Reign: Hysteria

Book 2: Reign

by Lily Blake

Genres: YA Romance; Historical Fiction; Media Tie-In

Synopsis

France is aflame with rumors of witchcraft and treachery. Who will be burn for their transgressions? Find out in this haunting original novel based on the hit CW television show, Reign. Something sinister has been sweeping the villages surrounding the French court. Rumors of Satan's horsemen traveling the countryside and claiming the souls of villagers have sent the people reeling into a religious frenzy and soon fear and suspicion lead them to accuse a young girl of witchcraft. After the prisoner is brought to the palace for questioning, Mary, Greer, Kenna, and Lola work to prove her innocence. But there are others who will stop at nothing to see the girl and her secrets silenced forever...

Release date: May 12, 2015

Publisher: Poppy

Print pages: 224

Sample

And so, I ask for Your Highnesses’ assistance.” Lord Verrier bowed deeply before his king and queen. “As you can tell, this is a most pressing matter, which must be received with the utmost urgency.”

“Really?” Mary replied, her perfectly arched eyebrow raised. “The utmost?”

“What the queen means to say,” Francis said, drawing Lord Verrier’s confused gaze back to his throne, “is that perhaps a dispute over the ownership of chickens isn’t something that necessarily requires royal intervention.”

“But, Your Highness—” Verrier began.

“I will have it dealt with,” the king interrupted. “Thank you, Lord Verrier.”

Red-faced, the nobleman nodded and shuffled backward out of the throne room. Francis waved to the guards to close the doors behind him.

“Are you not enjoying yourself?” Francis asked his wife as she carefully lifted the weight of her crown from her head. Nursing it carefully in her lap, Mary rolled her head from side to side before resting her huge brown eyes on the king.

“How many more are there?”

“I don’t know,” he confessed. “But I do know how important it is that we keep the nobles and the peasants on our side right now. Giving the people an audience with their king and queen allows them to feel they are being heard.”

“No one believes that more than I, Francis, you know that.” Mary reached across her throne to take his hand and he squeezed her delicate white fingers tightly. “Only I hadn’t expected to be hearing quite so many, well, petty squabbles. It’s like being a little girl in the nunnery again; she stole my chickens, he took my carriage. Really, I begin to wonder, do people ever grow up?”

He smiled playfully. “More than a year at court and you have to ask me that?”

“Good point,” she replied. “To think of all the little girls across France, dreaming of glamorous court life.”

Mary stretched her arms above her head, breathing in to find some relief in her green brocade gown. A dress this tightly corseted was not designed for sitting on a throne listening to childish arguments between men old enough and rich enough to know better.

“You talk as though you didn’t dream of debating the ownership of Lord Verrier’s farm animals,” Francis said, teasing. “Mary, Queen of Scots, Queen Consort of France, and chicken fancier.”

Mary looked down at her beautiful brocade gown, at the diamonds and rubies that sparkled on her fingers, and then at Francis, the King of France and her husband. These were the things that little girls dreamed of across the country, across the world even. What they didn’t anticipate were the politics, the power struggles, the constant threat of assassination, not only from the Protestants inside France who resented their Catholic rulers but now from her own cousin, Queen Elizabeth, who sat on the throne in England, only a short sail across a small sea. And then there was this distance between herself and Francis that she could not seem to breach. He was beside her always but sometimes felt so far away, as though his head and his heart were elsewhere, and it scared her. Life in the palace was far from a fairy tale.

“Mary?” Francis saw his wife’s happy expression shift and squeezed her hand again. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, of course.” Mary recovered herself quickly. Replacing her crown, she smiled at Francis. His golden hair shone in the bright afternoon sunlight and his blue eyes shone with relief. She was getting too good at lying. They both were. “Shall we get on with it? I’d like to have settled whether or not Madame du Metiere’s goats should have been sent to market or not before it’s time for dinner.”

With a quick grin that reminded Mary he was still the man she loved, Francis motioned for the guards to open the door to the throne room and send in their next guest.

Immediately, Mary could tell something was seriously wrong. The family that rushed toward them and fell to their knees were shaking, all three of them, husband, wife, and young child. There was no blustering, no marveling to be in the same room as royalty, only solemn and silent panic, the kind that filled a room before even a word could be spoken.

“If it pleases you, Your Grace, we need your help.” The woman spoke first, bent in such a deep bow that her forehead practically touched the stone floor. “We don’t know who else to turn to.”

Francis, feeling the same uneasiness that had unsettled his wife, felt his spine lengthen and grew taller on his throne. “Tell us what has happened and we will help if we can,” he replied.

“It’s my Alys, my daughter Alys,” the father said, almost shouting. “They’ve taken my little girl.”

His wife rose to her knees and rested a hand on the man’s arm to calm him. Now that they faced her more fully, Mary could see the evidence of tears and a sleepless night etched into their expressions. Even the child, a girl no more than six or seven, looked exhausted, and it hurt Mary’s heart to see someone so young bear such weight on her shoulders.

“Who has taken your daughter?” Mary asked. “Do you know where she is?”

“We do, Your Grace,” the wife replied. “Our village elders have her. They believe her to be a witch and intend to execute her tomorrow at dawn.”

“Surely there is a longer story here,” Mary said, pulling forward in her throne, and ignoring the anxious look on Francis’s face. “Please tell it to me.”

“My name is Mélanie Février, this is my husband, Jehane, and our younger daughter, Ada. We have traveled from the village of Auxerre, four hours south of your castle, Your Grace,” the woman began. “Some weeks ago, there began strange occurrences in the village that no one could explain; several people died of no cause the doctors could find. At first it was older people and no one was too suspicious—we have been short on food for a while and the weather has not been kind this year—but then it was the babies.”

“The babies?” Mary raised a hand to her throat, afraid to hear the next sentence.

“Yes, Your Grace,” Mélanie said. “They were born… wrong. Or they weren’t born at all.”

“My God,” Mary breathed, her thoughts turning to her own miscarriage. Refusing to cry in front of her people, she steeled herself for the rest of the story. “Continue, please.”

“At first, someone said he had seen a dark figure riding around the edge of the forest at night, and we thought perhaps this man, whatever he may be, was visiting these nightmares on our village, but the men of the village waited out all night with torches and saw nothing. And still the old people and the babies were dying.

“Eventually, after many discussions with our priest, the elders decided it must be a curse. There was no natural reason for the things that were happening to us and so it was agreed that someone had placed a curse on the village. The only person who had tended to all of the dead was our village healer. Many years ago there were rumors that he was no ordinary healer, that he possessed a supernatural gift and practiced witchcraft, but he had been so kind to our village and saved the lives of so many people, no one had ever suspected him of ill intent.”

“Until now?” Francis asked.

“Yes, Your Grace,” she said, hanging her head low. “Only, the healer had passed away just before the curse was visited upon us, leaving his apprentice to take on his work.”

Francis’s mouth set in a hard line.

“Your daughter Alys is the apprentice?” Mary guessed.

“She is, Your Grace.” Mélanie pushed her hair behind her ears and pressed her hands to her heart, rising to her feet. “But she is good. She is young and eager to learn. Ever since she was a baby herself, she wanted to take care of others. We would never have allowed her to study with the healer if we thought he was teaching her ill. He came to us, said he had seen how good she was with the old and the sick in the village, and she wanted to do it, she wanted to help people. She would never hurt anyone.”

“The villagers suspect the healer was teaching your daughter witchcraft?” Francis asked.

“No, Your Grace,” she replied, wiping a stray tear from her strong face. “Guillaume Maillard was a great man. The women of the village would have it that Alys took his learnings and used them to harm instead of heal.”

Mary held out her hands to calm the woman as the guards began to draw their swords. “But why were the elders so quickly convinced of her guilt?” she said while Jehane choked back a sob. “This must be very difficult for you, I know, but I beg you understand why we must ask these questions.”

“As soon as they accused her, the deaths stopped,” Mélanie said simply. “But it just isn’t possible. My daughter is no witch and she hasn’t the heart to harm a fly. She could not have done this.”

“If Your Grace does not intervene, they will burn her at dawn tomorrow.” Jehane found his voice, shaking as he spoke. “They will kill my daughter for crimes she could not possibly have committed.”

Mary and Francis glanced at each other, a thousand silent exchanges passing through the ether. Francis was uncomfortable, that was plain to see, but the reasons for his disquiet were not. His recent brushes with the supernatural—visits from the ghost of his father, the dreams he had suffered—all made him want to wash his hands of this case. But he could not. He was the King of France, the defender of the Catholic Church, and any reports of witchcraft had to be dealt with before paranoia ran rife throughout the country. Something as serious as a proven witch could be more devastating to France than the plague, and yet, this family seemed earnest. The thought of an innocent young girl going to her death to appease the superstitions of old men made him angry.

“We will send someone to your village.” Mary spoke before Francis had even finished thinking. “Please trust that your daughter will not be executed tomorrow; no harm shall come to her until we have spoken to the village elders. Until we are satisfied that we know the whole truth in this matter, no action will be taken.”

“Oh, Your Grace.”

Jehane rushed toward the throne, throwing himself prostrate at Mary’s feet. The guards were upon him in a second, pulling him away even as he wept.

“Guards, let him go,” Mary ordered. “And send for the king’s brother, immediately. We will take no more audiences today.”

“You would send Bash to investigate this threat?” Francis asked in a low voice as the family gathered themselves and prepared to leave the throne room.

“Yes,” Mary said, determined. “He can travel quickly, he knows about these things, and he is your second. The elders will have to obey him.”

Francis shook his head slowly. “How many more decisions will you make for me, Mary? How many more times will you speak before we discuss?”

Mary turned, shocked. “What’s to discuss? A life is on the line.” She spoke quietly but fiercely. “I didn’t realize I needed to ask your permission to stop an innocent French girl from being slaughtered.”

“But what if she isn’t innocent?” he replied in a harried whisper. “What if she is a witch?”

“She isn’t.”

A small, clear voice rang out from the doorway of the throne room. Mary and Francis turned to see the younger daughter of the Févriers staring straight at them.

“She heard us?” Francis breathed.

“Yes,” Ada said. “But it’s all right, I understand. You don’t know Alys. But she isn’t a witch. Don’t be mad at Mary, she’s a nice lady. Her crown is too heavy and it hurts.”

The queen looked at the little girl. It was a long time since someone had been so informal with her. Even the youngest children of court referred to her as “Your Grace” and were often too intimidated to come close.

“Apologies for my Ada, Your Grace.” Mélanie scooped her daughter up in her arms. “She is full of worry for her sister; she does not know the protocol.”

“It’s quite all right,” Mary said, her eye still trained on the young girl, who only smiled and waved.

With one desperate glance back at the royal couple, Mélanie buried her face in Ada’s blond hair and left the room. As the door closed behind the Février family, Mary and Francis sat there alone, in uncomfortable silence. Again.

Explain to me again why we’re riding out into the middle of nowhere instead of making love in our warm, comfortable bed?” Kenna asked Bash as t. . .