“I don’t answer to her! She isn’t anything to me!”
“So it would appear, given your efforts to have her imprisoned and killed.” Tasha gave her a smile. “Do you think she doesn’t intend to see you pay for your treachery?
What will you tell the members of the High Council when she confronts you with the truth? Do you think your lies will count for anything then? She’s a hero now, Isoeld. She saved the Elven nation with her acts of courage at Aphalion Pass.”
Hiding back in the trees, remaining perfectly still, Xac Wen could still see clearly the look of mingled fury and despair on the Queen’s face.
“I will deny everything! No one will challenge me!”
Tasha shrugged. “Perhaps. We’re going to find out, at any rate. Too bad your first minister won’t be there to support you in your efforts. I’ve never seen anyone run away so fast.”
He reached for her arm, but she jerked away quickly, her haunted eyes shifting this way and that. “Teonette is a coward. If not for me, he would have crawled back to the High Council begging for mercy long ago. Let him go. I didn’t need him then, and I don’t need him now.”
“You can tell all that to the High Council when we bring you before them,” Tenerife said brightly. “It should be interesting to see their reaction.”
She sneered at him. “You are such a fool. You and your brother both. You think this matter all done and over already, don’t you? The little Princess returns, the conquering heroine, and the evil Queen is deposed and sent into exile. So simple. Except that isn’t how it’s going to happen. The Princess will make her case, but I will make mine, as well. She is young and wild and often confused—everyone knows that. I’ll convince the High Council that she misread what she heard and saw. I was there, but it was an assassin that killed the King. I was trying to save him, and I did manage to save her. But she was so out of her mind with grief that she had to be restrained and locked away for her own protection.”
Tasha and Tenerife exchanged a quick glance.
“It won’t work,” the former declared. “They won’t believe you.”
“No? Why don’t we find out? Take me back and let me face them. Running away was never a good idea in the first place. Teonette’s solution—a coward’s way. In fact, he forced me to go with him. He threatened to kill me if I didn’t. The assassin was his doing, not mine. I discovered it only tonight. He admitted it. He wanted me for himself.
He’s always wanted me.”
“You had nothing to do with the killing? Is that what you plan to say?”
“Of course! Look at me! Do I appear dangerous to you? Do you think the High Council will see me as dangerous? Or as a beautiful woman coveted and manipulated by strong men!”
The brothers stared at her in silence. She looked from one to the other, and then walked right up to Tasha and cupped his face in her hands. “You can’t win this, Tasha.
Not this way. But there is another. You could support me. You could tell them that what I say is the truth. If you did that, I would make you my new first minister. And your brother could have a place on the High Council, too. There’s no reason you shouldn’t both be there to help me govern as Queen. We share the same concerns; we both want to see things set right. Phryne is young and untrained; she needs time to grow and mature. When I am gone, she can be Queen after me. There’s plenty of time yet for her.
We can make her understand.”
She was touching his face all over. “In the meantime, you can hunt down Teonette and silence him! We both want to see him punished. We could share so much, you and I.”Her voice was seductive and compelling, and she stroked the big man’s arms and shoulders, casting glances at Tenerife as she did so, commanding attention as only beautiful women can, demanding they consider what in a different time and place they never would.
Tasha nodded slowly. “We could do that. Couldn’t we, Tenerife?”
“We could,” his brother agreed.
“Be your consorts together?” Tasha pressed. “Act as your protectors and advisers?”
“All of that! Anything you want!”
Xac Wen, still in hiding, was so horrified at what was happening that for a moment he almost left his hiding place to try to stop it.
Tasha was caressing Isoeld in response to her advances. “You are a beautiful creature, Isoeld,” he told her. “What man wouldn’t want to do what you asked of him?”
“Only a fool,” Tenerife said.
Tasha placed his hands on either side of her face and drew her to him. “But then we’ve never been particularly bright,” he whispered.
Then he tightened his grip, wrenched her head sharply to one side, and broke her neck.