Free The Dark Queen (The Dark Queens Book 5) by Jovee Winters Page A

flipping her palm over and immediately a hard curl took the corners of her lips as she gazed transfixed at the fireball glowing on her palm.
    Blood tingling with a rush of raw power, she knew that she was so close to the end of this nightmare that she could practically taste it. The anticipation of the end, it lingered on her tongue like the sweetest aroma.
    Only a few more weeks, enough time to make sure she was stronger than Brunhilda, to break the cuff on her wrist and then she would free herself. Herself and Snow. She’d return to Seren, to father, and she’d never leave again.
    They’d be safe and sound and never again have to worry about the wolves that lived and breathed in this wretched, horrible world called the above.
    She might even find a new love someday.
    “My queen,” Mirror hissed urgently, “someone comes!”
    She frowned, as immediately his mirror went dark. So lost in her head and her future plans that she’d forgotten to quell the flame in her palm when her door was suddenly slammed open, and there stood the king, the dowager, Charles, and a handful of royal guards.
    Too terrified to make a sound, she held as still as field mice scenting danger, staring at the lot of them wide-eyed and disbelievingly.
    Brunhilda wore a cruel smirk. George stood beside her looking bored. It was Charles’s look, which finally caused the numbness in her brain to scatter.
    His look was one of tortured regret.
    “Charles?” she whispered, but the lead knight turned his face to the side and refused to look at her.
    Brunhilda pointed a finger at her. “There, a witch. I told you! Burn her at the stake.”
    “Wait! What?” Fable jumped to her feet, finally quenching the magick, and clutched onto the edges of her robe with nerveless fingers, shaking her head. “What are you going on about? George, what is this?”
    His lip curled into a look of disgust. “I will not harbor a witch in my presence. Behead it and burn it at the stake.”
    Jaw dropping; Fable couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Or seeing.
    Suddenly everything was moving too fast to process. The guards came pouring through her door, surrounding her in a circle. Their faces sharp, angry, and cold.
    Charles led the pack, and he looked anguished and terrified. For her.
    Blinking, trying to piece the fragments of this mad puzzle together, she backed up, until her back pressed against the stone wall and she could go no further.
    Nothing made any sense. Why were they in her room? Why was Brunhilda calling her a witch as though it were a bad thing when the dowager queen was one herself? None of this made any sense.
    “What is this!” she cried again, tongue feeling swollen and thick, throat too tight with fear so that it was hard to breathe.
    Brunhilda wore a lecherous grin as she said, “We do not harbor witches in the Enchanted Forest. Do you not know your own tales, Darkness?”
    Blinking, unable to believe this could really be happening, she shook her head. Mouth flopping open and shut like a dying fish on land. “But...but...”
    Tossing her head back, the witch cackled, the sounds of which seemed to echo like madness through the rafters.
    Why was everyone standing around looking at Fable as though she were the villain? Couldn’t they sense the madness, the evil in the dowager? Or did they simply not care?
    “You were supposed to give him an heir. Instead, you turned yourself sterile, you think I don’t know. You reek of dark magick, the little fairy told us everything, do not think to lie to me again,” she said it with far too much pleasure in her voice.
    The little fairy?
    There could only be one.
    Fable’s heart sank like a rock to her knees.
    The Blue had betrayed her.
    But why?
    “No.” Fable gripped her robe tighter, shaking her head and knowing she was still in shock. Desperate to believe this was nothing more than a dream, a strange, awful, and terrible dream. “No. You’re a witch. You, not me. You!”
    Brunhilda’s face was