Now the only sadness she felt was her own. She looked to the window. What would it take to jump, she wondered, then realized she could not, even if she wanted to; the window was newly barred, no doubt in expectation of her arrival.

“We’ve chosen this dress.” One of the nurses was walking over, holding a drab gown of simple cut and coarse fabric. The other tugged Avin’s arm and she stood as they forced the garment over her head and stepped back.

Avin stood silently as they stared, and felt a small tingle of victory at the disappointment in their expressions, for she knew what they were thinking: even in this simple gown, she still looked regal. She was a royal born, and nothing they did could diminish it.

The nurses locked the door behind them when they finally left, and for the first time since Avin could remember, she was alone without the noise of urgent news, disloyal advice, and voices that mocked and threatened. Now there was only the crackle of the fire in the grate and the sound of water dripping from the parapet.

She moved her slim fingers to the crown now collaring her neck, and she remembered the day it had been put there. She’d been nearly as numb then as she’d been when it was locked around her neck this very day, and had felt no less trapped by it, no less betrayed.

She’d been crowned on what should have been the day of her arrival at Ravenscroft on the arm of her new husband, Lord Xander Gawen. Their marriage was to have been a show of unity binding two houses and two former rivals—King Leon Grey and Lord Reginald.

But on the eve of her wedding, she’d learned the horrible truth of why her father had pushed her toward marriage with the intense young man she’d first feared, but had grown to love. Avin had been bait in a plan to lull House Gawen into a union King Leon never intended to take place.

Wine had flowed freely at the festivities the night before the wedding, and the complacency of King Leon’s guests—which had included Ravenscroft military leaders—had made them ripe for attack. The king was soon celebrating not a wedding, but a military victory.

But the crushing defeat that had King Leon doubling the size of his kingdom and driving Lord Reginald and his son’s army into the southlands also succeeded in crushing his own daughter’s heart.

Wild with despair, Avin had been desperate to make amends, pleading with her father to at least get word to Xander to let him know she had nothing to do with the plot. But King Leon had coldly told his daughter to stop her crying. There would be other suitors, he said—better ones now that his kingdom was larger—and that she should waste no tears on a man who now hated her as much as she loved him. The Gawens, he assured her, blamed both of them.

A day later, while exploring his newly expanded kingdom, her father had fallen from his horse. By nightfall, Avin had been crowned queen in his stead, and believing Xander despised her, the new queen of Windbourne vowed to never love again.

Winter arrived with unexpected ferocity that same day, freezing the land along with Avin’s heart. She vowed to protect both, diverting wealth into a military buildup she felt was necessary to protect Windbourne from an invasion. She raised the height of the castle walls and prepared to carefully ration her kingdom’s stores as she waited out the cold and trained her army.

But the fates had other plans. In the past, winters had been short. This time, the season held fast. Food supplies rapidly dwindled, much of it going to feed the hungry troops. Grief and fear gripped the land as food became scarce and game fled the surrounding forests.

A chunk of ice broke free from the parapet and crashed past the window. It struck the ground just as the door behind her opened. Avin turned, saying nothing when she saw Xander standing there, a plate in his hand.

He did not address her as he shut the door. Avin turned away, but could still feel the weight of his gaze, just as she felt the weight of the collar around her neck.

“You’re thin,” he said. “Too thin. When did you last eat?”

She wanted to answer him with a retort, to ask him if he expected her to be fat. Isn’t that what he’d led her people to believe? That she’d been dining on rich food as they’d starved? But she didn’t say that.

“Answer me.”

She recognized the warning in his voice, remembered the bite of the cane. The welts were still tender. She did not want more.

“I can’t remember.” It wasn’t a lie. She’d lost her appetite long before the castle stores had dwindled down to maggoty potatoes and moldy bread.

“Then it’s time to break your fast. I have summer fruits from the south,” he said. “And cold pheasant.”

He placed the plate on the bedside table and walked over to where she sat on the stool. Avin did not meet his eyes as he hooked his finger in the crown around her neck and lifted her to her feet. She did not fight as he led her to the bed, where he pushed her to the floor in the same kneeling position he’d made her assume in the throne room. She kept her eyes on the floor as he sat down on the bed in front of her.

“Eat.” It was an order. She looked up to see him offering her a bite-sized morsel of the food.

“You can force me to kneel,” she said. “But understand this. I will die before I eat from your hand.”

“Eat.” He did not waver, did not move his hand. “You need to eat, and I will not allow you to refuse.”

Avin looked at him, her eyes softening. She parted her lips and leaned forward.

“That’s it,” he said. “That’s my obedient little—aaahhh!”

His thick forefinger was caught between her teeth as she fell limply to the side, her full passive weight pulling his hand down as he tried to draw it from between her clenched teeth. Avin saw the king raise his balled fist and closed her eyes in expectation of a crashing blow to her face. But it didn’t come. Instead, he scooped her up, placing her in his lap. She scrunched her eyes tighter as she felt his hand on either side of her cheeks, squeezing until she had no choice but to part her teeth and release him.