“"Greetings, Queen Danika. We meet again,” the mistress stated with a cold blank face.
“Mistress Vetta.” Queen Danika's voice held firm, belying the fear inside her.
Vetta could only keep staring at her. Coza had been disturbing Vetta for several weeks for her to carry out her own part of the deal. She paid him no heed at all because she was not killing Danika as part of any deal she made with the monster but because it would be her revenge.
This was her revenge. Her pain. Her hate. Her vengeance. Vetta would do it on her own terms. In her own time. Which is why she is in the bedroom today. The hatred she feels for this woman. The pain she and her father had caused her. Here she is, living a good life again as a queen, after she and her father had destroyed her life. How is that fair?
But she brought you food when you were dying of starvation in the dungeon, a voice whispered inside her.
That voice again. Vetta was starting to hate that annoying voice that had suddenly taken over inside her since she got out of the palace to 'heal' and 'live a new life.'
She did not have this voice before, but suddenly it was there, saying things she did not want to hear.
“You will not ask me what I am doing in your bedroom? How I got in?” Vetta flashed her teeth. It wasn't a nice smile at all.
Queen Danika shrugged. “Would it matter if I did?”
“No, it wouldn't.” The knife hidden under her breast feeling like the extra weight it was, reminding her what she was there for.
Queen Danika nodded her head. Then she turned and walked towards the table. “I must get those herbs, I'm afraid. It helps my back,” she said conversationally.
Vetta arched her brow. “Shouldn't you have given birth? It's long overdue…if King Lucien is truly the father of that thing.”
Danika didn't rise to the bait. She only shrugged again while she poured her liquid concoction into a cup. “He's taking his time to come, but I'm not in a hurry.”
“Maybe he does not want to come into a world where his mother is a monster. And his grandfather?” Vetta let out an empty laugh. “Let's not even go there.”
“How have you been, Mistress?” Danika asked with concern. “There has been a lot going on for me. I haven't been able to inquire.”
Taken aback, Vetta arched her brow and stared at the queen more thoroughly. The concern she saw on that face threw her off-balance. Vetta forgot all about taunting her as fierce anger whip through her. “Don't you dare put on that act of pretense for me here, or I swear to the heavens I will kill you in a more painful way that will leave you in excruciating agony until you take your last breath!”
The hate and anger that spewed from each of those words made Queen Danika cringe inwardly. She had never felt such magnitude of heavy negative feelings from anyone at all. It only took everything within her power for her to curb her fear.
“So you came to kill me?” Danika asked simply.
“Surely, you did not think I came here to play with you or to congratulate you.” Vetta crossed her arms. “I do not think you to be so dull in the brain.”
“The king will hate you if he finds out about it.”
“If he finds out about it,” she replied easily.
“Do you hate me that much? Enough to kill me?”
That empty laugh again. “If you have any idea how many times I have tried to get you killed in the past, you would know how much I hate you, Danika.”
“You have tried to kill me before?” Queen Danika was not too shocked—she knew the mistress hated her so much—but she was shocked, nonetheless.
Vetta raised her fingers and began separating them one after another as she talked. “I paid those market women to beat you up at the square. They would have killed you, but your sidekick intervened. I planned with Karandy to set you up that day in the storage room. Too bad that bastard was the one that died instead.” She smirked as her eyes met Danika's wide ones. “There are a few more of them, actually. So since you have found out about it, you can stop all those pretense now.”
Danika was speechless. Too speechless. “Why are you telling me this now?” she forced herself to ask.
“Because I know I'm going to kill you today. Finally.”
“Then why don't you get on with it? Why are you just sitting there on my bed? Why don't you do it?” Queen Danika asked in a whisper.
Vetta shrugged. “I am taking my time with you. You know how it is. You savor a delicious meal before you eat it. I am savoring my revenge,” she said simply.
The hand that held her liquid concoction trembled. She dropped the wooden cup on the table and faced the mistress squarely. “Do you think killing me will erase everything my father put you through? Do you think killing me will make you feel better?”
Vetta hesitated for the first time, and a different look crossed her face. But only for a second. The look cleared, replaced by the cold angry one. “I know that seeing you alive does not make me feel better.”
That hurt. Queen Danika lowered her eyes to blink back the pain of those words. She almost gave up. But something inside her did not want her to give up.
Silence descended.
“I know you love the king.” Queen Danika looked up and stared at Vetta. “I know you love King Lucien in your own way, Mistress. I carry his child inside me. If you kill me, his child will die too. It will hurt him more than anything in the world,” she whispered, her voice laced with pain.
Vetta averted her eyes. “He can always birth another with any other woman.” Her head whipped back and she glared at Danika. “Thanks to you and your father, I will not be able to give him a child!”
Queen Danika shook her head slowly. “He cannot birth another, Vetta.”
The mistress let out that empty laugh again. “You are surely thinking too highly of yourself.”
“That's not it. The king is sterile; he has been for the past few years.”
Vetta gaped at her. “What!?”
She swallowed tightly. “When he was roasted...it happened. The seers said that it's a miracle we are having a child now.” She caressed her belly lovingly.
The world tilted around Vetta. She wanted to rage at Danika for telling her a lie like that in an effort to save her own head, but suddenly, a lot of things were starting to make sense to her.
Why she never got pregnant for him in the five years she was his mistress, even when she took fertility pills, only to get pregnant with Karandy's child after that one time...
All those women brought into the palace and slept with in the next year after their slavery...
Why he was so happy when he found out about this child...
It suddenly made sense. That one night three years ago, they were talking after he took his pleasures from her body and he called himself “A king that can never have an heir.”
Then she'd dismissed it because she thought he did not want a child. Now she knows it was because he couldn’t father them.
Queen Danika watched how devastating the news was for the mistress, and that is when she actually believed that the mistress did not know was about this before.
But would the revelation save her from the other woman's hatred and rage?