Forbidden (A New Adult Paranormal Romance) Read online

  Dimynedon, his much hated cousin, was among the four.

  Aein shifted from his prone position, taking care not to make a sound. If they knew he was up here, making images . . .

  Dimynedon was a magnificent creature, with a wingspan far larger than Aein was long. Green, gold and red veins ran shimmering through his translucent wings. It was so unfair. Aein gripped the crystal so tightly that it bit into his flesh.

  “And they’re sending,” Dimynedon said to his companions, “a cripple to the Blue Planet. A cripple, would you believe?”

  His companions laughed, their wings shaking back and forth. Aein’s mandibles clenched. His own single wing lay curled behind his back, drab and grey in contrast, malformed since the day he was born.

  “Just because he’s a Prince of the Blood.” The sneer was unmistakable in Dimynedon’s voice.

  “He can’t even fly,” one of the companions agreed.

  “He’s a Crawler,” said another. “Once a Crawler, always a Crawler.”

  Every inch of Aein’s body fought to claw out of the vent and rip into these vermin. Crawler was the basest insult one could give a Sporadean, who were aerial beings for as long as there had been science. Keep calm, he told himself, trying to slow down his thundering heart. They’re jealous because they’re not one of the chosen Five.

  “Hey,” Dimynedon said, “did you hear something?”

  Aein held his breath. It wasn’t just about sound. Dimynedon had uncanny scent perception, the best among all the Sporadeans. Dimynedon was the best in everything – the aerial fighting arts, the races, the sky acrobatics – all which Aein could only watch longingly from the sidelines.

  “I daresay,” Dimynedon said, confirming Aein’s worst fears, “that we have an eavesdropper, and there’s only one place his stench is coming from.”

  Aein tried to crawl backwards but the Sporadeans in the chamber were far more agile. They leaped up and tore off the gold mesh that covered the vent. He flailed as they grabbed hold of his upper limbs. Aein tried to hook the duct walls with his lowermost feet, but Dimynedon wrapped a limb around his neck and pulled him out as one would extract a thorn. Aein struggled in their grasp, kicking, but they were four and he was a wingless cripple. The crystal scuttled to the floor.

  “Oh look,” Dimynedon said, picking up the crystal. “He was planning on tattling.”

  “You have no right to bring your goons to the Redwood Table,” Aein said hotly.

  Dimynedon leaned close to his face. Aein saw himself magnified a dozen times over in his cousin’s multifaceted eyes.

  “I’m a Knight of the Table,” his cousin said with an unmistakable edge, “something you never will be. How does it feel to be the only one in a long line of royals who didn’t make it to the Table?”

  “If I had your wings, I would be a Knight,” Aein shot back.

  Aein braced himself for pain as they threw him sprawling onto the Table. His carapace was as hard as theirs, but even he could feel his muscles juddering beneath it. Three of his captors pinned him down while Dimynedon sprang up with one beat of his majestic wings to hover above him.

  “The last time we caught you like the Crawler you are,” his cousin said, “we hung you from the Emerald Spire. Took them a whole day to find you.”

  Aein strained all his limbs, and it took his captors every effort to hold him down. “You were going to rape that poor Karsissian slave.”

  “It was none of your business.” With a graceful movement that belied its strength, Dimynedon struck Aein’s face. “If you weren’t a Prince of the Blood and my aunt’s youngest son, I would have killed you.”

  “I dare you to kill me now.” Aein tasted blood in his mouth.

  “Foolhardy, aren’t you, Crawler? But you don’t want to die. You want to scurry on your six legs to that Blue Planet of yours, the world of the creepy crawlies.” Dimynedon turned to his companions. “The dominant creatures there walk upright on two legs, can you believe? It will suit our friend Aein here to debase himself. He’s had plenty of practice all his life.”

  “Where I’m going,” Aein said evenly, “has nothing to do with flight. Duty awaits those who have been born unto the privilege.”

  It was Dimynedon’s turn to flinch. Dimynedon was not First Family and no amount of furious wing beats would ever make him so. As envious as Aein was of Dimynedon, his handsome cousin was more envious of him, especially on the eve of this journey.

  If he survived today.

  Gritting his mandibles, Dimynedon struck Aein. Again. And again. Aein tuned himself out. I can survive this, he thought, letting the pain flow through him into the redwood. When that didn’t work, he tried to think of everything else but this.

  The waves of dizziness that washed over him were so profound that he only half-heard the hiss at the door: “The Supreme Commander’s coming! Quickly, we have to go!”

  His fleshy manacles vanished so suddenly that he barely noticed them. Aein opened his eyes. He was alone, cut up and bleeding on the Redwood Table. The wood scent filled his sensory spores with a sickly sweet smell.

  Thulrika. Not good. She was Supreme Commander of the Hive armies. He would be forced to explain, and he was so phenomenally bad at explaining.

  The door swung open. He glimpsed the airiness of the Hive walls outside.

  “What is the meaning of this?” he heard Thulrika’s thundering voice. “What are you doing here?”

  Aein shook his head to clear his swimming brain. He crawled onto his belly, his natural position. The Supreme Commander’s wingspan was larger than everyone else’s. She hovered above the floor, imposing in her height.

  “It’s nothing,” Aein muttered, “I was just – ”

  Again, he was tongue-tied. Lying was something as difficult for him as nibbling the far end, pointy tip of his abdomen.

  “Whatever it is, I’m not interested, because we have far more important things to discuss.” Right to the point, as always, without niceties. Thulrika was a severe-looking female. Unwed. More butch than the whole Sporadean army put together. “I’m not sure you’re up to the journey tomorrow,” she said.

  “It doesn’t matter if I’m beat up,” Aein argued, “I’ll be metamorphosing in the new carapace anyway, and – ”

  “Yes. Let’s talk about the world you’re going to. The Blue Planet.” She paused for effect. (Though Aein had never known Thulrika to pause for anything but effect.) “Rich with trees, vegetation, spices, wood, everything we need.”

  A moment passed between them. Aein nodded.

  “It doesn’t matter what the Laws passed down from Fytenach the Fair say, and it doesn’t matter what the Council says,” Thulrika went on. “You have to make a choice for the greater good. We need this world, this place the natives call Earth, and every vote . . . your vote . . . counts.”

  Again, his conscience prickled. The subtle request from the Supreme Commander, the most important personage in Spora after his mother – to go against the sacred laws he had pledged to uphold. To sacrifice his honor and credibility.

  For the greater good.

  “Pass swiftly through this land. Mingle with the natives if you must,” Thulrika said, “or mingle with them not at all. But should any native discover who you are, kill it immediately. Do your duty for Spora, and I’ll see to it that you’ll become a Knight at this Table. Isn't that what you’ve always dreamed of?”

  Aein hesitated, his mind a whirlwind of emotions. He gazed at the Redwood Table, remembering everything it stood for.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “But, Snow White, it’s high treason, and – ouch! You just stepped on my toe.”

  “Swing the torch this way.” Snow White grabbed the one torch that they carried between them and held it aloft. The frightened face of Tom Cherry reflected the red-and-gold flickering flames so that he resembled a tortured soul from the depths of hell.

  “Is it this trapdoor here?” she demanded.

  A solid iron trapdoor stood embedded in the wall at
waist level. They were in a secret passage behind the castle walls. Cold stone blocks, musty with lichen and age, hemmed them in. Broken stone slabs littered the floor. The passages had been built for the castle-dwellers to escape a siege, and not many knew them as well as Tom Cherry, who explored them with his brothers as a boy.

  Tom’s ashen face told her she had struck home.

  “Sssssh.” Snow White pressed her ear to the brittle iron. She listened for voices, footsteps. “Can they hear us in there, do you think?”

  “Only if you speak really loudly, as you’re wont to do most times.” Tom appeared distressed enough to gnaw at his knuckles, which he would have if she didn’t shove him the torch. “Please, please don’t do this,” he pleaded. “I can’t imagine what would happen if you’re caught. I know you’re a princess and all, but – ”

  “If I’m caught, I’ll absolve you of helping me.”

  Snow White wrenched the handle of the iron door. It whined open with a too-loud-for-comfort creak to reveal a solid brick wall.

  Snow White stared at it, nonplussed. “What’s the point of walling up an escape route?” she complained.

  “You were always too impatient.” Tom shoved the torch back at her and wisely ignored her glare. His deft fingers felt for grooves, indentations on the brick where it met the top of the door.

  “I thought you said you’ve never been to the Queen’s bedchamber.”

  Tom flushed in the lamplight. “I might have peeked,” he admitted.

  The loud click of a clockwork gear sliding into place made them both jump. The wall gave way on its left. Brick grounded against stone in a wince-inducing shriek that must have roused the entire castle.

  “Are you sure the Queen is the banqueting hall?” Tom said anxiously.

  Snow White peered out into the chamber. The false wall scrunched against soot and ash in a large, dormant fireplace. Thank god for summer, she thought as she clambered out on her hands and knees. The enormous bedroom was deceptively quiet, with only the flickering wall sconces to give light.

  “Wait,” Tom cautioned, “you have to take off your shoes or you’ll leave soot stains all over the carpet.”

  “Oh, I knew that,” Snow White said loftily even though it never occurred to her. “Stay in there, Tom.” She strained her ears for footfalls outside the door. This way, she wouldn’t have his flogging on her conscience. “I’ll only be ten minutes or so.”

  Tom’s terrified eyes followed her as she padded barefoot across the room. The magnificent four poster bed was draped with a brocaded gold and silver canopy. Its headboard held a fresco of the Enchanted Forest, where the Queen had been found by Snow White’s father fifteen years ago, wandering like a lost wraith without memory. Snow White remembered the rumors well. Isobel had held out a red-and-white apple to the King. He took one bite of it, and was smitten forever.

  Snow White mimed closing the wall in the grate to Tom. “Don’t spy on me.”

  “I wasn’t,” he shot back.

  Snow White waited until he had dragged most of the wall back, leaving only a few inches of exposed secret passageway, and turned back to her task. She wasn’t sure what exactly she was looking for, but she’d heard of a mirror the Queen kept, one that Isobel cherished as much as Snow White loved her golden beetle. No mirrors were present in the bedchamber, but there were two doors that possibly led to antechambers.

  Snow White was about to open one when she heard muffled voices outside the main door. Iron staves clomped as the guards stood to attention.

  “Snow White!” Tom’s strangled whisper came from the grate.

  A key clicked in the lock. Too late to do anything but wrench an antechamber door open and bolt in. Her heart pounding loudly, Snow White found herself in a cluttered room lit by moonlight wafting from the window. The walls were sheathed in tapestries, now grey in the semi-darkness. A wall mirror the height of a man occupied a corner. Snow White’s pulse quickened.

  Laughter sounded in the bedchamber. Snow White heard Wolfsbane’s voice above the slamming of the main chamber door.

  “Hey,” he said, “you’re still an incredibly beautiful woman. I was just horsing around with her to get a rise out of you. Can't you take a joke?”

  The Queen’s clipped reply: “You have the manners of a boor.”

  “Oh, come on, Isobel. What do I have to do to make it up to you? I can – ”

  Silence, followed by a sigh, then a deep moan. Snow White hoped they would be too preoccupied with each other to notice the uneven wall behind the grate. But oh, what if they decided to light a fire?

  More moans, and the sound of heavy cloth collapsing onto the floor. Snow White took this opportunity to slide into a half-open closet crammed with bulky woolen garments. A fur collar dug into her nose. It was all she could do not to sneeze.

  This was going to be a long, long night, she thought as she listened, unabashed, to the sounds of lovemaking. It didn’t occur to her to be frightened. What can my stepmother do to me after all? went her reasoning. Spank me? Marry me off? They have no reason to see this as anything but a harmless, childish prank.

  But what if Tom Cherry got caught? Snow White pictured his eyes rounding at the frenzied creaking of bed boards. She had no qualms that he would wait for her; his sense of duty far outweighed his peasant terror. She also had no qualms that he was a virgin. Why, she thought as warmth suffused her cheeks, he’s quite a youngling. If they catch him, I will have to protect him, because he sure as marbles can’t protect himself.

  When the night climaxed and her flexed knees began to resemble a pincushion, the voices – smoky, dulcet, satiated – started again.

  “Where are you going, woman?” Wolfsbane’s drawl. “Don’t leave me and mine standing.”

  Soft footsteps coming closer. Snow White cowered in the copious wool. This is what being in a sheep pen must feel like, she thought.

  The Queen entered with a candle. Through the sliver of open closet door, Snow White could see that her stepmother wore only a silken sheet. In the sudden light, the tapestries glowed with richly embroidered scenes of the Enchanted Forest. Frightened deer fled from two-headed beasts amid woven trees of gold, copper and red. In the center, a handsome horned youth with crimson wings smiled coyly at the viewer.

  The Queen kicked the antechamber door shut. The unladylike gesture – both decisive and firm – reminded Snow White of why she admired Isobel in the first place.

  Isobel turned to the mirror, which Snow White saw had an ebony frame. Instead of the Queen’s reflection, the mirror’s surface was a grey cloud.

  “Mirror,” Isobel said, fingering the glass, “awake.”

  The cloud dissolved. Snow White wasn't the type of girl given to gasping, but she had to clamp her mouth tightly shut. Isobel’s reflection stared back: rich mahogany hair curling at the edges, storm blue eyes, complexion like cream. It spoke in a voice that dripped honey, “Isobel, has what I have seen come to pass?”

  “Imogen.” Isobel’s voice was strained. “You were right. The girl is beautiful. But surely not comparable to us.”

  “Our devil pact suggests otherwise.” The reflection flashed an unpleasant smile. “Tick tock, the clock stops for no one. Is that a sliver of grey I see in your hair, sister? A wrinkle forming at the side of your eye?”

  Devil pact? Snow White repeated. Who was the devil here? The horned youth in the tapestry?

  Isobel stepped back, uncertain. The image in the mirror remained still.

  “Do I have to be the right arm of your wrath and envy once again?” Imogen opened her arms. Her expression was beatific, loving. The white sheet slipped off the sensuous curves of her body.

  Snow White held her breath as the Queen turned from the mirror in a trance-like state. Her body was ripe, lush with full womanhood. Such a contrast to Snow White’s own, which was a budding flower compared to Isobel’s radiant bloom. The mirror dissolved into its grey fog again. Isobel exited the antechamber, leaving the door ajar.

  “
I have a task for you, Huntsman,” Snow White heard her say.

  “Oh, we’re back to calling me Huntsman now. I thought we were past that months ago, unless we’re back to playing outlaw and damsel in distress.”

  The Queen said, “I want you to take Snow White into the Enchanted Forest and kill her.”

  Snow White’s blood turned cold.

  No, she couldn’t have heard properly. She squeezed her knees to stop herself from bolting out of the closet.

  “Whoa,” Wolfsbane’s voice, backing off, “that’s a little extreme, don't you think?”

  Yes, Wolfsbane, you’re absolutely right. It is extreme in the way an ocean is a little salty. And I have done nothing! Except being responsible – in an unfathomable, roundabout way – for giving my stepmother grey hair.

  “It never stopped you before, Wolfsbane,” the Queen went on. “You’ve always been quite the predator. I remember the tailor’s daughter well. Five months gone she was. Didn’t stop you from laying a blow that made her lose the child and bleed to death. I had to persuade the lynch mob to cut you down from the stake.”

  “It was an accident.”

  Slithering noises. A moist plop to suggest kissing. Snow White’s stomach turned.

  “If you do this, Wolfsbane, I’ll make you my prince consort. Imagine – you, a lowly born huntsman becoming a royal.”

  No, Wolfsbane, Snow White wanted to say out loud, royalty is overrated.

  “And to assure me the deed has been done,” the Queen said, “I want you to cut out her heart and bring it to me as a token.”

  #

  The Sporadean day was balmy, meaning it would have been forty degrees centigrade on Earth if centigrade had yet been invented. But Sporadean carapaces, which were harder than shellfish, protected them from extreme heat and blistering cold – though the corpses would turn in their graves if Spora were to see a cold day.

  Perhaps in the next millennium, Aein mused, when the trees came back and the soil became fertile and loamy again. Spora had not seen an abundance of trees since the days of Fytenach the Fair. Then the blight came. The trees sickened and died. Sporadeans desperately turned to other food and shelter sources. Famine raged through the land, and the Sporadeans lost more than ninety percent of their population.