Broken Dove (Fantasyland #4)(175)
The shrewdness left her face and spite replaced it, reminding him precisely why he’d never liked her, and she declared, “You must know what everyone is saying about you and this…Madeleine.”
“Indeed I don’t know,” he replied. “I also don’t care.”
“She will care, especially as you take her to the Gales.”
“That’s doubtful,” Apollo replied, and he would have believed this statement to be truth but weeks ago.
However, Maddie was vulnerable now.
He would have to have a word with Frey and Finnie, Lahn and Circe. At the Gales, they would need to keep an eye on his Maddie and assist him in keeping her away from those who would cause harm, either intentionally or not.
“Men do what they will and what others think matters not,” she returned. “Women are not made that way.”
Apollo shook his head. “I have had the unique and exquisitely pleasurable experience, madam, of learning with great fullness how each woman is quite unique. I’m certain there are some who are not made that way. I’m also certain there are those who are.”
She clamped her mouth shut and at that moment, thankfully, the door to his study opened and Frey strode in.
He took one look at his mother, his face hardened but his lips muttered, “Brilliant.”
Valeria’s back shot straight before she snapped to her son, “Is that how you greet your mother?”
“I would say it is, since it was how I did,” Frey replied, and Apollo fought back his smile as he looked to his boots.
“With the welcome I’ve received from the two of you, I’m uncertain I wish to relay the crucial message that’s been given to me,” she announced.
Frey stopped five feet from her and crossed his arms on his chest.
“I suppose you could make that decision. However, word has been received that father has wasted no time in petitioning the queen for a dissolution of his union to you. Should that happen, unless Calder is feeling generous, you’ll need to fall back on your own House to absorb your upkeep. As you’ve been rather unfriendly to them over the decades, it’s doubtful they’ll be keen to do that. And if I have a word with Calder, I fear he won’t be feeling very generous. So, in the end, you must hope Malcolm Turnish will take you to wife. But I assume your sojourn at Brunskar means Turnish has not offered you welcome.”
Apollo looked from his boots to Frey’s mother to see her eyes were aimed at her son and they were slits.
“What, precisely, have I done to you that you feel it’s appropriate to treat me in this manner?” she asked.
“Precisely, nothing,” Frey answered immediately. “And a mother who does nothing is no mother at all. Thus, I have no qualms treating you in this manner.”
She stared at her son a moment before she swallowed.
Frey spoke on.
“Now, why are you here with bird nor man bringing news you would be?”
“My message was too sensitive to trust to bird or man,” she answered.
“And your message?” Frey prompted.
She drew in breath through her nose, looked to Apollo, then back to her son and declared, “Antoine has perished.”
“Fuck,” Frey muttered as her words made Apollo straighten from the desk.
Frey looked to him and Apollo shook his head.
Frey turned his attention back to his mother.
“Franka sent you with this message,” he stated.
“She did,” she confirmed.
“How did he die?” Apollo asked.
Valeria looked to him. “They have had him, and have been torturing him, for a great deal of time. There is only so much a body can take. He simply expired.”
Apollo raised a brow. “And they shared this directly with Franka?”
She shook her head. “As she would, during her discussions with them, Franka demanded to see him again to ascertain his condition. It was a coincidence, and I daresay a grave error…theirs…that when they opened the mirror to show him to her, he took his final breath.”
At that, Apollo felt something he thought he would never in his life feel.
Sorry for Franka Drakkar.
He then felt Frey’s gaze and turned his eyes to his cousin.
“They no longer have anything to hold over her,” he noted.
“And therefore she’d have no reason to act for them,” Apollo replied.
“True,” Valeria put in and both men looked to her. “But Franka is a Drakkar. As you bid, she shared with them that you erroneously came to the conclusion that it was Kristian who was behind the plot against”—her eyes slid to Apollo—“Madeleine. Also as you bid, she shared that you’ve imprisoned him and his family in the dungeons of Brunskar to await transport to Snowdon to stand trial for treason. A guilty verdict that carries a sentence from which any sister would wish to save her brother. Although her lover is dead and they have nothing to hold over her, her brother is incarcerated and what he would face if found guilty means she has something to bargain with. And this she’s doing. The plan proceeds as hatched, with that alteration.”
“Her bargain?” Apollo prompted.
“That once they have done what they wish to do, Kristian and his family will be freed and she, as well as her brother, will be allowed to continue their lives unhindered by whatever malice they intend,” Valeria answered. “But, as you wished, she has pressed them to act and do it quickly, now doing so in order to save Kristian rather than to halt the torture of her lover.”