Dark Throne, The (27 page)

“
I don't care about the dress
. What the hell is wrong with you? I'm here, you haven't
seen me for over two decades and all you've been doing this past
month is bitch at me. Complain about the way May raised me. At my
lack of manners and knowledge about local customs. Or about some
other crap.” She paused a moment and sucked in a huge gulp of air.
One of the women that hovered about her mother -the Elfen didn't
appear to have a title for the role, but she thought it was akin to
a
Lady in Waiting- began to shuffle the seamstresses out of the
room.

Apparently, the Queen couldn't be taken  down a peg or
two in front of the staff
.

“
I'm your mother
. You
shouldn’t be talking to me this way.”

“
Oh, get over yourself
.
For whatever reason, you sent me to Earth. The only mother I've
ever known is Aunt May. She was there for me, when you weren't. And
it probably isn't your fault, but nothing will change those two
decades. You can bitch at me all you want, make me miserable if it
makes you feel as though you're my mother, but I won't be here. As
soon as this farce of a fucking wedding is over, I'm going with
Fade. And as it stands, I don't care if I never see you again.
You've made me miserable, Setta. Do you know that? These past few
weeks… I've spent my entire life wishing I'd known you. Hating that
fate had taken you away from me and left me as an orphan. This
could have been so different. Instead of making me love you, you've
made me hate you.”

She'd been harsh
. Too
harsh, probably. But at the same time, only Fade had got her
through these last few weeks. Only his calming presence had made it
all bearable. Had she been alone and left to deal with Setta, then
she'd have been in tears every night.

Heather wished it could have been
different
. It hadn't had to be
this way, but the moment Setta had turned from a relieved mother
into a bitching harpy, that was the second their relationship had
gone down the drain.

Everything had started with such promise
. It was such a damned shame. Enough to make her
want to weep with the tragedy of it. But she was too fired up to
cry. She was sick of it. Sick of being criticized. Sick of her
every action being dissected and then commented over with a grand
critique of what she should have done instead.

No more.

She'd had enough.

Setta's mouth bobbed open and shut as
though she was in some kind of stuporous shock at being spoken to
in that way.

All Heather knew, was that if Setta treated the people in
her kingdom the same way she did her daughter, then there would be
a rebellion every day of the bloody week
.

That the people of Jender were content with
t
heir royal family either
spoke loudly of her father's popularity and diplomacy, or that the
face Setta showed the rest of the world wasn't the one that glanced
upon Heather.

“
You can't speak to me like this
. I won't have it.”

Out of all of her words, that Setta's reaction was at
Heather's audaciousness and not the content… well, Heather
immediately deflated
.

What was the point
?
What was the goddamn point?

No matter what she said or did, Setta
was never happy.

She spun away and strode from the
center of the room to one of the windows that
overlooked the central keep. Down below, hundreds of Elfen were
going about their business. Each one entirely unaware of the fight
occurring just a few thousand feet away.

“
Rather than being shocked at what I´ve said, why not react
to them
? I wanted my mother. I
wanted to know her just like I did and do my father. But you're
making it impossible.” Sadness welled in her soul overriding her
earlier anger. Bitter upset had tears prickling her eyes as she
stared down at the central courtyard that heaved with
life.

Her stomach clenched with the pain of her emotions and
suddenly, without even knowing how, Heather realized that Fade felt
her pain and was coming to her
. Her heartbeat quickened in reaction. Not because she was
in anyway exerting herself, but because
he
was. He was
running to get to her. She could sense his panic and didn't have a
damn clue of how to stop it, of how to reassure him.

Her mind was turned inwards, turned
towards Fade, so much so that when her mother pressed a hand to her
shoulder she jerked in surprise, her head shooting around to find
the unknown threat.

The look of bitterness on Setta's face as she removed her
hand and took a step back was enough to have sadness arching
through her again
. That the
older woman believed she´d just been rejected, was evident from the
pain on her face.

The irony was that this time, Heather hadn't meant to
reject
.

She'd hoped to do that with her words and try to encourage
Setta into changing
. Into
behaving differently. Anything to force the untenable situation
into improving. Because it couldn't have deteriorated much
more.

The door burst open and prevented Heather from saying much,
as Fade exploded into the room, eyes darting about as he sought the
source of Heather's misery
. As
soon as they lit upon Setta, his face darkened. Brows lowering,
mouth scowling, he growled, “What have you done now?”

Setta gasped
. And
before a peep could escape her mouth, Heather knew what she was
about to say. Down to the last letter. “How dare you speak to me
like that?”

“
Christ, you're like a broken record
. Stop saying that. In this room, you're not a Queen.
You're my mother. Or is that not as important as your role in the
kingdom?”

At her words, the other woman's skin blanched, making her
face pasty
.

“
I will not have you upsetting my mate
. Why on Mearth do you persist in treating her
thusly? Do you fail to see her upset? Her misery at the way you
speak to her and ask of her things that are outside of her ken?”
While anger graced his features, Fade also looked perplexed as he
strode over to Heather and tucked her against his side.

It was rather charming to be so
protected
. For a man to have
sensed her upset and to have ceased whatever he was doing to charge
after her, to discern the reason for her sadness. While she would
have done exactly the same thing if she'd sensed his distress, she
ignored that for a moment and indulged in simply being pressed
close to the man who completed her heart and soul.

She was independent
,
always had been and probably always would be… that is, if she
didn't grow too accustomed to being cosseted in this
manner.

While she'd
reveled in
taking care of herself and relying on no man to do it for her, that
had held far more importance in New York and Pennsylvania than it
did here.

Strange how the habits of a lifetime, something that had
formed over the entirety of her existence, were being challenged by
the presence of this extraordinary man
.

She needed no one to fight her battles
. Back in High School, she'd been the head of the
Debate team. Christ, could she argue. No one could ever whoop her
ass. But here, she was quite willing to let Fade fight her battles.
Especially, as where her mother was concerned, she seemed to
possess no protective instincts. It had taken the entirety of her
stay to force her into speaking the truth to Setta. And even then,
simply because her mother had touched upon a sore
subject.

Had she not mentioned weight, then Heather believed she
would have just accepted and took more of Setta's
bullshit
.

Why?

She didn't know
.

Perhaps because she was on different territory
here
. And by that, she didn't
mean a parallel universe.

At this moment, in this castle, she was with parents she'd
long believed to be dead
.

That would have unsettled even the most hardened of
people
.

Psychologically, she was in a transient state of disbelief,
something which was slowly warring with the acceptance that her
mother and father actually lived
.

And adding another dimension to the mixture as well as a
completely different race… well, hell, Heather thought she was
coping just fine
.

She hadn't shrieked or screamed once at the different types
of Elfen that walked about the castle
. And there were some weird ones.

Ten feet tall knights with flowing pea-green
hair
. Plump serving maids with
breasts, of the exposed variety, the size of small dogs. Christ,
they made porn stars GG boobs look small.

Heather had accepted the weirdness of her existence with,
she thought, dignified aplomb
.

In a way, she wondered if May had done something… set the
stones for her to accept this weird world of
hers
. It seemed to be the only
explanation of why she accepted all of this so easily.

And she
had
fitted in remarkably well. Every now
and then, she'd spot something that would make her eyes widen or
her mouth gape, only for her to force her features back into a
semblance of normalcy within seconds. She'd pose the questions to
Fade and did so in secrecy so as not to offend whatever or whoever
had freaked her out.

Although the people were pretty good
. They knew her circumstances and if she happened to
stare at them a little too long, they’d simply bow and nod their
heads in understanding.

She wondered how much her subconscious could recall from
childhood and how much that had eased her path
. She’d never once thought about it on Earth, but
something was making this crazy shit easy to accept.

Mearth itself wasn't too peculiar
. Things were remarkably similar to Earth. There were
beds with duvets, chairs with padding, and fields with crops… Sure,
the names of things changed and the crops were weird in comparison
to Earth flora, but still, nothing too bad.

Being a princess was rather nice
. She didn't have to clean the toilet, which was
called a
lavske
here. If she ever wanted to eat, she
pressed a panel on a wall. She only had to worry about what her
mother was up to. Her father had decided not to pressure her into
making any public visits. Something for which she was grateful.
Every few days or so, she'd make an appearance in the ‘court’ but
she glued herself to Fade's side and so, was spared any of the
gossiping.

Every day, people gathered in court from just after lunch
for few hours
. An hour on
Mearth lasted sixty-five minutes and a day consisted of twenty-two
hours. Another aspect that made it easy to conform to this new
world.

Her mother and father sat atop t
heir thrones as nobles and gentry wandered about the
ludicrously opulent chamber. The Mearthen equivalent of gold, not
the color but the expensive precious metal, was something
called
dinger
. A horrible
name for something so precious, but she had no say in the roots of
the Elfen tongue.
Dinger
decorated the
walls of the room and was present in the furniture. Her parents'
thrones seemed to be made of nothing but.

Fade had told her once that Jender sat upon some of the
richest
dinger
deposits on Mearth, just another
reason for the neighboring states to be envious and to covet the
country.

She hated the times that she had to spend in court but knew
it was something she'd simply have to accustom herself
to
. When she lived in Haden,
she'd have to undertake the same ritual in her own
court.

The thought made her grimace
. Being a princess was nice, life was easy. Especially as
little was asked of her at the moment and she could spend her days
simply wandering about the palace, studying the riches and watching
the people, her people, as they went about their daily
business.

Being a queen, on the other hand, was another kettle of
fish and one she didn't entirely look forward to
.

There was something very pre-revolutionary France about the
entire situation
. Upon their
thrones, she couldn't help but compare her parents to Marie
Antoinette and Louis XVI. Not that they were mean Kings and Queens
or ignorant of the very lowest peons, Fade had told her Jender was
one of the happiest nations on Mearth. It was simply such an
antique way of living.

And that she would have to embrace it, well… it didn't
really settle well with her
.

It was like living in a history lesson
. And she’d flunked history more times than she
could count.