Chapter Six
Kelvin's Point of View
***
I knelt at the same spot where Sabrina had fallen last night. I knew it was there because of the bloodstain on the ground. It was dried already and had turned a darkish hue. And the smell of it was still strong.
The bad news was, where the heck was her body and the statue?
"Looks like we have a problem," my beta, Thomas, said as he walked to stand beside me.
"Yeah," I agreed. Nobody meant that she might not have died. And there was the missing statue of her father. "She isn't here, and neither is the statue. What the heck happened?"
I had bodyguards come along but I told them to stay some distance away while Thomas and I revisited the Tweeds.
"Well, we should have waited for her to die. Confirm it and then leave. Then we could have been sure."
"There was no way she could have survived that, Thomas," I told him. "No way."
He nodded his agreement. "Yeah, I know. Now we have a mystery on our hands as well. Find out where the heck her body is."
"You think someone moved it?" I asked.
"Sabrina could not have survived that. So this means someone found her and moved her body."
"And the statue? You think the person took that too?"
Thomas didn't answer me. Instead, he turned his face away and looked around the place. Probably didn't have an answer to that. I mean, why would someone take a dead body away and the statue as well? To me, it seemed that whoever it was, must have some knowledge of who she was and what had happened that night. And I didn't think that was a good thing. I told Thomas about what I thought and he was silent still.
"This was your idea, Thomas. Now, we have to deal with the consequences."
Thomas looked at me. "We both knew what we were getting into, your Majesty. And the fact that her body and the statue aren't there is a blessing in disguise."
"How?"
"If she was to be reported dead, then all fingers would point at you. Now, everyone just thinks she ran away. It is usual for a woman to do that when she is jilted. Everyone would know she went hysterical to the point that she took her father's statue with her."
"Well, that makes sense," I said, with a smile.
"So, we have nothing to worry about."
I looked around the place. Tweeds. One effing place to kill someone. "Well, let's get out of here."
"What is that?" Thomas asked.
"What's what?" I asked without looking where he was looking.
"That on the ground," he said and pointed. I followed his finger. Just beside some weeds, there was the glint of a bottle. I remembered it, walked over, and picked it up. The cap had been removed, and the bottle was empty.
"She drank it," I said. "She drank the sleeping drug. And it's at a different spot. What does this mean?"
"Either she effing rose from the dead herself," Thomas said. "Or she had help."
***
Back at the palace, I called for an emergency meeting of the council. It was made up of two men and two women.
"Who is the spokesperson?" I asked.
They were quiet as they looked among themselves.
"Are you all deaf and dumb?" I snapped.
"We don't have a particular spokesperson for this council," said the one called Derek. "But if you are asking about the eldest, that would be me."
I chuckled. "You right? So, what do you people do here?"
"Well, we present the deliberations of the day and you make your decision on them."
"Alright. So do we have deliberations to talk about today?"
"We do," he replied.
"Good. Afterward, I want you to send the laws to me. I need to go through them to see if there is any part that needs amendment."
They all looked surprised at what I said.
"What is the problem?" I wanted to know.
"You just came in and you want to read the law just to amend it?"
"I want to make things better in the pack. So I have to start from there."
"And do you have any experience or degree regarding the amendment of laws?" asked the woman called Ana.
"We shall see about that," was my response. "Now what do we have to talk about?"
"The statue of Brooke is gone," Derek said. "And we have no idea who took it."
"Where was it?" I asked as if I didn't know.
"In the garden," Ana said. "Has always been there."
"When did you notice it was gone?"
"This morning," Ana said. "Well, one of the guards noticed it and sounded the horn."
"Oh, I didn't hear that," I said.
"Well, his majesty just has been so tired with royal duties that he slept so long." And with the way she put much emphasis on royal duties, I knew she was making a taunt of my sex time with Lara.
"Oh, were you next door?" I asked her, making sure I had a smirk on my face. Vanessa made a sound of kissing her teeth and I got angry at that. "Look, if you can't sit at the same table with me in this same hall, you should as well find jobs elsewhere. But what would you do? This is the best-paying job you can get in Tweed pack, right?"
They said nothing.
I turned to Derek. "Now, tell me about that statue thing again. Do we have tracks leading from its initial position?"
"No, we don't. Seemed as if a witch had just levitated that and taken with her through the air."
"And how long have there been witches in Tweed pack?" Vanessa asked. "There haven't even been recent sightings in the nearest forests."
"I agree," said the man named Clinton.
"Is there any other way it could have happened?" I asked, needing to know what they knew.
"Someone could have carried it away," Vanessa said. "I mean we are fast."
"Do you know how much it weighs?" I asked.
Silence. Then Derek said, "No, we don't."
"Then we can't tell if a werewolf like us can lift that over their backs and take it away. So, we might have to start some witch-hunting"
Sabrina's Point of View
I lay in my bed as the sun came up, till the time it was streaming through the window that I had opened a little during the night. It was either me or that the house had some mysterious heating system somewhere below the ground.
My head was filled with so many thoughts that it seemed heavier than normal. So I just decided to lay down there till I could figure out what the heck had gone wrong with my life. My father had died at a very old age, and lived a great life himself, before telling me to take the mantle of leadership from him. What I could not understand was why mine went a different path. Was it a crime to love? Were men really mean and heartless enough to betray the one who loved them more than anything?
Yes, I loved Kevin Oates more than any other person living. The ones closest to me were already gone, so Kevin became my father, brother, best friend, and lover.
Not anymore.
When I heard Peter's revelation last night, I could not believe it. So Kevin wanted me out of his life permanently. The vial was only a trick to make my pain less painful and death easier.
My stomach churned in horror at that thought and my legs felt squishy to me. So I got up feeling aggravated, went out of the room, picked a random door on the right side of the lobby, and began throwing things at the walls.
I saw Kevin right in front of me at every turn and I picked up anything I could lay my hands on and just began smashing the rest of the furniture.
I was at this for a while, then when I stopped and looked at what I had done, I was amazed at how much violence I could do.
"Should I be worried?"
I turned and Peter Devonshire was at the door, leaning against the doorframe. He folded his arms across his chest and his head was inclined at a diagonal angle.
I dropped the piece of broken wood in my hand. "I just.. Sorry."
"Don't apologize. I did this during my first decade of being cursed. That's why this part of the hall is neglected."
I looked at him in surprise. "You broke things too?"
"Yeah. When I was frustrated, and when I experienced pain in my veins. Have you ever felt your veins popping inside your body before?"
I shook my head.
"They just tear up like someone pierced a needle in and flipped it up. So, I break things to balance the pain. Then I heal and it's beddy bye."
"You sleep it off?"
"I have to. It reduces the trauma."
We stood there, looking at each other. Like broken people, I wondered if there was a way we could find comfort in each other's pain and discomfort. Probably none.
Suddenly, he said, "You hungry?"
"What is the time?"
Without looking at his watch, he answered, "Seven minutes past nine."
"Are we having venison again?"
"No," he said, and the corners of his mouth went up. "Rabbit meat. After breakfast, is there something I have to show you?"
"What's that?" I requested.
And he said, "A lot of evil."