Royal Rebellion
Royal Rebellion
SISTERS OF ANDLUSAN DUET
Andie M. Long
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Copyright (c) 2018 by Andrea Long
All rights reserved.
Cover by Jay Aheer at Simply Defined Art.
Formatting by Tammy Clarke at The Graphics Shed
Contents
LAST RITES
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
FIRST RULES
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
IMMORTAL BITE
About the Author
Also by Andie M. Long
LAST RITES
Chapter One
Mercy
The excitement made me feel so alive. My heart beat faster in my chest, and adrenaline ran through my veins like a rabbit at the start of a hunt.
In the passenger seat of the car, my thighs stuck to the leather with sweat. The windows were open, and strong gusts of wind whipped my hair like a piece of plastic caught in a tree. The brown locks fell over my eyes and for a second or two I couldn’t see, obscured by my collagen curtain. An unknown to me song, with a deep bass beat that thrummed through my chest, boomed from the car stereo. My grin was fierce, my eyes twinkling with the excitement of the rush, a life being lived to the max.
We sped down the country lanes, the undulation of one dip making my stomach flip. A car on the opposite side of the road sounded its horn.
“Fuck off, you miserable old bastard.” Billy yelled. No doubt the driver had forgotten what it ever felt like to be young. I could imagine his passing glare fixed in cantankerous judgement. I raised my hand to move the hair once again blocking my view and then time slowed down to thousandths of a second. Life in infinitesimal motion.
Billy turned to me and I was struck by the raw beauty of his face. The jut of his jaw and the angles of his cheekbones. His perfect silver-grey gaze as his eyes met mine, widening before me. His perfect white teeth as his mouth opened in a silent scream. His thigh tensed on the brake, pumping down on something no longer working. The barrier protecting the trees and the hills now stood out in my vision as it came ever closer…
Then there was silence, and I stood among the wildflowers and heather, my cornflower-blue gossamer gown billowing in the breeze.
White feathers fell from the sky like an angelic snowstorm, pooling around my feet as if I stood on a cloud.
Billy stood to my side as we gazed out from the hilltop.
"Am I dead?" he asked.
"If you are, then I'm dying too.” I looked down at myself, watching as my body shimmered like a hologram.
Billy’s mouth gaped. “What’s happening? Are we ghosts?”
“Wait for me. Hold on. I can save you." The portal opened down below on the other side of the hill, out of Billy’s sight. My way home and my way of saving him. So, I jumped, leaving him standing there.
Leaving him thinking God knows what.
Leaving him stuck in limbo.
I jolted awake, my breath coming in short pants. Thank Goddess, it was just a vivid dream, a nightmare. Slowly, I raised myself up on my feather pillows, noticing that my skin was clammy, my bedclothes and nightdress damp with perspiration. I rang the bell on my bedside table and my lady-in-waiting, Saira, came straight through the door.
“Morning, Your Highness.”
“I wish you’d stop this nonsense and call me Mercy.” I told her for the millionth time.
“You’re second-in-line to the throne and I will always call you Your Highness. Well, to your face that is.” Saira winked.
I shook my head laughing. “Could you draw me a bath please? The night was hot, and I need to feel clean.”
Saira walked around to the side of my bed where she drew back the assortment of blankets. Here at the Winter Court we always sought comfort in our bedcovers and I was no exception. My bedroom was painted a beautiful ice-blue colour, and warm blankets were covered by an exquisite tapestried cover of individual snowflakes which had took a seamstress a year to complete.
I was a Princess of the Winter Court. Our mother had passed away a month ago after succumbing to an infection, and now myself and my twin sister, Leatha, were the next generation of royalty. At a few minutes older than me, it was Leatha who would sit on the throne as Queen, and I would be named the Queen’s consort, until such time as Leatha married.
Where I accepted my fate, Leatha did not. We were as different as identical twins could be. We were mirror images, but for the fact I had a small mole above my lip. Leatha hated being in the Winter Court. She wanted to travel, to see the other Kingdoms. She spent hours reading books about imagined lands such as life on the planets of Earth, Mars, etc. Leatha was given to fancy and could barely be raised out of her chambers before midday, lost in books and her dreamworlds.
I knew we had the responsibilities of our people in our hands, and although our Court suffered no real hardships at present—despite the challenges of living in a permanent winter—we had a duty to ensure that each and every villager had an ear to listen to them should they require it.
Leatha’s coronation was in three days’ time. Yesterday she had been almost impossible to speak to and spend time with.
Leatha burst into my room where I sat at my desk tending to paperwork left by our mother’s secretary—now our secretary. And so it would be that I would take care of such matters because my sister would pile them on a desk and make paper aeroplanes out of them imagining that each one was taking her on a journey outside of the Winter Court.
She threw herself upon my bed, laid out on her back, and sighed.
“My life is over before it’s even begun, Sister. I shall be forced to marry for position, not pleasure, and to stay here in the Winter Court, my zest for life frozen like the landscape of this boring place. I may as well end myself.”
I turned in my chair to look upon her.
“There is much adventure awaits you as Queen. Look at all the balls we shall hold. How visitors from other Kingdom’s shall come bearing gifts to honour and to beg favour of the Queen. How many pretty gowns shall fill your closets. All the women of the land, especially the younger girls, shall want to be you, Leatha.”
Another sigh. “I suppose.” She bolted upright and rolled onto her stomach, elbows bent and resting her chin on her hands. “I could get the seamstresses to make me dresses so utterly splendid that everyone will hold their breath to see me and gasp at their magnificence. Some may even faint with the wait.”
“I’m sure a few will.” I encouraged her. This was the only way to get my sister interested in her
future position.
“And of course, you shall also have beautiful gowns, but none so beautiful as mine. Where mine will be festooned with jewels, yours shall complement the colour but be plainer.”
I kept the smile on my face, though right now I wanted to become the ten-year-old me, where I would jump on the bed and pull her hair for being mean.
Leatha jumped off the bed with the same gusto as to which she’d first leapt upon it.
“I’m off back to my room to call the seamstresses to come take an order for more gowns. And to ensure my coronation gown is the most decadent thing anyone has ever seen.”
It already weighed so much she could barely move in it, but I let her leave the room and take her wild ideas with her while I buried myself back in the paperwork.
Saira had prepared me a breakfast of oats and berries for after I had finished bathing. I had almost finished eating when a knock rattled my door like a cannon had fired at it.
“Your Highness. Your Highness.” A woman’s shrill voice could be heard from the other side. I got up from my seat but Saira had gotten there before me and opened the door to reveal Ramona, my sister’s main lady-in-waiting.
Ramona stood trembling as she whimpered words it took time for me to decipher. “Princess Leatha. Something is wrong. Come quickly. I have phoned the royal physician.”
I dashed from my room although I was dressed only in my undergarments: long-johns and a vest top.
My sister’s room was on the other side of the top of a vast staircase. My chambers to the right, hers to the left.
As I burst into the room, what I saw took my breath away.
My sister was lying on the bed on her back looking as if she were mid-nightmare. She tossed and turned though no sounds came from her mouth, but the worst thing was her body was turning translucent. It disappeared, then re-appeared fully. It kept changing between the three states.
“Dear Goddess, what is this?” I gasped. I had heard of magic, but I had never witnessed it before. This could not be anything else because people didn’t just disappear before your eyes.
“Someone must have placed a hex on her, or something. Maybe an enemy who does not wish to see her take the throne?” Ramona queried. “But I don’t know how as no one has visited her quarters. She was asleep in her room at ten pm last night.”
“And you just found her like this? It is now ten am, that’s twelve hours she could have been like this.”
“Yes, your sister won’t allow me to assist her before this time of the morning.”
I knew this already, and I also knew I needed to keep outwardly calm, though inside me terror was giving me chest pains, and the sound of my heartbeat thrashed in my ears.
Our main physician, Lord Thomas Mandrake, knocked on the door and entered the room. I looked at him and watched as his face paled. He was a tall, thin man, with dark hair, who looked older than his actual age, as if life had bore down heavy on him. I was very fond of him. He had always been close to our family, and I considered him like I would an uncle. He had no wife or children of his own, preferring to spend his time caring for the sick and infirm.
“Oh no. Please no.”
“What is it?” I yelled at him. “Tell me.”
He looked at the ladies-in-waiting.
“Please excuse us.” I asked them. “If you could wait outside the door, I will call you if you are needed. Please do not let your faces show that there is anything wrong with Princess Leatha. If anyone asks, she is troubled by a severe headache brought on by the pressure of her upcoming coronation.”
Saira and Ramona both nodded and quietly left the room.
I looked back at Lord Thomas.
“I need to check your sister over and see if my initial assessment and my fears are confirmed.” He told me. “Could you assist me?”
“Of course.”
“When she appears in solid form, please grab her hand. It should keep her grounded for a little longer than usual.”
I walked to my sister’s bedside. Where my top blanket was festooned with snowflakes, she had chosen for hers to be covered in silver threaded sigils and white feathers. She had heard fanciful stories from our grandmother that we were descended from a family of witches and protected by angels. My grandmother had always been one for a tale, and whereas I had politely listened for the minimum time I could get away with before returning to studies that would benefit me in life; Leatha had sat for hours at her feet enchanted.
With her long dark hair, hung in waves around her pale-skinned face, Leatha looked like a sleeping angel.
As her shimmering form solidified, I grabbed her hand, noting the ice-cold touch of her fingers within my own.
“Well done.” Lord Thomas checked her eyes, her pulse, and then he murmured an incantation under his breath. My sister’s skin took on a purple hue, and I gasped and let go. She disappeared, returning and shimmering again after a minute. A minute in which I thought my heart would stop beating.
“It is as I feared.” Lord Thomas turned to me, a grave expression on his face.
“Your sister has been abusing magic. She has been travelling the planes to visit places not of our kingdoms. She has become stuck. Something must have happened to her, an accident or tragedy where she visited, and now she is between worlds.”
“So, we find someone who is an expert in magic and we get them to free her.” I ran a jerky hand through my own dark hair.
Lord Thomas reached out and took my free hand, clutching it in his own.
“I am sorry, Princess Mercy. When someone is between worlds, they live in eternal torment lest we end that misery. I will need to perform the Last Rites ceremony to free your sister.”
“What? Are you telling me she must die?”
He nodded. “I am sorry, there is no other way.”
“There must be.” I snapped. “Get me a magician to talk to.”
“Magic is banned in this realm as you well know.”
“I know that I am not going to allow my sister to die.” I held his gaze.
Lord Thomas leaned in closer to my ear and whispered. “There is a peace spell I was taught earlier on in my career. I can cast it now, but it will only last a few days. Your sister will just look as if she is sleeping.”
“Do it. Please.” I urged. “Buy me some time.”
He stood over her bed and I watched as he whispered the words that stopped her slipping in and out of the world.
“It is only temporary.” He told me. “You have only days, maybe three or four.”
“So I have until the coronation to try to find a way to get my sister back?” I looked around her room at the masses of books piled on tables. Maybe there would be something here to give me an idea as to where she had gone?
“Thank you, Lord Thomas. I will not forget I owe you a debt.”
He chewed on his bottom lip, lost in thought for a moment. Then he fixed his gaze on me once more. “Should you find you have need to learn more about the magic arts, questions… please find me. I know someone who might be able to help. A friend’s son. I should send him to you in the guise of an artist, sequestered to make a coronation gift for your sister.”
“We are very honoured indeed to have such a faithful physician. I thank you, Lord Thomas, and give you my blessings for a safe journey home.”
With a bow and a doff of his hat, he bid me farewell. I sent the two ladies on their way with tasks to do, having reassured them all would be well and then I turned back to my sister’s room.
It was time to start looking for clues.
Chapter Two
Aaron
Our mother put cold water in her mug of red-hot black coffee and gulped it down at breakneck speed before staring at the kitchen table, her eyes widening.
“William Buckley. Out of bed before midday? Are my eyes deceiving me?”
My brother Billy sat back in his seat, his hands behind his head as if he had all the time in the world. Which he did because he was a student and it was the
final days of the summer holidays. At a year older, I was off to my job working as a manager in a store that sold sports clothing and equipment. Academia hadn’t been my thing whereas Billy didn’t even need to revise. It all just came naturally to him. I’d spent years feeling like a dumb older brother, but my gift was my gab. I could sell ‘snow to Eskimos’ as they say and I was climbing the corporate ladder fast, already deputy manager after only a year. So our mother was off to her job as a nurse at the local hospital, and I would be following shortly behind her. What my brother was up to was anybody’s guess because he certainly did not get up at this time—ever. My mother’s eyes met mine over the top of her mug, and she shook her head before placing it on the worktop.
“Right, boys, I gotta dash. Have a great day at work, Aaron. Billy, wash the dishes and for God’s sake clean your room. I saw the open door and all I can see is laundry piled everywhere. Put it in the wash basket, or even better, try putting a load in. Only your own though, I don’t want my clothes ruined.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mum.” Billy lifted up his thumb.
I waited until the door banged shut behind her before I stared my brother down.
“What are you doing today?”
“Nothing. I just couldn’t sleep, that’s all, so figured I may as well get up.”