A New Queen

👩🏾‍💻 Hi guys, I’m so glad you’re here! Thanks for giving A New Queen a glance.🙏 Just a few quick notes, if you haven’t finished Dream Lover yet and you don’t like SPOILERS you’re going to want to 🛑 STOP READING! If that kind of thing doesn’t bother you please enjoy it and let me know what you think. I really enjoy everything you guys write in the comments🥰

~❤️Jocelyn

His majesty, Byron Dashwood was in another one of his moods, they’d all known it was coming. It was joining day today. A celebration of the end of the great war that had joined the island and brought peace and prosperity to many.

Joining day was celebrated each year on the anniversary of the first of the great battles. Joining day, for the king, however, was also a reminder of his wife who’d died from a wound she got in the battle. She had won that battle nearly single-handedly and each year Byron, face grim and serious reminded the crowd who came to listen that, it had been a woman who struck the last blow in the battle and that all of Mercia’s people great or small man woman or child were vital then he bid them all enjoy the festivities while he retired to his chambers to brood.

This joining day would be especially hard for the king, only those who’d lived in the giant old castle believed ghosts walked its halls. Thousands of lives had begun and ended in the black stone structure but a few still roamed the halls long after death. Until last winter, princess Elle had been one of them. She was spotted most often standing on the third floor looking out a window that overlooked the town. Some claimed to see her in the old stable that used to house her beast. But whether she was seen or not it was believed she was never far from Byron.

Some of the more suspicious types believed she had scared off or even done away with anyone who openly challenged the throne. Alton, a close friend of the king’s, was one of them. He’d witnessed Elle’s haunting firsthand, there had never been a time when he doubted, she would and could find a way to protect Byron. Even in her ethereal form. But when Byron traveled to North Umbria last year, Elle had seemed agitated. She paced, fluttered pages of books in the library, and she’d tormented Alton. When Byron left the castle, Alton ruled in his stead. Elle had plagued him for two full days before she vanished.

She never spoke to him as Byron claimed she sometimes did, she only stared at him. He’d tried everything he could think of to communicate with her, but she only stared at him. The servants began to avoid him, afraid they might draw her attention. But she only had eyes for him. She stood over him while he slept, and that last night before she vanished in front of his eyes, she hovered inches from him half the night. Just before she faded away, Alton thought she might have shed tears.

The experience had made him feel more than inadequate. The feeling had kept him on edge for the rest of the 6 weeks Byron was away from the castle. He searched the castle, checked all of her favorite places trying to figure out what she wanted. He’d even gone down into the royal tomb to see if something had disturbed her body. It only worried him more to find her looking exactly as she had when they’d closed her inside. She was a little pale, too still to be alive but she hadn’t decomposed.

In his place, the king who’d died only three years ago looked nothing like he had, his skin had dried and sunk to rest against his bones, but Elle looked like she might sit up at any moment. It bothered him enough that he wondered if Byron had had her glass coffin enchanted but when he leaned in closer to take look, he thought he’d caught some slight movement and he was ashamed to say it sent him running in the other direction.

Later, he told himself that some determined body beetle had probably found its way into her coffin looking for a meal. But he couldn’t help feeling like she’d sensed him there and her eyes had begun to shift toward him under her lids.

When Byron returned Alton told him about the strange ghostly behavior, Byron discussed it briefly and dismissed it as a failure to communicate. Two months later when Byron still hadn’t seen Elle’s ghost himself, they had the conversation again.

She’d been gone, completely from the castle for just over a year now and words like grim and surly were understatements at best, polite euphemisms at worst, on days that reminded Byron of Elle.

The boom of Byron’s voice rose faded away as a door opened and closed. On his way into the room, a young maid nearly ran him down in her efforts to escape Byron’s fury. Alton noted she was clutching at her left wrist. His own mood darkening when he closed the door after her and faced his friend.

“Have you started beating young girls?” he asked voice ice cold.

“A beating would have been deserved should I have.”

“Are you trying to force your wife out of a peaceful rest?”

Byron had been pacing the room like a wild thing in a cage. At Alton’s accusation, he sunk into a large chair by the window.

“No, Jesus,” He said burying his hands in his thick black hair.

It was something Elle used to say. Alton thought it might have been some kind of mild expletive, he’d never thought to ask.

“No,” and on a sigh, Byron leaned back, let his head fall back into the cushions, “she was wearing her rings.

Byron kept the rings Elle wore as a symbol of their marriage around a silver chain he sometimes wore.

“Wearing them and dancing around the room,” Byron said voice suddenly tired.

Having a childish fantasy Alton thought

“Elle said once that she used to dream about the perfect wedding, that she’d forced her younger brother to stand as a fake groom in pretend weddings until he was old enough to reach the food in the kitchen himself.”

Alton had never imagined Elle with a sibling, he knew Byron well enough to know that the maid and her stolen moment to pretend she was a princess in conjunction with the memory Elle had shared with him would have caused some pain and he would have lashed out before he thought and he’d be feeling guilty about it now until he gathered himself enough to make amends.

“She really is gone, isn’t she?” Byron sighed

“Byron there is nothing you could have done, nothing anyone could have done.”

Byron nodded, “It’s like she only just died.” Byron told him. “Like’s she’s only been gone for this past year. It was me this time.”

The pain in Byron’s voice and the guilt alarmed Alton. “You think you forced her out? You weren’t even here when it happened.”

“No, I was in North Umbria, signing that treaty.”

“Stop this!” Alton told him. “You have a kingdom to rule and no time to feel guilty over a ghost. She found her way here once; she can do it again.” Alton said all he could offer was the possibility that Elle’s ghost wasn’t completely gone but somewhere else. “Until then, you’ve got a young girl to apologize to.” Saying so, Alton had an idea, “I think it would make both of you feel better if you approached the task as if she were a young version of Elle.” Byron smirked at that. Alton knew his friend’s mind well. “younger than that.” He warned.

“I suppose,” Byron said mulling over the idea. “I’m too old to be seducing the girl servants anyway,”

It wouldn’t have stopped him, they both knew, But Byron preferred young widows to meet his needs. Women who had no risk of growing too attached. Women he could be done with quickly.