His Secret Slave to Scandalous Queen

Henry hesitated. He kept his eyes ahead, watching the path wind between the trees. "There is someone else," he said.

Richard nearly smiled himself inside out. "Ah...Who is she?" he asked. "Do I know her?"

"God, I hope not!"

Richard’s grin widened at once. "Afraid of some competition uhn?" he wiggled his brows.

Henry snorted and adjusted the bow in his hand. "Competition with your king? You must wish for death."

"Some deaths are worth it. Really, who is she? A noblewoman?"

"No... a strange woman." Henry mused as he thought of Livia.

Richard’s brows rose. "So you were able to get it up with this woman?"

Henry shot him a disgusted look. "You really were dragged from a ditch and handed a title at random."

Richard laughed under his breath, wholly unrepentant.

"I can get it up, I just...maybe I am just currently wrapped up in this other woman that every other one dulls in comparison."

That quieted Richard a little. He knew what it was to be ambushed by one person. "Yeah..." Richard agreed. "I know what you mean." He said his thoughts drifting to his Diana.

Henry turned to him at once, openly skeptical. "How can you know what I mean? You jump from one cunt to the other. I’m surprised I have heard of no scandals since you came into town."

"Eh...it all gets boring after a while."

"Then maybe you will begin to think about taking a wife."

Richard gave a short laugh. "You are older than I am. You take a wife first."

"By merely two weeks!" Henry argued.

"Yeah, yeah, excuses excuses!"

"I have a son. I have you beat!"

"Well, then, I’ll get myself a son. Why should I be further ahead of my king." Richard teased.

Henry barked out a laugh at that. "You’d get a son if you spent enough time inside the many cunts you get caught buried in."

Richard clutched his chest in exaggerated outrage. "Says the man with a court full of mistresses!!!"

"That...that is my mother’s doing, not mine." Henry argued immediately.

Richard turned to stare at him, grinning so broadly now that it was impossible to tell whether he was more amused by the answer itself or by how quickly Henry had rushed to defend his innocence. "I wish my mother would have a buffet of ladies waiting for me every night."

Henry gave a low snort. "Trust me, you do not want my mother."

"She would have made a great queen too." Richard said.

It was a topic Henry didn’t want to dwell on. Yes, his mother would have made a great queen but when she saw that that wasn’t going to happen, she decided to put him on the throne and make a great king out of him.

The thoughts still haunted him. The sacrifices she had made, the blood she had spilled. She had taken the impossible shape of his life and bent it.

Henry was last in line to the throne. He was seventh in line. Infact, there was no clear path to the throne.

He was born of a mistress after all. Every lesson of his childhood had carried that truth: that he was important enough to be useful, but not enough to matter safely. Too near power to be ignored, too far from it to claim it.

His mother had cleared the path and walked away with her hands clean. That was the part that never let him rest fully. The way everything had happened with just enough distance, just enough deniability. And Henry, for all his gratitude, for all his love for the woman who had shaped him still felt the weight of that unseen blood.

"Your Highness?" Richard called.

No answer.

"Your Highness?" he tried again, louder this time.

Henry blinked as though surfacing from deep water. "What? Yes?"

Richard studied him for a beat, one brow lifting. "Are you all right?" he asked. "You drifted off for a bit."

Henry straightened. "Yes, sure," he said.

"Look, a deer!" Richard pointed.

Between the trees, stood a stag. It lifted its head, ears twitching, every line of its body poised for flight.

And then the hunt began. The stillness shattered. Hooves pounded damp ground, birds burst shrieking from the branches, and the deer sprang forward. Henry felt the thrill hit him hard, hot in his blood, burning away the fog that had clung to his mind. Richard laughed as they chased after it.

*****

Sophie stood in the room with a bowl of water cradled carefully in both hands, trying very hard to become invisible.

The royal physician knelt beside the bed, examining the princess. The queen mother was there too. She had refused to leave matters to servants, or ladies, or secondhand reports. No—she would have the truth from the source itself, seen with her own eyes and heard with her own ears. She did not want to risk lies.

And the princess, lying back against the pillows in silence, wanted very badly to kill her. In her mind, she did it with great creativity.

A knife, perhaps, slid neatly between those proud ribs. Or poison. Slow poison. Or perhaps a candlestick. Sophie’s bowl. The physician himself if necessary.

At last the physician stepped back. "There," he murmured. He moved to the basin, rinsing his hands.

Once he was done, Sophie quickly helped the princess gather herself. The physician dried his hands carefully on a cloth before turning to the Queen Mother. He bowed his head.

"Your Grace, all is well."

Theodora did not look relieved. "Are you perfectly sure?" she asked.

The physician swallowed. "Yes, Your Grace."

"Fine. Thank you. You may leave."

The man bowed again, and made his retreat. Theodora turned to Madeleine at last. Madeleine had allowed Sophie to settle her gown and adjust the sheets, but there was nothing meek in the way she sat propped against the pillows now.

"Is this how you plan to continuously humiliate me?" Madeleine asked.

Theodora sighed, a woman wounded by disrespect, a woman irritated by the persistence of a foolish child. She moved a few steps across the chamber.