Page 22 of Wicked Things

“What servant gave you this information?” I asked softly, taking another sip of my wine.

“I have no intention of telling you that. I merely want to know if it’s true. I need to know.”

“As you once told me when I was a small child, Mother, “You’re old enough that what you want and need won’t hurt you.”

She glared at me, and I sat back and smiled. I was beginning to enjoy myself.

“Is it true, Fionn?”

“I fail to understand how the way I spend my evenings and with whom I choose to sleep could possibly be any of your business.”

She had the good grace to blush, but she was made of sterner stuff than that and recovered quickly. “Tell me, Fionn.”

I took another sip of wine. “No. Now, mother, was there anything else you ‘needed?’”

“This is not acceptable to me.”

“Then it’s fortunate that I no longer have the need to consider what is or isn’t acceptable to you.”

She suddenly stood, stamping her foot. “I never said a word when you made the decision to marry some mortal boy instead of passing up all the many, many lovely ladies of the court that I presented you with as acceptable marriage prospects. I didn’t like the prospect of it, but I assumed you had your reasons, and naturally, I assumed it would be a mariage blanc.” She gave me an incredulous look. “You even gave him your ring.”

A mariage blanc, or literally a white or pure marriage, was one entered into usually for some financial or personal gain with no romance and certainly no physical intimacy involved. When my mother started throwing Frankish words at me, a mortal language from a people she pretended to despise, I knew she was very near the end of her patience. Not that she had much to begin with. Come to think of it, Braden had leveled the same charge at me.

Her grandfather had been a mortal from the land of the Franks, a heritage she tried hard to forget and pretend never happened, but she had visited there as a child once with her mother who had wanted her to see where her grandparent had been born, and she had picked up a bit of the language and a lot of the arrogance of the Franks while she was there. My great-grandfather had been a knight in the Carpetian Kingdom of the Franks, who had long ago visited Éire on a diplomatic trade mission and while there he’d been lured into a grotto by my beautiful, though treacherous, great-grandmother. After having her way with him, she abandoned him and he died not long afterward, because she had drained his “vitality,” and he slowly starved. In other words, she had taken what she wanted and moved on. A family trait, I might add.

She hadn’t done it simply to be cruel. I doubt the prospect of him dying as a result of their liaison had even occurred to her. Her husband, the king of Murias, hadn’t been able to get her pregnant, and knew that she would be soon discarded if she didn’t produce an heir (no matter that it hadn’t been her fault. Kings weren’t any more logical back then than they were nowadays) and knowing that any other man of the court would cause a problem, she had taken matters in her own hands—so to speak. It all worked out splendidly for me, as his eventual heir to the throne, so I had no complaints. Plus, I had the blood of a determined, ruthless queen and a handsome, brave French knight running through my veins, so I counted it as a win.

But I had distracted myself from the conversation with that little aside in my mind and tried to focus back on my mother. “Well,” she was saying. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“About what?”

She blew out a long-suffering breath. “About this ridiculous marriage of yours. Do you or do you not intend to put him aside soon and find a queen?”

“I do not.”

“You’re being deliberately obtuse. You know you have to provide an heir.”

“I don’t expect to need one for a very long, long time. My father would still be alive if not for that fucking ogre. Besides, I have two younger brothers.”

“Half-brothers,” she shrieked at me.

“Ah yes, but it’s the half that counts. They’re my father’s sons, and a direct link to our not so pure bloodline, I might remind you. So get used to Braden, as I intend to keep him around for a very long time. Probably forever. If you can’t do that, then I suggest you make other living arrangements. I won’t have him feel unwelcome or slighted in his own home.”

We stood there glaring at each other—clearly, she’d been defeated, but she was loath to admit it. Finally came the distraction she so desperately needed to make a dignified exit.

“Excuse me, Your Grace,” a servant standing in the doorway suddenly said, “I beg your pardon, sire, but a courier has arrived from the Gorias Kingdom with an urgent message for you.”

“I see. If you’ll please excuse me, Mother,” I said, and she inclined her head at once, gave me the sketchiest of curtsies and swept from the room. The servant handed me a folded slip of paper and waited to see if I’d want to send a message in return. I opened the paper, not terribly surprised at the message I read inside the hastily written note.

It is with deep sorrow that we inform you of His Grace, King Callum’s death. An intruder got past his palace guards and entered his sick room during the night to cruelly and viciously attack him as he lay sleeping. The king’s council requests your presence and your wise counsel at your earliest convenience. The king had been informed that you found his son and of your intention to marry, and he was most pleased, informing the council that he named you as his successor to the throne of Gorias, as soon as you arrived in the Gorian Kingdom and produced evidence of the marriage. He wrote this down and all the council witnessed his signature on it. We await your arrival, as things remain dangerously unsettled here since the king’s tragic assassination. Please let us know when we might expect you.

The note was signed by the seven council members of the Gorian Kingdom and had probably been written by the late king’s closest advisor, Lord Oisín.

I was stunned by the news. Attacked in his bed. His deathbed! It had been a little over a week since my visit to Gorias. So much had happened since then. I’d traveled to the mortal realm and back, retrieved Braden and then taken him home with me to marry him. We even had time for a quick detour to a mortal village along the way.

Yet Callum’s injuries had been so severe that he would surely have died in a few more days or a week at most anyway. In truth, I hadn’t been surprised that this note was bringing news of his death—but I expected it to be from his injuries and not his murder by a subsequent attack. To learn that he’d met his inglorious end in such a way was shocking. His imminent demise had been the reason I’d married Braden in such haste to begin with, but I wished he’d had time to see his son before this had happened.

Speaking of Braden, the thought of telling him was not at all pleasant.