Bounty Hunter (The Black Tulip Chronicles #1)

11. Nadiette

Chapter 11

Nadiette

I clip a flower here, a flower there, feeling all the feelings of a woman spurned. So much so, I’ve taken to a servant’s job, grasping any distraction available. I’ve always thought Ikar achingly handsome. Clip. Kind, honorable, strong. We’d grown up together, laughed and planned together. Clip. Kisses stolen on horseback, wandering his lands on lazy, warm afternoons. The way he’d caressed my cheek just days ago. Clip. Clip. Our children would be beautiful, his rugged handsome features combined with my classic beauty. Add to that, his kingdom is enormous with bounteous crops and wealth. Now he tells he is forced to take a Black Tulip as a wife. Clip. Clip. Clip.

I look at the pile of mutilated flowers fallen across the moist soil and growl in a way that would have my mother red in the face as I pluck a mostly whole, light pink tulip head from the ground. Between two fingers, I spin it back and forth, and more petals fall, spinning toward the ground. An exclusive group of women that thought they were more entitled to royal marriages and power than other magic factions, leaving powerful Originators like me to search for the passable leftovers. The second and third sons or other nobles. I know the kingdom’s history. I know of Queens of the Night. It didn’t take much research to find the seer vision that tells of their danger. They are no secret and had disappeared as awful things should. In fact, they were so evil, they were hunted down and destroyed—by Originators, no less. And it seems it will have to happen again.

The mess of flowers before me will all be wilted by morning, just as the Queens of the Night soon will be. It seems that just as my strong Originator magic-ancestors were forced to hunt them down, I will also be forced to protect the kingdom by clipping them off until none are left for Ikar to choose from. I will save him from his honor, and when it is comfortably assuaged and his search futile, he will return to me. I will forgive him and we will marry in the marble cathedral church with a bouquet of the whitest flowers and have powerful, gorgeous children. The people need never know the difference, since nothing official has been announced about our impending marriage. My cheeks redden at the thought of him arriving home with another woman on his arm, supposedly more powerful than me. I drop the tulip head to the ground. Of course, no tulips will adorn my bouquet. No tulips will grow on our lands at all. I stand, leaving the mess of flowers on the ground, and when I pass the gardener, I pause.

“Remove every tulip. I don’t want to see another,” I say stiffly.

The gardener frowns at the seemingly odd request but nods as a dutiful servant does. “Yes, my lady.”

I watch as he kneels by the first bed and begins weeding them out from among the other flowers.

I smile. For you, Ikar.