Reign: The Haunting Read Online Free Page B

blade. Things had to be very bad for Francis to retreat to his sword-making but adding to that his scene in the great hall and Lola’s desperate request for a late-night audience, Mary knew something was gravely wrong with the king.
    â€œLeave me, Mary,” Francis said, eyes trained on the job at hand. “I need to be alone right now.”
    â€œThen that’s a problem,” she said with a soft, sad smile. “You’re a king and I’m your queen. Neither of us will ever be alone.”
    Francis looked up at his wife with confused red eyes.
    â€œI’m so tired,” he said, a moan in his voice. “But I have such nightmares.”
    â€œI know,” Mary said. She walked around his worktable carefully, sitting beside him on the bench. There were a lot of knives to hand and as much as she loved and trusted her husband, she couldn’t help but feel an edge of anxiety. “But they are only dreams. Why do you want to send your son away?”
    â€œBecause he isn’t safe here,” he replied, his expression tight and resolved.
    â€œWe are always in some kind of danger,” Mary tried to keep her voice light but her words honest. It was true, after all. They were the king and queen of France and Scotland, they would always have enemies. “We decided he was safer on castle grounds, bearing your name. That is why you claimed him.”
    â€œI thought you would be happier with him gone.” Francis still refused to look at his wife. “I thought you would be pleased.”
    Mary ignored the pang in her heart. Whatever was wrong with Francis, this wasn’t the time to rise to a fight. “I want my godson near me,” she replied. “So does Lola. And I know that you do too.”
    â€œBut he isn’t safe,” Francis said again, his voice breaking on every word. “I can’t have him here.”
    â€œWhy?” Mary pressed, taking the stone and the steel from his hands and holding them in her own. “Who would hurt him?”
    Francis looked up, his eyes full of fresh tears that he refused to let fall.
    â€œMe,” he whispered. “I’m afraid that I will hurt him.”
    *  *  *
    Dawn came slowly, broad strokes of orange and red painting the sky outside the castle, the rising sun finding Francis on his knees in front of his father’s sarcophagus.
    â€œWhat is happening to me?” he asked the image of the former king. “Is this real? Are you really speaking to me?”
    But the stone did not speak.
    Francis rubbed his hands over his face, breathing out hard. His knees ached and his head throbbed, but he had sworn that he would not leave this room until he had an answer.
    â€œYou appear to me in my sleep,” he said, pleading with his dead father once again. “You use maids and nightmares to give me messages but when I come to you, there is nothing? Why do you torture me?”
    With an angry shout, Francis pounded his fist into the floor, bloodying his knuckles, but his body was so overcome with exhaustion, he felt nothing. He couldn’t go on this way, the dreams were too much. If the roses grew where his father had fallen, how long before harm befell his child, his only child? And if it wasn’t his father’s ghost seeking revenge that troubled him, how long before his own madness wounded the whole of France?
    â€œEither I am a heretic”—he flexed his hand, watching the blood run over his fingers—“either I have been forsaken by my own god or I have gone mad.” Turning his back to his father’s resting place he leaned his forehead against the freezing cold castle wall. “I don’t know which is worse.”
    â€œI’ve been called both of those things,” a voice said, a dark figure lingering in the doorway. “Neither is preferable. Especially for a king.”
    â€œLucky for you then that you will never be king,” Francis replied