The Queen Revealed (30 page)

“Grottonski, take your Prince home,” ordered the Empress, as she lumbered back to her dais. “He is looking a little feeble tonight.”

Rainere felt Grotto pull him by the arm and mutter something, but he couldn’t make his feet move. Rainere’s spinning brain had slowed to a stop. Was he really going to leave the Nest without Natalie? But that was impossible! He needed to give her back to Adelena. None of this made sense anymore.

Grotto pulled him more forcefully toward the entrance of the cavern and Rainere fell into step.

“Prince of Marchant,” called the Empress. “Remember to take your servant with you. If you leave him here, I will eat him after I eat your Queen.”

Unthinking, Rainere stumbled over and picked up the cowering Schiss in his arms. Though he cradled the small man gently, Schiss still cried out in pain at the touch.

“Now go!” ordered the Empress with a wave of her lurid yellow foreleg. “I have much to prepare before I feast on the Hidden Child tonight. When the moon rises, I will no longer just be the Empress of the Under Lands, but I will become Queen of the Above Lands. The Hidden Child and I will be as one and
my
Favored will roam the lands, eating everyone in our way!”

Rainere walked out of the cavern, pushed and pulled by the anxious Grotto, with the sound of the Empress’s words ringing in his ears. As the darkness enveloped them, he automatically led the way out of the mile of tunnels to the surface.

Rainere was surprised when they stepped out into the warm, dappled sunshine of mid-morning. Surely the world should have gone still and the birds fallen silent. Natalie was lost and it was completely his fault.

Rainere passed Schiss to Grotto and then, with shaking hands, conjured a pulsing green portal. He paused before stepping through to look back down the tunnel to the Nest.

“Leave her, Master,” said Grotto gently. “You did everything you could. The child is lost to us now.”

“The Lost Child,” whispered Rainere, as Grotto took his arm and pulled them through the portal and back to the Grey Palace.

Chapter Forty-Five

“And Wish to be an Angel Instead”

“But you must have some idea where the Prince went, or when he’ll be back?” insisted Adele.

She was starting to lose her patience with the whey-faced servant before her. The man wiped his nose on the back of his filthy sleeve and shrugged. “’E doesn’t tell us nuffink,” was the terse reply.

“Can you at least tell me how many servants are working in the palace and help me organize a search party? My daughter could be hiding anywhere!” Adele knew she was getting shrill, but it had been a couple of hours since Lady Olivia had gone to wake the children and discovered Natalie had disappeared.

“I wouldn’t know ‘ow ta,” said the servant as he started to lean to the left before righting himself. The man was clearly drunk. “Tha’s Mr. Grottonski’s job, innit?”

“And where is he?”

But the servant just shrugged again.

Adele huffed with frustration. Of all the days that Natalie could start playing her games, she had picked the worst of them. Adele knew her daughter loved it here in the Grey Palace and that she didn’t want to leave again, but after last night Adele was loathe to have to ask Rainere’s help for something as silly as Natalie playing hide-and-seek in the palace. A thorough search of the apartments hadn’t turned up any trace of her and though Adele wasn’t ready to panic she was close to it.

“Your Majesty. No luck, I’m afraid,” said General Ohrig, as he and the rest of her Queen’s Guard returned from another search, filling the room with their noise and clatter but no Natalie.

Adele frowned at her General and Ohrig frowned back. “We explored where we could, Your Majesty, but there are lots of places we could not enter that were protected by Magic.”

Adele heard the undercurrent of concern in his voice, but she fought to avoid feeling it herself. Natalie was just hiding and would be found soon. Adele chewed her lip. But where was Rainere, or even Grotto for that matter?

“Your Majesty, we’ve also had no luck finding the Priest, Pere Raven, or Charlie either.”

“Where is that Priest?” muttered Adele to Ohrig as he approached her. “Surely he wouldn’t want to miss the Steeplechase?”

“Your Majesty, when was the last time we saw the priest?” asked General Ohrig, keeping his voice low and casting his eyes about to make sure they weren’t overheard. The servant Adele had been questioning had wandered off to scratch himself and ogle Lady Olivia as she played on the couch with Stella.

“The last time I saw him was when he went for a tour with all of you,” replied Adele.

“The priest accompanied us as far the Royal Nursery, then left us there and went with Mr. Grotto to the Marchant’s family chapel. He seemed excited about it, and almost ran out of the room when Mr. Grotto offered to show it to him. After that, all we’ve had is Mr. Grotto’s word that Pere Raven has remained in the chapel or the library attached to it. I thought nothing of it until this morning, but the man still hasn’t shown up and its almost time to leave. And now Natalie has gone.”

The unwanted fear uncurled in Adele’s gut. “And no Prince Rainere or Grotto either,” Adele added reluctantly. “This is very odd.”

A dark frown was Ohrig’s only reply. He didn’t need to say anything else. Adele knew what he was thinking.

Lady Olivia walked over to Adele with Stella on her hip, giving the leering Grey Palace servant a wide berth.

“Your Majesty, all is in readiness for our departure. The Steeplechase is scheduled to start at midday. We should probably be on our way if we are to make it on time.”

“We can’t leave without Natalie.”

“No, of course not, Your Majesty, but perhaps Siobahn and I could take the little ones back and await you at Belvoir?” the young woman suggested. “I’m sure the Prince would understand if we split the party in two. It’s probably best I go with the nanny and children as Siobahn is terrified of His Highness.”

Adele locked eyes with Ohrig as she realized if Rainere didn’t appear to help them pass through the portal they were all trapped here in the Grey Palace.

“He’ll be here,” she promised her General, but didn’t quite know what made her so confident. Where had her Prince gone with Grotto and Pere Raven? Was this something to do with the wedding she refused to have? Had Natalie seen something?

Adele shook the dark thoughts from her head and turned to the Grey Palace servant. “You there! Do you know the way to the palace chapel?”

The man shrugged and nodded at the same time, which Adele took for assent.

“General, let’s leave three men here with the children and three of you come with me to the chapel.” Quickly Ohrig organized his men and they set off after the swaying servant.

As they left the Palace interior, Adelena and her men made their way across the unkempt gardens to an enormous building separated from the rest of the grounds by a rusty wrought-iron fence. More church than chapel, the building loomed over them, casting a somber form in the sunny sky. They stopped at the large stone doors and the servant leading them muttered a short prayer which was, surprisingly, echoed by General Ohrig, and QGs Owens and Bear. It was a prayer intoned out of respect to the Goddess Serena before they entered the sanctity of her house. One of the doors had already been pushed open, so they could pass through silently.

As she stepped into the chapel Adele felt a sudden flash of the familiar. Like many of the Gothic edifices back on Earth, the stone walls were decorated with stained glass windows portraying scenes both hideous and sublime, and filtered the sunlight into different colors. Long wooden benches sat in tidy rows, ten on each side of the carpeted aisle. Adele heard the sound of roosting birds in the eaves and noticed the pews were decorated with dry, white splotches. She shivered as a cold draft blew in behind her and remembered that Natalie would still be in her little nightdress.

Adele walked down the aisle and saw that candles had been lit at the altar. Row upon row of tall black candles that filled the air with a dusky perfume.

With a start Adele realized there was a figure kneeling on the steps before the altar and her heart leapt. This was why her men hadn’t been able to find him. He was here in this unfamiliar part of the palace. As soon as she told him that Natalie was missing he would help to find her immediately.

Rainere rested on his knees, his long black hair hanging down his back, his head bowed as if in prayer. It only struck her as odd that he didn’t turn when she called out his name. Adele mounted the steps and came close enough to touch him.

“Prince Rainere,” she used his title as her men were within hearing distance. “I’m sorry to disturb you at prayer, but we have a problem. Natalie has gone missing…” Adele stopped when Rainere gave her no reaction, but kept his eyes closed and his hands clasped in front of his chest.

“My love,” whispered Adele more urgently. “Please I need you to help me find Natalie.”

Adele was shocked to see a glittering green tear slowly trace its way down Rainere’s cheek.

“Rainere, what’s the matter?” she asked and touched his shoulder. She heard her men fall silent as they witnessed her gentle gesture.

Rainere finally opened his eyes and Adele saw his lashes were wet and his eyes glowed strangely, swimming with bright green tears.

“
Cara mia
, I know where she is,” he whispered and turned to her, grief and despair marring his beautiful face. “But, my darling heart, she is lost.”

Adele’s hand flew to her mouth and the Chime Voices shrieked so loudly and so forcefully, that she blacked out.

Chapter Forty-Six

“But Devils Don’t Have Wings”

“The Prince should be back soon,” General Ohrig muttered. His heavy tread paced close by to her.

Adele woke up, but didn’t open her eyes. There was something on the other side of her eyelids that she didn’t want to face, a terrible thing. If she stayed here in the dark, then she could ignore it.

“What happened to the Queen?” A panicked young voice roused Adele and almost tricked her into opening her eyes. Carefully, she squeezed them tightly shut.

“Where have you been, boy?” asked Ohrig gruffly. “We thought you had been taken, too.”

“I haven’t yet,” answered Charlie. “But I know the Princess has been. That’s why I’m here.”

The princess
, thought Adele dreamily. That word had something to do with the ‘terrible thing’.

“What do you know about Princess Natalie’s disappearance?” demanded Ohrig.

Adele’s eyes flew open at her daughter’s name and she woozily climbed to her feet. She had been lying on a velvet couch and the dust from it clung to her. A large blanket had been draped across her, but was now pooled at her feet and threatened to make her tumble.

“Where is Natalie?” she croaked, and looked wildly around the unfamiliar sitting room. “Where are Aaron and Stella?”

General Ohrig was by Adele’s side in an instant and he pushed her gently back down to sit. “Easy, Your Majesty, you’ve had a shock. Charlie, pour the Queen some wine.”

“I don’t want wine,” coughed Adele and noticed that General Ohrig had his sword in his hand. “I want my children.”

“Prince Rainere, is guiding the children with the nanny and Lady Olivia back through the portal to Belvoir. The men have gone down to see it done. We still don’t know where Natalie is, but the Prince has promised to tell you everything when you are revived.”

Ohrig handed her a glass of red wine. “Drink this, Your Majesty, it will help you feel better.”

Adele doubted that. She felt horribly hollow and sour inside. Her mind was still so dull and kept flitting about, noticing insignificant things, like the broken braid trim on the side of the couch, and that Ohrig smelled of peppermint and tobacco, but she had never seen him take either. With an effort, Adele forced herself to sip at the wine and swallow it.

“Where have you been, Charlie?” she asked and saw the boy had huge sweat patches under his arms, making the fabric of his shirt stick to his ribs.

“That doesn’t matter just yet, Your Majesty.” The boy was in a great hurry to tell her something. Adele watched incuriously as he dropped to his knees before her on the carpet.

“Your Majesty, I don’t know where the Princess is, but I know who took her from her bed. It was the Prince himself.” Charlie’s voice was low and urgent, and when he reached out to take her hand, she could feel how cold and clammy his fingers were.

Why would he lie to her like this?

“Careful lad, she’s still in shock,” warned General Ohrig. “If what you’re saying is true then...” The General was interrupted by the arrival of Captain Lucky and the rest of the Queen’s Guard. Prince Rainere and Grotto followed close behind.

Rainere. Adele breathed a sigh of relief at his arrival. He would fix all this confusion, and he would help her find Natalie.

“The children and women are all off the grounds and were safely put through the portal, General,” said Captain Lucky. His voice was loud in the quiet of Adele’s head.

Adele found Rainere’s eyes with her own. She smiled and was happy when he came to sit next to her on the couch. Without thinking about the room full of men around them she leaned into him as his arms encircled her. She breathed in his spicy cold scent and felt a warmth spread inside of her. She knew he felt it too.

“
Cara mia
, I am so sorry,” he whispered into her hair. “She is gone my darling. I did everything I could, but the Spider Empress has her now.”

Wait. What?

Adele’s shock shattered like a glass wall around her, and the real world came rushing in too fast and too bright. She pushed herself out of Rainere’s arms and stood up. She raised his chin with a finger so she could look into his eyes.

“What did you just say?” she asked and her voice was brittle.

“Your Majesty, I really don’t…” interrupted the General, his tone betraying his disapproval.

“Shut up, Ohrig,” snapped Adele and waved the General to silence while keeping her finger under Rainere’s chin. She saw green tears leak from his eyes.

“
Cara mia
…”

“No,” corrected Adele sharply. “After all of that: you said Natalie was where?”

“With the Spider Empress,” whispered Rainere. “Darling, I did what I could to save her.”

Adele dug her fingers in Rainere’s chin, pinching hard. The Chime Voices began chanting low and intensely in the background behind her gradually stoking rage. “Are you telling me that Natalie is with Spiders? What does that even mean?”

“
Cara mia
, let me explain,” said Rainere and pulled his chin from her grasp, clasping her hand in both of his.

But Adele could already see the guilt in his dark green eyes and she stepped back to let General Ohrig and his men move forward. As she got further from him, the Prince climbed to his feet. He didn’t seem to notice the swords surrounding him or the glass manacles that General Ohrig proffered at him.

“Your Highness, Prince Rainere, I am arresting you under the authority…”

“Adelena, I need to tell you what happened,” said Rainere, and with a twist of his hand all of her Queen’s Guard were hurled back against the walls of the room, their swords clattering to the floor as they were suspended a foot above the ground.

“What did you do to my Natalie, Rainere?” asked Adele. Her voice sounded as cold as the fear that was spreading through her chest, freezing her heart and making it splutter frantically, then pause for too long.

“He took her, Your Majesty.” Charlie surprised her by jumping between her and the Prince. “He came to the children’s bedroom this morning while they slept. He put something on Natalie’s wrist and kissed her on the mouth. She passed out and he carried her out of the room, through the great wardrobe. Your Majesty, you must believe me, I saw the whole thing.”

Charlie was pale and desperate, but his eyes burned with an intensity that sent the silver rings glittering and spinning about his pupils.

“I have no reason to lie,” he added more quietly and turned to face the Prince. “Stay behind me, Your Majesty. I can defend you from him where your Guards can’t.”

Adele looked from Charlie’s trembling hands then to her Queen’s Guard pinned helplessly against the walls by Rainere’s magic. She almost laughed but it would have been joyless and wasted even more time. Adele didn’t fear Rainere’s power. She could take him down with one hand. An image of the Sandarian Mage in his death throes came to mind.

“I’m waiting, Rainere,” she said.

Rainere moved toward her, but her little bodyguard put up a hand to stop him, the other slipping inside his vest.

“Adelena, please do not blame yourself for what has happened,” said Rainere, his tone pleading with her to understand. “The Prophecy and the actions of those forces of darkness here in Evendaar were all fighting long before High Wizard Ohren brought you here.”

He looked into her eyes and sighed at the confusion he saw there. Rainere sat back down on the couch and ran his hands through his hair, pulling it back and away from his face.

“I have never lied to you,
cara mia
, but there are things about myself that I have hidden from you.” The Prince took a deep, shuddering breath. “At the very beginning, I was coerced by the Spider Empress, Ka-kik, into helping her bring the Hidden Child of the End of the World Prophecy into our world. She used my blood to fuel her Spell of Retrieval, but what she didn’t know was that the Wizards of St. Lucidis also wanted you and attempted their own Spell of Retrieval at the exact same moment. The Empress’s spell failed with the interference and I was lost among the stars for a time, but when I returned to the world, I saw that you, the woman who had haunted me for so long, was here in Evendaar. The Wizard Ohren crowned you Queen in accordance with the Prophecy, but he didn’t know that the Empress also feels a claim to you and she believes that you will be the one to bring her species back to power. The Spider Empress is evil, but she holds a great deal of power over me, Adelena. The only way I could protect you from her was to marry you and take your Throne from you, ruling as King of Unisia. The Empress and her Spider People would then have the freedom to rise up from their Nest and once again walk in the light. My Oath to her satisfied, you and I would have been free to live as we wished. With the Spider People once more in power, the St. Lucidis wizards would have been so busy defending their precious Golden Palace, that they would not have troubled us again.”

Rainere shook his head sadly.

“But you would not marry me,
cara mia
, though I begged you to so often. I wanted to save you so much from knowing the terrifying truth about our world. I thought our love was strong enough that you would marry me for me alone.”

“Get to the part about Natalie,” said Adele over the cries of General Ohrig who had renewed his efforts to get down off the wall with louder shouting.

“The Empress gave me until the full moon to convince you to marry me. She wanted to rise on a night when their dark Goddess Lune is at her strongest. That is tonight,
cara mia
.”

Rainere stood up and came toward her, but stopped a few feet away. She could see his desperation in his tightly held jaw and the vein that throbbed at his temple.

“Adelena, I vowed that I would never give you reason to fear me and I would never force you to bend to my will, so I had to come up with a plan to save you from yourself. In the little black box, I gave you, there was a very special necklace which would have been enough to protect you from the Spider Empress’s poison but Natalie took it for herself. It was imbued with powerful Magic and I couldn’t take it from Natalie to give it back to you so I thought perhaps I could just,” - Rainere took another deep breath - “I disguised Natalie with an Illusion Spell to look just like you and put the Marchant Wedding band, a bracelet, on her. I then put her under a Sleeping Curse so that she would not suffer when I took her underground to the Spider Empress. That was what the boy saw me do,” he gestured at Charlie, who tensed at the motion. “I took her down into the cavern this morning and showed her to the Empress, wearing the band, as proof of our marriage, but the Empress betrayed me. I can see now that all along she planned to keep you for her own.”

“She is keeping my Natalie?” repeated Adele.

“Please, my dear heart, do not blame yourself for what has happened to your daughter,” begged Rainere again, his face etched in pain.

Adele felt the cold comfort of shock creeping back over her mind. She clenched her fists and forced herself to breathe. She wanted to listen to Rainere’s words, but the Chime Voices were ebbing and flowing, making her feel lost.

“So you just wanted to marry me to make this Empress happy with you?” she asked, bewildered. “And when I wouldn’t you gave them Natalie instead of me.”

Rainere raised his chin, his eyes flashing with frustration. “Adelena, I love you with every fiber of my being and with every drop of The Blood in my veins. You knew this was true, even before you knew me as a flesh-and-blood man.  So, you must believe that I had no knowledge of this Prophecy before the Empress took my blood for her Spell of Retrieval. But when you appeared as the Hidden Child, I knew it was the hand of the Goddess that had brought us together. Neither the Wizards nor the Spider Empress know what we mean to each other, but I couldn’t risk the Empress hurting you in an effort to get to me. I would not risk your life or safety, no matter what it costs me, Adelena.”

He gathered her hands in his own and kissed them gently, his eyes closed to her shocked expression.

“You were scared the Empress would hurt me, so you gave her my
daughter
instead of me?” she asked. Adelena was asking the same question, but Rainere kept answering it in different ways.

“I made a vow to you Adelena, I vowed on my life to protect you in this world and I would never break that vow. I have little left to me but my honor and I will never be forsworn, my love.”

Adele considered this man who had loved her so passionately and intimately. Rainere’s face was beautiful even with its mask of fear. She had given herself to him body, heart and soul and he had loved her fiercely in return. He had not broken a single one of the promises he had made to her.

But he was completely and utterly insane.

“Release my men,” she said quietly, and pulled her hands out of his.

She heard the sound of gasping as all six of her Queen’s Guard dropped to the floor with a thud. General Ohrig was at her side in an instant.

“Tell me where the Princess is now!” he ordered the Prince.

Rainere ignored him. “Tell me you understand,
cara mia
? I had to give Natalie up to save you. Even if I had revealed her true identity the Empress would have eaten Natalie and I immediately, and you would still be at the mercy of the Spider People. I saved myself so I could come back to protect you from what is to come in the Days of Darkness.”