Lady Livingston and Lady Reres, not bound by the glamour thanks to their own fae blood, exchange a worried look.
I have to work quickly. I can make people ignore the queen for only so long; everyone in this room has been trained to pay attention to her, and it would be far too draining on my magic to keep this up.
“Was it him?” Mary asks.
She means her husband, of course.
“I don’t know,” I say, and that is what worries me.
The queen’s frown deepens. “If I were Queen of England, it would be simple to chop his head off.” Her voice is wistful, but her shoulders slump in defeat. “But I’m not. Yet.”
Mary has enough enemies, and even if she is technically next in line for the English throne, it’s not wise to remind anyone of that. “Let’s keep talk like this to ourselves.”
“This whole situation is unacceptable.” Mary squares her shoulders, no small feat under her heavy black gown and stiff white ruff.
“I agree,” I snarl, not liking her tone or the implication that I’ve failed.
“I wish I had your power,” she says, her eyes searching mine. “Maybe I would have known not to marry Darnley if I could have seen his…” She searches for the right word.
“Auras,” I supply. “The colors tell me only a little. Moods, intents, things like that. But would it have done you any good? You didn’t believe me when I tried to tell you—”
She raises her hand, and I obey the command to stop talking. What’s the point? I warned her not to marry the “long lad,” as she calls her tall husband. Darnley came to court reeking of glamours—glamours to make him handsome, charming, witty. Perfect. And she fell for it, head over heels, skirt over head, ring over finger.
As soon as they were married and it was officially too late to change anything, the glamours fell away.
The problem, though, is that it may not be him this time.
“We have to assume this is much larger than one man’s ambition,” I say in a low voice. Lady Reres still hears me; her back is stiff, her shoulders bunched together. “This could very well be the start of a war. Although…” I add, my voice trailing off.
“Yes?”
“I told you,” I say, my voice dropping lower. “I could…handle the problem of Darnley.”
She bites her lip.
Even with Mary’s knowledge that her husband is not a good man to be around—putting it mildly—she refuses to let others know the extent of Darnley’s treachery.
“I cannot risk my baby being declared a bastard,” she told me the night after David’s murder.
“There are plenty of bastards at court,” I reminded her. Every king before her had multiple mistresses. Seemed sometimes half of Scotland was related to one King James or another.
“Bastards at court are fine,” she said primly. “But not a one of them is allowed the throne.”
“We can kill Darnley regardless,” I pointed out. “You obviously conceived while married. It’s fine.”
“It’s not.” The queen’s voice brooked no argument. “Look at what happened in England.”
Damned England. That country ruins everything. King Henry, eighth of his name, ruled before Elizabeth. And his willingness to toss aside wives—either through divorce or beheading—led to a quite literally bloody succession mess. Queen Elizabeth is sometimes even called a bastard—often by Mary herself—despite Henry being married to her mother before her head was removed from her shoulders. And shehad to fight to take her place on the throne of England, a fight that saw her half brother and half sister die and a cousin lose her head before Elizabeth could take the seat.
Even now, so many years later, there are constant calls for her to be overthrown. And most of them are rooted in the idea that she’s illegitimate, a handy excuse for all the Catholics who don’t want a Protestant ruler and all the men who don’t want a female one.
Killing Darnley—executing him for his treason—would cast doubt on baby James’s legitimacy for the throne, despite the marriage contract. I don’t agree with Mary’s point, but I understand where she’s coming from.
Still… “I could make it look like an accident,” I tell her.
The king consort could take a nice tumble into the sea, perhaps; the kelpies would gladly drag him under for me. The bansheeslovea man like Darnley; they would delight in screaming at him until his brain exploded.
She doesn’t tell me no.
