A Royal Rebellion by Revella Hawthorne Read Free Book Online Page A

mean?”
    “King Henry was so upset when my mother started to get sick right after she gave birth to Edward. He was even more upset because my mother miscarried at least twice between Mal and myself, and twice again between me and Edward. Mother wanted to stop having children, you see. She knew what was wrong with her. Why she was having so much trouble getting pregnant and staying that way.”
    “Tell me who the fathers are!” Arianna shrieked, ready to strangle Mason.
    “Once it came time for Malcolm to marry, my father had him tested. Quietly, of course. The disease was in the last stages with Malcolm. He is completely sterile. So am I. But our father couldn’t admit this to anyone. The sanctity of the Cassian Dynasty must be preserved above all else, and for him to remove both Mal and I from the line of succession wouldn’t do at all. Too much speculation, doubts into the strength of Airric’s sons. Our line would be seen as tainted, weakened.”
    She was going to be sick, he couldn’t mean….
    “So Father, his blood as pure and untainted as any previous Cassian Monarch, decided that he would guarantee the continuance of our line. He would skip the tainted generation completely. So each year, my dear sister, during your routine visits to the royal physicians, he had you secretly impregnated with another’s seed.”
    “No…” The urge to vomit rose, threatening to overwhelm her.
    “Your children are my father’s bastards.”
     
    ***
    Arianna
     
    The memory left her ill. And so did the slim journal she held in her hand, dated some forty years prior. It was written by the late queen, when she was still Princess Esme of Elysian. Arianna dropped the journal, and dove back into the small chest she’d found under the bed, looking for one that would have been written around the time of her death. Mason was fifteen when his mother died, so Malcolm would have just turned twenty. Arianna married Malcolm the year he turned thirty, just over ten years ago.
    Malcolm knew, he must. Mason knew, so therefore Malcolm must know. How could he take her to their marriage bed, make love to her, and celebrate each of her pregnancies knowing the truth? How deeply did this betrayal run?
    She found it, a dark blue leather book dated the year of Queen Esme’s death. Arianna sat on the floor, skirts askew, and flipped until she found the relevant passages.
    The words made her heart pound, her stomach flip. It was true.
    King Henry, deprived of a healthy wife and heirs, forced Queen Esme to go through more pregnancies, this time via IVF. His sanity broken, King Henry was determined that he would never let the line of Airric fail, so he felt more children was the answer. It was all done secretly, since no royal could be conceived through artificial means. Only through intercourse and unassisted, natural conception was a Cassian heir considered legitimate. It was written into law almost a hundred years ago, when the development of DNA technologies took off around the world. It was a law created as a measure to insure that only a true-blood Cassian could take the throne, so that no foreign blood could be inserted into the line in an attempt to usurp the crown.
    Queen Esme was implanted with an egg fertilized with the king’s seed, and forced on bed rest for each pregnancy. Queen Esme was forced to carry each child to term, then they were delivered via C-section. With each reluctant pregnancy and birth, she grew weaker and weaker.
    Edward was the last child she conceived and delivered naturally, before the disease began to kill her. All of the blood princesses, while the king’s daughters, were automatically disqualified from the line of succession because they were conceived via IVF, and so were all of their children as a result.
    Edward, last naturally conceived child, and the only one who wasn’t…..
    “King Henry will be most upset, sister,” a nasty voice interrupted her thoughts, and Arianna sat up sharply, eyes wide in