Page 20 of Caroline the Cruel
She washerin that single expression. Not the façade she wore. Not the woman he’d just witnessed use her Gift for the first time, compelling several dozen people to their knees, which hadn’t beenthatterrible, he admitted. It was the woman under the figureheadQueen Caroline Dallimore,and she was pleased to see him. Only a few weeks and it was working. The only problem was the elated surge it gave him knowing it. And it wasn’t because of the mission.
His mind flashed to how perfectly her supple body had felt for the few seconds she’d been beneath him. To the unforgivable thoughts he’d had about her after that glass of wine the night before. Johnneth slammed the door on the memories.Shit.
Chapter 5
RavensscatteredasCarolinestormed across the square. The onyx scavenger’s shed black silken feathers danced in the wake of her trailing skirts before settling once again on the rust-colored cobblestones. The birds seemed to know when to flee.
Angus stood outside the door she was headed toward, which opened to an elevated courtyard on one of the lower levels of Roskide. He wrung his hands as she approached. “They’re in there.” He jerked his head to the door. “What are you going to do?”
Caroline narrowed her eyes and tossed her chin to the sky making her hair dance like the feathers. “Don’t worry. I have something planned. Something perfectly and uniquely suited to our friends in there. If I’ve learned anything from the Gods, it’s that pain comes in all shapes and sizes.”
Gritting her teeth, Caroline tamped her rage down and opened the door.
Felix, the man standing rigid before Caroline and drawing her full ire, had come from nothing. Everything he now had was because of her generosity. His trading business, his position among the merchants, even the self-possessed confidence he wore so flippantly, as if he had been born to his gifted position.
He had hoped for something more from their arrangement, but that was his own damn fault. She never made him any promises.
To be the lover of a queen should have been enough. It had taken them months to find him. He had stolen his new bride away to a sleepy town in the foothills of the old mountain range at the edge of her kingdom.
If Felix were a smart man, he would have whisked the girl far away into Veetula, the cold kingdom to the North—enemy territory. King Hollis would have taken the man in. Felix probably would even have been celebrated for scorning the queen. But there was nowhere in her kingdom she couldn’t find him.
And Felix wasn’t a smart man. That’s not why she’d been interested. Caroline thought of the first time she’d seen him, sweat trickling down his muscled back as he toiled away on the Karper’s farm. He was leaned over a plow and had removed his shirt to soak up the sweat from his brow.
Maybe it was the way the sun glinted off his golden skin, the way he brushed his ash hair out of his eyes. Or maybe it was the way he adjusted himself after he boldly drank in the shape of her, not realizing the identity of the beauty who’d exited her halted carriage to stand before him. She had to have him. Caroline was practically salivating, watching his body flex and heave. She approached the farmer and bought his indenture at once. Made him a free man.
She introduced him to trading in the luxury items coveted in Everstal and soon after, she took him to her bed. She taught him how to touch a woman. Please her. He had been serving her nicely until one night he failed to arrive at her room. At first Caroline had thought a deal had gone foul, but after a week’s worth of lonely nights, the rumors drifted her way. Angus had been afraid to tell her. Rightly so. She’d even threatened to compel him—she had never done it before. Not to him, her commander.
She had been betrayed. Again. And how had Hastings known? Did that mean everyone knew? How embarrassing.
Felix ran off with some woman—the daughter of another merchant because she could give him something the queen could not.A wife.
“Hello, Felix,” she purred.
Felix raked a thick hand through his hair. Hair she’d pulled on as she’d directed him toward her pleasure. She shivered at the thought. To think he’d been with some other woman while he’d been with her. The man’s stupidity was endless.
“Caro—” he started.
“You don’t get to call me that anymore, darling.” She smiled grimly.
“Your Majesty, if I may ask—”
“No, you may not ask.” Caroline loosened the grip on her skirts before Felix could catch the motion. She had a role to play here, and she would do it.
She cleared her throat. “If you had wished to have a wife, a child…” She watched the dirty blonde standing behind Felix, sniffling. The woman was clearly showing, the bump at her stomach which she cradled poked forward of her ample breasts.
Caroline cocked her head to the side, addressing the woman. “What’s your name?”
“Her name is—”
Caroline cut him off again. “She was bold enough to steal the lover of a queen. She’ll be strong enough to speak for herself.”
The woman’s wide eyes darted between her husband and the other woman. “I—my name’s Jaine, Your Majesty,” she said, voice wobbling.
Caroline sauntered over to Jaine and reached her hands out toward the woman’s swollen belly. “May I?”
Jaine brought a trembling hand up to her mouth and she shot Felix a pleading look. Tears tracked down her cheeks, no doubt thinking of the terrible things the queen was about to do.
“Caroline, I won’t let you hurt her.” Felix thrust a hand out to grab the queen and pull her back, but he froze as he fell under Caroline’s power.
