King & Queen

“Please don’t do that, Your Majesty. He’s with me. We need to speak to the king urgently,” I fretted. My eyes went to the door as though the guards would walk in at any moment to take us away.

“He’s upstairs. What’s going on?”

“Please, can you get him? We need to talk to him now!” The urgency in my voice was unmistakable. I’m sure she must have caught the fear in it too.

She wrung her fingers in her hands. I’d never seen her so skittish. “I don’t understand what is happening here.”

“Please!” I begged. If she didn’t summon the king, I was going to have to go looking for him myself and in a castle this huge, it would take me forever to find him.

A couple of guards entered the room. I pleaded with the queen with my eyes.

“Can you ask His Majesty to come down here, please?” she said to them with authority. “It’s rather urgent.”

They bowed again and left the room. I exhaled sharply. Finally, I would be able to tell Luca’s parents the truth. Now all I had to do was to get them to believe me.

Five minutes later, the king blustered in.

“What is it? I was...”

He stopped talking as he saw who was in his wife’s study. I watched as his mouth opened to form a perfect O shape.

I curtseyed again. “Your Majesty.” He bowed his head to me in a daze. “You’re dead!”

“I assure you I’m not dead and as you can see that I’m not dead, you’ll also be able to see that I wasn’t murdered by Cynder.” I indicated Cynder to my right.

His eyebrows shot up as he took in the sight of Cynder by my side.

“I think I need a drink,” he said weakly. “Do you have any whiskey, Sarina?”

The queen shook her head in mock frustration. “No, but I could do with one myself. Maybe we should all head to the parlor.”

The king nodded. We followed him to the wood-paneled room I’d been in the last time I’d been at the castle. Then, Seraphia and I had drunk champagne instead of whiskey. With a heavy heart, I realized I’d have to tell them the truth about Seraphia too. This was going to kill them.

“Where have you been all this time?” asked the queen. “Luca is worried sick. Oh goodness me, he’s going to marry that dreadful woman!” Her hand flew up to her mouth. She seemed so unnerved, unsure of herself. I’d never seen her this way before. The king poured four very generous glasses of whiskey and downed his in one go before passing the rest around and pouring himself another. Even he was rattled by my arrival.

I glanced at Cynder who nodded. I needed to tell them everything.

“Luca knows I’m alive. He knows Cynder is alive. On the day of our wedding, Cynder wasn’t kidnapping me, he was rescuing me.”

Theron sniffed and adopted a quizzical look. “Rescuing you from what, my dear?”

I sighed. I wanted to put this gently without hurting them, but I realized there was no way to do that. “He was rescuing me from Luca. You see, it was Luca who planted the bombs at my palace. He was planning to kill me to get the crown.”

Both the king and queen looked at me as if I was telling some kind of joke and they were waiting for a punch line.

When it didn’t come, Theron spoke. “That’s preposterous,” he blustered. “He loves you. He’d get the crown anyway if he married you.”

I could see the queen nodding slightly beside her husband. I couldn’t tell if she was agreeing with him or on the verge of fainting.

I pulled a chair over for her just in case. She sat down, giving me the smallest of smiles.

“Actually, he would only become the prince consort,” argued Cynder. “He wouldn’t become king by marrying the queen.”

“But it’s the same, just a different title,” huffed Theron.

Cynder carried on, trying to make Luca’s parents understand. “But that’s my point exactly. It’s the title he wants. Prince consort doesn’t have the same value. The king is the highest ranking person in the whole kingdom. A prince consort is one below the queen. Luca has had enough playing second best. He wants to be number one!”

“Luca has spent his whole life in his brother Tomas’s shadow,” I agreed. “He’s resentful that Tomas, a man who really isn’t that interested in being the next king, will get the crown when you, sir, pass away. When Tomas married a Magi; a group of people that Luca thinks are beneath him, it only compounded the issue. He couldn’t bear it that a Magi was going to be the queen here when he could never be king. The fact that Seraphia and Tomas have two sons makes it extremely unlikely that he’ll ever get the throne in Thalia. Seraphia told me that he hated her for a long time, but when he saw an opportunity to become king in my country and saw my desire to integrate the Magi, he began to suck up to her.

“He had a good feeling he’d be picked as one of the four. Why wouldn’t he? Already a prince in his own right, good -looking, charming. He was known as a ladies’ man before the ball. He knew what it took to woo women. He still does. Remember the woman at the dinner party at his house, his PR lady? He’s sleeping with her. He probably was the whole time. Who knows?”

Sarina made a sound of horror. This must be so difficult to hear, but she had to know.

“When he had what he wanted, me, he hatched a plan to kill me and my family ensuring that he would become king. Everything was planned until Cynder and some others found out. It was only after the wedding that I found out the extent of his lies. He has guards all over Silverwood looking for the pair of us. He wants us both dead. He’s been hunting the Magi too. In less than a month’s time, he will be king, and he’ll be able to do whatever he likes.”

Theron swirled his whiskey around in his glass as if contemplating whether to drink it or not.

“I know there are a lot of things happening in Silverwood at the moment and I can’t say I agree with everything that Luca is doing,” he said, downing the whiskey. “Marrying that Bloom woman when he barely knows her for a start, but I’m afraid you are wrong. He’s made it very clear to us that he’s missing you terribly, and I’ve seen no mention anywhere of him hunting the Magi. I will agree with you that he wasn’t too fond of Seraphia for a long time, but recently they have been the best of pals. If anything, he’s become an advocate of the Magi.”

“He’s lying to you. Everything is a lie!” I shouted in frustration. Cynder took my hand to calm me down.

“Seraphia!” I said, “Where do you think she is?”

The queen’s brow furrowed, and she frowned. “She’s at her parent’s house down south. Her mother has been quite unwell, and she’s gone down there to look after her. Why?”

“Her parents are on vacation.” I sighed, looking to Cynder for help. He nodded in encouragement. I knew I was hurting these people which in turn hurt me. “Luca has her. She’s locked in his basement.”

The king’s eyebrows shot up. “Why ever would he lock Seraphia in his basement? It makes no sense.”

“She’s locked in his basement because he’s planning to kill her. She, along with some other people, has been printing a newsletter to tell the people of Silverwood the truth. Luca found out and caught them. The execution date is set for one day after the royal wedding and two days after he becomes king.”

Theron shook his head. He had a pained expression on his face.

“I’m sorry, this all sounds very far-fetched. I think we need to contact Luca and bring him here to sort this mess out once and for all.” Both Cynder and I shook our heads abruptly, but it was the queen who spoke.

“No need. I called him when they arrived.”

“He knows we are here?” I felt physically sick at the thought of it. The last thing we needed now was for Luca to come and capture us here.

The queen looked pained. “When the guard told me, I didn’t believe...I had to take a look for myself. Of course, I had to tell Luca the good news immediately.”

“What did he say?” asked Cynder quickly, giving me a quick glance. I could see the fear in his face. It matched my own thoughts.

“He said he would come here to see for himself. He said he was on his way!”