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Chapter Fourteen
I was relieved my mates were doing better. It had shaken us all up more than I wanted to acknowledge, which was why I had put up with being confined again. I wasn’t sure how long I could tolerate the lack of freedom, but had recognized an important fact. In buying the fact that our enemy wanted to kill me, we were discounting his real objective, which was to take over the whole kingdom and return to his version of reigning as usual.
With every passing day that he had access to our kingdom, he could be doing just about anything. Our volunteers had begun their patrols, but the same dense forests that made it hard to ride our horses at a gallop, or were so pleasant to run in as wolves, provided miles of hiding places for evildoers.
If they couldn’t get to me, then what were they doing? What plans was Bors hatching that could cause harm to my people? The improvements we were creating were certainly vulnerable to damage. The solar fields, the wind turbines, the upgraded homes, and even the bridges, many of which needed repairs but were not dangerous yet. Sabotage would be easy. Maybe.
I paced my palace like a caged tiger, wanting out with every fiber of my being. I moved from window to window, looking out as if I might find the answers, but being shut up in here just made it worse.
How could I protect my people if I was unable to be among them. But how could I protect them if I was dead?
We were not holding audiences now, against my protests, but my mates claimed that anyone could be one of his men. This restriction may have been the hardest of all, but keeping me locked up was not quite the protection they’d hoped as was brought home late one night as I stalked the halls, restless and bored.
I had just about decided to end my imprisonment. It had been days since Bors or any of his people had been seen. Maybe they’d decided to leave? After my people battled the lions, and my mates drove off the wolves, maybe he’d given up?
But as I paused to look out a window at the moonlit gardens, I knew that wasn’t true. Bors was far too greedy for both power and money to walk away. Every bush that stirred with a breath of wind was a potential knife-wielding danger. Every shadow a menace. Every… But what was that?
“Alert! Call the captain of the guards!” Because that shadow was a man. And he was sprawled across the cobbles of the courtyard like a broken doll. At my shout, people came running from all over the palace, and I was carried along in the surge of people rushing outside. They flooded the area, setting up a perimeter around the spot where the man lay. But the captain of the guard did not come because we knew very quickly who had been hit in the head and left to bleed out.
The captain of the guard.
He had been on his way to speak with the guards on duty but never made it there. Men ran through the castle grounds and the woods beyond, flashlights and torches lighting up the trees and reflecting off the castle windows. They shouted to one another, getting more upset with every moment, as did I, because they found nothing.
My captain was dead before we found him, so he could not tell us who had assaulted him, if he even knew, and I was outraged and puzzled. Why did whoever it was come in and strike just one person then leave? Was it the start of an attack? If so, they must be quite a distance away now. Henry had only recently been promoted to the position and was a kind man in his mid-forties. He had a wife and four young children.
And I had to tell them he was not coming home.
I’d been hiding in my castle, while someone I was responsible for was murdered. I assembled my mates and informed them that projectKeep the Queen Indoorswas now over. My life was no more valuable than any of my people’s, and the audiences were officially back on. My mother and father would be ashamed of me, and so was I.
They argued, but I held firm. It had been against my better judgment to start with, and I should have learned not to do things that were against everything I believed. Then they argued more, insisted that, without me, it was just possible the High Council would put Bors back in since he’d be the only family member left.
I reminded them of my sister. Jillian might not prefer to be queen, but she’d step up if she had to.
We could have gone on like this all night, but another development occurred that changed everything.
“Your Majesty. I have a message for you.” The young trooper who ran in fell on his knees before me, holding a white envelope out before him. “I was told to bring this to you immediately.”
“Rise, we don’t hold with kneeling around here,” I informed him, taking the letter. “Where did you get this?”
“A man gave it to me as I was coming to start my shift in the forest.”
“A man?” Leif grabbed his arm and dragged him to his feet. “What did he look like? After everything that happened here tonight, you didn’t think to raise an alarm?”
“I didn’t know, my lord. I was visiting friends in a village a distance away and only just returned.”
“Then describe him as best you can.” Gunnar jerked him around to face him. “Was he tall, short? What color hair? Eyes? Did he have any distinctive characteristics?”
When Arne reached for him, I decided I’d had enough. For certain the trooper had. “Just stop, all three of you. You’re going to drive everything he knows out of his head. Now, everyone stay where you are while I open this and read it.”
“Are you sure you should?” Leif’s voice held all the worry. “Maybe there’s something wrong with it.”
“Like what?”
“Poison,” added Gunnar. “Or worse.”
“What’s worse?” Ignoring their concerns, I pulled out the single sheet of paper and read it.
To my darling niece,
It’s been a pleasure to play these little games with you, but the time draws near for the end game. In forty-eight hours I shall have retaken my kingdom and ended your pathetic excuse of a rule. Consider this your only warning.
Your beloved uncle,
Bors
