Page 4 of Edge of Oblivion (Night Prowler 2)
His smile faded. He relaxed back into the plush comfort of his enormous carved chair, inhaled a deep breath, and waited for it to begin.
“Morgan Marlena Montgomery,” Viscount Weymouth intoned over the cacophony, staring down his aquiline nose through his spectacles. He took particular pleasure in his role in the proceedings because it was he whom she’d plotted to kill, after all, regardless of her failure to do so. “Daughter of Malcolm and Elizabeth, former sworn member of this Assembly, do you understand the charges brought against you?”
Morgan stood demurely before the dais, hands folded at her waist, head bowed. The jeering crowd fell suddenly into tense silence, and even the breeze creeping through the open windows seemed to still. Slowly, she raised her head and leveled the viscount with her gaze, calm and direct.
Slanted sunbeams caught in her hair and haloed her head in glimmering auburn and bronze, a faerie crown of light, and she looked for a moment like a Michelangelo Madonna, pure and sweet, and nothing at all like the treacherous viper he knew her to be.
“I do,” she answered, her voice soft but clear. “And I accept the will of the Assembly.”
The viscount sniffed, displeased. She did not seem appropriately afraid. Well, no matter. She’d be afraid very soon, he assured himself. Very soon. He’d have her stripped and shorn and trussed like a turkey; he’d give her to the crowd to soften her up before fixing her to the Furiant, his personal favorite of the tribe’s torture devices, so named in honor of the bohemian dance of spinning and flailing bodies and limbs.
Soon, he promised himself again, nearly salivating with anticipation. I’ll see you naked and begging soon, my duplicitous dove. He snapped the thick sheaf of papers in his hands and moistened his lips, lowering his gaze once more.
“Then by unanimous resolution of this Body,” he read, his sonorous voice carrying to the far reaches of the silent room, “we do hereby sentence you to—”
“Wait.”
The voice came from behind him, clear and commanding, the American accent evident even with that single word. He turned, startled, and the room turned with him, all gazes now focused on the woman who’d appeared so suddenly beside the empty throne. She was lovely and pale, the palest creature in the room, golden-haired and delicate in a gown of ivory satin that nearly matched her skin.
She stood there like a shimmering opal among a sea of black pearls.
He glimpsed her solemn face, registered the stubborn lift of her chin, and his heart sank.
“Majesty,” he murmured, executing a low, practiced bow. The men on either side of him rose and bowed in turn, and so did everyone in the crowd, in utter silence. Like static electricity sparking in invisible bursts over all their heads, the sense of anticipation in the air ratcheted higher.
Her husband rose and too
k her hand, and with a quizzical arch of one dark brow he bent and pressed his lips to her fingers. When he straightened, she sent him a penetrating, sidelong look and let her hand rest in his as she turned to face the room.
“I have an idea,” the Queen declared.
Beneath the starched white collar of his shirt, Viscount Weymouth began to sweat.
2
Morgan was having trouble remembering how to breathe.
“And that way,” the Queen continued, calmly addressing the stupefied Assembly, “we can kill two birds with one stone. So to speak.”
In the wake of this statement—utter silence.
They’d reconvened in the East Library, a smaller yet no less grand room than the formal hall they’d just left. It was peppered with priceless antiques and ticking clocks and plush Turkish rugs and a huge crystal chandelier that threw fractured prisms of light over the polished mahogany table and the silent, stiff group of nineteen seated around it.
Sixteen Assembly members, one Alpha, one Queen, and her.
The traitor.
To whom the Queen had just offered a lifeline, slim though it was.
Morgan kept herself calm as best she could by focusing on the view of the hills through the windows, rolling drifts of loamy earth carpeted in emerald fields and nodding wild-flowers and miles of forest so dense only a faint memory of sun reached the silent forest floor from the canopy far above. Pale green rays filtered through but never fully penetrated the cool gloom.
The river Avon cut through the dark center of it, miles of snaking turns and crystal clear water that was bejeweled above by darting turquoise dragonflies and perfumed pine needles and gossamer tufts of drifting goldenrod, below by the mirror flash of rainbow trout. On a clear day like this she knew she’d be able to see straight down to the sandy bottom, to the waving tendrils of moss anchored to beds of smooth, dark stones, to the tiny, darting hatchlings and froglets. She’d spent hours exploring the New Forest as a child, many hours and days and months of her life. The memory dissolved like a bitter pill on her tongue; in all likelihood, she would never explore it again.
“With all due respect, my lady,” said the viscount to the Queen past stiff lips, “I fail to see how your plan can be realistically executed.”
From the corner of her eye, Morgan saw Leander’s head turn in the viscount’s direction. She didn’t have to see his face to feel the particular heat of his answering stare: warning and blatantly hostile. Envying the lone hawk that circled far above in the stark cerulean sky beyond the windows, she fisted her trembling hands in her lap and practiced breathing.
In. Out. In...out.
