Page 68 of The Time Of Queens

“You had no right!”I told him in a seething tone, my face turning away from the damage I had done and now looking at the one responsible.

“I agree, and for this I am sorry. But all I can say regarding my actions is that I believed in her cause,” he told me, keeping his tone even and unapologetic despite his words.

“And just what cause would she have exactly to warrant such a lie?” I asked bitterly, pulling my fist from the wall, now just as furious with her also. For she knew from the very beginning who she was to me and yet she was cruel enough to withhold it from me. To play the part of someone of little circumstance when she knew the truth. When she knew that she was my everything.That she was always destined to be mine.

“She needed to get close enough to steal from you, I believe it was why she broke in the first time.”

At this I flinched back a step before shaking my head and asking,

“Come again?”

“She wanted to steal from my brother?” Vincent added incredulously.

Adam released a sigh and continued on, for he had come too far with no reasons to stop now.

“A coin… she needs a coin, my Lord.”

“She needed money?” I asked surprised, yet it was Lucius who answered.

“She needed a way into the Janus Temple, for I believe this letter explains as much,” he said, pulling the evidence from his jacket pocket and handing it to me. I opened it up, forcing myself to take care not to just tear it open in my haste. I then read it quickly, feeling my anger rise once more with each word written. Because now I knew why my coachman told me she was headed to London.

“The HellBeast King,”I seethed aloud.

“It would seem this was her backup plan, for she must not have found what she was looking for,” Vincent said, pulling the coin Lucius had brought with him from his pocket.

“You hid it?”

“You might have trusted her reasons for being found in here that day, but I did not,” he admitted, obviously knowing of our time in my study and questioning it just as I should have.

“There was no loss of a snuffbox?” I assumed, directing this question at Adam, who shook his head, telling me no. But then I jerked the letter in my hand at my second and snapped,

“And you, just when were you intending to show me this?” I asked Lucius, who shrugged his shoulders and stated calmly,

“When I believed the time was right.”

Of course, one look at who the letter also implicated, then I knew the true cause, for he hadn’t wanted to cast an accusing light on his friend until he himself decided to intervene. A fact I had no choice but to let go, instead focusing on one far more important, asking,

“And why, by the Gods, would a mortal need access into the Janus temple?”

“Now that is something I don’t know and, like you, am eager to find out,” Lucius replied, now looking to his own second in command for answers. At this Adam finally showed discomfort and started by releasing a heavy sigh.

“Now this is where it gets infinitely more complicated,” he admitted, making my brother scoff on my behalf, saying,

“What could be more complicated than that of his Electus choosing to keep her true self from the man Fated to be hers?”

A good question indeed, and one I too wished to know more than all else.

“She needs a coin to get home.”

I frowned, disbelieving that any door in the temple could lead her home. As they all led to places she was forbidden to go, for none were connected to the mortal realm. Not even my own doors led to anywhere upon this Earth. Of course, I had contemplated having one cast to lead directly into Afterlife, myhome in New England in the Americas. But as of yet, I didn’t see much cause for such, nor the waste of power, for they were not easy to make.

In fact, it had taken a lot of resources on my part just to have one made for my vault where I kept most of my vast wealth and earthly treasures.

“Home? She is mortal, for wherever would she think to go?” Vincent stated, asking the question before I could.

Adam was starting to look more uncomfortable by the second, until finally he astounded us all by saying,

“She arrived through the fountain.”

---