Glass of Revenge

~1~

The woman looked at the messengers blankly. How could it have possibly come to this? The last two centuries she had spent loving him, adoring him, waiting for him to come back to her. Yet he never had. She was well aware that her beloved had been coerced into swearing that blood oath to Maeve, but she had always believed that Maeve had ordered him to stay far away from her. That she had ordered him to have nothing to do with her.

She had always hoped though, that one day her beloved mate would make his way back to her one day. Had believed it with her entire heart for the last two hundred years. But now she was just plain baffled as to why he had not come back to her. Baffled as to why he had moved on, why he had walked away from her, had abandoned her so easily.

Starting a few months ago, she had heard rumours that her beloved mate had been freed from his blood oath by Maeve. When she had first heard these rumours, she had refused to believe them. It was almost impossible, when it came down to it, for a blood oath to be broken honourably. And when the rumours had persisted, she had had come to accept rumour as truth. But what had still confused her was why he had not come back to her the moment when he was freed – the very moment that he was able to.

So why hadn't he? The answer had come to her once again through rumours that were passed along. The answer was as blindingly simple as it was painful and hurtful. Gossip and speculation whispered that her beloved had been freed from his oath to Maeve in order to swear the blood oath to a young and beautiful foreign queen. That her beloved mate had fallen in love with this young queen, who was supposedly as beautiful as she was powerful.

But what she didn't understand, what she refused to understand was why her mate had never told her about any of this in person. Why he had never come to see her. She had always presumed that Maeve had kept her apart from her mate purposely for these last few centuries. However, that didn't explain why this supposed foreign queen that her mate was now meant serving hadn't let her mate do so much as send her a letter or attempt to contact her in any way whatsoever.

She could only conclude that this young queen either didn't know that she existed or she just didn't care. That was the only reason she could possibly think of the coldness, the distance, the lack of communication between her and her beloved. And now with the news that the messengers had brought her... She didn't know where she stood with her cherished and much-loved mate. And she needed to know where she stood with her mate. More than that, she needed her mate to be with her. She needed him to be with her more than anything else in the world. She might have lost their unborn child all of those centuries ago, but she could still have her male, her mate, in her life.

But now, the messengers had brought her the worst possible news in the entire world. The news that her mate's young queen had been crowned queen of her kingdom across the ocean, and married a Fae male in her household. That the young queen's remaining lords had insisted on the wedding being an enormous spectacle, with the entire world watching on. The joy and love of the newly wedded couple had been blatantly obvious, the messengers said, having eyes only for each other. Their love and devotion was more than evident, and the queen's people were more than willing to celebrate with them and for them.

Her mate. Her own beloved mate. The fire-breathing bitch had married her mate. She had stolen another woman's mate. How could she? The fire-breathing bitch of a queen would pay. In that moment she swore to herself that she would make the queen pay for what she'd done, for what she had been put through. That foreign, fire-breathing bitch would pay for stealing the mate of another woman. It made take a while to take her revenge on the foreign queen, but she would ensure that her mate would come back to her.

Her mate belonged to her, and her alone. No else was allowed to touch him. He was hers, and she was his, and they belonged to each other. She had been so utterly miserable without him all of these centuries. She needed to get him back, by whatever means possible.