Love Mark Fantasy Book 2: Trust in Love

I’d witnessed the birthing process enough from growing up in the brothel where my mother had worked to know the queen’s babe would be here soon.

Low, distressed moans and heightened murmurs of encouragement filtered from her royal bedchamber and out into the corridor, echoing down the hall to me like shards of haunting memories that pelted me with visions better left forgotten.

Pain and blood, and too often death, mixed in with the new breath of life; I’d seen it all. I knew exactly what was happening in that room.

Biting my bottom lip, I stole an inconspicuous glance around the corner and watched the assortment of men gathered outside her door, waiting for news, men who knew nothing about the process transpiring on the other side of that portal.

Among the ignorant, the king sat gruffly in a padded chair that someone had brought for him as he glared at the chamber’s entrance and impatiently rolled his signet ring around his pinkie. Even in the middle of the night, he wore his gold crown embedded with rubies and sapphires and long leather cape with the fur collar.

Ever the pompous ruler.

Tonight, however, he seemed more zealous than he had during the last four times one of his wives had given birth. More restless. More attentive. And infinitely more irritable.

Then again, the last four times a queen had borne him progeny, he’d already had a male heir.

But Murdock was nearly five years in his grave now, and King Torrance’s remaining four issue were all female, thus preventing any of them from assuming the throne after his reign, per Far Shore custom.

A bastard like me didn’t count, of course.

“It doesn’t matter if she births a boy or not, you know,” a voice, thick with a royal’s elitist pragmatism, announced directly from my left.

Flinching in surprise because I thought I’d been alone and hidden rather well, I spun to find one of the king’s legitimate offspring standing beside me in her nightgown.

“What’re you doing out of your bedchamber this late?” I hissed.

Twelve-year-old Sable blinked at me from solemn gray eyes. “My rooms are just there. And honestly, who could sleep with all that caterwauling going on? It’s absolutely dreadful.”

“Indeed,” I said dryly. “Such concern for your dear, sweet stepmother while she’s suffering through the most intense agony of her life. You’re the soul of sympathy, you are.”

I sniffed and tossed her an affronted glance. “I’ve no interest in the crown.”

Ignoring that unfortunate bit of fact, I shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I be curious about the arrival of a new half sibling?” Bumping my elbow her way, I sent her a teasing wink. “Maybe I’ll actually like this one.”

“Only because you command it, my princess,” I murmured offhandedly, my attention returning to the king when he demanded to know how much longer he was going to be forced to sit there, waiting.

None of his servants were brave enough to tell him he wasn’t being forced to do any such thing. He sat there by his own directive to begin with.

“It’s going to be another girl, anyway,” Sable went on in her matter-of-fact voice.

I glanced her way, lifting my eyebrows. “You think so? Even though the second soothsayer claimed it would be a boy?”

“Honestly,” I shot back, rolling my eyes to copy her. “He could’ve told the truth. The king will behead him anyway if he learns he was lied to.”

I agreed with her wholeheartedly. But it was always fun to egg on Sable’s temper, especially when she was certain she was right, which was pretty much always.

She broke herself off when the first cry of a newborn rent the air.

The two of us exchanged wide-eyed glances.

The child was here.

“Well?” King Torrance barked, surging to his feet as a midwife eased nervously from the queen’s bedchamber and into the corridor. “Is it a male?”

He cuffed the unfortunate man upside the head until the dignitary cowered to his knees and blanketed his bloody face with his arms. So, the king proceeded to kick him in the ribs with an inhuman barbarity while his other advisors watched wide-eyed, all of them backing into the farthest walls so as not to be next.

Sable whimpered out a sympathetic shudder, so I nudged her toward her bedchamber. “You’d better return to your room.” She didn’t need to witness such cruelty.

“I’ll look after myself.” Prodding her harder, I urged, “Go! Now. He’s coming this way.”

“He—” Sable glanced over and peeped out an anxious sound when she spotted the king indeed storming in our direction. Sending me a farewell glance, she darted into safety, silently closing the door just as I slipped into a shadowed nook, out of sight and behind a stone column.

A moment later, Father rounded the corner.

“This is an outrage,” he blustered as he stalked by where I hid in the dark, the breeze from his passing cape brushing against my bare arm. The dignitary’s blood freckled his cheeks and began to drip as he roared, “Where the hell is that lying soothsayer? Bring him to me at once! I want his head on a platter.”

Damn, he was mad.

A bitter grin quirked my lips. Good.

I only cared about his misery. Or his recognition.

And if I couldn’t have one, I’d settle for the other.

Curious to see who else the king was going to blame for having another daughter—for he certainly wouldn’t point a finger at himself—I furtively followed the trail of dignitaries and guards fretting over him as he stormed into his throne room to rant and pace.

I had to admit, it wouldn’t break my heart to see the youthful Queen Kalendria go. She and I had never gotten on, not since the night she’d tried to crawl onto my pallet with me in the stables, anyway, and I’d turned her away without giving her what she wanted.

In hindsight, I probably should’ve just fucked the shrew as she had ordered, because a woman scorned—especially when she was the most powerful woman in the kingdom—was the worst sort of enemy to have. Sable had no clue our stepmother had secretly been trying to have me assassinated for nearly two years now, and only the king’s interference had saved me.

Watching Father fume, I settled into my usual spying spot behind the largest tapestry on the north wall as he heaved himself onto his throne before he pounded his fist down on its stone armrest.

“Murdock was supposed to be my legacy,” King Torrance wailed. “My heir.”

Oh, give me a break.

Murdock had been an ass. A boorish, vain, cruelly selfish ass. Worse so than Father because he’d been particularly reckless and ignorant in his asinine ways. Far Shore was better off with him gone. He would’ve made the worst ruler this realm had ever seen. And that was saying a lot with all the tyrants who’d traipsed through these halls before him.

“I’m sorry, Your Majesty. I just—”

“Get out of my sight!” Pointing toward the exit, King Torrance snarled at two of his nearest guards, “Take him to the dungeons. His services here are no longer required.”

“And cut out his tongue,” the king added. “I’m tired of his incessant prattling.”

As the guards dragged the weeping, flailing dignitary from the room, they had to jerk to a halt and pause when another man stumbled through the entrance, blocking their path.

Yawning and scratching his chest as he came, the newcomer eyed the trio impatiently before stepping aside to allow them departure, waving his hands in dramatic sarcasm for them to go first. Then he reached between his legs and grabbed himself, leering after them, before he swaggered across the floor toward his own seat of honor to the left of the throne, finally gaining the king’s attention.

“Greggor!” my father greeted his dearest companion and top advisor with a relieved sigh. “Where the hell have you been, old chap? I’ve been surrounded by imbeciles in here.”

Ignoring the insult against himself, the king waved an unconcerned hand. “My sources tell me the Donnelly dragon’s dead.”

The king scowled at him. “Then who do I take?”

Greggor smirked in amusement. “It’s Nicolette, I believe.”

Pulling back, I blinked in shock because I knew Nicolette. Barely, but still…

Shuddering, I eased deeper behind the tapestry as my mind reeled.

Nicolette.

At the time of our whirlwind introduction, I’d been too swept away by the energy and life in her dark brown eyes to truly comprehend who she was. My savior in a nightdress and dark flowing hair had snatched me from the jaws of death and led me out of the Donnelly castle mere moments before I would’ve been executed.

The night our army had first invaded Donnelly, and the very same night my half brother, Murdock, had lost his life, I’d been captured and chained with a dozen other soldiers. We’d been held in their dungeon for hours before we were paraded in front of their new king.

But I hadn’t. How could I? What would my father have done if he learned I’d decided to serve another kingdom instead of his? No, it would’ve been much nobler to die loyal to his name. Maybe he would’ve been proud of me then, possibly even commissioned a small statue in my honor—as he had for Murdock—and claimed me as his son postmortem.

Before I knew it, though, some stranger commanded that I be separated from the others. He then led me away to the lovely, exotic Nicolette of Donnelly who’d freed me from my chains.

She saved me.

I had worn myself to the bone, hiking through the Vast Desert for days before I set foot on Far Shore land again in order to return home. All because the girl who’d called herself my one true love had given me the chance to make it.

I owed my life to her.

Listening to my father and Greggor discuss capturing and torturing her set off an uneasy churn in my stomach.

From what I remembered, Nicolette had been sweet and innocent and way too gentle to mar in the vicious way they were describing.

“I hope she’s untried,” the king was saying, his lips spreading wide with lascivious delight as he rubbed his hands together greedily. “I want to be the first to breach her maidenhead, show her what a true cock feels like.”

I winced.

“In that case,” Greggor answered. “Don’t send Morell for her. He’s entirely incapable of keeping his prick out of a woman. She’d be half-swollen with his child by the time they made it back to Far Shore.”

“Fine. We’ll send the eunuch Borell, then.”

But his advisor made a face. “With his temper? Borell would strangle her to death the first night she whined and pleaded for a pillow and a foot massage.”

In his frustration, he threw a goblet across the room.

Directly at the tapestry I was hiding behind.

The cloth gave a sudden lurch as the cup slammed against it, near my head. I hissed in surprise and ducked just before the entire piece of embroidered artwork ripped free from its frame and pooled to the floor in front of me, leaving me exposed to the room full of dignitaries, guards, and my already-enraged father.

Hell fire. This was not the best night to get caught spying on the most cantankerous king in the Outer Realms. His son or not, I was probably as good as dead now.

Straightening from my cringe, I offered them a rueful smile and then waved. “Um, greetings?”