Queen Beatrice rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Do I have to tell you to relieve yourself each morning, you fool? What sort of idiot thinks I’d have wanted her alive? I paid you to do away with her. And I didn’t mean hide her.”
Bardo babbled away, but as the Queen approached me, his whimpers of protest grew too quiet for me to notice.
For a long moment, she stood before me, looking at me with disgust. I could smell the sourness coming off of her, laced between the scent of the flowers in her hair.
Then she took hold of my face, turning my cheeks this way and that. With her thumb she drew down my eyelids, as if examining me for disease. Her fingertips were ice cold and I fought the shiver that her touch drew from me, not wanting her to see anything but defiance in me.
Her lips twisted in disgust. “She looks like her mother. One glance at the little slut and her father would know the truth in an instant. Thank God for all those other imposters, making the old fool less likely to ask questions if word should get out.”
“My queen—”
“Why?” The word fell from my lips unbidden, and I instantly regretted it.
The cruel smile that spread on her face told me that no good would come of my question. If I thought appealing to her better nature might save my life, I would be disappointed.
She had none.
“Why? Why? Because I could, you little slut. Because it was the only way to secure my own future. You think I care about your blubbering or your questions? Do you know how many children my own mother had? Thirteen. Thirteen. All of whom survived into adulthood, the wretches.”
Her nose twitched in disgust, as if there was a bad smell, as she traced a thumb over my face. It could have been a kind, motherly gesture, but it wasn’t. She was comparing my face to her own, and found me lacking.
“I was the youngest daughter, and apparently not the prettiest in men’s eyes, though my sisters were all fat and ugly. My mother and father ignored me, I was never to get a good marriage.” She laughed. “Showed them, didn’t I?” The words were uncharacteristically off-cuff, her voice slipping into something of an accent, but she recovered quickly, drawing a sharp breath through her nose.
“Your mother’s death was not my doing,” she said, though I doubted it was intended to give me comfort. “I was her lady in waiting, sold into her servitude, so to speak, and expected to grieve, but I saw opportunity! Oh, your father loved her, even I could see that. He fed her up like cattle and put a baby inside her within an hour of marriage. But grief, now that was something I could use!”
“My queen, we need to hurry—”
“You’ll hold your tongue if you know what’s good for you!” she snapped, her words little more than a hiss. When she met my eyes, I saw pride in hers. “The king would fall into the nearest warm bed if only he didn’t have a daughter to distract him. A little drink, a few kind words, a tight, warm, willing cunt to bury himself in and he’d be mine. It wasn’t difficult. Men are predictable. But for any of it to work you had to go.”
“But—” I shrank back at the way her eyes narrowed. I turned my eyes down and they lingered on her belly.
The queen laughed. “Children? Me? Absolutely not. Ruining my figure and needing all that…attention. Yuck. Not that your father didn’t try, at least in the early days after our marriage. It’s amazing what you can do if you know the right herbs, however. Poisons to some but I’ve built a tolerance. I deal with my problems like a woman, my dear, head on and without remorse. Speaking of which.”
She turned her back on me and approached Bardo once again. He fell silent at once and swallowed so hard and so painfully that I heard the gulp from across the room.
“Who else knows about her existence?”
“Besides your guards, only the man I placed her with, and his wife. That’s all, I swear it. My queen, if you’ll just allow me to—”
“I suppose I have no choice but to believe your word on that. My guards will deal with them at once. As for you, you dirty little toad, you have been my extortionist for long enough,” the queen said to him. “But that time is over. The secret has been revealed and your value to me is gone.” With a snap of her fingers, she turned away and two of her guards seized him.
Poor Bardo didn’t stand a chance, and the guards left him in a garroted, dead heap in a matter of seconds.