“But why is it the right thing to do?” she asks.
He laughs. “If you cannot tell me, then why areyouso willing to commit treason?”
“I …” She flounders in the face of his laughter, in the face of her own tumbling thoughts. For she has asked herself, time and time again, why she is doing what she is doing. She has no real wish for the power that comes with being a true ruler. She is not certain that she is a good queen; she does not have the attention span or the education for it. So why has she risked everything for these queens who barely tolerate her?
Some rageful creature lets out a shrill note inside her, and is still, and her thoughts settle.
“Because I have been told that I am lesser when I am not.”
Culpepper nods, like a teacher. “Exactly,” he says. “Exactly.”
He holds out a hand, inviting her to join him. She does not take it.
“What will happen next?” she asks. If he will not answer philosophical questions, perhaps he will answer practical ones. He returns to her, cupping her face in his hands.
“We will destroy the king. There will be some fighting, I’m sure, but with your power and Queen Cleves’s and Seymour’s power against him, the king will fall. You will be Queen of Plythe in your own right. You and I can marry, and I will be your devoted helper in managing your new kingdom.”
He kisses her again.
In another life, she would have missed the implication of that word:kingdom.But she has known Boleyn, and Cleves, and Voda Kelaverinn, and all the other queens. In another life, before Boleyn, she might even have convinced herself that this was love.
But not this life, not now.
“What if I do not want that?” she asks.
Culpepper makes a noise in the back of his throat.
“I mean it. What if I do not want to marry you?”
He sighs and looks to the ceiling, as if all her questioning is growing tiresome. “We would make a handsome pair, would we not?”
Something flicks in her mind. He turns for the door, but before he can reach it, Howard seizes the nearest heavy object – a bust of some long-ago queen – and hefts it with all her might at the back of his head.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Howard
Culpepper teeters, touches the back of his head. His fingers come away bloody. She does not wait for him to counter her attack. She is Goldfoot, descending upon her prey. She throws herself at him before he can recover, and they fall in a tangle of limbs and gown to the floor.
“You’re insane,” he pants, grappling with her as she, straddling him, reaches for the bust. He pulls at her hair, and a clump comes away in his hand, grey and rotting skin entangled in its roots. He gags and flicks it away. She almost laughs that in such a moment he is so preoccupied with her body. It gives Howard the space she needs to seize the bust once more.
He wrests her off him, rolling her over so that she is beneath him. All the feigned adoration that he tried to charm her with is vanished. All that remains is his truth: flared nostrils and a hand upon her throat, squeezing, squeezing.
“Stupid bitch,” he says.
Through the desperate thump of blood in her ears, Howard thinks she hears a shout. Perhaps it is her own. This is not her end: she will not be brought low by this grasping boy. Never again will someone call herstupidand live.
Though the arm clutching the bust feels so, so heavy, she brings it up as hard as she can against his jaw. He falls off her with a curse. She does not think on her burning chest, nor the pain in her throat.She brings the bust down, again and again, upon his head. Warmth sprays across her face like kisses.
“Your Majesty, stop!”
Arms wrap around her, drawing her away from the bloodied lump. It is her ladies and Florin, brought to her side by the noise of the fight.
“What did you do?” Lady Tylney whispers.
“He was not worth risking my life for,” Howard says. She lets the bust drop to the floor and heaves, needing to fill her bruised body with fresh air.
Florin sways. Legh cannot look at Culpepper’s prone body, or the blood that is pooling on the floor beside the mess that was once his head.
