The Imp Prince Page 3

  They patiently waited in hope for her eyes to open once more, or for the gentle rise and fall of her breath to fail.

  Aside from the infrequent creaking and groaning of floorboards as they shifted their weight, and the ornate pendulum clock against the far wall tocking steadily, there was silence.

  As well as the servants, there was one other in Lady Ivy’s bedchamber. Ferdinand, her son and heir, a young man barely out of his teens. He was of average height but had a thick block of a head and no neck and wide shoulders. Combined with a long torso and short legs, this made him look like a wedge teetering along on tiny feet. His hair was dark black and slicked down with heavy oils, his face a mishmash of broken nose and droopy eyes and full, almost voluptuous lips, and he had coarse, dark hair growing on the backs of his hands through to the first joint of his knuckles.

  Few could have called him anything kinder than ugly, and his dark, brocaded jacket was already starting to strain to hide his girth, a promise of greater bulk still to come.

  Yet of all those in the room, his sorrow, his grief was the most genuine. He sat on the side of Lady Ivy’s bed, his thick, brutish hands twitching and clutching the air as if they sought to hold onto hers. Tears ran freely down his face, to drip from his chin. And while he might have wished to howl in rage and fury at her untimely and, to him, unwanted illness, that howl got no further than his quivering lips, as he did not wish to disturb her rest.

  He was disconsolate. Steeped in heartache and sorrow. All there could witness his shoulders shake as he silently sobbed at his mother’s incremental passing.

  Of all those in the room, he endured the deathly odors his mother gave off more willingly than any other. He would have sat there forever, counting the regular tocks of the clock, just to be there when she awoke.

  Which she did, when a breath caught in her throat and she started to cough.

  Some of the more empathic servants stepped toward her in an instinctual move to help, despite their misgivings. Ferdinand, more awkward than many, leaned toward her but did nothing, her too-delicate form inviolate, his hands flexing in anguish.

  Yet Lady Ivy’s coughing was brief. No longer did it wrack her whole body. She was too weak for that. Her coughing was at once more gentle and more sinister. It stopped as soon as she brought her lace kerchief up to her lips.

  Quietly, those servants who had stepped forward moved back to regain their places against the wall.

  When she opened her eyes, they were as black and filled with malignant hate and madness as ever they’d been.

  Still propped up on her cushions, she looked around through the dull light of the room. Although no expression touched her features, she seemed to be judging those servants who were there. Looking at them with suspicion, as if she hadn’t ordered their presence.

  As if they were there to commit some heinous act.

  More than one girded themselves against potential accusations. Yet Lady Ivy said not a word until her gaze reached that of her son.

  Into the silence, the ornate clock against the far wall gave an extra loud tock.

  The cold judgment of her expression faded. Almost, a faint hint of a smile curved the corner of her mouth that her kerchief didn't hide. She didn’t try to reach for him, but instead gathered her strength to speak.

  “My beautiful boy,” she said. “My most handsome man.”

  The servants didn’t react. They’d heard her address her son in that manner for years, despite the obvious incongruity between her words and the truth.

  Ferdinand said nothing. New tears welled on his cheeks, and a sob of pure torment broke free from his control.

  If any had been watching closely, they might have noticed a flicker of triumph pass briefly across Lady Ivy’s face, as if her son’s grief was some sort of achievement.

  Yet her words were normal enough.

  “Don’t cry, Ferdinand,” she said. “It will be all right.”

  Ferdinand broke down even further, crying more openly. Another child, no matter how old, might have reached for his mother then, to provide or gain comfort in this moment of need. But the relationship between these two was far from normal. Even in her frail condition, there seemed a barrier between her and all others, an invisible line through which none could pass. Only the physicians who had tended her over the preceding months had been able to cross that line, and even then it had come at a cost.

  Lady Ivy’s tongue was not known for diplomacy or compassion. She had used it to lash the skin from the physician’s backs and to send many scampering in fear from the room.

  “How will it be all right?” Ferdinand asked, his voice high-pitched and filled with hurt. “How? When you are gone—” He didn’t finish the thought.

  A shadow of impatience furrowed her brow.

  “Hush now,” she said. “Quit your blubbering.”

  She said it harshly, with a remnant of her former acid, unmindful that her words contradicted her earlier triumph that he would grieve so strongly.

  Tock.

  “There are things that I need to say, things that you must understand before I go. Are you listening, Ferdinand?”

  With effort, Ferdinand reined in his misery. He sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve. Then, his eyes made red through grief, he nodded.

  “Good. Good,” Lady Ivy said. She closed her eyes for a moment as if rallying her strength, and when she opened them again, they were as black and hard as chunks of coal.

  “You will soon be Lord of this Keep, and of the lands around it. Be warned, for it is not all sunshine and roses. There are those who will seek to take advantage of you.” She pursed her lips in bitterness and spite and shuddered as if suppressing a painful memory. “But you will be the Lord. Your will commands. Never forget this.”

  Ferdinand nodded. It wasn’t anything that he hadn’t heard before. Such was his mother’s perspective.

  And yet, never before had her words seemed so immediate. Or, Ferdinand realized through his grief, so lacking in specifics.

  He frowned in turn.

  “Who is it that I must be wary of?” he asked.

  Tock.

  Once more, Lady Ivy surveyed the servants standing quietly against the wall. If anything, her gaze was even harder this time. Even more full of judgments.

  “The servants,” she said. Her words were spoken quietly, yet such was the gloomy stillness that they carried to every ear within the bedchamber.

  Some few of the servants muttered, giving voice to their shock that she would say such a thing. But most simply hardened their expressions and looked back at her.

  “Treat them harshly,” Lady Ivy continued. “Offer them no kind words, and give them no leeway, else they will expect it. Then you will be serving them.”

  Oblivious to the angry glares and whispers of disbelief from all around, Ferdinand simply nodded.

  “And who else?” he asked.

  “Strangers who come calling,” Lady Ivy responded. “Their motives are suspect, and there are none who can gainsay their words. The clergy also. They are men like all others, and yet they profess none of the desires that men have. And those who practice witchcraft, for the very desire speaks ill of their motivation.”

  Lady Ivy’s words were filled with such animosity and resentment as she spoke that Ferdinand wondered at the source of her hate. Never before had she spoken quite in this way.

  It didn’t occur to him that her paranoid words might be the product of her perilous health or an unbalanced perspective. He’d also had suspicions about the trustworthiness of others, like anxious whispers in his mind.

  Tock.

  In fact, his suspicions went further.

  “Who else?” he demanded. He didn’t bother to moderate his tone. All those in the room heard the underlying need and hate and potential for viciousness in his words.

  Again, Lady Ivy’s mouth quirked into a smile. This time she had lowered her kerchief, and the expression was plain for all to see. She seemed proud of his quest
ion.

  “Most of all,” she said, her voice low and conspiratorial yet still clear, “do not trust your cousin.”

  Ferdinand’s eyes opened widely in shock. His cousin. Lyndon.

  They had grown up together, ever since Lyndon’s parents had died. Quick to laughter and with a ready smile, Lyndon was much better liked among the Keep servants. And while Ferdinand believed his mother’s pronouncements of his own beauty, he couldn’t help but look at Lyndon’s more balanced features and proportional physique, and wonder.

  In the quiet, dark and places of Ferdinand’s mind, he had grown to hate his cousin. But he had said nothing. He had thought that his resentment was his alone and that no one else shared his secret enmity.

  It felt delicious to know that his mother also viewed his cousin with distrust.

  He was smiling before his mother said another word. Yet he didn’t stop her.

  “He has no claim on your inheritance,” Lady Ivy said. “Yet in the years since he arrived, he has been building quiet alliances among the servants. There’s a demon inside him, you mark my words. It is my thought that he plans to depose you once I am gone.”

  In this time of grief and sadness, her words felt surprisingly wonderful to hear. All this time, he had disliked his cousin, and now he had a reason! More than that, he had an ally!

  Except that his ally would not be with him for much longer.

  His smile faded somewhat, and a knot of hurt and pain grew deep inside him.

  Surprisingly, despite her frailty and the invisible barrier around her, Lady Ivy lurched toward him. Desperation lent her strength. She latched onto his arm with both hands, the kerchief caught against the brocade of his sleeve.

  He was shocked. Never before had his mother sought out the comfort of such contact, either to give or receive. He didn’t know how to react. He simply sat there, wondering at the delicate lightness of her grip.

  “Do not let him!” she spat. “Whatever happens, this Keep is yours! Do not let him take it from you!”

  The fragile vehemence in her voice surprised him, as did the coal black determination in her eyes. He could see that she was willing him to acknowledge her fears with the last strength of her being.

  He was filled with conflicting emotions. Joy that after all these years, she had crossed her invisible boundary to hold him. Malevolent glee that she too despised his cousin. Fear that Lyndon even now might be planning some sort of coup. Worry that his mother might expend what little strength she still had.

  And an underlying, hideous grief that she was so near to death.

  He nodded, trying to convey in the gesture how seriously he took her paranoid warnings.

  “I won’t,” he said. “I won’t.”

  Lady Ivy held his gaze for a few moments more. Then the hard light in her eyes faded. She sank back onto her pillows and closed her eyes.

  Tock.

  All at once, Ferdinand’s conflicting emotions coalesced into one.

  Anger.

  He wanted to rage and scream and howl at the unfairness of it all. His mother was dying. She was so young, and yet soon she would be gone.

  She would leave him all alone.

  The sheer, unutterable tragedy of it was too much for him to bear. With his eyes starting to smolder as hers had done, he looked around for some way to express his fury.

  The servants who met his gaze flinched back at what they saw. But he didn’t plan to take his wrath out on them yet. That would come later.

  Tock.

  As fast as his diminutive legs would carry him, he lurched from his spot on his mother’s bed and charged toward the far wall.

  In less than a second, he had reached the ornate, pendulum clock.

  It was as tall as he was, and made from dark wood. It had been in his mother’s bedchamber for all of his life, tocking steadily, tocking his mother’s life away one second at a time.

  All at once, his anger became focused. With a snarl of pure rage that was indistinguishable from hate, he gripped the clock on both sides with hands that no longer twitched with uncertainty but moved instead with confidence strength.

  In one movement, he pulled the clock away from the wall.

  It crashed into the hardwood floor with a crunching of gears and a splintering of wood.

  Its tocking days were done.

  Chapter 2: Stairs

  Some few hours had passed, and Ferdinand’s mother still lived.

  For most of his life, Ferdinand had been empty. He had drifted through the Keep like a ghost, un-trusted by the servants, ignored by those visitors of rank who had called on his mother (unless they perceived some value in gaining his favor), bereft of any companions his age.

  Until Lyndon arrived. At first, Ferdinand had thought he had found a friend. In those beginning weeks and months, Ferdinand and Lyndon had spent considerable time together, exploring the abandoned rooms of the Keep, creating mischief in the kitchen and cellars, even venturing beyond the walls into the darkwood forest after which the Keep had been named.

  But as Ferdinand started to share more of his secret thoughts and feelings, as he had voiced his small dislikes and foul opinions about the shortcomings and flaws of those around them, Lyndon had started to become more distant.

  At first, Ferdinand had felt hurt and betrayed. He didn’t understand Lyndon’s behavior. He had moped in despair until he figured it out.

  Lyndon had never liked him. He had been his friend only as he dealt with the grief of losing his parents. And then, with his own hurt safely packed away, Lyndon had distanced himself from his cousin.

  Then Ferdinand’s sense of betrayal had coalesced into a quiet hate that he’d carried with him ever since.

  Until now.

  With his mother slowly dying in her chamber on the floor above, Ferdinand leaned on the handrail on the landing overlooking the great, curved stairway that led to the main entrance hall.

  Despite the grandeur of the architecture, it was as cold and dim in this part of the Keep as it was everywhere else. With the seeping dampness of the ever-present fog, dry wood was hard to come by, and the fireplaces remained largely unlit. The candelabras and chandeliers held more melted wax than usable candles, and oil for the lamps was precious.

  So it was that Ferdinand could look down without being seen himself upon those who stood between the columns and arches from which time and ill repair had stolen their magnificence.

  He could watch his cousin caper about in his unseemly mustard-colored jacket, oblivious to the pain and grief suffered by others, chatting gaily and smiling at one of the younger serving maids.

  “Demon,” Ferdinand muttered.

  The quiet hate that he had carried all of those years was quiet no longer. Nor was it all by itself. Anguish and anger were its brothers, settling together in the depths of heart like ashes in a hearth. Ferdinand could feel it there, a hard, hot sphere that spat bile and venom into his veins and pounded in the front of his brain.

  No longer was he a ghost drifting about the Keep, invisible and despised. Now, with his anguish and anger and hate driving him, he felt powerful.

  He felt like he mattered.

  Even with his mother dying upstairs.

  Instead of watching Lyndon laugh and dance around the serving maid in quiet despair, Ferdinand stomped down the stairs, heedless of the creaking and groaning of old wood.

  He made enough noise that Lyndon paused in his capering, and the serving maid turned his way.

  He ignored her completely. He wasn’t even aware that his fists were clenched at his sides as he stalked toward his cousin with his chin thrust forward. It annoyed him that Lyndon was taller than he. He had to look up at him and added that small insult into his growing ball of hate.

  On another day, Lyndon might have offered an insincere smile in greeting. But perhaps Ferdinand’s expression warned him. Perhaps his new, bristling strength was enough to dissuade him.

  Or perhaps the somber mood of the Keep had reached even him.
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br />   Instead of offering a grin, Lyndon’s face fell. It was as if he recognized in some small-minded way that his flirtations and gaiety were out of step with the prevailing despair.

  He might have spoken. Lyndon was never short of a word. But this time Ferdinand didn’t give him that chance.

  “You!” Ferdinand said. “Perhaps you have failed to notice. Mother is dying. And here you are, cavorting as if all is as well as can be!”

  He threw the words as an accusation, as if they had barbs. And indeed, they rocked Lyndon back on his heels. He seemed shocked by Ferdinand’s vehemence, and at first didn’t appear to know what to say. All he could do was raise his hands as if in surrender.

  The serving maid, perhaps sensing danger and recognizing that she wasn’t the target, lifted her skirts and scurried into the depths of the Keep.

  Ferdinand felt his stomach tighten as a sneer curled his lip. Despite his instinctive belief in his mother’s pronouncements, he’d known for some time that Lyndon looked down on him, even if he couldn’t fathom the reason. That knowledge had soured his view of himself. Could there have been something wrong with him that his mother couldn’t see?

  But now, as he looked up into his cousin’s demonic eyes and perfectly symmetrical face and caught the cloying odor of sour wine on his breath, he knew it not to be the case.

  It was Lyndon who was flawed. Not him.

  “Are you drunk?” he demanded. “How dare you!”

  He was livid. Aghast. Dumbstruck. How could his cousin show such disrespect? How could he drink when Ferdinand’s mother was breathing her last?

  Did he care that little for her? For either of them?

  It was then that Ferdinand truly started to believe in his mother’s accusation. Before that moment, he had relished her distrust of Lyndon because it bolstered his own view. But with this so blatant display of dishonor, now it seemed more likely.

  It seemed more correct.

  It was also the moment when Lyndon started to smile.

  Perhaps it was just his natural expression. Perhaps he meant only to try to defuse Ferdinand’s obvious anger. Perhaps it was just the wine causing him to smile at an inopportune moment.

  Whatever the reason, Ferdinand interpreted it as condescension, as if his cousin cared not a jot about him or his mother.