Chapter Forty Nine: In Bed With the Beast, Our Final Farewell

Yuri Gristhm made his return to Stalis castle, not with an air of gloating victory, but in a state of fuming rage. “The cowards refused to come out and fight us like men,” he spat, the moment Clara came to greet him in the reception hall. “They fled at the very sight of us, before we’d fired more than a single volley. They lifted anchor and set out to sea. If we’d had our own fleet ready I would have set out and chased them, stormed their decks and cut down every last one of the cowards. Yet in my absence, my captain tells me that conniving duke dared send more poisoners into my castle?”

“Yes.” Clara nodded. “And they attacked your son, but he is just as strong as his father, so the poison did not claim him. He is already awake.” She made no mention of Charlotte’s hand in that, because Yuri clearly did not think a woman’s brilliance to be an asset. He would want the wife of his son to be ignorant and subservient, not capable of brewing deadly chemicals.

“And these assassins laid hands on you as well?” Yuri growled, fierce blue eyes burning with rage.

Clara felt her heart swell anew, casting doubt on her most recent resolutions. She gave a glowing smile and melted right into those massive arms that came to encircle her. “And you would have broken their skulls for that, my love, I know, but the snake is already dead, pricked by his own poison by the girl he came to abduct.”

“Charlotte killed him?” Yuri was not pleased with this, just as Clara might have predicted.

She smothered her sigh though, and kept her smile beaming. “Charlotte is a firm ally of this family,” she assured him. “She has fallen head over heels for Carnen, and the two of them are to be married this very day. We were just about to sit down to brunch and discuss it with the other lords.”

“You may sit at my side, and I will inform the lords of it then,” Yuri grunted, and Clara’s smile further tightened with a subtle grinding of teeth.

“Carnen should do most of the talking though, don’t you agree? He needs to make a strong show that he has fully recovered his strength and present Charlotte as his prize, yes?”

“Yes, I suppose,” Yuri caved.

The warlord kept outfitted in his full gothic armor as they set off to brunch with the Stalis lords. He clapped his son on the shoulder briefly and made a long study of Charlotte that made her blush and squirm. His only remark at the end of it was “She looks just like the other one.” Then he pulled out his chair and sat down at the head of the table.

Carnen guided Charlotte into her seat, and she initiated the announcement to their guests. “Thank you, my good lords, for attending us this day! I have been most uncomfortable these past few days…” Clara gave her leg a little jab beneath the table at that wording, and Charlotte quickly remembered the lie she was supposed to present for the security of their household. “Uncomfortable as in ill,” she corrected. “Most horribly ill. And my f-fiance,” Her eyes darted to Carnen, and all the tension bled from her frame with a dazed look of entrancement. “He was so hurting as well, only just now recovered. My father…” She faltered, eyes lowering. “My father is not a good man,” she most earnestly sighed.

Carnen and Clara took over for her then, since she seemed incapable of further elaboration.

Carnen ended with the announcement, “And we will be pronounced man and wife this very day.” He gave Charlotte’s hand a light squeeze, and her blush returned.

“Yes. I mean, is… is that alright?” She seemed to be asking herself more than the lords at the table, but they took it as a request for their permission.

The eldest of the lot and the churchman at his side both raised their chins in haughty consideration. “If this will bring peace to our nation and put an end to the riots… We sanction this union.”

“It matters nothing if you sanction it,” Yuri retorted with eyes deadly, and the men shrunk right back down in their seats, as Clara gave an internal sigh.

“Indeed, your lawful king has made the decree and that is all that matters. Still, we cherish your kind words and blessings, my lords, and we invite you and all your households to attend both the ceremony and the reception this evening.”

Clara waited in annoyance then for Yuri to dismiss them, then she took him back to their bedroom to help remove his armor. “I think the blue tunic would look most dashing on you if you were to wear it to the wedding ceremony,” she prompted.

“To walk through the streets of this city without armor on would be most foolish,” he disagreed, eyes weighing into her. “and what is this reception you have promised the lords anyhow? I have seen the servants carting out the most ridiculous looking banners, trying to drape my hall in ribbons of all things.”

“Streamers are tradition at any party, especially a wedding reception,” Clara informed him lightly. “And Charlotte wanted a ball, so that is what we shall give her.”

Yuri grunted. “You women and your dancing. She can dance if she pleases, but not before a hall of a hundred other men.”

“It is elegant dancing, not lewd performance,” Clara most gently corrected. “A waltz is a careful hold, respectful between every partner. Still, I will ensure the new bride dances only with her groom for this ball.”

Yuri’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

“She will be dancing only with Carnen,” Clara repeated, and Yuri seized her by the throat.

“I will not have a man of my family humiliate himself in such a fashion. What right had you to speak before those lords anyhow? Speaking on my behalf, and so emboldening my son’s new bride as well.”

“I was helping you, Yuri,” she grated, most solidly unable now to hold her smile.

He struck her, a stinging slap across the cheek, and she went right to the floor.

Clara was furious, but she hid that most useless emotion and burst into tears instead, staying huddled on the floor and putting pointed hand to her womb.

Yuri gave a heavy sigh. Then he knelt by her side, taking her in his arms and pushing back her hair. “I told you not to make me angry like this.”

“I’m sorry. I truly thought I was helping you.”

“Oh, Clara.” He put a light hand to the rising bruise on her cheek. “You are far too impulsive, acting out on your own so often as of late. Now look what you’ve done, such a noticeable mark.” He paused. Then he kissed her, the lightest of pecks. “I’m sorry.”

She forced a smile, shifting positions to flash him a purposeful slip of bare shoulder. “So we can make up now?”

He smiled in return, the hunger rising in his gaze. He lifted her up onto the bed and instantly started kissing her neck. “You think it’s too early for wine?” she gasped, and he laughed, shouting for the servants to bring in a pitcher.

He had her dress off in seconds, and she eagerly helped to remove his own tunic, craving one final taste of him before he was lost to her. “I cannot wait for tonight,” she breathed. He had dared strike her and bruise her face right before a public appearance, so she could no longer tolerate biding her time with him until after the wedding reception as had been her initial plan.

“You will never have to wait.” He smiled, pulling her in. “I will take you any time you beg it.”

The maids left the wine on the table in the outer chamber and took their leave as quick as possible when they heard the sounds of her majesty’s unmistakably ecstatic screams.

“I love you,” Clara gasped, as Yuri brought her to full orgasm for the sixth straight time that week. Maybe that was just the hormones, but maybe it was his primal power.

“I love you, my Clara, my queen.” He kissed her neck, and she shivered. She knew now that this man was not capable of love. Still, she savored those words anyway, for this final time they would be spoken. “Now get down here and use those lovely lips of yours for what they were intended,” he ordered, pulling her head down toward his crotch.

She was most certainly not going to bend to that request, so she prompted him laughingly, “Can I wet my lips first, my lord? I need to recover some vigor and catch my breath.”

“Ah yes, the wine,” he remembered, releasing his fistful of her curls. He started off to retrieve it, but Clara raised a hand, forcing herself to her feet.

“Please, my love, it is my pleasure to serve you.”

“I assumed you’d be already too sore to stand.”

She laughed, staggering the few feet to the table in the outer room. “I am quite sore, yes, but I insist.”

She poured two glasses, insisting to herself that a single cup would not damage her child, and in this hour, she most certainly needed the courage. She had kept the little vial of one of Charlotte’s concoctions taped right to the underside of this end table, and she had instructed Arianna to set down this serving tray there once Yuri called for libations. She slid the toxin free with one seamless move and tipped it into Yuri’s glass.

Yuri lounged back on the bed most happily watching her approach. She held him out the glass and he downed it in one swig, tossing it aside to shatter on the stones. “This beverage of your country has no bite,” he remarked. “Still, I find myself developing a taste for it.”

Clara took a sip of her own goblet. It tasted like acid in her throat, and she knew she could not finish it. Yuri had already seized her, pulling her back in toward his chest. “I have been sober as a priest these past few months, you know, for the sake of our child.”

“A foolish superstition of your country,” he scoffed. “Still, I will allow you your paranoia, my queen.” He took the cup from her hands and finished it off just as he had the first one, to save her the temptation.

He put his lips to her breast.

“When I said I loved you earlier--”

“You may say it again. Say it as many times as you please,” he happily instructed, bruising her flesh with a most affectionate new suck mark. It was going to be difficult to speak with him distracting her like that, and she was also worried about possible residue…

She lifted his chin. “I cannot say it, not in this moment, because you must know now that I also, most strongly despise you.”

His eyes hardened. Then he gave a bitter laugh. “Humor is not your talent, Clara. Do not attempt it again.”

He threw her down on the mattress, but she put her hands on his chest, holding his stare with solemn conviction. “I despise your disgusting, controlling soul.”

He grabbed her by the throat, eyes cold and savage. “If this is a tease, you need only say you want it harder, Clara, and I will give it until you take back all those claims and break the windows with your screaming, though that may be too rough on our child.”

“You broke the bones of your own child, your firstborn son. You will do the same to me eventually, and you will do the same to our boy.”

He struck her, and her head snapped to the side with vision flashing black. He did not allow her to fall though. He held her pinned up against him in violent vice. “I should never have apologized for striking you! I should have put you in your place long bef...” His words were getting garbled, his swelling tongue hanging heavy in his mouth. He gave a nervous swallow. “I don’t feel…”

Clara batted away his hands and stepped away from him, striding to the opposite side of the room. He tried to drag her back, but his clumsy lunge missed its mark by a mile. He collapsed to the floor with eyes glazed and unfocused and breaths devolving into a panicked wheeze. “What is…?”

“I am a scheming snake along with every other member of my family, remember?” she reminded him of his previous unfair denouncements. “So I have decided to inject you with some much deserved venom. That glass of wine contained a most deadly brew our little Charlotte aided me in concocting.”

“Trchers... btch.” He could not even fully get out the insult, throat already swelling shut.

“You will never live to see your new son,” Clara continued on coldly, “because you are not worthy of being his father. You are not worthy of being my king.” She massaged a hand to his wonderfully aching suck-mark surrounding her rock hard nipple. “Still, I did crave one last time together as a final farewell. You are a devil in the sack, Yuri, but now it’s time to go to hell.”

She stood there watching on coldly, allowing him this last lovely sight of her glorious bare body as he thrashed and whimpered and most finally died.

Clara felt dead inside. She felt used and battered, but grimly triumphant as well. She slipped into her dressing gown and exited the room. She would not call the guards yet. Yuri had been up all night, so he would sleep until the wedding, exhausted by his queen, as the maids had all overheard and could attest. He would sleep right through the wedding ceremony. That would prompt their men to finally go searching for him, and Clara would lead them to discover his dead body in their rooms.

Doctor Martin would happily lie about his time of death, and the great warlord would be pronounced murdered by another of Marseir’s agents, a spy in their serving staff that Clara had found out days ago, and thus felt zero guilt framing for this poisoning. She would drive out every single one of Etienne’s spies infecting her home, even as she cried and most publicly grieved the death of her second husband.

Carnen would be crushed by that loss far more genuinely than Clara, she knew. Still, he would already be married to Charlotte by the time he discovered Yuri had been killed. He would keep firm control over the army of northman, and Clara’s castle would stay forever secure, as she worked to finish swaying the citizens to her side of this contest for the throne. Etienne had already lost that battle after all. He would be a wanted exile in a matter of days, despised by all his people and unwanted in his own country.

Clara was the queen of Stalis and she did not need a king. Even if she did decide to take another lover or remarry… Perhaps it was time that she pursue a younger man for once.