The Queen Revealed Read Online Free Page B

him.
    All that imposter Queen has to do is marry my Master and put him on the throne as the rightful King of Unisia. Then when the Dark Entities take back the lands of the other nations, Prince Rainere will finally rule all of Evendaar. The Marchant Blood will once more hold the Throne and my oath to Rainere’s late father will finally be fulfilled. Grotto almost smiled at the thought of it, but the moment passed quickly. The task was not yet done.
    What we need is more time to get the Queen to marry the Prince, but the Prophecy is being moved to the will of the Spider Empress and she is far too impatient for a resolution. If only the Hidden Child was not this Abomination that has trapped my Master in her terrible Magic, binding him to her with filthy wiles. The quicker he puts her and her mixed blood children aside after the marriage, the better.”
    A loud sniff alerted him to the presence of one of the servants who made up the meagre staff at the Grey Palace. The man had slunk into the room and hovered by the door, wearing a dirty apron and a surly expression.
    “Barren, call for the glazier,” Grotto ordered, pointing to the empty windows behind him. “We will need these windows repaired immediately.”
    The man Barren sniffed again and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. The smell of cheap whiskey hung about him like a fog. “The glazier say’d ‘e wasna’ gonna come agin if ‘e’s bill wasna’ paid from the las’ time.”
    Grotto stared hard at the unkempt servant as he struggled to come up with a cure for the last repair bill, and this expensive new one. “Take the pewter candlesticks from the High State Dining Hall. There are six of them there. Give them to the blacksmith and then take what he pays you to the glazier. They should both know that the order came from me, so there will be no haggling. Am I understood?” Grotto snapped.
    “Unner-stood, sir.” Barren attempted a bow, but just sort of fell to the side and stumbled out of the door, instead.
    Grotto clenched his hands into fists of impotent rage and bit off a curse. How low the Marchant Family has sunk! They were reduced to selling off priceless heirlooms, just to keep their crumbling home whole. Grotto was not a greedy man and gold held no personal attraction for him, but he did like things to remain as they should. Despite Prince Rainere’s willful destruction of the palace’s windows, mirrors, and the occasional chandelier, Grotto was determined to keep the palace in good working order until the Prince was King and the doors of the Unisian Royal Treasury flew open to him.
    He remembered so clearly when the Grey Palace had been the most elegant and opulent of all the Marchant houses. It did not share the ostentation of the Golden Palace, but had been decorated over the years by the Marchant monarchs in an elegant and formal way. From the smallest details in the gold leaf frescoes adorning the walls, to the exceptionally rare ice marble that lined the floor of the entrance hall in great square slabs, the Grey Palace had been a vision of wealth and good taste. Of course, there had always been hundreds of servants to clean and polish the rooms in the past.  Now there was just Grotto left to care for it all, and his small staff of drunken buffoons from the local village.
    “One day soon, I will return things to the way they were,” Grotto promised himself aloud. “This palace will again become the beauty that it was and those pewter candlesticks and everything else shall be brought home. May the Goddess Lune bless my efforts.”
    Newly energized, Grotto knelt down to sweep up the rest of the broken glass with fresh vigor, muttering to himself. “Though that Abomination has stolen my Master’s senses, her marriage to him will give him back all that is rightfully his—his throne and his home.”
    Grotto caught a glimpse of his reflection in a shard of glass and paused. His vivid green eye glinted back at him. All he had to do was to