Page 14 of Knightfall
My hands shook as I turned the handle and pushed open the door.
Mother lay in her giant four poster bed, her hair plaited in a braid that reached her waist. The velvet covers were drawn around her waist and pillows propped up her back. A small lap desk was pushed to the side of her and overflowed with paper. As if she was working from her bedchamber. As if this were a normal event.
Was she that ill? Was it serious?
My heart beat a mile a minute as my eyes roved over her.
She was thinner than I remembered. Her hair was streaked with grey. Her lady-in-waiting clucked somewhere but the woman left the room at the flick of my mother’s wrist. For the first time in my memory, my queen mother smiled when she saw me.
“Bloss. I’d heard you returned. Well done,” mother nodded at someone behind me.
I supposed Ryan and the others had followed me into the room. I didn’t turn to look. I was still in shock.
Shock turned to anger. She was acting so calm about my return. So normal.
I saw her hand tremble against the bedsheets, though she tried to hide it.
That wasn’t an emotional tremble. It didn’t stop. She ended up burying her hands in the blankets to conceal her weakness.
My shock transformed into fear, and fear shape-shifted into an angry bear raging inside of me.
“What the sarding hell is going on?” I stomped further into the room. Ryan maintained his place two steps behind me. “I haven’t heard any talk about you being sick.”
She laughed lightly. “I can’t be ill. I have one missing daughter and another that’s two years away from being eligible to marry and take the throne.”
Those words blasted like a cannonball through my stomach. “Below the belt,” I snarled.
“Is it? I thought I only spoke truth.”
I seethed. She was always good at cutting me, at throwing me off balance and forcing me to use my power. It flickered in my stomach even now. I shoved it down forcefully.
No. I left that all behind, I told myself.
She watched me through slitted eyes, waiting to see how I’d respond. When I’d left, I’d been a scared little princess. Now? If this was the inn, I’d have cursed her to high heaven. So that’s what I did.
“You only speak half-truths, you black-souled she-witch. And you know it.” I growled.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ryan take a disbelieving step backward.
I’d just cursed the queen. No one cursed the queen. Not only that, but four years ago, I would never have said that. When I was eighteen, I’d been mother’s plaything, her puppet.
Aw, shite, I thought.
He was gonna think I wasn’t myself. That I was some kind of magicked spy.
But my mother grinned. “Grown up a bit have we? Think you can spit vitriol at your monarch?”
“Someone should. You surround yourself with enough ass-kissing fools.”
“Your Majesty,” Connor’s voice interjected. “Are you certain it’s Bloss?”
She arched an eyebrow. “She looks quite a bit worse for wear, but … Bloss, what did you do to your tutor when you were three?”
I rolled my eyes. “I bit his nose so hard they had to stitch it.”
“And when Avia was nine and you were fifteen, what was the horrific fight in your chamber about?”
My cheeks grew pink. “I refused to let her stay there at night any longer.”
