Dark Throne, The (34 page)

The King screeched his fury, his loss at the top of his
voice and Fade could well understand
. And as selfish as it was, he needed the King and the rest
of Jender’s kingdom to deal with the Queen’s death as quickly as
possible. They needed their focus to return Heather to the
fold.

The armed men were frightened by the King’s
behavior, not afraid, but unsure of
how to act. Knowing there would be no help from that quarter, Fade
strode forwards and pressed a hand to Henrik’s shoulder. “She’s
gone, Henrik. She’s gone and shaking her isn’t going to bring her
back. You need to focus, concentrate. Whoever did this, whoever
killed your wife, took Heather too.”

Henrik’s eyes had been almost blinded by grief, but they
cleared a fraction as Fade’s words
. “Take as many men as you need, as from this moment, you
may act in my stead.” His voice hoarse, he yelled, “Let this man
lead thee as though it were my tongue making the orders. You see
before you your next King.”

“
Henrik, don’t be hasty
.”

“
And don’t you be a fool, man
. Go. Fade. Go. Find Heather and bring her back to
me.”

That being said, in a broken voice that splintered on every
other word, he buried his face in Setta’s hair and began to rock
back and forward
.

Knowing that nothing would move the other man, Fade strode
off
. “We must search the
palace grounds and then reach out into the village. Spread out, do
what you must, just find Her Royal Highness.”

Fade realized that that was the only option open to him,
for he had to wait for Heather to sound the
alarm
. Until that occurred, he
was roaming in the dark.

His heart felt as lost as Henrik’s
. Only his mind, his battle-hardened mind, kept him
going. He knew what to do and until she acted, he had to go through
the motions.

He would not think of loss
, he would not think of her in that same wooden state as
Setta was now.

If he did, then he would not be able to
function
. And he was of no use
to her in that kind of stasis.

***

“
You bastard
.”
Heather’s sobs racked her whole body. They were exhausting,
shifting her from side to side on the wide bed. But she couldn’t
stop them. Her mother had gone and this bastard had taken her from
her, for no real reason. He could have grabbed Heather and dragged
her out without murdering her mother.

But no
. He’d taken her
life and left Heather motherless once again.

She’d lost three female figures from her life
now
. She’d been raised by a
woman who had loved her, who had taken on the role of mom, because
in Heather’s childish mind, she’d lost both her parents. Then May
had died and now, Setta again.

It was too much
.

She couldn’t cope with the idea of it and her body reacted
instinctively
. Her emotional
pain coming to the fore in physical agony.

“
Why?” she raged
.
Horror and loss bleeding into her words so that her voice was
almost unrecognizable.

“
Because I could
.”

The words were soft with malevolence and filled with
cruelty
. Heather didn’t think
she had ever hated anyone or anything as much as she did this son
of a bitch. He’d decided to barge into her wedding day, separate
her from her mate and then murdered her mother.

Even as she thought it, she felt surrounded by a surreal
reality
. One that made no
sense. The decades of her life on Earth condensed down into a
matter of days, the horror and loss of being an orphan, the
struggle, and the fight for survival as anorexia plagued her mind
and battered her body, the constant seeking for money to live in
one of the most expensive cities in the world… She’d endured the
bullying of high school, fought her way through college only to
lose the only thing connecting her to the ground – her aunt. It had
all been a mini-war, everyday a fucking battle leading her towards
this so-called easy existence, where she was a princess.

It was like something out of a kid’s
movie
. A bad one. Because this
life wasn’t easy and she wasn’t living her happy ever after,
because it wasn’t
cushy
. Princesses
still suffered and she was tired of suffering. Tired of being
battered by life. It wasn’t fucking fair.

She’d had enough.

Her eyes were swollen and hiccupping sobs still raged along
her throat, tearing it and making her feel ravaged by her
emotions
. She sat up, her
limbs wobbly and she peered through the gloom of the room she
assumed was her holding cell.

She lay on the bed, which was scented of something that
reminded her of lavender, but was probably called something
completely different here
. The
sheets, upon every slight movement of hers, wafted that faint
scent. The bed was positioned on a raised dais. It was large and
took up a lot of space. There was a small walking area around it
and there were carved wooden railings directly opposite her which
led to a short staircase and to the ground floor of the
room.

Here, there were cauldrons
, pitch black, gleaming cauldrons with bubbling contents
that reminded her of Halloween flicks with witches boiling eye of
newt to make potions and concoctions to curse entire towns. There
were five in all. The central one was huge, almost as large as
herself and the other four were smaller, two medium and two small.
She couldn’t see the heating source that fuelled them, but she
could feel the heat. What with her barrage of tears and the warmth
emitted from the cauldron, she was hot and sweaty, her hair clung
to her face and the nape of her neck.

There were bodies wriggling on the floor, each tied up with
rope
. Moans came from their
throat, not only were they in an uncomfortable position, the heat
alone must have been torture.

Beside the cauldrons were a set of shelves, each containing
pots and jars with peculiarly
colored contents and from the stench of the room, she
didn’t want to know what those contents were either.

Books lined the walls
.
Old books. In leather, in varying stages of condition. From
battered to pristine.

On the back wall, there was a worktable laden with more
books and parchment
. Her
captor had his back to the table and was sat on a chair, his feet
rested upon one of the poor bastards lying on the floor.

There was a handsomeness to his features, but age and bad
living had ravaged his skin and added to his
years
. It seemed only right
that such evil should write itself upon the man’s face.

“
Because you could?” Heather repeated the words softly and
let them penetrate her mind, her very soul
. She’d been mugged, faced the wrath of thieves and
yet, she’d never come face to face with such cruelty. With such
easy vindictiveness.

She wanted to kill him and Heather would
. Just as he’d snuffed the life out of her
mother’s veins, she’d do the same to him. She vowed it. If she
could, she would have sliced a knife across her palm and made a
blood oath. This man’s life was hers. And if she had it her way, he
wouldn’t be living past the day.

He didn’t know with whom he was dealing
. He thought she was some pampered princess,
who’d had help with bathing herself, who needed attendants to guide
her through every stage of existence.

But she wasn’t that pampered miss
. She was tough, street smart. Whatever plans he had
for her, they wouldn’t be coming to fruition.

Rage battered her, drowning her grief and need to
mourn
. It filled her to
bursting so much so that her skin felt tight with it. Her body
itched with the need to release her wrath upon the man.

She’d never wanted to harm another human
being
. She’d defended herself
in the past, had reacted to another person’s actions and felt no
guilt. But this was more than self-defense. This was
revenge.

“
What do you want with me?” she murmured softly, wanting to
know why the man had come into her world and thought nothing of
destroying it
.

“
You are to be my wife
.”

The arrogance of the man astonished her
. She blinked at him for a second and had to
withhold her laughter. She wasn’t amused, just astounded at his
audacity.

“
And is murdering your wife-to-be’s mother the way you
usually court women?” she asked, her voice chillier than
ice
. Hell, it was the coldest
thing in the entire room.

“
I don’t need to court you
. If you can talk as coherently as this, enough to question
me, then you’re ready for the ceremony.”

“
I doubt I’d ever be ready to tie myself to a freak like
you
,” she spat. “Why do you
wish to wed me? Let me guess, because I’m the heiress to the
throne. And I thought gold-diggers were an Earth concept.” She
shook her head and smiled at his confusion over her terminology. “A
gold-digger is someone who seeks material gain as the primary goal
from a relationship. I’d say you fit that bill to a goddamn
tee.”

She smiled and raised a hand
. If she could recall Fade’s words, then as soon as she
triggered the
sleckil
, a noise would
blast out that would incapacitate anyone in the
vicinity.

Fingering the ruby, Heather watched as the bastard’s eyes
grew tempestuous as they followed the movement of her
hand
. He obviously thought she
was fondling herself.

As if
.

He stood and she waited for him to approach her, as he took
her actions to be that of an enticement
. The
sleckil’s
location
between her breasts must have made him think she was touching her
breasts and who was she to sway him from that opinion?

As soon as he was within a foot of her, his legs brushing
the side of the bed, she depressed the button
. And found great glee in doing so.

The sound was worse than she thought
. It was strange, like nothing she’d ever heard but
her brain could handle the sounds, whereas her captor and his
captives on the floor obviously couldn’t. The screams they all
emitted added a tandem to the sound of the
sleckil.
She
watched on as they all reacted to the
sleckil
and she
took great pleasure in Calder’s horror at the sound piercing his
skull.

A
part of her didn’t want it to be so easy
. He slumped to the ground and she assumed he was
unconscious. She wanted him to realize it was she who had taken his
life. Because she could, just as he’d taken that of her
mother’s.

She wanted him to suffer as his life bled from
him
. She wanted him to
hurt.

At the same time, there had been no other way for her to
fell him
. Her grief had made
itself known in her shaking limbs and she felt weak from her
sobbing. Strong enough to kill him, but not strong enough to fight
him for supremacy.

Her legs wobbled as she climbed off the bed and stood
beside it, feeling dazed and weak
. She clung to the sides as she walked around it and then
wandered around the room trying to find a suitable weapon to end
that sorry bastard’s existence.

On one of the shelves, she saw a familiar marking on one of
the bottles and almost as though fate had ordained it, beside it
was a dagger with a leather hilt and feathers suspended from the
binding
. The marking was a
skull and crossbones. Now, this man could have been a pirate, but
she doubted it. She assumed that the contents of the pot would or
could induce death. Just the ticket for what Heather
intended.

Her hands shook as she reached for the pot and carefully
unfastened it
. Taking the
dagger, she dipped the tip into the bright orange concoction that
perversely smelt of marmalade, something Aunt May had been very
fond of.

Careful not to let the potion touch her skin, she retracted
the dagger from the jar and stalked over to Calder’s limp
form
. Her threatening pose was
weakened by her staggering steps, but no one in the room was to
know that she felt close to collapse.

She wondered if the
sleckil
had affected
her, because her bout of crying had weakened her but not to this
extent. Her still evolving body had protected her from the damaging
sounds of the
sleckil
but the parts of her that were fully
Elfen must have reacted and because of it, she felt as flimsy as
hell.

Heather thought that only her rage, her sheer fury kept her
going towards Calder
. And she
was absolutely thrilled to see that the man’s eyes were open and
that he was staring straight ahead- obviously a prisoner in his own
body. Somehow, that gave her more energy. She clambered down to the
floor beside him, the knife clutched in her hand and smiled as she
raised the dagger and hovered it over his heart.