“Do you doubt my wisdom,son?”
I shook my head, holding my ground. “No, Your Majesty.”
“Perhaps you have another way to strengthen Eleyta against the coming darkness?” she snapped as shadows gathered around her. “Something that would protect our country as thoroughly as an alliance with Ipotha? You know we need them if we’re going to survive what is to come. If they fall, we all fall. The Fortune Elves have all confirmed that darkness is coming.”
I barely bit back a sigh.
This was all the queen had spoken about for the past six months. Everything she did revolved around it. Ever since her favorite Fortune Elf Saw a future filled with death and despair, Mother had become obsessed with the darkness.
Since that first vision, all of her actions were done in the name of the coming darkness. She called the wayward vampires home, arranged this ridiculous union, and was even throwing a ball in a fortnight. She said it was a celebration of my wedding, but we both knew it was a cover so she could play at politics.
I, for one, was sick of the coming darkness.
“Mother.” My wings snapped together, and I took in a deep breath as I tried to maintain my cool. “This coming darkness is probably nothing! You know as well as I do that visions can shift. Not only that, but Valeria came back from Ithenmyr a month ago and reported nothing unusual.”
“Valeria cannot be trusted,” the queen spat, stepping towards me. “She has not been right in the mind since her lover abandoned her for an elf.”
“But—”
“Enough!” Mother yelled. “You are forgetting with whom you speak.”
The threat in her voice was clear, and her own black wings snapped out of the shadows. Instantly, I shut my mouth. Only the most powerful vampires in Eleyta could summon wings, but none were quite as black as hers. The queen’s wings sucked the light of the room entirely, and shadows swirled around her hands and feet.
She snarled, and her fangs glinted in the purple light. “Do you need a reminder of who is ruler in Eleyta,son?”
No, I most certainly did not. The last time she reminded me of my place, I lost the only person I cared about.
Swallowing as blood-soaked memories flooded through my mind, I tightened my wings against my back and tilted my head, exposing the length of my neck in a show of submission.
The pounding of my heart was the only sound in the room as she stared at me. She could rip my throat out with a second thought—I had seen it happen countless times in the past. Mother couldn’t read minds—few of us could—but she had other tools at her disposal that allowed her to inflict pain and keep people in line.
“My deepest apologies, Your Majesty,” I murmured, keeping my eyes low and my neck exposed.
A long moment passed between us, and I counted my heartbeats. My neck cramped, but even so, I did not move.
Mother chuckled. The sound was as icy as the snow outside and laced with echoes of violence. Her pale fingers landed on my face, and I shivered as her nails scratched my cheek.
“Good boy,” she crooned, patting as though I were a child and not a prince who had seen three centuries come and go.
Knowing better than most what happened if the queen lost her temper, I sighed and asked, “What would you like me to do, Your Majesty?”
The queen pulled her hand away, and I straightened my neck. A smile danced on her lips, but it did not reach her eyes. Her pale skin, smooth despite the two millennia she had existed, gleamed in the violet light. Her wings disappeared back into the shadows as she took on the appearance of a feeble female once more.
It was all an act.
“You’re going to be a good little prince,” Queen Marguerite said. “That’s why I Made you, isn’t it?”
Tension still filled the air between us and Mother glared at me until I mumbled, “Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Good boy,” she hummed.
I kept my mouth shut. There was no point in speaking. Not now.
The queen continued. “In a moment, you are going to turn around and leave this room.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” I agreed.
“You will marry and Bind yourself to the human without a single complaint.”