A Royal Rebellion (6 page)

“A weakness? A disease? Tell me! Are my children alright? Do they have it? Does Malcolm?” Panic was seeping into her nerves. Were her babies sick? Her husband. Surely not, they were all so healthy. They must be fine. Her hopes were dashed, and Arianna almost fell off the chair she was using to see into Mason’s cell.

“Malcolm has it, sister dear. I have it, and the children have been spared, but they are not spared the fallout from the lies. My sisters, even with the assistance garnered in their births, were born with it. It presents falsely as a form of chicken pox when they’re children. My mother, Saints rest her soul, gave the disease to us all, save one.”

“What is it?” Arianna whispered, terrified.

“I could go into a horrible, long winded lecture on what it does, but the disease itself has been around for eons, attacking houses that have seen to many inter-marriages of cousins and the like generation after generation. It’s a disease that attacks the eggs and sperm cells in developing children, that causes a type of cellular disintegration of the cell walls,” Mason said, a weird smile twisting his lips. “There is no treatment for it, not for a Cassian Royal at least.”

“I don’t understand,” Arianna complained, though in part, she did. A deepening well of despair was building in her gut. This couldn’t be true.

“The disease, Ari, renders those afflicted with increasing levels of sterility. Most people aren’t aware they have it. A fever will occur when a child, growing in severity, then one day be gone as if by magic. But inside the body, especially in females, the cells are becoming weaker. Eggs in the ovaries are becoming warped, breaking down. In advanced cases, like with my mother, the cellular degeneration can spread to the uterus and vaginal walls, even into the intestines. It weakens everything.”

“Oh, dear God, no,” Ari breathed, in total shock. “My sons? Malcolm?”

“The men luck out, if you want to call it luck. We won’t die of it, but Malcolm and I are sterile. It just warps our sperm as its produced, making them weaker, less viable, and eventually we will cease to make any at all.”

“But…I have children! They are his! My children are Malcolm’s! Stop lying!” Arianna snapped, becoming enraged. This was all a horrible, nasty lie. “I have slept with no man but him!”

“You have children, yes. So does my witch of a wife. They are not sick, but that doesn’t matter.” Mason smiled, a rueful display of bitterness. “Malcolm is not the father. Nor am I.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“King Henry was so upset when my mother started to get sick right after she gave birth to Edward. He was even more upset because my mother miscarried at least twice between Mal and myself, and twice again between me and Edward. Mother wanted to stop having children, you see. She knew what was wrong with her. Why she was having so much trouble getting pregnant and staying that way.”

“Tell me who the fathers are!” Arianna shrieked, ready to strangle Mason.

“Once it came time for Malcolm to marry, my father had him tested. Quietly, of course. The disease was in the last stages with Malcolm. He is completely sterile. So am I. But our father couldn’t admit this to anyone. The sanctity of the Cassian Dynasty must be preserved above all else, and for him to remove both Mal and I from the line of succession wouldn’t do at all. Too much speculation, doubts into the strength of Airric’s sons. Our line would be seen as tainted, weakened.”

She was going to be sick, he couldn’t mean….

“So Father, his blood as pure and untainted as any previous Cassian Monarch, decided that he would guarantee the continuance of our line. He would skip the tainted generation completely. So each year, my dear sister, during your routine visits to the royal physicians, he had you secretly impregnated with another’s seed.”

“No…” The urge to vomit rose, threatening to overwhelm her.

“Your children are my father’s bastards.”

***

Arianna

The memory left her ill. And so did the slim journal she held in her hand, dated some forty years prior. It was written by the late queen, when she was still Princess Esme of Elysian. Arianna dropped the journal, and dove back into the small chest she’d found under the bed, looking for one that would have been written around the time of her death. Mason was fifteen when his mother died, so Malcolm would have just turned twenty. Arianna married Malcolm the year he turned thirty, just over ten years ago.

Malcolm knew, he must. Mason knew, so therefore Malcolm must know. How could he take her to their marriage bed, make love to her, and celebrate each of her pregnancies knowing the truth? How deeply did this betrayal run?

She found it, a dark blue leather book dated the year of Queen Esme’s death. Arianna sat on the floor, skirts askew, and flipped until she found the relevant passages.

The words made her heart pound, her stomach flip. It was true.

King Henry, deprived of a healthy wife and heirs, forced Queen Esme to go through more pregnancies, this time via IVF. His sanity broken, King Henry was determined that he would never let the line of Airric fail, so he felt more children was the answer. It was all done secretly, since no royal could be conceived through artificial means. Only through intercourse and unassisted, natural conception was a Cassian heir considered legitimate. It was written into law almost a hundred years ago, when the development of DNA technologies took off around the world. It was a law created as a measure to insure that only a true-blood Cassian could take the throne, so that no foreign blood could be inserted into the line in an attempt to usurp the crown.

Queen Esme was implanted with an egg fertilized with the king’s seed, and forced on bed rest for each pregnancy. Queen Esme was forced to carry each child to term, then they were delivered via C-section. With each reluctant pregnancy and birth, she grew weaker and weaker.

Edward was the last child she conceived and delivered naturally, before the disease began to kill her. All of the blood princesses, while the king’s daughters, were automatically disqualified from the line of succession because they were conceived via IVF, and so were all of their children as a result.

Edward, last naturally conceived child, and the only one who wasn’t…..

“King Henry will be most upset, sister,” a nasty voice interrupted her thoughts, and Arianna sat up sharply, eyes wide in dismay. “You weren’t supposed to know.”

Camilla stood just inside the door, a smirk on her lips, eyes full of manic delight. She walked into the room, lips twisting in derision. Arianna surged to her feet, enraged.

“You knew! You bitch! You must have known!” Arianna screamed, rounding the bed, intending to rip her sister-in-law to shreds. How dare she take part in this travesty!

“Of course I knew! I’ve known since Mason was called back from the army to marry me. He refused, the bastard.” Camilla’s face warped into a snarl, and she dodged Ari’s reaching hand. She darted across the room, a small table between them, Arianna panting in rage, bosom heaving. Camilla giggled, some of her insanity slipping out in the sound.

“Why?” She was asking this of everyone. She was so confounded by the whole mess that it was all she could ask past her anger and confusion.

“Why did he refuse? He was in love with a soldier! Because he caught some of Eddie’s perversion, that’s why,” Camilla spat. “Oh? Do you mean why did I go along with this? Easy, sister. I wanted to be a princess.”

“For power?” Arianna gasped out, shaking. “You let them violate us for power?”

“Don’t act so scandalized. You wed Malcolm for the same reasons. You were never told any of this because you’re too flighty, too spoiled. You’re dutiful and devoted one moment, and irascible and undependable the next. Too inconstant. Stubborn, even, and King Henry said you weren’t to be trusted.”

“You let him put his seed in you? You knew what was really happening during our yearly exams?” Arianna demanded, again feeling sick. Her emotions were everywhere, all over the place.

“I let King Henry fuck me,” Camilla admitted, and Arianna swayed on her feet. “There was no need to pretend with me, I let him knock me up the good old fashioned way. I’ve actually never slept with Mason, you know. He could never get it up for me.”

“I don’t blame him one bit, you disgusting whore!” Arianna lunged for Camilla, but her sister-in-law ran back towards the door, laughing.

“Don’t be rude, Ari. King Henry is going to be so mad at you! And Malcolm, well…he’s going to be so disappointed you know the truth.” Camilla smiled one last time, and then ran out the door.

She would go directly to the King. Of that, Arianna had no doubt. She had little time before she ended up under lock and key, or worse, she ended up like Mason. There was no need for a queen-presumptive, not anymore—there were six heirs for the Crown Prince, after all. Arianna was decoration at this point.

If the king was crazy enough to violate his wife’s right to choose, then to do the same to his daughter-in-law’s, and everything he’d done to Mason over the years, and now Edward…he was insane enough to kill her.

She would never stay silent. This atrocity could not go unanswered.

There was someone in this palace who could tear this secret apart, and stop King Henry’s madness. And there was someone out there now, who’s right to rule was pure and unblemished by his father’s insanity and duplicity.

Chapter Four

Percy

“Edward?” Percy called hesitantly, still not used to saying his master’s name when other people were around. Reynard was sitting in a chair next to their room’s door, long legs stretched out in front of him, gun in his lap, the TV remote in his other, switching through the channels on the unit on mute.

“Yes, Percy?” Edward asked, coming out of the bathroom, drying his hands on a towel.

Percy put a hand on his neck, the consort collar heavier than usual, with the skin underneath becoming irritated. This was the longest stretch of time he’d worn it without Edward removing it to provide his skin with some relief, and he was past the point of being brave and keeping quiet.

Percy tipped his head to the side and lifted the heavy coils, the rope-like collar limp and silky, but the finely refined metal was beginning to hurt him. “It hurts.”

Edward walked over the bed where he knelt, Reynard pausing what he was doing to watch. Edward towered over him, his fingers taking the place of Percy’s as he lifted the collar higher, exposing the skin on the right side of his neck.

“Damnation,” Edward breathed out, gently moving Percy’s head so he could see all around his neck. The skin was red and chafed on both sides, the back and front not as irritated. “I am so sorry, Percy. I don’t have the key. I lost it after I got shot.”

“Let me see,” Reynard said, standing at Edward’s side now, leaning over Percy’s other side. Thick fingers with callused pads ran gently over his skin, and Percy shivered.

“Can you pick it?” Edward asked Reynard, both men touching his neck and the collar. Percy closed his eyes, hyper-aware of the two bigger, stronger men looming over him. Edward meant the ornate locking mechanism that the two ends of the collar disappeared into. It was a dark metal, heavily covered in precious red and white gems, and the ancient collar was designed to fit one key, and one key only, making it nearly impossible for it to be removed by anyone other than the royal who put it on the consort’s neck.

“If this was a lock designed in the last fifty years or so, I would say yes,” Reynard said, tipping Percy’s chin back and lifting the lock away from his neck as high as it could go. “This necklace is over five-hundred years old, and meant to resist tampering. It was created by some of most ingenious and devious men in history. We would need an expert in ancient lock designs. I’ll do my best, though.”

Percy blinked his eyes open, eyes watering at the sting as the coils dragged on the inflamed flesh of his neck. Reynard froze, and Edward took the necklace from Reynard, holding the coil off of Percy’s neck.

“There should be a silk scarf in one of the bags,” Edward said to Reynard, who strode for the side of the room where their bags were stacked. Reynard returned after a moment, and handed Edward a long length of silk, and he held a small blue jar in his other hand.

“Put some salve on first, on the skin, then the silk,” Reynard advised, opening the small jar. A strong odor rose from it, and Percy crinkled his nose in distaste. Edward chuckled, and dipped his fingers in the creamy ointment.

The second the salve hit his skin, Percy moaned at the cooling sensation, the pain dissipating, going numb. It was cool, and stung, but it quickly went away as Edward spread a thin layer around his neck. Percy leaned into the touch, eyes growing heavy, the care and thoroughness his master showed in tending to him making him want to melt in pleasure. He hummed, and rubbed his jaw and cheek on Edward’s forearm, looking up and watching every move his lover made.

Dark eyes met his, and Percy could see a deepening in them, as Edward recognized his fascination and responded. The door clicked somewhere nearby, the captain gone from the room, but Percy couldn’t take his eyes off Edward to check. All he wanted was for Edward to keep touching him.

Edward was wiping his hands on a towel now, watching Percy as he kneeled on the bed, biting his lip, shifting his weight. Percy whimpered, his body vibrating with need. Percy reached out and tried to grab Edward, but his master backed away, shaking his head. Percy whined deep in his throat, desperately needing Edward to touch him, to take him, his hole growing wet and aching with emptiness. Percy’s body clenched, tight and urgent, and he fell to all fours on the bed, a fine layer of sweat building over his whole body, clothes sticking.