The Alpha King Marked Me. I Still Haven't Told Him I'm A Girl novel Chapter 29

Chapter 29: Twenty Nine

"You knew my father."

Margot leans back in her seat, smoke curling in the air about her. "I did. For a handful of years." The black in her irises expands and for the first time, the smile that spreads across her lips isn’t laced with venom or hate. It is soft. "He kept me hidden in his decrepit hut. Saved my life when they left me to burn."

I clench my jaw. "You must be mistaken. My father was no wood maker. He wasn’t even alive two hundred years ago. He was sixty-five when he passed on."

My voice cracks on the last sentence, but Margot merely peers outside, a long look on her face. "How did he die?"

I look down at my book. "He was ill for a long time. It ravaged him quickly."

"I see."

"Are you..." I gnaw on my bottom lip, trying to bite back the question. But I want to know more. I want to understand why. She had refused and the timelines suggest otherwise, but truth is, I couldn’t look at her for one minute straight without seeing my face in hers. It is right in front of me, right here in the open, and still, she refuses to acknowledge me.

"Did you lie to the King about being the woman who birthed me?" Not mother. Never mother.

The wind lifts her golden locks of her shoulder and a world of silence passes between us, in which the air grows thick with tension. Finally, she says, "Eldric and I shared... a moment of weakness. A misstep." Her amber eyes, ringed with kohl, lift to mine. "That union gave me a child. A daughter. But she never drew breath long enough to be named. You are not mine, Valerian. Even if, by some sorcery, you switched your cock for a cunt overnight, you would need to be over two centuries old to fit."

"But--"

"Enough, boy," she snaps. "My past is not yours to sift through like ashes."

I clip my lips shut.

"Whispering is not merely a gift. It is a craft. The ability to control perceptions, weave illusions so convincing, they could rewrite memory and break the mind of weaker things. Including yours." She weaves her fingers in the air and the ground beneath my feet begins rumbling. Shaking. Splitting. A cry splits from my lips as the ground yawns wide and swallows me whole.

The dark abyss grows eyes of molten gold and sensuous lips. "It’s all in your head," it whispers.

I blink and I’m back in Margot’s chamber, heart thundering with the aftermath of the fall, all while she stares at me, bored.

"How did--" My hands fly to my chest. "How can you do that?"

"It is a craft. "It is craft," she says coolly. "One that lives in blood, and one I would sooner let rot with me than share with the murderer of my child." She points at the books. "Take them. Learn what you can from dead pages. But do not darken my door again

The sight of you disgusts me."

*****

The castle is busy, maids darting through corridors with armfuls of linens, trays, and gowns, their hurried steps echoing off the stone. The air hums with nervous, yet excited chatter and clattering dishes, and I’m relieved not to be noticed by whatever frenzy has taken hold of them all.

"What’s happening?" I ask the closest guard to me. The only one of the four who doesn’t seem to hate me that much.

"There’s a Selection tonight," he starts, then lowers his head as a pair of courtiers dressed in ridiculous garbs and faces powdered too pale pass by. "The King is choosing his bride. It has the Kingdom in an uproar. There hasn’t been a Queen in centuries."

Oh.

"Don’t talk to the prisoner, Sam," Nath growls behind us. Rather than take the stairs that lead to my holding cell, we pivot, heading for the first wing of the castle.

"Where are you taking me?"

"The King has summoned you to his chambers."

The floors change from white marbles to black, gilded with gold. The walls transform, portrait after portrait displayed of previous rulers dating back to Tiber, whose picture hangs besides a statue of Thandric. There are lesser maids on this floor, and the few that run around are dressed differently, all clad in slips of clothing and all painstakingly beautiful in their own right.

We come to a halt in front of the largest set of doors I’ve ever seen, a couple of guards manning each opening.

A burly man with beady black eyes and red hair grunts in greeting at Nath. "Careful. He’s in a foul mood today."

My brows rise at that. Was the King ever in a good mood? From what I’d seen in the weeks spent leashed to him, the man only ever smiled when he was seconds away from killing someone. I swear he jerks off at night to the sound of screaming and suffering.

There is more chaos within.

The King’s chambers are large enough to swallow a banquet hall, but it feels suffocating the moment I step inside.

Servants and pages dart about, arms full of silks, boots, goblets, anything he’s tossed aside. A cry maid runs past me with a shattered glass on her tray. A goblet bleeds out on the map of Ebonheart, ignored.

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