The Queen remained unmoved. Evan looked from her to the confused faces of the Soldiers. “Well?” he asked. “What is the message?”
Alcander bristled noticeably. “She said, ‘My name is Thea of the original family whose time has long since been forgotten. It will be forgotten no more.’”
The words were like a paralytic, stopping Evan’s blood cold. Every member of the original family had died nearly a generation ago, their stories lost in time. The Elder had to have been lying.
The Queen stood from the table without a word and retreated towards her private residence. Evan looked to Eva at his side and saw that she was lost in her thoughts, trying to make a connection in the senselessness of the situation. The two Soldiers looked to each other nervously.
“You three stay here,” Evan instructed as he stood. “Do not leave until the Queen returns.” Alcander and Hector nodded obediently at him. He knew Eva would stay put.
The doors to the Queen’s residence opened in his hands, welcoming him back into her private world. She stood some distance in the room with her back to the door.
“Your Highness?” he called. She didn’t acknowledge him. Evan closed the distance between them. “Kyra,” he spoke softly.
Her head lifted and turned to him, her body following suit until she was facing him. He could tell that she was struggling to maintain her composure, fighting whatever emotion dared rise to the surface and the public eye. Her eyes searched his as though they contained some answer she was looking for. She looked not like his Queen, but like a woman who didn’t know what to do next.
“Tell me what I can do to help,” he offered. He cupped her left elbow in his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. She used his grip on her arm to bring herself closer to him before reaching up and touching her lips to his.
To his surprise she didn’t close her eyes, but instead kept them trained on his as her mouth moved against his. His lips parted, accepting hers between them. He kissed her back and felt her need quicken, her eyes finally closing as he reciprocated the intimacy. Her arms looped around his waist, fingers picking up the hem of his shirt. His eyes closed at the touch of her fingertips on his skin, moving up underneath his shirt until her palms were pressed against his lower back.
He felt a familiar wanting inside him, one he both enjoyed and hated. A part of him liked the thrill of the affair, not caring for Owyn’s feelings. He suspected the King already knew and that there may be have even been others the Queen had wanted and taken. She had a bewitching way about her, able to command love and respect in tandem with obedience and loyalty.
Then he thought of Zoe. He saw the smile he knew was difficult for her to manage, the way she overreacted to inanimate objects that looked nothing like spiders, her humor and her sadness. He thought that if he’d kissed her he would feel absolved of the guilt about his affair with the Queen. There would have been no twisted sense of obligation or punitive desire. The decision to kiss her would have been his and may have even provided him an out with the Queen, a reason to stop.
The Queen’s kiss was a tempest. When at last she pulled away her eyes were heavy and lidded, a burning in them he knew went beyond just her lust. There was a fury in her. Her hands moved from his back to his hands, grabbing his in each of hers.
“Bring me back the King, the book, and the damn woman who took them from me. Take their whole city if you have to.”
Evadine watched as her brother and the Queen emerged. She had been under the impression that no one but the King was allowed such a private audience with the Queen, let alone entrance to her bedroom. She knew it hadn’t been the first time her brother stepped beyond the threshold and had often witnessed her leaving Evan’s room when everyone else had already gone to sleep. She had long ago accepted their affair and never once spoke about it, not even to her brother.
She noticed that Evan’s face was fraught with tension. Had the Queen had instructed him to do something he was against? She listened as he addressed the room, his instructions to the two soldiers brusque as the Queen watched from behind. Both Alcander and Hector looked to her for confirmation as Evan concluded and then the three of them were off.
Eva didn’t like being alone with the Queen. She always felt as though there was an unspoken expectation of her that she was never quite able to reach.
“Perhaps I should have sent you to bring back the book,” the Queen mused, though her frustration was evident. She stood behind her seat at the head of the table and placed her hands around the back of it like a podium.
“I don’t understand, Your Highness,” Eva replied.