Chapter Forty Six: The Tragic Truth of Love at First Sight

Clara sent out the guards along with Captain Erin’s body. She had been fully content to see the conniving killer who had dared threaten her child twitching in pain until the heart-attack claimed him, but Charlotte seemed utterly broken by finally witnessing the effects of her poisons. Her hands stayed clamped to her mouth in horror for long minutes after the corpse was removed. She kept huddled there by the base of the bed, raggedly sobbing over the serial killer her rat of a father had sent to assassinate his pregnant cousin and her comatose step-son.

Clara hid all such angry judgments of course and sank down at Charlotte’s side, holding her close and rubbing her shoulders. “You did the right thing.” She guided the girl’s hand to her stomach. “You saved us both. He was an evil man, and he had to die, Charlotte.”

“He-he w-wasn’t e-e--”

She held a gentle finger to her lips. “Yes, he was.”

Charlotte’s eyes darted down to Clara’s womb. Her dress was torn, and there was a small nick of a cut in her skin from when she’d pulled against Erin’s iron grip and he had applied some pointed pressure to show her how easily he could kill her unborn son. “Is-is he alright?”

Clara smiled. “My boy is fine, thanks to you,” she repeated. “See? You can feel him kicking.”

Charlotte gave a broken smile. Though it quickly died, and her eyes raised to Clara in concern. “Do you think that’s because he could feel the danger? Oh, what if he’s scared?”

“Then he’s just as strong as his mother, getting ready to fight back,” Clara clucked, shoving her way to her feet. “Come on now, you have work to finish. Carnen still sleeps, and he needs you to save him.”

“I… I know the compound that will counteract this venom,” Charlotte stammered, wiping at her nose. “The herbs grow in the gardens. I just need to distill them.”

A long abandoned room in Clara’s castle had all the glassware and equipment they required. It was the childhood bedroom of Etienne Marseir before he had married and built his own country estate, too full of himself and also too paranoid to keep living with the rest of his family at court. Clara had long since gone snooping in these rooms. She had blown the locks from the desk and uncovered the secret chamber behind the bookcase.

She showed that hidden laboratory to Charlotte now, and the girl noted unhappily, “There’s flaws in the glass of these tubes. That affects the reactions, but... I can... I will make it work,” she resolved.

That explained why Etienne had left behind this equipment. Though Clara wondered why her cousin had not bothered to trash this entire little laboratory the day he had taken his leave of this castle. Perhaps because there would be no way to cover up the sounds of shattering glass or hide the smoke of a fire from the palace staff and his brothers, he had opted to simply abandon and hide this most antiquated equipment instead, taking with him all notes on his created compounds and mechanisms.

Charlotte needed no such written instructions to make her cure. She did the math herself and had Carnen’s antidote fully synthesized in a matter of hours. Clara asked her a number of unassuming questions as she worked, questions about the chemistry that Charlotte was all too happy to answer in excruciating detail.

“I imagine these chemicals are dangerous if cooked improperly,” Clara noted, looking pointedly to Charlotte’s thickly insulated gloves and googles.

Charlotte gave a distracted nod. “If you mix these too quickly, or put this one too near heat, they’ll explode. And this,” She pointed to the plant in the little pot on the desk. “This is completely poisonous if you get any of the leaf matter in the mix. You can only use the boiled down roots.”

“Poisonous in what sense?”

“It irritates the eyes and throat, causes stomach cramps if ingested.”

Not nearly strong enough for Clara’s purposes. “Still, your father would never use a plant like that for one of his poison needles.”

“No. Likely not.”

“But my cousin did cultivate the plants for his poisons right here in the palace gardens, now didn’t he?”

Charlotte cocked her head, reflecting. “I guess he did. Most of the herbs down there have multiple uses, medicinal or poisonous depending on how you process them. That belladonna though, that is of much more limited use. It will kill anything that eats those berries, no processing required.”

“Oh really? Such a deadly pretty plant, that solitary bush with those lovely black flowers.”

Charlotte gave a distracted nod. “That’s the one. Still, Belladonna I can treat and counteract, a potent neurotoxin on the other hand…”

Clara took careful mental notes on their discussion, and she shifted to more innocent sounding topics of science when Charlotte thought too seriously about her father poisoning people, poisoning her new love…

“This treatment will help him, but it’s been so long already...” Charlotte fretted, finally finished her concoction.

“He’s strong. He will wake,” Clara insisted, guiding her over to the bed where Carnen was laid up. “But we’d best give him your medicine now to give him a hand.”

She settled down in a chair at the side of the room, as Charlotte most lovingly spooned the antidote into Carnen’s mouth. By the way her eyes stayed glued to him with such entranced and tragic concern, Clara knew the girl to be head over heels in love with him already, and who could blame her? The boy was just as handsome as his father, and he would keep little Charlotte wrapped firmly around his finger, so long as he held his temper and did not act coldly or cruelly as Yuri was prone.

The queen ordered dinner be delivered to this bedroom, but Charlotte had no appetite to join her for the meal. She kept her eyes glued to Carnen, knelt at that beside, waiting for him to awake. “He’s a poet, you know,” she murmured at one point, placing a dampened cloth to his forehead.

Clara arched an eyebrow. “No, I did not know that.” She would not have thought that any of the men in Yuri’s family would pursue such a sensitive art.

“He hides them in the bottom of a locked trunk up in his tower, but Aya memorized a few and recited them to me.” Charlotte sighed, pulling shamefully back from her prince. “Aya… Aya loves him, you see.”

‘Aya is a filthy peasant who knocked me out unconscious and might have murdered me on order of your father,’ Clara wanted to snap in response, but she held her tongue and prodded sagely instead, “And does Carnen speak so kindly of the lying imposter who nearly strangled him to death?”

Charlotte flushed, eyes lowering. “Well… no. He insults her most terribly, but then… He does not speak kindly of me either...”

“He will, dear,” Clara assured her, holding her eyes with glowing insistence. “You have saved his life this day, and he will be endlessly grateful for that. He is already ensnared by your brilliance and beauty. I’m sure he will compose for you your very own sonnets, if he has not already.”

Charlotte blushed at the thought, clasping hands to her chest. “You think? I’m a poet myself sometimes. I could write him a verse.” Her eyes locked back on her sleeping groom. “Oh, I could so very easily write him a verse.”

“I’m sure he would love that,” Clara lied. Carnen may very well think that pathetic from what she knew of his character. Still, her step son at least was wise enough to control his reactions and listen to Clara’s council. He respected her advice, unlike her husband, his beast of a father.

Charlotte’s eyes began to droop, and the queen encouraged her to stretch out on the bed beside her prince and get some rest. Their patient was stable, and there was no need to sit up watching him any longer since it was pushing ten in the evening.

Charlotte turned a burning, bright red, but did as she advised, stretching out tentatively on the right side of the mattress with her eyes glued to the face of her sleeping prince.

Etienne Marseir would never have this throne. His own daughter was going to most happily denounce him and bring ruin to all his schemes. She would carry on the Gristhm line with Carnen’s heir, Clara and her child would be the protected and proper leaders of this nation, and they would be a happy whole household just as Clara had envisioned.

And Yuri… Yuri no longer fit into that picture.

Clara had been uneasy around her husband ever since she glimpsed his true controlling and irrational nature. He had noted just the other day that she was acting unpleasantly, and she had manipulated wisely, “I am tired and uncomfortable, my lord, and fearful as well.” She turned to meet his gaze. “I fear you no longer desire my company, Yuri. I am certainly not as attractive to you now as when we first met.” She put self conscious hands to her swelling waist line, and Yuri’s gaze instantly warmed.

He put his hands to her swelling breasts. “You are more radiant than ever.”

Those words were so wonderfully warming, and so was the feel of him against her as he treated himself to an afternoon delight. Clara did love to look at him, and to run her hands up his body. She loved the firmness with which his hands and mouth caressed her breasts and how wonderfully it hurt when he entered her however he pleased. He could be gentle with those lips of his, but those rough and weapon calloused hands had been made to hold her down and pin her up against his chest in iron, even bruising hold.

She valued that he was frightening to their enemies, so she could accept the occasional mark he inflicted on his wife. The one thing she could not accept though… “Are you leaving yourself to deal with the Arakesh fleet, because you fear for Carnen’s safety?” she prompted him in the exhausted aftermath of their lovemaking, after she knew him to be fully satisfied.

Yuri scoffed. “Fear for his safety?” He sighed into her hair, kissing her forehead. “You are such a woman. Carnen is my son. He needs no coddling. He needs a stern lesson again to rid him of his utter incompetence. I go to deal with our enemies myself because we cannot afford another loss.”

“You say he needs a lesson again,” she pressed, trying to keep a neutral expression as she remembered anew her step son’s battered ribs and broken nose. “Like when you broke his nose for letting that assassin, Aya, fool him?”

Yuri’s hands tightened around her arms, an instant, bruising vice. “Do not tell me he went whining to you about such things.”

“Of course not,” she laughed, deadening all compassion and acting as a monstrous echo to her husband’s own ideals. “He is a grown man. He keeps his pride and keeps quiet, as he should. A child is different though, yes?” she pressed in a most desperate, last ditch quest for hope. “You would never so brutally injure our son for example.”

“You’re upsetting me again,” he muttered. “What is the purpose of all these questions?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry.”

He grunted. Then he flipped her over, pressing into her in the one position she preferred to avoid, though she did not dare protest it now. She gave the expected sounds of pleasure with the feigned enthusiasm that she could fool any man with. “Still, you do not often upset me. No, you are most pleasing,” he praised, pushing in all the harder. That hand went back to her stomach. “And our son will be just as obedient and good as his mother. He will not have the failings of the others.”

No, he would likely turn out just as cruel and brain-damaged as Faust, because Yuri would be looming over him his entire childhood, dealing black eyes for every act or noise that upset him.

Clara never voiced such worries again of course. She played adoring fan for her husband all the rest of that evening, sitting as close as he wished to him at dinner with her hand resting happily on his thigh. She kept her smile and wished him well on his mission to eradicate their enemies.

He would be returning to this castle no later than the dawn, no doubt, and Clara would be forced to deal with him in permanence. Hard as she had fallen for this golden god who had brought life back to her nights and given her this child… She could not afford to delude herself any longer. Her son was her future, and he must be protected above all else. Some most brutal love stories were just doomed to end in tragedy.