Page 154 of A War of Crowns

Her nose wrinkled. “You are just like your father,” she accused him at once.

He sighed and brushed her off, turning to leave. “You are to be confined to your wing for the rest of the day, Mother,” he dully decreed on his way out the door.

To his Kingsguard, he added, “No one shall allow her to pass until I order otherwise, no matter what she tells you.”

“What?” the dowager queen whispered, and he flicked her a look over his shoulder. “You are placing me under…house arrest?” A disbelieving laugh huffed from deep within her throat. “Edmund, be serious.”

“Oh, I am. I’m being quite serious, Mother. But there’s no need to look at me like that. It’s just for this one evening.”

“But the Princess Mariana is due to arrive at any moment,” his mother breathlessly reminded him. Her eyes wide, she desperately searched his features.

He shrugged once more and stepped back into the corridor. “Yes,” he drawled, basking in the fresh glare the dowager queen delivered his way. “But our actions have consequences, you know. You should have thought about that before you undermined me.”

“You ungrateful child.Iwas the one to broker that arrangement—”

Edmund nodded to his nearest Kingsguard, and the man stepped forward to slam shut the door, cutting off his mother’s fresh protests mid-sentence.

She was lucky that he loved her; otherwise, he might have been inclined to place her under house arrest for the rest of the week rather than merely a single night.

“Next time, Mother,” he whispered to the closed door, not caring if she heard him through the wood or not, “don’t hire assassins behind my back.”

He turned away with that. His steps brisk, he strode back to the comfort of his own apartments in silence. His mind whirred through all he still must do before evening fell.

His mother had been right about one thing, at the very least.

His new bride-to-be was due to arrive at any moment.

“I don’t want to be disturbed until Her Highness is here,” Edmund snapped to his Kingsguard once they made it back to his chambers. “Tell me the moment she arrives.”

He left his guards at the door as he stepped into his sitting room. After a moment, the door clicked shut behind him.

Finally, he was alone.

But now he was in afoulmood.

Letting loose a low snarl, he combed his fingers through his hair and veered off toward his bedchamber. No doubt the stash of vodka he kept within his nightstand might help to improve his mood.

But the second he entered the darkened chamber, he stopped when he noticed a strange lady lounging atop his bed, her eyes closed. As if she had any right at all to be there.

“You there,” Edmund called, his already foul mood darkening at the sight of the stranger. “What are you doing here?”

But when the woman atop his bed opened her eyes to look at him through the darkness, Edmund realized his mistake. That was no lady.

It was a witch.

“Edmund,” the strange woman purred in a voice full of rasp and smoke. Unfurling herself from the rumpled sheets, she rose to her feet and drew to her full height.

Like all Arathian women, she was horrendously tall. And like all witches, she sported those strangely golden eyes, which gleamed even within the muted shadows of the room.

He had never seen a witch in the flesh, but those eyes were impossible to mistake for anything else. “How do you know my name?” He took a step backward toward the still open door behind him. “How did you get in here?”

The witch ignored both questions. Instead, she whispered, “I’ve waited so long for this moment, Edmund…”

He didn’t care to know exactly what it was this creature had been waiting for, though. “Guards!” he screamed as he dashed back into the illuminated expanse of his sitting room. “Guards!”

Silence was all that greeted him.

“They are not coming, Edmund,” came that smoky voice from just behind him again, and Edmund whirled upon his heel to find that the witch had followed him into the sitting room and was steadily prowling her way all the closer.

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