Forbidden (A New Adult Paranormal Romance) (3 page)

For the greater good.

“
Pass swiftly through this land. Mingle with the natives if you must,” Thulrika said, “or mingle with them not at all. But should any native discover who you are, kill it immediately. Do your duty for Spora, and I’ll see to it that you’ll become a Knight at this Table. Isn't that what you’ve always dreamed of?”

Aein hesitated, his mind a whirlwind of emotions. He gazed at the Redwood Table, remembering everything it stood for.

CHAPTER TWO

“But, Snow White, it’s high treason, and – ouch! You just stepped on my toe.”

“Swing the torch this way.” Snow White grabbed the one torch that they carried between them and held it aloft. The frightened face of Tom Cherry reflected the red-and-gold flickering flames so that he resembled a tortured soul from the depths of hell.

“Is it this trapdoor here?” she demanded.

A solid iron trapdoor stood embedded in the wall at waist level. They were in a secret passage behind the castle walls. Cold stone blocks, musty with lichen and age, hemmed them in. Broken stone slabs littered the floor. The passages had been built for the castle-dwellers to escape a siege, and not many knew them as well as Tom Cherry, who explored them with his brothers as a boy.

Tom’s ashen face told her she had struck home.

“Sssssh.” Snow White pressed her ear to the brittle iron. She listened for voices, footsteps. “Can they hear us in there, do you think?”

“Only if you speak really loudly, as you’re wont to do most times.” Tom appeared distressed enough to gnaw at his knuckles, which he would have if she didn’t shove him the torch. “Please, please don’t do this,” he pleaded. “I can’t imagine what would happen if you’re caught. I know you’re a princess and all, but – ”

“If I’m caught, I’ll absolve you of helping me.”

Snow White wrenched the handle of the iron door. It whined open with a too-loud-for-comfort creak to reveal a solid brick wall.

Snow White stared at it, nonplussed. “What’s the point of walling up an escape route?” she complained.

“You were always too impatient.” Tom shoved the torch back at her and wisely ignored her glare. His deft fingers felt for grooves, indentations on the brick where it met the top of the door.

“I thought you said you’ve never been to the Queen’s bedchamber.”

Tom flushed in the lamplight. “I might have peeked,” he admitted.

The loud click of a clockwork gear sliding into place made them both jump. The wall gave way on its left. Brick grounded against stone in a wince-inducing shriek that must have roused the entire castle.

“Are you sure the Queen is the banqueting hall?” Tom said anxiously.

Snow White peered out into the chamber. The false wall scrunched against soot and ash in a large, dormant fireplace. Thank god for summer, she thought as she clambered out on her hands and knees. The enormous bedroom was deceptively quiet, with only the flickering wall sconces to give light.

“Wait,” Tom cautioned, “you have to take off your shoes or you’ll leave soot stains all over the carpet.”

“Oh, I knew that,” Snow White said loftily even though it never occurred to her. “Stay in there, Tom.” She strained her ears for footfalls outside the door. This way, she wouldn’t have his flogging on her conscience. “I’ll only be ten minutes or so.”

Tom’s terrified eyes followed her as she padded barefoot across the room. The magnificent four poster bed was draped with a brocaded gold and silver canopy. Its headboard held a fresco of the Enchanted Forest, where the Queen had been found by Snow White’s father fifteen years ago, wandering like a lost wraith without memory. Snow White remembered the rumors well. Isobel had held out a red-and-white apple to the King. He took one bite of it, and was smitten forever.

Snow White mimed closing the wall in the grate to Tom. “Don’t spy on me.”

“I wasn’t,” he shot back.

Snow White waited until he had dragged most of the wall back, leaving only a few inches of exposed secret passageway, and turned back to her task. She wasn’t sure what exactly she was looking for, but she’d heard of a mirror the Queen kept, one that Isobel cherished as much as Snow White loved her golden beetle. No mirrors were present in the bedchamber, but there were two doors that possibly led to antechambers.

Snow White was about to open one when she heard muffled voices outside the main door. Iron staves clomped as the guards stood to attention.

“Snow White!” Tom’s strangled whisper came from the grate.

A key clicked in the lock. Too late to do anything but wrench an antechamber door open and bolt in. Her heart pounding loudly, Snow White found herself in a cluttered room lit by moonlight wafting from the window. The walls were sheathed in tapestries, now grey in the semi-darkness. A wall mirror the height of a man occupied a corner. Snow White’s pulse quickened.

Laughter sounded in the bedchamber. Snow White heard Wolfsbane’s voice above the slamming of the main chamber door.

“Hey,” he said, “you’re still an incredibly beautiful woman. I was just horsing around with her to get a rise out of you. Can't you take a joke?”

The Queen’s clipped reply: “You have the manners of a boor.”

“Oh, come on, Isobel. What do I have to do to make it up to you? I can – ”

Silence, followed by a sigh, then a deep moan. Snow White hoped they would be too preoccupied with each other to notice the uneven wall behind the grate. But oh, what if they decided to light a fire?

More moans, and the sound of heavy cloth collapsing onto the floor. Snow White took this opportunity to slide into a half-open closet crammed with bulky woolen garments. A fur collar dug into her nose. It was all she could do not to sneeze.

This was going to be a long, long night, she thought as she listened, unabashed, to the sounds of lovemaking. It didn’t occur to her to be frightened. What can my stepmother do to me after all? went her reasoning. Spank me? Marry me off? They have no reason to see this as anything but a harmless, childish prank.

But what if Tom Cherry got caught? Snow White pictured his eyes rounding at the frenzied creaking of bed boards. She had no qualms that he would wait for her; his sense of duty far outweighed his peasant terror. She also had no qualms that he was a virgin. Why, she thought as warmth suffused her cheeks, he’s quite a youngling. If they catch him, I will have to protect him, because he sure as marbles can’t protect himself.

When the night climaxed and her flexed knees began to resemble a pincushion, the voices – smoky, dulcet, satiated – started again.

“Where are you going, woman?” Wolfsbane’s drawl. “Don’t leave me and mine standing.”

Soft footsteps coming closer. Snow White cowered in the copious wool. This is what being in a sheep pen must feel like, she thought.

The Queen entered with a candle. Through the sliver of open closet door, Snow White could see that her stepmother wore only a silken sheet. In the sudden light, the tapestries glowed with richly embroidered scenes of the Enchanted Forest. Frightened deer fled from two-headed beasts amid woven trees of gold, copper and red. In the center, a handsome horned youth with crimson wings smiled coyly at the viewer.

The Queen kicked the antechamber door shut. The unladylike gesture – both decisive and firm – reminded Snow White of why she admired Isobel in the first place.

Isobel turned to the mirror, which Snow White saw had an ebony frame. Instead of the Queen’s reflection, the mirror’s surface was a grey cloud.

“Mirror,” Isobel said, fingering the glass, “awake.”

The cloud dissolved. Snow White wasn't the type of girl given to gasping, but she had to clamp her mouth tightly shut. Isobel’s reflection stared back: rich mahogany hair curling at the edges, storm blue eyes, complexion like cream. It spoke in a voice that dripped honey, “Isobel, has what I have seen come to pass?”

“Imogen.” Isobel’s voice was strained. “You were right. The girl is beautiful. But surely not comparable to us.”

“Our devil pact suggests otherwise.” The reflection flashed an unpleasant smile. “Tick tock, the clock stops for no one. Is that a sliver of grey I see in your hair, sister? A wrinkle forming at the side of your eye?”

Devil pact? Snow White repeated. Who was the devil here? The horned youth in the tapestry?

Isobel stepped back, uncertain. The image in the mirror remained still.

“Do I have to be the right arm of your wrath and envy once again?” Imogen opened her arms. Her expression was beatific, loving. The white sheet slipped off the sensuous curves of her body.

Snow White held her breath as the Queen turned from the mirror in a trance-like state. Her body was ripe, lush with full womanhood. Such a contrast to Snow White’s own, which was a budding flower compared to Isobel’s radiant bloom. The mirror dissolved into its grey fog again. Isobel exited the antechamber, leaving the door ajar.

“I have a task for you, Huntsman,” Snow White heard her say.

“Oh, we’re back to calling me Huntsman now. I thought we were past that months ago, unless we’re back to playing outlaw and damsel in distress.”

The Queen said, “I want you to take Snow White into the Enchanted Forest and kill her.”

Snow White’s blood turned cold.

No, she couldn’t have heard properly. She squeezed her knees to stop herself from bolting out of the closet.

“Whoa,” Wolfsbane’s voice, backing off, “that’s a little extreme, don't you think?”

Yes, Wolfsbane, you’re absolutely right. It is extreme in the way an ocean is a little salty. And I have done nothing! Except being responsible – in an unfathomable, roundabout way – for giving my stepmother grey hair.

“It never stopped you before, Wolfsbane,” the Queen went on. “You’ve always been quite the predator. I remember the tailor’s daughter well. Five months gone she was. Didn’t stop you from laying a blow that made her lose the child and bleed to death. I had to persuade the lynch mob to cut you down from the stake.”

“It was an accident.”

Slithering noises. A moist plop to suggest kissing. Snow White’s stomach turned.

“If you do this, Wolfsbane, I’ll make you my prince consort. Imagine – you, a lowly born huntsman becoming a royal.”

No, Wolfsbane, Snow White wanted to say out loud, royalty is overrated.

“And to assure me the deed has been done,” the Queen said, “I want you to cut out her heart and bring it to me as a token.”

#

The Sporadean day was balmy, meaning it would have been forty degrees centigrade on Earth if centigrade had yet been invented. But Sporadean carapaces, which were harder than shellfish, protected them from extreme heat and blistering cold – though the corpses would turn in their graves if Spora were to see a cold day.

Perhaps in the next millennium, Aein mused, when the trees came back and the soil became fertile and loamy again. Spora had not seen an abundance of trees since the days of Fytenach the Fair. Then the blight came. The trees sickened and died. Sporadeans desperately turned to other food and shelter sources. Famine raged through the land, and the Sporadeans lost more than ninety percent of their population.

The new generations grew up hungry, frugal and determined never to starve again.

Aein gazed upon the blighted desert. The golden silos shimmered in the rising heat as far as the eye could see. His home. His world.

“Spora,” he whispered, and his heart ached for its barren golden beauty. How far would he go to preserve her? Thulrika’s words thundered in his mind:
We need this world, and every vote . . . your vote . . . counts
.

The Blue Planet awaited his condemnation.

“Aein.”

Her voice stirred his heart. Gnomica! He turned swiftly.

“Cousin,” he said, faltering at the sight of her at the door. She was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. Her wings ran with purple veins, and were of the softest gossamer. Her supple red carapace gleamed in the artificial golden light. Her eyes were kind as they gazed upon him.

His spirits sank, as they always did when she gave him that look. Kindness was not a sentiment he wanted Gnomica to bestow upon him. Admiration, perhaps. Lust. Definitely love. But she would never gaze upon him with anything but kindness or pity. His very hideousness prevented that. Perhaps it would not be wise to tell her that he dreamed nightly of running his limbs down her wings, clicking his mandibles gently against her beautiful, slender neck.

“I have come,” Gnomica said, “to wish you a good journey.”

“Thank you,” he said awkwardly.

“Try not to get into too much trouble, cousin.”

“I’ll try very hard not to.”

They stared at each other, silence expanding the gap between them.

“When I come home, you’ll be married,” Aein remarked, unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

Gnomica sighed. “We were betrothed since birth.”

“Ah yes. The endless betrothal. I wish you a happy wedding, and try not to miss me too much when you’re lying with His Incredible and Brave Handsomeness.