A Curse of Queens

Book 4: The Kingmaker Chronicles

by Amanda Bouchet

Genres: Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology; Fantasy Romance

Synopsis

The War of Gods is just beginning
After centuries of conflict, the three kingdoms of Thalyria have finally been reunited. But now the queen has been cursed, the royal lineage has been broken, and no one knows who’s behind the plot to threaten the once-fractured realm’s fragile new peace.
Desperate to help, Jocasta—the king’s younger sister and a gifted healer—hatches a daring plan to find Circe’s garden, a fabled island where she hopes to discover an antidote. But she can’t do it alone. She needs the strong arm and unflinching
bravery of the warrior she’s loved since childhood—her brother’s right-hand man and captain of the guard, Flynn of Sinta.
Flynn has spent years fighting to deny the desperate longing burning between them, but he cannot allow Jocasta to face this danger alone. He swears he will be her shield, and together they will do the impossible. Yet with old feelings blazing
bright and treachery brewing on Mount Olympus, one thing is clear: Thalyria and its new royals are still pawns in an epic game of power—one that might end in a War of Gods.

Release date: October 4, 2022

Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca

Print pages: 505

Sample

Prologue

It was not a day like any other. It was Jocasta’s eighteenth birthday, and if the man she’d loved since she was six years old didn’t already know he had her heart, he would know it in the next few minutes.

She took her brothers’ makeshift bridge over the river and cut through Flynn’s olive grove rather than use the dirt road between their two houses, avoiding gnarled old roots that had twisted her ankles on more than one occasion. She’d just washed from head to toe, and she had plans. Arriving at Flynn’s house with dusty toes poking out of her sandals wasn’t part of them.

Her stomach clenched, and Jocasta took a steadying breath. This was it, then—everything finally coming together.

Really, she shouldn’t be so nervous. Wasn’t Flynn practically a member of the family already? Her oldest brother’s best friend? Someone she’d known—quite literally—forever?

Besides, he was it for her—the one. She couldn’t even remember a time when that wasn’t her reality.

She stepped over a fallen branch and headed up the field, Flynn’s house a deceptively cheery whitewashed dot in the distance. He lived alone now. Old Hector was the last to go, leaving Flynn parentless, brotherless, and sisterless after a decade-long cycle of everything going wrong. Her heart had broken over and over along with Flynn’s, but now she could finally help him. Wouldn’t a family of his own be just the healing balm he needed after losing everyone?

Despite her positive—and logical—thoughts, panic still thrummed in Jocasta’s veins, descending like a swarm of locusts on her fast-beating heart. Fear of rejection grew with every step toward Flynn’s, but it wasn’t as though she were about to spring herself on him from out of nowhere. She wasn’t blind to signs or prone to inventing things out of sheer hopefulness. There was really only one way to interpret all the kind smiles and shared laughs, the near-daily inquiring after her health and projects, the long, private conversations down by the river between their two houses, and the frequent escorting her home, even when they both knew it wasn’t necessary.

Flynn’s attentiveness wasn’t new exactly, just different somehow. He’d always looked out for her. And as independent as Jocasta liked to think herself, she had needed help at times.

Ice slid down her spine, and she slammed the door on the memory she mostly managed to avoid. It surged up anyway, and she walked more slowly through the sudden spike in her pulse, repeating thoughts like done, over, and no! until a colorful word mosaic of her own design patterned over the ugly images in her head.

Squaring her shoulders, she picked up her pace. There hadn’t been a truly violent raid on their village in years, even if the last one still felt like yesterday at times. Sintan royal guards descending on their homes. Heartless soldiers demanding taxes far beyond what was due, thieving, destroying, and taking, especially from the women of the tribe. Seven babies were born roughly nine months after that last impromptu tax raid, and she’d had her first woman’s cycle only a few months before.

She could’ve been one of those new mothers five years ago if Flynn hadn’t pulled that rotten-toothed bastard off her in time. He’d practically ripped the man limb from limb before spiriting her away to the hidden tunnels below the temple district. He’d raced off again to try to protect others, leaving her with his hunting knife and cloak. She’d been so cold down there, shivering in fear and shock beneath that big statue of Zeus. Sometimes, she still heard the eerie silence and felt the flood of dread deep under her skin like a sickness oozing its way out from within.

That distant day was a tangle of fear and gratitude in her memory, and Jocasta mentally stomped on it as she approached Flynn’s house, each step driving the horror that could’ve been so much worse for her farther into the ground.

No one ever knew what happened that afternoon except for the two of them—how close her life came to being irrevocably changed. Not her parents. Not her brothers and sisters. No one. She should’ve been hiding in the secret room behind the kitchen pantry, but she’d been too far from home when the brutal, greed-driven soldiers arrived—and then not close enough when they truly closed in.

Flynn came for her when it was all over. Her family was intact but poorer, and he took her back to them. They never spoke of that day again.

Every now and then, when her mind hovered between asleep and awake, she saw Flynn’s face as he killed that soldier above her. Most of it was a blur. Her groping wildly for a weapon. Rough, hard hands pawing at her new breasts and yanking up her dress. Suddenly knowing she’d lost—that she’d never stood a chance.

Another few seconds, and that would’ve been true. Flynn had snapped her attacker’s neck so hard she sometimes still heard the crack. And then a huge auburn-haired beast had reached down for her, a roar in his chest and his features on fire with hate. All fear had vanished. As savage as he’d looked, he was her beast.

That day not only marked the moment her father became deadly serious about uniting the southern tribes into a coalition big and powerful enough to strike fear into the northern Sintan elite but also the day her love turned into passion. For as long as she could remember, she’d looked at Flynn with a child’s adulation

. After that raid, she’d understood what it felt like to look at a fierce, capable man and nearly combust with a woman’s love.

Jocasta’s steps slowed as she started down the flat, sun-warmed path of stones leading to Flynn’s front doorway. Doubts rattled like swords, warning her away from the field of engagement. She knew how she felt, but what about Flynn? He’d never actually touched her or spoken to her in a way that indicated his feelings went deeper than friendship. It was just that lately, things hadn’t felt the same.

The prospect of being alone with Flynn usually sent dragonflies swooping through her belly. Right now, their frantically beating wings churned up a wash of acid in her stomach, and Jocasta fought a nervous grimace. The closer she got to Flynn’s door, the more her heart squeezed and burst and caught fire as though hit by a lightning bolt.

Finally on his doorstep, she shifted from foot to foot. Could this be a huge mistake? There was no backward from a confession of love.

But there was no forward without one—or at least not into a future she wanted.

Steeling herself, she lifted her hand and knocked. She’d always liked Flynn’s whitewashed house with its sky-blue shutters—probably more than he did at this point. He kept the old farmhouse in perfect condition. The only things missing were his mother’s big clay flowerpots with their bright-crimson hera’s hearts and jaunty flushing dryads. He had the pots somewhere; she had no doubt. And Jocasta would replace the dead roots of bygone blooms with her kitchen herbs and medicinal plants as soon as it was her right.

Flynn was home now. He couldn’t always be out honing his battle skills with her brothers and Kato. The five of them did little else these days, but homes and lands also needed tending. Even if Flynn hated every lonely second he spent in his empty house, a man like him would never let his family farm fall into ruin—or at least not the buildings. Harvests were a different story. Last season’s fat black olives now stained the grove, shriveled and bird-pecked where they’d fallen while a new crop grew, waiting for a farmer to tend to it, when the only person who lived here now had a new occupation: war.

Jocasta waited for Flynn to answer her knock, which she’d made sure was loud enough to resonate. At this time of day, he was often in the back courtyard building something to furnish his house. If the telltale thud, thud, thud she’d heard was any indication, he was at it again. The steady fall of his hammer seemed to echo the beat of her heart these days, although if he built one more unnecessary chair or table, he’d have no place left to walk.

Maybe he could fashion them a cradle soon, one that rocked, and she’d try not to be too terrified when he rode off with the others to defend their border, which was slowly extending toward the north.

She knocked again, even more firmly this time. The hammering in the courtyard abruptly stopped, and Jocasta’s heart tumbled, speeding up. She could make this empty house a home again. She would.

The

door opened, jolting her pulse into a mad enough dash to make her hands shake. She hid them in the folds of her gown, all that floaty material draping down her hips and legs finally coming in handy. Flynn stood a head taller than her, his broad shoulders blocking out everything beyond. Limned in the golden glow of the sunset at Jocasta’s back, his auburn hair looked almost blond. He hadn’t cut a single lock since his father died, and the thick mass now brushed the strong curve of his jaw. She wished she could smooth it back with gentle, soothing strokes, the kind reserved for wounded animals. Or wounded souls.

Jocasta exhaled a slow, deceptively steady breath, her eyes fixed on Flynn’s. Surprise flitted across his expression, quickly replaced by concern.

“Is everything all right, Jo?” He looked past her, around, and then at her again. He frowned. “It’s getting late for you to be out alone.”

His concern plucked at her heartstrings, sending a warm vibration through her chest. “Everything’s fine,” she answered. Except for her voice. It was already low and gravelly enough without creaking from nerves. She cleared her throat, wishing she didn’t perpetually sound as if she just woke up. “As you know, the southern lands have never been safer.”

Had wooden conversation ever led to seduction? Probably not. She fought a wince.

Flynn nodded, smiling despite how stiff and stilted she sounded. “Griffin’s talking about going on the offensive soon. Next thing those murdering royals up in Sinta City know, he’ll be king.”

The idea made Jocasta shudder in fear for everyone she loved. It was entirely possible her brother would eventually make a bid for the throne. But a Hoi Polloi warlord ruling the realm? It had never happened. Magic always won.

“Happy birthday.” Flynn stepped aside, leaving her room to enter. “I was going to stop by your house later, but since you’re here, I have something for you.”

Her heart leaped at his words. Jocasta followed him inside, her unruly pulse robbing her of breath and those dragonflies now carousing wildly in her stomach.

Inside, the house was dark except for the natural light slanting in through the deep-set windows. Flynn skirted an upturned stool with one leg still waiting to be attached and strode toward a side table. It was one of three lined up along the far wall.

“Is the upstairs this full?” Glancing around, she spotted several new pieces of furniture in varying stages of completion. There were far too many chairs for a one-man home. One was child-sized, and her heart gave a little thump. She could already see a red-haired imp in it. Their imp.

Flynn just shrugged, his silence seeming to invite her to ignore the fact that he was populating his house with inanimate objects because all the animate ones were gone.

Jocasta let it go, knowing she couldn’t truly understand Flynn’s suffering. Her family remained intact. Parents and siblings, all able-bodied and well.

Flynn picked up a small box tied with a thick hellipses-grass bow and held it out to her. His eyes gleamed the same warm brown as the olive-wood container he’d likely carved himself as he placed the gift in her hands, a smile tugging at his mouth.

Jocasta bit her lip. Flynn had given her many things over the last eighteen years, but never something wrapped in a bow.

She tried to hide how her fingers shook as she opened the box. Her breath caught. It was a bracelet. A beautiful bronze bracelet with fluted engravings on either side of a row of polished blue stones.

Her eyes jumped to his face, her heart pounding in her throat. Surely, giving her jewelry was a strong sign of his regard?

Flynn plucked the bracelet from the box and slipped it onto her wrist, squeezing to adjust the size. He set the box aside. “The stones match your eyes. They were the brightest and bluest I could find.”

Elation made her dizzy. That was the most romantic thing he’d ever said. To her—and probably ever. Jocasta moved without thinking. Happiness propelled her forward, and she threw her arms around Flynn’s neck, stretched up, and crushed her lips to his. Finally! She closed her eyes, held on, and soared.

Flynn froze, his lips warm but unyielding, his arms at his sides, and his big, hard body not melding to hers. Jagged worry spiked her pulse. This might be her first kiss, but she still knew what was supposed to happen, and Flynn not kissing her back—at all—definitely wasn’t it.

She stayed where she was, her lips pressed firmly to Flynn’s and her breasts lightly brushing his clothes. She angled her head, the new, more intense pressure a silent plea for him to reciprocate. He was twenty-eight years old, a man who’d been on military campaigns, and she had no illusions about the women he must have kissed—and certainly more. Jocasta couldn’t possibly be that bad at this.

Still, he didn’t move. Just as hope started to crumble and die in her chest, Flynn kissed her back. His mouth suddenly surged against hers. He wrapped his arms around her and hauled her in close, a sound of pure hunger rising in his throat. Jocasta echoed it—a deep, primal moan of excitement and relief. Spearing her fingers into his hair, she arched into him with an instinctive roll of her hips.

Flynn’s gasp punched her lips. He hesitated. Their mouths barely touched, their breathing ragged and loud. Then his grip tightened, and he brought her to her toes as he slanted his mouth over hers, softly at first, and then harder, parting her lips. Jocasta’s legs grew heavy and weak. His tongue brushed her lower lip, feather soft and questioning. The thump of sensation low in her abdomen said yes, and she opened for him, catching fire from the heat of their kiss.

Flynn slid a hand to the nape of her neck. Tilting her head back, he licked into her mouth. Jocasta sagged in his hold, the wildest jolt of pleasure hitting the space between her legs. A little whimper left her, swallowed up by the warmth of Flynn’s mouth.

Learning quickly from him, she swept her tongue over his. He tasted of the mint sweets she’d made him. Chasing the flavor, she deepened the kiss. Triumph roared in her blood as Flynn fisted one hand in her

 hair. The other clenched the back of her dress, holding on to her as though she were necessary. Desire pulsed, hot and urgent. She devoured him, he ravaged her mouth, and it was glorious.

Until he reared back.

Jocasta staggered, nearly losing her balance. She opened her eyes, her mouth gaping. She glanced around, half expecting to see one of her overprotective brothers cocking back a fist. But no—they were alone. No one had yanked Flynn away from her.

The inferno inside her fizzled to wisps of smoke. Slowly, apprehensively, she looked back at Flynn. His expression turned her stomach to lead, and the knot forming in her middle dragged her hopes and dreams down with its cold, hard weight. She didn’t want to let them die, but as she watched Flynn’s hands curl into fists and his eyes go from stunned to horrified, the future she’d imagined for them started collapsing without waiting for the awful words she knew were on the tip of his tongue.

The man she’d loved for as long as she could remember stared at her, paling until his auburn hair glared a shocking red. “Forgive me,” he finally said.

Jocasta expelled a trembling breath. “I kissed you. There’s nothing to forgive.”

“I took advantage.” His measured tone cut like a knife. He took another step back. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

She swallowed. It won’t happen again.

Those weren’t idle words. He meant them.

Tears stung her eyes. Flynn didn’t want her. He was supposed to claim her, she’d claim him back, they’d tell her parents, sign the temple registry, plan an official wedding if they felt like it, and likely start a family immediately. Maybe even right now. She’d been ready and willing. Apparently, she was the only one.

“I see.” Her voice came from far away. Jocasta could barely feel her lips. Numbness rang in her head. A sickened daze smothered the thrill of their kiss, obliterating it from existence.

How stupid. She started to shake. What a stupid, naïve fool I am. It was all in her mind. Him. Her. Everything.

She shuffled back, even though he’d already put more than enough distance between them. She’d been waiting for this moment for years, for when Flynn couldn’t use her age as an excuse, or his firm friendship with her brothers. She was a woman, fully grown and frankly well into marriageable age, according to their tribal traditions. Not that she needed to marry. She’d wanted Flynn.

Queasy, she turned to leave. “I… Goodbye.”

Spiraling into a horrible, sinking pit of humiliation, she rushed for the door. Everything would be different now. She’d need to avoid Flynn for life. How in the name of the gods was she supposed to do that?

Flynn caught up in two steps, his nearness shocking compared to the sudden gulf between them. “I’ll walk you home.”

“

No, please don’t.” Not looking at him, she yanked open the door and flew outside. The bracelet he’d given her glinted in the dull light, and the sight of it on her wrist broke her heart all over again.

He fell into step beside her anyway, flatly stating, “There’s no way in the Underworld I’m letting you walk home alone in the dark.”

Jocasta scoffed, the sharp sound somewhere between bitter and bruised. She finally stopped and looked at him, anger sparking even though her soul was one enormous festering wound. “I’m Anatole’s daughter and Griffin’s sister. No one within days of this place would dare lay a finger on me.”

Flynn flinched, jerking his hands out of sight. He’d touched her. And gods, how he wished he hadn’t. It was written all over his face.

They stood on his walkway, the ease that had always existed between them burned down to ash with one explosive kiss. A breeze swept over them, and Jocasta shivered, more devastated than cold. Flynn watched her, eyes wary, mouth flat. He didn’t say a word.

Jocasta turned and started walking again, one foot in front of the other, already trying to shove lifelong feelings into a forgotten corner of herself where they wouldn’t spring up like some horrible jack-in-the-box every time Flynn was around. Flynn followed her all the way home, now two steps behind and eerily quiet except for his tread. He’d started stomping like a Cyclops everywhere he went. She’d liked it. It had let her know when he was nearby.

A sob caught in her throat. She held her breath, keeping the shuddering howl inside.

Home finally loomed in sight. Jocasta didn’t want to go in but had nowhere else to go. So home it was—with too many people inside. Flynn might’ve turned and left her at the gate, but her mother saw them through the window and waved them both toward the door. It would’ve been strange for him to refuse.

Stepping under the lintel and into the house, Flynn kissed her mother’s rounded cheek, just as he had since he was a boy. “Hello, Nerissa.”

Jocasta forced a quick smile for her mother but couldn’t produce a word.

As they moved farther inside, her father strode over and dropped a kiss onto the top of her head. He clapped Flynn on the shoulder, his face splitting into the wide grin he reserved for his children. Anatole had always treated Flynn like one of his boys, especially after Flynn’s real father, Old Hector, stopped caring about anything outside of his own grief.

Anatole beamed at them both, his focus shifting to Flynn as he spoke. “I see you found our wandering healer.” Flynn simply nodded, and Jocasta’s father turned to her. “Did you find those plants you were looking for?”

“No.” In all honesty, she hadn’t even looked. The sudden urge to search for althaea root had been an excuse to leave the house late in the afternoon—just when most of the people she knew would be finding their ways home and staying there, including Flynn. “Someone else must have gathered them up first.” Having a naturally husky voice served her well for once. No one knew it was low and raw from holding back tears.

“There’ll be more in a few days.” Anatole’s shrug accentuated the increasing stoop in his shoulders. Her father had recently begun looking his age and giving more responsibility to Griffin, who acted as co-head of the family now. It all meant change, when the only change Jocasta really wanted had just been denied to her. “And your competition doesn’t stand a chance,” Anatole added. “Whatever you concoct will be better.”

“Thank you, Father,” she murmured. His encouragement meant a great deal to her. Most tribal fathers didn’t support their daughters in endeavors that had nothing to do with finding a husband and providing grandchildren. But Anatole had married a talented healer whose income supplying counsel, salves, and cures had been twice his own as a grain farmer, and he’d never batted an eye at Jocasta following in her mother’s footsteps.

Out of sheer habit, Jocasta moved deeper into the house, but the moment she entered the great room, she knew she had to leave. Her entire family was there, and what if they could all see her chest ripped wide open and her heart falling out? It didn’t matter that they barely looked up from their evening activities, her entrance with Flynn nothing unusual. Everything was different. Her shattered dreams cut like broken glass. She’d never stop bleeding.

At her back, Flynn blocked her path out, so she stood there, the wretched knot in her throat only growing. Jocasta’s older sister, Egeria, sat by the fire with a scroll in her hands, reading. Her middle brother, Piers, did the same. Griffin and Carver played a strategy game, which their father rejoined. Kaia, at only nine, hopped like a flea as she talked to Kato. Kato, a de facto member of the family even more than Flynn, listened with his full attention, ignoring the game he’d probably started out playing with the others to hear about a typical Kaia adventure involving her beating the local boys her age at a footrace around the center of the village.

Jocasta had already heard the story twice. Kato probably had, too, but his effortless charm always came with a smile, and more importantly, his kindness ran deep. He’d listen ten times and always look just as interested.

Sometimes, Jocasta wondered why she hadn’t fallen in love with him instead of Flynn. Kato was a few years closer to her in age and arguably the most handsome man in all the realms. His battle-sculpted body, blue-sky eyes, and sunshine hair were all most of her friends could talk about. They didn’t know him like she did, though. They hadn’t watched and learned as her mother cleaned and soothed Kato’s cuts and bruises in the middle of the night, time and again. Jocasta was only waist-high at the time. She used to hold Kato’s hand, thinking that might help—and he’d let her.

Some evils didn’t come from the outside. Kato’s parents were proof of that. Then one day, he just stopped going home. She’d lived under the same roof as Kato since before Kaia was born. Loving him the way she loved Flynn was impossible. He was her brother now.

Flynn got called into the game to replace Kato, clearing a path for her back out of the room. Jocasta joined her mother in the kitchen and began the monotonous task of kneading bread. It was mindless and 

numbing. It helped her stay blank instead of focusing on how her life had finally begun for an incendiary blink of an eye and then stopped. They didn’t talk, and Nerissa threw her worried glances. Tears threatened every now and then, surging up with shocking heat and violence.

Flynn stayed just long enough to be polite and then returned home. After that, he started spending more time at his house than he did at hers. Then it stopped mattering where he chose to be, because Jocasta rarely saw any of the men in her life anymore. They were busy making her world a safer place and doing whatever it was that victorious warriors did. She tried not to use her imagination too much where Flynn was concerned.

Jocasta threw herself into honing her healing skills and becoming invaluable to her community. She improved on her mother’s key recipes and invented new medicinal remedies in her dwindling spare time. Her ointments sold as quickly as she could make them, as did her herbal teas and tonics. She might not have a household of her own, but she was a household name, and that was almost enough for her.

But then one day, she was told to pack up and leave home. Griffin had won. The whole family was moving to Castle Sinta. She was a princess of the realm.

Jocasta packed her trunks, the life she’d begun building once again torn from her grasp. As her family rode out, a royal army that included Griffin and his core team—that included Flynn—surrounding them, she glimpsed a tightly shuttered-up whitewashed farmhouse in the distance. Her heart too numb to ache, she simply turned away from it.

No one ever knew what she’d done on her eighteenth birthday, how she’d thrown herself at Flynn. How he’d kissed her as if his life depended on it and then leaped away from her as though burned.

Had he been more horrified with himself or with her? In the end, she never really knew.

That was another day they never spoke of. In fact, they barely spoke at all.