A Jewel for Royals

  As a plan, it had its dangers. Rupert might survive. He might learn what Angelica was trying to do. He might fail to do all the things that Angelica anticipated of him first, leaving them both at the nonexistent mercy of the Dowager. Angelica liked to try to contain all the possible outcomes of a situation like this, but the truth was that there were some circumstances where it was impossible to make certain of everything. The best that she could do was to set things in motion and adapt as necessary.

  She wanted to believe that it would be good, though.

  “I will be queen soon,” she told herself, and the country would be a better place for it. It wouldn’t be shackled to the injustices of the past or under the thumb of a madman, as it would be with Rupert. It wouldn’t be torn apart to put people under the control of those with magic, as Sophia might do.

  Instead, it would be run as it ought to be run, by someone who understood the play of power in the country and the personalities of the nobles who mattered. People might mutter at first about her ascent to the throne, but once Angelica had been there a year, they would understand that she had always been the best choice for it. Her rule would be both peaceful and stable.

  Of course, before any of that could happen, there were people who needed to die.

  Angelica had already made arrangements for Rupert.

  The assassin could deal with Sophia if Endi couldn’t improve his efforts.

  And, assuming Angelica had said all the right things to Rupert, the Dowager herself would soon be a memory.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Rupert waited in his mother’s chambers, palms sweating, fingers fidgeting with his sword belt as he sat there. He’d never felt quite like this before. Oh, he’d felt angry and nervous and uncomfortable plenty of times, but he’d never felt this kind of self-doubt, never sat there wondering if he was about to do the right thing.

  Then again, he’d never been about to kill his mother before.

  “You need to do this,” he said. “You have to do this.”

  “Have to do what, Rupert?” his mother demanded, coming in with precise steps. Her guards shut the door behind her. Clearly she wanted to be able to rebuke him without having to maintain all the propriety of a queen. “What are you doing here?”

  “Can I not have come to see my mother?” Rupert demanded, standing.

  “No,” the Dowager said. “You can’t; not when you are currently supposed to be on a ship to one of my dependencies.”

  Rupert bit back his anger at that. His mother had tried to send him away. She’d tried to get rid of him so she could give her throne to Sebastian.

  “I chose not to go,” he said.

  “Then you’re choosing both to risk your mother’s anger and defy your queen,” his mother shot back. “And my reports tell me that you were on the ship. So you didn’t just defy me, you tried to trick me.”

  “I sent a soldier along with Sir Quentin Mires to vouch for him.”

  “Then Mires will die for it,” his mother said. She stood and moved to one of the room’s windows. “You’ll be lucky if I don’t have you tried for your defiance, too.”

  Rupert stood to follow her. Despite what he’d come there to do, a part of him still wanted to work this out. He wanted his mother to give him what should have been his all along.

  “You’re being unreasonable,” he said.

  “Be very careful, Rupert,” his mother replied. “Or you will find out just how unreasonable I can be.”

  She was going to threaten him here, now? Why could his mother not just show him the love that he was due as her son? Another mother wouldn’t have put him in this position, wouldn’t have tried to take everything away from him.

  “Where is your brother?” she demanded. “I told you before that you were to release him before you left.”

  “Sebastian is where I left him,” Rupert said. “He will remain where I left him.”

  His mother’s expression darkened. “I promise you, Rupert, that before you leave this room, you will tell me where my son is.”

  “I’m your son too!” Rupert shouted back at her. “I’m your eldest son. I’m the one who should have inherited. I’m the one who didn’t try to run away with… with some…”

  “With Alfred and Christina Danse’s eldest daughter,” his mother supplied.

  That made Rupert pause, his eyes widening in shock.

  “So you see, Rupert, I know more about what is going on here than you ever could. That is why I am the one who gets to make the decisions here.”

  “Decisions like cutting me off!” Rupert snapped. He couldn’t accept that. If his mother knew all that she did, why would she ever agree to Sebastian being her heir? It made no sense. It was just an insult.

  “You are a man without any self-control,” his mother said. Rupert saw her shake her head. “No, you are not even a man. You are a boy who never bothered to grow up when he should have.”

  “I am everything a man should be,” Rupert insisted. He’d commanded men, he’d seduced women. He’d fought and he’d killed, made decisions that had fought off an invasion. He’d experienced more of what the world had to offer than most people managed in a lifetime.

  His mother laughed at that, actually laughed. “You’re as far from it as I can imagine, Rupert. Goddess knows I tried my best with you, but I failed. I let you have your head too much, and you turned into… well, into this.”

  She was speaking about him as if he were some horse that she’d tried to train and had now decided was only ready for the knacker’s yard.

  “What happened to you, Rupert?” she asked. “I did my best for you.”

  “As I remember it,” Rupert said, “you were hardly there for most of it.”

  He tried to think back to when he’d been a child, and he could remember the endless succession of nannies and tutors far more easily than he could remember any time with his mother.

  “Because I was busy trying to make sure that we weren’t all killed by our enemies!” his mother snapped back. “We had only just come out of the civil wars. Your father was dead, lost in a stupid battle that he should have avoided, but—”

  “Don’t talk about my father like that!” Rupert shouted back.

  His mother walked over to a portrait on the wall, from which his father stared down, looking every inch the king he’d been. How much time had Rupert spent trying to live up to that image, being strong, not letting the lower orders impinge on his station?

  “You idolize your father, Rupert?” she said.

  “He was a good man, a strong man,” Rupert said. “You wouldn’t have married him otherwise.”

  His mother snorted at that. “As if I got a choice in who I married. But yes, he was both of those things. And they killed him for it. You say I wasn’t around for you as a boy? Well, who was around for me?”

  “I…” Rupert didn’t know what his mother was talking about.

  “While you were growing up, I had to make decisions that reshaped this kingdom. I had to decide to ally with the Church of the Masked Goddess. I had to make deals with the Assembly of Nobles. I had to kill the traitors whose very presence threatened our kingdom, and I had to make those decisions alone. I had to make them because your father, foolish man that he was, had gone and gotten killed.”

  Rupert stayed silent. How dare his mother blame his father for all this? How dare she claim that it was his fault that Rupert had grown up without any of the warmth of human contact? How dare she?

  “And I tried to do my best with you, Rupert,” she said. “I gave you the finest tutors, the best sword masters. I gave you a post in my army when you did not deserve it, all the money you could wish for, endless patience with your indiscretions. I gave you advantages that no one else has had, and you threw them away.”

  “They were mine by right!” Rupert said.

  “They were yours because I’d fought for them,” his mother shot back. “Because I’d made decisions that—”

  “They were the wrong deci
sions!” Rupert said. “You’ve spent my life complaining about all the compromises you’ve had to make, but why make them if they were so bad? You killed the nobles who opposed you, so why not kill the rest too? Why not be bold? Why be a coward about it?”

  “You’ve gone too far, Rupert,” his mother said, and now her voice was cold with anger.

  “I will always go as far as I need to,” Rupert said. “I saved this kingdom by being strong, but even then you and Sebastian whined that I was being too cruel, that the lives of the peasants mattered. You never even thanked me!”

  The silence that followed seemed to echo with everything that had gone before.

  “So this is what’s going to happen,” his mother said. “You’re going to go, and you’re going to do it now. My guards are going to take you down to the docks this time, where a ship to the Near Colonies will be waiting. I will not be defied. You will tell me where your brother is, and you will leave in disgrace where you could not leave before with a modicum of dignity.”

  Rupert shook his head. “No, I won’t.”

  “You don’t get a choice,” his mother snapped. “You’ll go, or I’ll have you dragged there!”

  “I won’t go,” Rupert shouted. There was a knife in his hand now, clenched so tight that his knuckles whitened. He’d come here to do this, but now that it was time, it wasn’t as easy as it should have been. He’d killed so many people, but this, this was hard.

  “What do you think you’re going to do with that, Rupert?” his mother demanded. “You’re a foolish boy, playing at being a man. Put it down now.”

  Rupert lowered it, but didn’t let go.

  “Put it down, tell me where my son is, and then—”

  “I am your son!” Rupert bellowed.

  Rupert stabbed her then, and it wasn’t something he decided; he just did it. The blade slid into her flesh so easily, came out wet, and he slid it in again. He heard his mother gasp with it as he struck at her, all the anger of the years before coming out in one big rush. He stabbed her again because she wasn’t falling yet, because she clawed at him and gripped at him and he wanted her to just stop.

  She fell back, collapsing to the floor, her chest still rising and falling, but slowly now. Her eyes stared up at the ceiling, and through the hot wetness of his tears, Rupert saw the moment when they glazed over.

  The knife in his hand was wet with blood, and it took him a moment to realize where it must all have come from, and what he’d just done.

  “Oh, Goddess,” he said, and fell to his hands and knees, struggling not to throw up. Ordinarily, death didn’t bother him, but this… this was beyond anything else he’d done.

  Distantly, he heard a booming sound, and it took Rupert a moment to realize that it was the sound of guards banging on the door. He thought quickly, standing to one side of the opening, then calling out.

  “Help! We need some help here!”

  The two men all but broke the door open then, standing there staring as they saw what Rupert had done. He couldn’t blame them, but he reacted quicker than they did, his knife taking the first of them through the throat.

  The second of them turned to him, reaching for his sword. Rupert was on him then, stabbing without precision, but with all the desperation that came from knowing what would happen if he did not. The man grabbed at his wrist, and Rupert hit him with his other hand. He felt the guard’s grip weaken, and Rupert stabbed him, down through the shoulder, into the lung and out. He watched the man collapse, and then stared at the scene he’d created.

  There was blood everywhere. Blood on the men he’d killed, blood on his mother, blood pooling on the floor in slicks of it that threatened to spread out and cover everything. There was blood on the knife Rupert held, and he wiped it on his shirt, only adding to the blood that was already there.

  “What have I done?” he asked aloud. “What have I done?”

  His tears were still falling, blurring the world around him into a shapeless mass of red. He didn’t know what to do next. He only knew that he needed to get away.

  So he turned and ran. Not caring about the blood that covered him, not caring who saw him do it, not caring about anything except putting that scene as far away as possible.

  His mother was dead.

  He was king now.

  And everything was about to change.

  NOW AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER!

  A KISS FOR QUEENS

  (A Throne for Sisters—Book Six)

  “Morgan Rice's imagination is limitless. In another series that promises to be as entertaining as the previous ones, A THRONE OF SISTERS presents us with the tale of two sisters (Sophia and Kate), orphans, fighting to survive in a cruel and demanding world of an orphanage. An instant success. I can hardly wait to put my hands on the second and third books!”

  --Books and Movie Reviews (Roberto Mattos)

  The new #1 Bestselling epic fantasy series by Morgan Rice!

  In A KISS FOR QUEENS (A Throne for Sisters—Book Six), it is time for Sophia to come into her own. It is time for her to lead an army, to lead a nation, to step up and be the commander of the most epic battle the realm may ever see. Her love, Sebastian, remains imprisoned and set to be executed. Will they reunite in time?

  Kate has finally freed herself from the witch’s power, and is free to become the warrior she was meant to be. Her skills will be tested in the battle of her life, as she fights at her sister’s side. Will the sisters save each other?

  The Queen, furious at Rupert and Lady D’Angelica, exiles him and sentences her to execution. But they just may have their own agenda.

  And all of this converges in an epic battle that will decide the future of the crown—and the fate of the realm—forever.

  A KISS FOR QUEENS (A Throne for Sisters—Book Six) is book #6 in a dazzling new fantasy series rife with love, heartbreak, tragedy, action, adventure, magic, swords, sorcery, dragons, fate and heart-pounding suspense. A page turner, it is filled with characters that will make you fall in love, and a world you will never forget.

  Book #7 in the series will be released soon.

  “[A Throne for Sisters is a] powerful opener to a series [that] will produce a combination of feisty protagonists and challenging circumstances to thoroughly involve not just young adults, but adult fantasy fans who seek epic stories fueled by powerful friendships and adversaries.”

  --Midwest Book Review (Diane Donovan)

  A KISS FOR QUEENS

  (A Throne for Sisters—Book Six)

  Did you know that I've written multiple series? If you haven't read all my series, click the image below to download a series starter!

  Books by Morgan Rice

  THE WAY OF STEEL

  ONLY THE WORTHY (Book #1)

  A THRONE FOR SISTERS

  A THRONE FOR SISTERS (Book #1)

  A COURT FOR THIEVES (Book #2)

  A SONG FOR ORPHANS (Book #3)

  A DIRGE FOR PRINCES (Book #4)

  A JEWEL FOR ROYALS (BOOK #5)

  A KISS FOR QUEENS (BOOK #6)

  OF CROWNS AND GLORY

  SLAVE, WARRIOR, QUEEN (Book #1)

  ROGUE, PRISONER, PRINCESS (Book #2)

  KNIGHT, HEIR, PRINCE (Book #3)

  REBEL, PAWN, KING (Book #4)

  SOLDIER, BROTHER, SORCERER (Book #5)

  HERO, TRAITOR, DAUGHTER (Book #6)

  RULER, RIVAL, EXILE (Book #7)

  VICTOR, VANQUISHED, SON (Book #8)

  KINGS AND SORCERERS

  RISE OF THE DRAGONS (Book #1)

  RISE OF THE VALIANT (Book #2)

  THE WEIGHT OF HONOR (Book #3)

  A FORGE OF VALOR (Book #4)

  A REALM OF SHADOWS (Book #5)

  NIGHT OF THE BOLD (Book #6)

  THE SORCERER’S RING

  A QUEST OF HEROES (Book #1)

  A MARCH OF KINGS (Book #2)

  A FATE OF DRAGONS (Book #3)

  A CRY OF HONOR (Book #4)

  A VOW OF GLORY (Book #5)

  A CHARGE OF
VALOR (Book #6)

  A RITE OF SWORDS (Book #7)

  A GRANT OF ARMS (Book #8)

  A SKY OF SPELLS (Book #9)

  A SEA OF SHIELDS (Book #10)

  A REIGN OF STEEL (Book #11)

  A LAND OF FIRE (Book #12)

  A RULE OF QUEENS (Book #13)

  AN OATH OF BROTHERS (Book #14)

  A DREAM OF MORTALS (Book #15)

  A JOUST OF KNIGHTS (Book #16)

  THE GIFT OF BATTLE (Book #17)

  THE SURVIVAL TRILOGY

  ARENA ONE: SLAVERSUNNERS (Book #1)

  ARENA TWO (Book #2)

  ARENA THREE (Book #3)

  VAMPIRE, FALLEN

  BEFORE DAWN (Book #1)

  THE VAMPIRE JOURNALS

  TURNED (Book #1)

  LOVED (Book #2)

  BETRAYED (Book #3)

  DESTINED (Book #4)

  DESIRED (Book #5)

  BETROTHED (Book #6)

  VOWED (Book #7)

  FOUND (Book #8)

  RESURRECTED (Book #9)

  CRAVED (Book #10)

  FATED (Book #11)

  OBSESSED (Book #12)

  About Morgan Rice

  Morgan Rice is the #1 bestselling and USA Today bestselling author of the epic fantasy series THE SORCERER’S RING, comprising seventeen books; of the #1 bestselling series THE VAMPIRE JOURNALS, comprising twelve books; of the #1 bestselling series THE SURVIVAL TRILOGY, a post-apocalyptic thriller comprising three books; of the epic fantasy series KINGS AND SORCERERS, comprising six books; of the epic fantasy series OF CROWNS AND GLORY, comprising 8 books; and of the new epic fantasy series A THRONE FOR SISTERS. Morgan’s books are available in audio and print editions, and translations are available in over 25 languages.