The War of Queens

Chapter 40

Angelique

 The morning dew had barely lifted, and the air was cold enough to make Angelique’s face sting. After surviving the snowy desert that was the Sea of Ice, she was more than ready to head south. Behind her, an army of several hundreds of men marched, some on horseback, some walking on their own feet. Angelique rode beside her sister, who rode in the middle beside Caterina. Ahead of them were only a few scouts and then nothing but a barren landscape of black stones and melting snow.

 “You should be happy you’re not in the back,” Jamie had told her when they first set off, two weeks earlier. “Nearly three hundred soldiers are not exactly cleanly.”

 Not only were they not cleanly, they were also slow. There was always a wagon that lost its wheel, or a horse that lost its shoe. When enough men fell back, those in front would need to stop. And the oxen drawing the catapults were all but fast. Angelique groaned inwardly.

 “I’ll go back,” she told her sister, “to see how our men are doing.”

 Elizabeth frowned, but nodded. “I need you by my side,” she reminded her.

 Angelique set her jaw. “Well, your men need word from you or they’ll think you ceased to exist.”

 She could tell her words had stung, and even though that was intended, it still hurt to slow down her horse and wait for Baldur to catch up. It was barely Elizabeth’s fault. Caterina and Asha kept her so close to them, clutching her to their side as though they were frightened of losing her. Which, of course, they are, Angelique thought to herself with a smirk. She is their way to the throne. Without her, they have no rights.

 Jamie approached Angelique. “You seem angry,” he commented.

 “Frustrated,” she corrected him.

 He frowned. “At Elizabeth?”

 She shook her head.

 “Caterina, then,” he concluded before sighing heavily. “She is utterly impossible to love, and incredibly hard to like, but you can’t do anything but respect her. She is strong, and she is determined.”

 Angelique rolled her eyes. “Yes, but how determined is she?”

 He glanced at her, amused at her childish frustration. “Not determined enough to take what is Elizabeth’s. To understand her actions, you must understand her. If her actions dumbfound you, it is only because you have never met someone like her before.”

 She raised an eyebrow. “And you know all about her, I assume?”

 “Not all, but most,” he told her. “Her family has been the subject of so many vile rumors, you wouldn’t even know. It has hardened her, made her cruel even. But she would not take something that was not hers.”

 “And how do you know that?”

 He drew back his lips in what might have been a smile, but it looked more like a grimace. “She grew up in a sanctuary, Angelique. Her childhood was spent in a dark monastery far away from the world. She barely went outside out of fear for the people who took away what was rightfully her family’s.”

 Angelique narrowed her eyes. “People who have things taken from them often take what belongs to others.”

 He chuckled. “Believe me, she would not wish that sort of life for anyone. She does cruel things to make way for herself, but she would not force anyone to endure what she had to endure.”

 “But she wants to take revenge,” she noted. “She is not so forgiving when it comes to the family that locked her up.”

 “Would you be?”