The Soulstoy Inheritance (29 page)

The ‘Lady Queen’
,
begging for her life from a man that has spent unending years in servitude to a mad king, smiling and bowing whilst only madness and hatred brewed within.

I could see it then, could see the change in his features, the decision falling across his glare and altering his disposition with its finality.

He’s going to give me what I want… So why do I feel as though he’s getting exactly what he wanted?

“As you wish, Lady Queen.” He gave a bow that still managed to appear bizarrely sincere. “I would have killed you with mercy, because despite all of this,” he waved his free hand about in the air, “I actually sensed somewhat of a kindred spirit in you… Alas… Elias, I assure you, will give no such quarter.”

I should have felt the winner of this backward battle, but Grenlow had changed too quickly. He had given it up too easily. Now I couldn’t shake the premonition that he might have been two steps ahead of me in my own plan to be two steps ahead of him this entire time.

I was quiet as we were escorted back to the castle, as were Hazen, Leif and Quick. This was no aberration as far as Leif was concerned, but Quick’s unspoken subservience was surprising. His golden rings glinted in the dark, his roguish features lulled into a neutrality that could have easily been mistaken for calm.

Leif.

Yes, Lady Queen?

Can you slip away?

They expect me to.

What do you mean?
I chanced a glance at the big man, and saw that Hazen was also staring at him, brow creased.

It was only the slightest shift in expression, but for Hazen to give away even that much had my unease increasing tenfold. Leif kept striding forward, more in focus than I had perhaps experienced him yet, though his features were still hidden behind the stretch of worn leather contoured to the lower half of his face, as well as the shade of his hood.

Nareon’s reign lasted several of your lifetimes, young one. Most of the Council has seen your name on the Hereditary Scroll as a mere placeholder, even if they haven’t been actively plotting to replace you. The entirety of any flourishing crop does not weep at the evaporation of the rain that feeds it. It is just rain. Brief, nourishing, and most of all… dependable. When one storm passes, another will inevitably follow. It is the way of our people, and especially our government. While Grenlow’s motives might have been in alliance with something much more sinister… I doubt that the rest of the council will oppose him. They see you as the rain that our people needed to ensure that our kingdom was not without rule before a more fitting head was found to place the crown upon.

I tore my eyes from Leif, instead examining the others. I finally understood the hesitation of Cereen and Rohan when Grenlow had pulled up his horse. They hadn’t been let in on the plan, but they had been expecting it. I wondered how they would feel if Elias became their new king…

Is that how you feel?
I directed toward Leif.

You are my Queen
.
That is how I feel
.

Good,
I decided inwardly.

Leif’s mask twisted in an unfamiliar way, and I realised that he was smiling. 

If I am your Queen, you will do something for me
. I tried to block my thoughts from Hazen, but wasn’t sure how successfully I could open my mind to one person while keeping it closed to another.

What do you need, Lady Queen?

As soon as we reach Castle Nest, break away and steal a horse. It is imperative that you reach the castle before us. Send Gretal straight to the border, nobody will look twice at her, she will be able to return to the human kingdom and stay out of harm’s way until I have managed to take care of everything here. Then I need you to find Cale, Rose and Miriam. Take them somewhere safe within the castle, and leave them with a guard of your own men. Are there people that you can trust?

I will take care of them, Lady Queen.

Thank you, Leif.

It dawned on me as we were marched back to the castle—looking for all the world as though we were being given a royal escort for our own safety—that my plan may have worked, but I had still somehow failed. I didn’t want to admit it, but I felt it inherently. Grenlow had betrayed me, but there was more to it than that. Grenlow had expected me to find out. He had expected me to make a move like this, and he had expected that he would be escorting me back to the castle.

Be careful,
I added as an afterthought to Leif.
There is every chance that Grenlow has some trap waiting for you as soon as you slip away from us.

You have a talent for underestimation, Lady Queen.

By the time we arrived back at the castle, Leif was gone, and nobody seemed to notice, or else they simply didn’t care. We were marched up several flights of stairs to a room that I had never seen before. It looked like it may have been another council chamber, except that there was something off about it: something that set it apart from the rest of the castle. The floors were patterned with tiny, painted stones that managed to be several degrees colder than those adorning the hallways. It may have been the colours… blinking at me in muted black, silver and pearl, or it might have been simply the nature of stone that had never felt the heat of the sun. The large windows were all covered with heavy, three-toned paisley drapes. The colour scheme of pearl, black and silver was repeated often throughout the room. There was also a banner hanging from above the fireplace boasting a design that was vaguely familiar. Hazen, I thought, recognised it too. His dark eyes had fixed upon the banner almost immediately, and even now, he was transfixed.

It depicted a foreboding, starkly adorned tree with only three blooms to claim. One of the leaves was high atop the tallest of the scraggly branches, unfurling in health, while the other two were in the process of falling to the ground. I was still staring at the banner when a most terrible sound pierced my ears. Hazen was suddenly upon the ground, his face creased in horror and pain, his tortured scream tearing through the room. Somewhere behind me, I heard the door slamming shut.

“It begins,” Grenlow said calmly, watching Hazen with a fascinated expression, as if this were something he had been waiting to see for a long, long time.

I forced my terrified limbs to move, to go to Hazen, but somebody grabbed me, holding me back. It was Quick.

“Put on a good act, or we will both die,” he whispered.

I didn’t even give myself time to absorb what he said; it was all too easy to pretend that he had betrayed me, because in a way, he had. There would be no way that Grenlow and the others would believe this ruse, unless Quick had worked with them in the past.

“No…” my voice shook; the word echoing around the room, sounding weak and pathetic. “You lied to me!” I cried, causing Quick’s grip to tighten painfully. “I
trusted
you!”

The torment of knowing how thoroughly I had been betrayed was only now showing itself to me. I thought that I could almost believe that Quick meant to get us out of this alive—I tried to believe that he wouldn’t let me die, that there was a reason he was doing this… but things were too rapidly slipping out of my control. There were tears of fury filling my eyes and I blinked them away, needing to keep Hazen in my sight. He was now staring sightlessly at the ceiling, face creased in agony.

“I’m sorry,” Quick whispered in my ear.

I tried to wrench my wrists out of his grasp, but he held tight, and so I sent a burst of power at him instead. Not enough to truly hurt him, but enough to convince the others that I might have been trying. He jerked backwards into the wall, except that his grip on me remained true, and I went with him. My head smacked into the his chest even as his head smacked into the wall. He was holding on so tightly now that my fingers were starting to go numb.

“Enough,” snapped Grenlow. “Contain her.”

Even as he said the words, Quick was already forcing the linked metal onto my wrists, pressing the ends together until they clicked, locking me in. I felt the effect on my power immediately, blanketing it. My wrists were not bound together, but instead were retained separately in links of metal tight enough to cause a tingling in my fingertips.

“Hazen!” I called, trying to get his attention. “Hazen, please look at me! Tell me what’s happening to you!”

He answered me with another wretched bellow of pain, and I heard the sounds of booted feet thundering up the stairs. The doors flung open and half a dozen soldiers spilled into the room, led by a bedraggled excuse for a man. His shoulders and back were stooped, his clothes hanging in tatters, his feet bare and dirty.

“You brought me presents,” the man purred, the soldiers melting back into the corridor as he stepped forward, his façade transforming.

Hair sprouted from his balding scalp, his posture straightened with the sickening sound of dislocation, and the wrinkles upon his face smoothed out. He was ageing backwards, walking towards Hazen… whose screams were growing.

“Just in time,” the stranger rasped, life flowing into him with every step closer that he got to Hazen’s body, now arching from the floor of its own accord.

“King Elias,” Ayleth voiced from the other side of the room. “Welcome home.”

Elias had barely spared the others a glance, but he paused now, his hands hovering inches from Hazen’s skull.

“Thank you.” He flicked a look to each of them as his fingers threaded into the hair of the one lying at his feet.

His eyes met mine and Hazen’s sounds of pain seemed to morph into something else, something that made my stomach heave. I lurched over and vomited onto the carpet, Quick still holding tight to my arms, even though my power had been cut off by the metal bracelets. Elias scowled, withdrawing his hands from Hazen’s head.

“What a mess you’ve made,” he told me, moving in the swift and silent stalk reminiscent of the other Soulstoy brothers.

He waved his hand at the carpet, and my vomit was doused with water, which heated into steam and unfurled into the air. “Don’t worry.” He grabbed my face, forcing me to look away from Hazen and into his own eyes. “I’ll take things from here. I will clean up the mess that you have made of my kingdom, sweet girl, and allow you to move onto the next life in… peace. You deserve that much, for babysitting my throne so dutifully.”

Hazen had grown quiet, but I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t see anything past the death calling to me through the grey void of Elias’s irises.

“You’re not living,” I whispered. “You’re something else.”

Elias grinned at me, his tight grip softening, falling away from my face.

“You’re right, of course.”

“What are you?” I flicked a look to Hazen now, swallowing my terror as I drank in his colourless skin and unmoving limbs. I wouldn’t let him die.

Hazen
, I called inwardly,
please answer me. Please.

“You’re a smart girl,” Elias was studying my face. “Take a guess. If you get it right, I’ll allow you to attend to your human. I’ve taken what I need from him for now.”

That got my attention. I returned his scrutiny immediately, taking from him what he took from me. Perhaps he saw a scared little girl, tears in constant supply, fumbling her way into the traps of greater warriors, greater schemers, greater leaders…

“You’re behind everything.” I did not offer it to him as a question, because I was suddenly sure. “You’re the darkness that has dogged my every step since Nareon approached me in the forest. You shot me with an arrow, warning me to stay away. You attacked Hazen at the castle. You killed Nareon… You killed my father.”

“And much, much more,” he added with a slow twist to his mouth. “But that will do for now.”

Quick released my wrists and I flew to Hazen, realising on some level that I should have attacked Elias instead. I could have put up a good fight even without my powers, but I would have certainly died much sooner. I couldn’t see any way out of my own death, but there was no use provoking it to occur sooner than Elias intended.

I pressed my hands to Hazen’s cold cheeks, trying not to let my metal bracelets touch him, turning his face back up to the light. His head was heavy, his breath undetectable.

“Don’t do this,” I commanded him desperately. “Open your eyes.”

I tried to hold back my tears, but my body was shuddering with silent sobs as I bent to kiss his face. I pressed my lips to his cheeks and the backs of his eyelids, a litany of senseless, whispered words battering his skin with each kiss.

Finally, I felt him. He didn’t answer me, didn’t twitch so much as an eyelid, but he was there in my mind. His presence crept into my awareness like a lurking fog, settling into my senses, testing out my capacity to house his own consciousness.

Bea
.

I cried even harder, clutching his face to mine, pressing one last kiss to his lips before I laid him down gently and stood to face Elias. The man was watching me with his head tilted to the side, Soulstoy-style. I shuddered, and a flash of pleasure sparked in his expression.

“I enjoy such mental bonds,” he drawled, stalking around the room to where Grenlow stood, he tapped the other man on the temple, and I paused. Grenlow’s eyes were blank.

He was an empty shell. 

“You’ve been…” I choked on my own words, feeling another wave of nausea roll over me. “It has been you all along,” I repeated.

Elias grinned, snapped his fingers, and Grenlow stood to attention. The switch was chilling. Grenlow was back to his usual self. His face was stony and expressionless, as always, but he was present. And I saw beneath the mask to things that I had only begun to see as I had gotten to know him better. The hint of concern in his gaze, swirling with something deeper, something that I had once mistaken for empathy.

“Stop,” I begged. “Stop playing with him, I can’t stand it.”

Elias pulled his consciousness back into his own body, reached over and picked a dagger from inside Grenlow’s coat, and then began to play with it. I watched as he leaned back against a side table, dug the tip of the blade into the polished wood, and began to spin it slowly around, carving a small hollow into the surface. Cereen, Rohan and Ayleth stood silently off to the side, each of them standing sentry with a part-terrified, part-reverent countenance.