The winter was deep but with the kings birthday just around the corner everyone was busy with something. Alaera, the kings wife and now a crowned queen gazed out from her patio into the snow. She was dressed in red silks. Smiling to herself she slipped off her slippers and stepped out into the cold air. She walked into the snow feeling it melt between her toes until she reached a spot just out of view of the world and busy castle behind her. The snow was thin here and she could easily kick up dead leaves but she was careful not to. Then she lay out, stretching out her arms and gazing up and the sky. The sun was out today and only a few clouds dusted the sky. The cold felt so good against her skin, many thought her a witch to enjoy such a thing. She wasn't sure why herself, but she loved laying in the snow with little to protect her from the cold. It tightened her skin any ways, and she had to keep up her beauty, she was a queen after all.

She lay quietly, waiting for someone she knew would come. Someone that met with her often and she could speak her mind to. Someone that wouldn't give away her secrets even if it meant his death. She reached up brushing her fingers over a red and silver pendant, he had given it to her and not a day went by without her wearing it. She licked her lips and let out a tiny little sigh. She felt safe here, she felt right here in the snow, hidden from everything but those that knew her best. Her soft brown eyes moved to look to a rustle in the bushes. Was this him she wondered, he was always so quiet when he reached her in these private meetings it was hard to tell. She didn't realize she was holding her breath in anticipation.

He could move over most surfaces effortlessly, but snow was tricky and dangerous, it left tracks. At the same time, he had a good excuse for meeting the Queen alone; a groom, in loosely-fitted, plain clothes, warm and stout, was often employed as a messenger, and he'd come with her from her father's country in such a role. It may have been a message of great import. In any case, he still moved lightly on his feet, leaving little trace of his passing in the snow. Months had passed since the wedding, and he'd spent the time tending to his job quietly, even as he developed workplace relationships with the castle's denizens, building a network of people that owed him favors or otherwise were well-disposed toward him. That was, after all, part of his other duty.

This new castle was a surprisingly open place; laughter, light and lots of joviality. He'd grown up in a different environment, a harder one, but he mimicked the joviality well. It was a place of easy going people, and the predator in him smelled the blood in the water. And he knew the Queen was from the same sort of environment-- her father was a bastard, steeped in plotting and the pursuit of power, often for its own sake. This meeting in the frigid night bore that handiwork.

He took a quick glance around as he made his approach, ensuring that there weren't followers or watchers, though this place was full of trusting people -- they didn't suspect the dagger in their midst and saw no need to wonder who the Queen was meeting and why. No one bothered to suspect a groom of anything, which he found hard to believe. He'd been taught to guard against anything.

Even queens.

He stepped into the moonlight and laid a hand against the queen's back, as if to signal that he was there, behind her. Perhaps to let her know that he could make the approach on her as well. As if to say, do not take me lightly.

But the words that came out of his mouth were;

"Your grace, you summoned me?"

Alaera was never certain on how she should feel about his uncanny ability to sneak up on her. She faced him with a soft smile and offered him her hand. She did rather love that she could still play her games with him and he would have to oblige her, even in a setting such as this in case eyes did fall on them. She stepped close to him so to whisper in his ear as he kissed her hand. "The king desires I give him an heir.." She tilted her head. Her hands were icy cold, but her breath was still warm against his ear. "I have no desire to allow him to do such a thing to me. I need a bit of a distraction for some time from that." In the months she had been wed to the king, he had only managed to get himself between her legs once, the day they were wed. Since then she had been very careful not to be in a situation where such a thing could happen again. She had more control leaving a man wanting any ways.

She pulled away looking around before walking with him. standing in one place, even she knew better than to do. "You've seen how the men are with me." She took his arm as if he was escorting her through the frozen gardens. "I grow tired of men wishing to undress me. Men hardly worthy of their wives let alone me." Alaera was always high on herself. How she looked, how she carried herself. All of it mattered, every moment it mattered because for her, her looks were a great deal of her power. She could make men do as she wished and she often did. He had seen it before and he had seen her kiss a man as she killed him. Women on the other hand could be a challenge for her, but more often than not she could get a man to resolve that problem. She was making her normal loop around the frozen garden, something one was to expect when she met with her grooms-man. "Suggestions?"

Once he was done kissing her hand, he gave a momentary thought to the problems, "The first is simple; if he becomes insistent, there are things you can take to make you seem ill. The effects will pass, but he will not want you that night. As to the other...which one of these fellows is the one that should set the example?"

It was just as well that things got under way, but a part of him often wondered if he might not be able to leave this place on his own some time. But the King, he would have a servant hunted down for such a thing. There was the matter of the pendant around the Queen's neck as well. It was a chain on him as much as it was ornamental jewelry, binding him. The winterscape around them was silent -- snow fell gently and without wind to stir it, so it came straight down. So he was able to speak softly; that and he used his hand to help block his mouth-- it seemed a silly precaution in such a trusting place, and yet he knew that soon, the place might not remain such for very long...

Alaera thought carefully, a normal woman would frown but not her. "I'll do that for the first few nights. But I have a desire for that." She stopped looking up at a tree. "I will have to give him an heir, father wishes it." She released his arm, putting a hand over her stomach. "I have no desire to carry such blood in me." She said suddenly, coldly. Her eyes narrowed. "You carry a few features of the king. I didn't simply pick you for your skills." She smiled a little. Of course since she had known him she had been keeping secret of her attraction to him. She had been a princess after all though, she had known her role to wed someone she didn't like every moment of that day. Of course it wasn't hard to have a few features that matched the king, he was a simple looking man with no features that made him clearly stand out other than the crown that sat on his head.

She reached up and stole a touch of his cheek. She knew that it was a dangerous game to play but she also knew where the guards stood and when they were hidden. But there was always that chance. "Come to my private rooms through the back tunnels when you've killed a man for me. Think you could rid me of the captain tonight? He's made every effort to lay his hands on me and I'm tired of his fish eyes." There was venom on her tongue as she spoke, if she wasn't under a watchful eye frequently she would have killed the man herself.

"I think I can make it so that both things will happen." He assured her, and then he was already stepping back, receding into the frigid night.

---

"A message for you from the Queen, sir," he told the captain, with a lot more deference in his manner than he felt; the Captain was a man wearing plate armor, very intricate and gilded in places, polished quite lovingly. Bet you have a servant that gets the back of your hand if he misses a spot, don't you?

"Yes," the captain replied brusquely, "Well out with it, lad!"

He shuffled his feet in apparent discomfort and didn't look the man in the eyes -- a meek servant didn't do such things after all, "Well, uh, she said...uh..." he gulped a bit under the withering gaze of the captain, "She'd like to see you in private, but in the Royal nursery."

Such was empty and unused, the sort of place where privacy could be had.

"What for?" the captain demanded, while obviously a certain idea or two occurred to him.

"I couldn't say milord," he told the captain humbly, "but she swore me to secrecy."

"Then don't say anything of this, oaf," the captain suggested as he strode off, "It wouldn't do to keep the Queen waiting, especially since she's waiting for me." He said that with a suggestive growl to his voice, and a swagger to his walk, as if he were about to be crowned king by virtue of riding the Queen.

---

It actually took several hours for anyone to notice ought amiss with the Captain of the Guard, because no one under him was all that eager to find him. Eventually, however, the King called for his loyal guardian...and when he did not respond to the summons, the King had the palace searched. When they did find him, it looked as the knight had slipped and fallen on the stone floor of the Nursery and hit the back of his head on some furniture on the way down, a fatal and unpleasant accident. The knock caused his head to swell, while he lay there, trapped on his back in his armor. When he tried to vomit, it choked him.

A terrible accident, they said, not realizing that the spell that put grease all over the floor of the room had expired long since, along with any evidence of foul play.

In this time, the Servant played his role as a groom, and even helped in the search. That, of course, was whe he took it upon himself to search the back tunnels to the Queen's chamber. He padded through the darkness, feeling his way by fingertip and memory, before emerging from behind a statue in her chambers, "It's done. The King will no doubt be too distressed at the loss of his great friend to be overly concerned with the demands of marital duty tonight."

Alaera waited patiently for the events to unfold. She looked at herself in the mirror, her soft skin almost flawless. Her lips thick and painted red. She was obsessed with how she looked. But she had secrets, her eyes hid them well but she knew deep down they were there. The king had come to visit her chambers before he had noticed the lack in his captain. She had faked being ill and was glad it had rid herself of him. She didn't love him and being forced into this situation made her hate him. She pulled a dagger from her hair that had been neatly hidden away. She frequently had several daggers on her, small ones but long enough to pierce a man's heart and sharp enough to slit his throat. She was an assassin herself after all, but she was playing a game with an entire kingdom not just a single man.

Just as her hair fell, uncurling from the tight style she had it in before she continued to watch herself in the mirror. She saw the slight shift in the curtains as the door opened to the hidden tunnels from her room. She rose and faced her assassin and smiled. "Hopefully that will keep him busy for a few nights." She spoke softly. Then she walked up to him and caressed his cheek. One of her secrets was him, she hadn't even told him, but it was growing and growing quickly. An attraction to a man she couldn't have, but she had spent her night thinking, debating. Her hand was soft, they weren't hands of a labourer. She stepped closer to him so he could feel her warm body close to his, then she tilted her head. "Lex, give me a child." She almost begged him, a show of her lack in control. Normally she was unshakable in her emotions even in the hate to her father and mother. But when she spoke with him, more and more frequently her real emotions showed. "Give me a child and we will claim it's the kings, I can not bare his child no matter the reason." She bit her lip as she looked him in the eyes before making the move of stealing that first kiss, a kiss she had never truly given willingly.

"It's not a good idea," he told her, once she stole her kiss, "especially if you become large with a baby without having had the man in your bed recently." But there was a terror there -- his own response, which he set about ruthlessly repressing. Of a certainty, the biological imperative was strong, but also of a certainty was the self-preservational instinct that whispered 'not yet' in his mind's ear.

Just as clearly, he knew he was chained to this place and so was she, chained to her father, one king, and her husband, another. There was no escape from that. But surrounded by the eyes and ears, they had to move carefully. He stepped back, broke the embrace, even.

"We can't do that, not now, not with the king watching and not with his people entrenched here. If we did that, I would be killed, you would be killed, the child would certainly be killed." It was so clear, really, standing there in the royal chambers, surrounded by all the finery.

"What we can do is start by bribing the servants and turning them into our people, rather than his. Then we can move more freely...do more." He told her, with a degree of ruthless certainty in his voice.

Alaera frowned just slightly as he pulled away. She knew he was right but she didn't like it. She reached out and squeezed his hand then let it go just as quickly. She was talking of something forbidden for everyone involved. Her eyes closed as she collected herself again. He could see a small tear just as she turned away. She may have been controlling him but she was just as bound. She dried her eyes on the back of her fingers and without looking at him she spoke. "Do what has to be done. I will buy myself as much time as I must from the king. I can not bring myself to have his child." Her stomach was turning at the thought. "I'd rather die." Those words came out abruptly and she covered her mouth as she spoke them. Then her hand moved to the pendant around her neck and she squeezed it.

"I know you're just as bound as me here." Her voice stayed barely above a whisper. "But you've seen what my father is capable of. We both fear him. I wouldn't put it past him to have someone here ready to kill us if we dare turn against him." She looked at him again, she was sad, and showing it. For once she was showing something she didn't show, in all the time she'd been here, all the time she prepared for this, he'd never seen her actually cry. Very quickly she stepped away and grabbed a tiny handkerchief using it to dab away the tears that made her make-up smear.

"Start by replacing your maids," Lex told her, "because the ones you have are probably watching. Find good reasons to fire them, frame them if you must, but they are the ones watching you for your husband. Once you have your own maids, we will see to the rest." With that, he departed from the chambers, back the way he came -- the back passage.

While she was dealing with her maids, Lex had other plans for himself -- he knew who was drinking and who had women on the side and who was in debt. A simple thing, really, to subvert such from the inside. The castle may have seemed a happy place, at least to the lords who lived in it, but the servants tended to go unnoticed, and their woes unseen. Their problems were ignored. And that was Lex's opening.

It was all a question of where to start. The groom pondered this as he headed back into the stables, even as the rest of the castle was still reacting in shock and dismay over the Captain's death. Away from Alaera, he was able to sit down and plot out his first approaches, who he would speak to first. Once he started making a list of people and their vulnerabilities, it turned out that there were quite a few -- a slack palace like this didn't lack for philanderers, drunkards and debtors, after all...

Alaera did her own work. She started blaming her maids for making her feel sick. She would frequently throw tantrums and purposefully stopped her beauty regiment to make herself look ill. She was clever, finding new ways to blame her maids. A few simply vanished. Lex had never seen any bodies though, even though more than likely they were dead. But they had no family so no one would come looking. She was doing very well for herself. She was bringing in her own women now, women she could trust. She was even bringing her own doppelgänger in. But she wasn't here yet and that was becoming a problem.

She sat that night at the dinner table next to the king. She was forcing herself out for the funeral of the captain. She had done herself up with the aid of her new ladies. Of course now that she had replaced most of them she couldn't be as sick. An unfortunate matter. She could feel the king undressing her with his eyes and she cringed inside. She was running out of time. The hall had been open to everyone, servants and nobles. Nobles sat up on the upper level of the dinning hall and the servants and peasants down in the dirt bellow. Alaera's eyes drifted over the men bellow them, she sat only second to the king. She was in black today, but the red pendant around her neck sat between the curves of her chest. She let her eyes fall on Lex, careful not to smile as she made a sort of knowing look at him, catching his eyes before moving on to look at all of the men and women.

Before dinner was finished she was pulled away from the table by the king. The men laughed and raised their glasses to the king, knowing what would happen behind closed doors. Alaera looked over her shoulder as she was pulled away to Lex. But she looked confident before she vanished into the kings chambers. A sweet little maid approached Lex once Alaera had vanished. "M'lady asks for your presence in her chambers. She requests you bring her fresh blood." She whispered in his ear as if she was flirting with him. This maid was one of Alaera's, she was a very good actress.

In the kings chamber Alaera watched the king making out with a large pillow and tried not to laugh. Her focus had to remain as she weaved her spell. She made sure this ended quickly, spells like this were difficult and took too much concentration. When she was finished she left his chambers, slipping through the back tunnels. When she was but a few feet from her door she dropped to her knees. She gasped and held her chest. That spell had taken too much, she couldn't even reach her room. She felt her head spinning and her vision blurred. "Lex.." she whimpered and struggled for air, grabbing her pendants, she couldn't use magic to call for him.