The Pledge

It had been tried before. And it had failed.

Without the kind of magic t Js i amagic t hat only a queen was born with, we could never survive.

THE QUEEN

The queen waited in hushed anticipation. She did not appreciate the calm.

When, at last, the door to the chamber opened and Baxter strode inside, she breathed an imperceptible sigh of relief.

“Has he spoken?” she demanded to know. “Have you broken him yet?”

Baxter hesitated, not a good sign. “No, Your Majesty,” he apologized, ducking as low as his belly would allow. “Not yet. We believe we’re close, however.”

She weighed his statement, his sugared reassurance of triumph, against the very real possibility that they would kill the boy before securing his cooperation. At the moment she needed all the information she could get about the resistance; killing anyone who might have valuable information would be counterproductive.

“Bring him to me,” she finally stated.

Baxter raised his head. “Your Majesty?”

Her eyebrows lifted, and her lips tightened.

Baxter cleared his throat, clearly recalling his position. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

She watched as he clumsily exited the room, and she wondered how much longer he could possibly be of use to her. He’d outlived his predecessors by years, but he was beginning to cross lines now too, to question his queen, even if only in thought. That in itself was treasonous. Cause enough for a death sentence.

Maybe, she thought, the new queen would have room for a traitor like him among her ranks. A sly smile found its way to her lips as she ignored the ache in her bones.

If only they could find a new queen in time.

The boy had to be carried into the room. He was incapable of standing before his queen, and she questioned whether he would have stood even had he been able to.

She had first received word of the boy from her spies, an intricate network laid throughout the city. They were distributed among every walk of life: the Counsel class, vendors, servants, and even within the ranks of military personnel. They knew how to gather information, using rewards and the promise of glory to coax her subjects into turning on one another.

She knew that the boy himself was no threat to her, that he was a nobody. But he had information to offer, or so she’d been told.

She gave the signal, and he was released by the guards. He dropped in a heap at her feet, whimpering softly as he clutched his ribs. His eyes were swollen, mottled with dark bruising, his lips gashed and bloodied. And these were just the injuries that were visible.

She did her best to sound gentle and reassuring. A difficult task, since her heart felt nothing for the boy. “You’re a fool. You’ll tell us what we want to know if it kills you,” she uttered.

He didn’t look up, and she took that as an indication that his wits were still intact, since she’d spoken in the Royal tongue. She dismissed J th ar chapab the alternative, that he was already too damaged, that he was no longer capable of responding to words in any language.

She tried again, this time in Englaise, in hopes of gaining an answer from him. “We don’t want to hurt you,” she lied. “We just want the girl.”

His head inched up cautiously. He opened his mouth to respond, but only an arid whisper escaped his mangled lips. His expression bore defeat.

Fury quivered through her. “Idiots! Give him water! You bring me a prisoner without preparing him properly?”

Baxter gave the signal, and a serving girl rushed out the door to fulfill their queen’s command. As she waited, the queen watched as her grandson entered the chamber, followed by his loyal guards. He looked smug, as always. And ineffective, as was to be expected of any male heir.

She was enraged that he’d slipped away from his guards yet again. He might only be male, but he was still a member of the royal family. There were rules to follow, precautions to take. It was bad enough he’d stooped to the ranks of the military.

She stopped herself from narrowing her gaze at him, reminding herself that personal matters were best handled in private. An insubordinate grandson could be dealt with at another time.

Maxmillian knew his place, of course, and he waited silently at the back of the room as she attended to the matter at hand.

The boy drank greedily, water dribbling from his lips onto his bloodstained shirt. When he was too weary to swallow any more, the queen resumed questioning him. “We know you’ve been associating with a member of the resistance. I promise you that all of this ends if you’ll only give us her name.”

His head lolled unsteadily as he tried to meet his queen’s gaze. “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” he rasped.

A sliver of a smile settled over her thin lips. “Come now, boy, your denials are pointless. Our information is accurate, I assure you. If you’re not sure which friend we speak of, then name them all. We’ll find her ourselves.”

He shook his head; it wobbled from side to side. “I won’t. You’re asking me to implicate everyone. I can’t do that.”

The queen jumped up, towering over the boy’s crippled body. She was quivering now, as rage consumed her. Of course she was asking him to incriminate his friends! She needed to find the revolutionaries, to squash them before they could cause further damage to her country. She needed to stop them. She needed names!

“Tell me! I command you to tell me!” she shrieked, spittle foaming at the corners of her mouth. She held out her hand in front of her, pointing at the boy’s throat and then balling her crooked fingers into a fist. She was surprised by the sudden show of emotion, surprised that she was eliciting the use of magic, but she was unable to check herself in time.