They Gave My Crown to an Adopted Daughter. The Queen Raged novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Tower of Larks

Locked in her old tower as a guest, Verena turns her fury on the husband who will not fight, and a note slides under the door promising her mother is alive.

The Tower of Larks was the room I had slept in until I was twelve.

The ceiling was still painted with flying birds, and the one over the bed still had a chipped wing.

Four guards followed us up the stair, and two of them stayed outside the door.

I stood in the middle of the floor and looked at what they had done to it.

My bed was made up in cream silk I had never owned.

My books were gone from the shelf, and a row of small gold perfume bottles stood in their place.

I opened the wardrobe, and it was full of Marigold's dresses.

"They didn't even bother to move her things," I said.

"They wanted you to see them," Conroy said.

He had shut the door behind him and stood against it, a big dark shape in the candle glow.

I took a dress off the rail, a pale blue thing with seed pearls, and threw it across the room.

It landed on the bed, soft and ridiculous.

I took down another one and threw that too.

"Eight months," I said. "Eight months they've had me dead."

"I wrote to my mother every week, Conroy, and she never wrote back, and I told myself she was busy."

"I told myself she hated the peace."

"She was in a locked room with a physician."

"I know."

"You knew he'd do this?" I swung round on him. "You looked at that circlet and you didn't say a word."

"I was not going to draw on your father in his own hall."

"You stood there!"

"I stood there."

"You let them take my letter out of my hand."

"I held the pass for you, Verena."

"I needed you to hit something!"

It came out so loud that one of the guards outside coughed.

Conroy crossed the room in three steps and stopped an arm's length away, his hands at his sides.

He was not a man who raised his voice, and I had spent eight months learning how much he said without it.

"Then hit me," he said.

"I will."

"Do it."

I shoved him in the chest with both hands, and he did not move.

I shoved him again, harder, and my eyes were stinging, and I hated it.

"I came home," I said. "I came home with everything he asked for."

"I know you did."

"I'm not supposed to be a stranger in my own bedroom."

"No."

"I need," I said, and my voice broke on it, "to not be dead."

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he lifted one hand and set it, very carefully, against the side of my neck.

His palm was rough and warm and smelled of horse and cold air.

"You're not dead," he said.

"Prove it."

I took a fistful of his coat and pulled his mouth down on mine.

His mouth was on mine before I finished pulling him down.

He kissed me the way he fought, slow and thorough and unyielding.

I bit his lower lip, and he made a sound low in his chest.

"I need this," I said against his mouth.

"Then take it."

I pushed his coat off his shoulders, and it hit the floor with a heavy thud.

His shirt followed, and I dragged my nails down his bare chest hard enough to make him hiss.

"You're shaking," he said.

"Fury."

"Good."

I pulled at the laces of my own dress, fumbling and cursing.

He watched me with those grey eyes, his hands at his sides.

"Let me do it," he said.

"No."

The dress pooled at my feet, and I stepped out of it in my linen shift.

I shoved him, and he let me push him back onto the bed.

The bed that was not mine, with its cream silk and Marigold's pale blue dress still lying across the foot of it.

I kicked that dress to the floor.

Then I climbed over him, my knees on either side of his hips, and looked down at him.

He was already hard under his breeches, and I pressed the heel of my palm against his cock.

He grunted.

"You wanted me to hit something," he said. "Hit me with this."

I pulled his breeches open and got my hand on him, skin to skin.

His breath caught, and his hips bucked up into my grip.

"Nine days on the road," I said. "I've missed this."

"Then stop talking and use it."

I stripped off my shift and threw it away.

His hands came to my hips, rough and warm, and he pulled me down so my cunt dragged along the length of his cock.

I was wet already, and he felt it.

"So wet for me," he said.

"For me," I corrected him.

"For you," he agreed, and his thumb found my clit.

I gasped and ground down against his hand.

"Don't tease," I warned.

"I'm not teasing. I'm letting you lead."

I lifted up and took him in my hand again, positioning him at my entrance.

"Look at me," I said.

He did.

I sank down onto his cock in one long, slow motion.

We both went still, and I felt every inch of him stretching me open.

"Fuck," I breathed.

"That's it," he said. "Take what you need."

I started to move, slow at first, watching his face.

His jaw was tight, and the candlelight flickered over the grey at his temples.

I braced my hands on his chest and rode him harder.

The bed creaked, and the sound was loud in the quiet room.

"Verena," he said, and his voice was strained.

"Say it again."

"Verena."

I rode him until my thighs burned and the sweat ran down my back.

He let me set the pace, his hands on my hips, his eyes never leaving mine.

But when I slowed, when I needed more than my own rhythm, he moved.

He flipped us, and before I could catch my breath he had me on my back with my wrists pinned above my head in one hand.

"Now you'll listen," he said.

"Make me."

He kissed the burn scar on my left palm, then my wrist, then my throat.

Then he worked his way down my body, his mouth hot and purposeful.

He paused at my breasts, sucking one nipple into his mouth while his hand found my clit again.

I arched off the bed.

"Please," I said, and it came out broken.

"Please what?"

"Please, Conroy. I need your mouth on my pussy."

"You ask so nicely when you're desperate."

He moved down and put his mouth on me, his tongue flat against my clit.

I cried out, and his free hand clamped over my thigh to hold me open.

He ate me like a man starving, like he had thought about this through every long mile of the ride south.

I fisted my hands in his hair and held him there.

"Don't stop," I begged. "Don't you dare stop."

He didn't.

He fucked me with his tongue, then with two fingers, curling them until I saw white.

I came on his face, my back bowing off the bed, his name a sob in my throat.

He didn't stop until I was trembling and over-sensitive.

Then he wiped his mouth on the inside of my thigh and crawled back up my body.

"Look at how you shake for me," he murmured, and there was the smugness I knew.

"Arrogant," I managed.

"You beg so well."

He pushed his cock into my wet pussy again, one hard thrust that made me gasp.

"Now you'll take what I give you."

He fucked me slowly, deep, each thrust deliberate.

His hand came to the back of my neck, holding me there, his mouth at my ear.

"You're mine," he said.

"Say it."

"Yours," I gasped.

"Again."

"I'm yours, Conroy. Fuck, I'm yours."

"Tell me what you want."

"I want you to fuck me harder."

He did.

The bed slammed against the wall, and I heard the guards outside shift their weight.

I didn't care.

I wrapped my legs around his waist and met him thrust for thrust.

The chipped-wing bird stared down from the ceiling, and I thought of all the nights I had slept in this room as a girl, never knowing what it would feel like to come apart under this man.

"Verena," he said, and his voice cracked.

"Now," I said. "Come inside me."

His rhythm broke, and he buried his face in my neck with a ragged groan.

I felt his hot cum pulse inside me, thick and deep, and it sent me over again.

I clenched around his cock, my nails digging into his back, and came with his name in my mouth.

We lay there breathing hard, still joined, until I pushed at his shoulder.

He pulled out slowly and rolled onto his back.

I got up and straddled him again, and he looked up at me with something like wonder.

"Again?" he asked.

"I told you," I said, reaching down to guide him back inside me. "I need to feel alive."

He was still hard enough, and I rode him slow this time.

His hands came to my breasts, then my waist, then the back of my neck.

He pulled me down and kissed me, deep and filthy.

"You're not dead," he said against my mouth.

"Prove it," I whispered back.

I rose and fell on his cock, chasing another climax.

His thumb found my clit, circling in time with my movements.

"I'm going to come again," I said.

"Then come for me, Verena."

I did, sobbing his name into the hollow of his throat.

He held me through it, one hand splayed across my back.

The candle guttered, and the room went dim.

I stayed on top of him, his cock still inside me, and listened to his heart hammer under my ear.

"You're not dead," he said again, softer now.

I didn't answer.

Outside, the guards' footsteps passed the door.

Afterward I lay with my head on his chest and listened to his heart slow down.

The candle had burned low, and the painted birds seemed to be moving on the ceiling.

"Conroy," I said.

"Mm."

"Why did you look at her like that?"

His heartbeat did not change, but his hand stopped moving in my hair.

"Like what?"

"Like you knew her."

"I have never met her."

I had learned to tell when he was lying by what he did with his silence, and this silence was a closed door.

I sat up on one elbow, and that was when I saw the paper.

It was a small folded square, white against the dark boards of the floor.

It had been pushed under the door from the outside.

I got out of bed naked and picked it up.

The handwriting was a servant's, round and careful.

"Your mother is not mad," it said. "Servants' stair, midnight tonight. Come alone."

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