the haunted kingdom by Charles E.J. Moulton (snow like ashes txt) 📕

All the souls in the room were actually naked, bodiless creatures whose only aim was to serve her as objects to help her win the eternal game.
Lucinda saw everyone here as her permit to become an immortal demon.
The reason for the hunger was a lack of revenge.
Patrick was for once sitting with Erica on his lap. More than anything he was afraid of his own sexuality that this was the same emotion that he always felt. This physical hunger that Lucinda was displaying had nothing to do with sensual pleasures. This was raw animal hunting for prey. Lust for death and revenge was the goal. Patrick was still holding a turkey leg in his right hand and had been fondling his wife’s left breast with his hand. Now his left hand was down on his wife’s lap and that hand seemed to rest on that fruitful middle like a dog hoping to get away with stealing a bone.
Sieglinde had for years now been a woman simply concentrated on being a good matriarch. Her sometimes-sudden bursts of anger came seldom nowadays. When Lucinda finally did arrive, Sieglinde was reminded of the time when her sister-in-law had once lived here. Both of them had stayed away from one another at that time. Lucinda had never liked Sieglinde and the feeling was definitely mutual. The queen stood for the established mother role and the official regal duties. She wanted to be a queen, a mother, a woman of the established society.
Lucinda was everything the queen was not. The king’s sister questioned everything that was official taken for granted, that included the royal family. Born into the royal family, she was therefore like a virus in Eden. She was the original snake or a replica of the serpent that once was. Once Lucinda saw that she couldn’t accept anything that was told within the royal family she tried to work against all that they stood for and loved. Sieglinde was the key to the Winsletenna legacy. She was the breeder of ancestors. Both of them decided soon enough that they didn’t want to talk or socialize.
Sieglinde had left very soon after the fire had ruined the mansion. Lucinda had been thrown out very, very soon after that and Alexander had changed. He spent most of his time brooding and going to some meetings that he didn’t have to attend. Madeleine had been a blue-blooded entrepreneur of sorts and she had been what Alexander had wanted. She was a woman who asked no questions. She had heard what the king talked about and let him make ferocious love to her.
The queen knew that the entire affair was a result of Lucinda’s attack and eviction. That was also the reason why she forgave him so quickly. The relationship never recovered. Seeing Lucinda again was traveling back to that horrible night of 1392, but also to her own husband’s infidelity.
Her every feature consumed by dark hate, she sat there like a black cloud, a matriarch who had spent years trying to push her children to become good people. It was as if all of her work now was in vain just because this woman kept her promise.
Strong, mostly quiet, gorgeous, faithful and still bruised by her husband’s infidelity after thirty years; this was the tall, blonde oak keeping the family together.
Belinda and Steven were distraught, but there was very little fear there. It was more the fact that they had been surprised by her sudden appearance that had made both of them shiver. Not only hands, but also feet and arms and legs, were clenched together.
Faced with her fears, the crown princess studied the object of her terror as it slowly sank to the floor. The dress was settling down in its own breeze, fluttering. It was after the initial shock and her first scream that she saw what her aunt was wearing. It was her wedding dress in a perverse pitch-black rendition. The elevated derriere and the train were there. The tiara and the lace, the cleavage and the diamonds, they were all there at public display.
Without a word, as Lucinda Iuvinhurmya Winsletenna slowly sank to the floor, Belinda stood up from her chair next to her father’s erect place. Having chosen to wear her wedding dress for this last of feasts before the honeymoon trip to Urbania, there were comparisons to be made. It was almost a sickly lust that drove the princess to gaze at the woman from a closer distance, as if wanting to see a darker version of herself from a foot’s distance. How had she been able to duplicate this dress? Carlos hadn’t made a second one, she knew that and never in black. He was a man of light. He hated black.
Alexander watched his daughter stand up and walk around the table toward his sister.
Not a word was uttered. Some people were lined along the walls in agony; some sat on the floor, some had tripped and kept lying there. A few musicians had dropped their instruments. The Cocker Spaniel Henry had taken refuge in Patricia’s lap. Mormidar and Ulfaas were standing by the fireplace in the same position that they had stood in a moment ago, but now with their heads turned and their eyes open so wide the whites of each eye surrounded the black moon of their irises like a dark blooded ball of death dropped in snow. Almost everyone had uttered a short cry. Without exception everyone present had screamed and then grown very quiet very fast. This made the silence even quieter. Belinda was walking slowly up to this woman who was responsible for so much ill doing, in fact for ruining the peace of the kingdom. And Belinda’s peace!
Well, for her it was like opening up the head of Caligula or Nero just to see what really was inside. A shorter version of the train of the white wedding dress pulled behind the crown princess as she circled around the woman. Lucinda, now descended to the floor, remained calm through it all, very much like an art model that would remain still while an artist studied her for his upcoming sculpture.
Her weird dog kept bobbing its heads without even attempting to attack. Belinda looked at the dog with disgust, but at the sight of this woman she remained absolutely cold. She stopped in front of the woman. Face to face with her she cocked her head. Belinda just stood there for so long that everyone began to wonder if the king was going to say something to bring her back to the table. Belinda was close enough to look her aunt in the eye and yet far enough away not to be hit in the groin by one of Reficule’s ten constantly bobbing heads.
The sight that met the eyes of the court was almost a cliché to watch: the crown princess dressed in white facing the fears of her life dressed in a black version of her own wedding dress. The entire hall of never again feasting Bacchanals watched the duo with a mixture of utter fear and perverse anticipation.

What is going to happen?
My Lord, help her to walk away from that woman.
She is brave to even try that.
Who does she think she is to barge in like that.
Lucinda ought to be hanged.
No, she is immortal.
She is not.
Then hang her.
Hang her.

There was one point when the eyes of the two women met. At that moment, time seemed to stop and the auras of the two respective women grew. The dark one’s aura was equally big as the light one’s aura. The difference however was in the pressure. Lucinda’s had a personality built upon threats.
Belinda was a soul whose spirit seemed to thrive on movement and energy.
The words that were exchanged between them were so soft-spoken that no one but they could hear them, but it left a deep impression inside Belinda knew that she would remember this in years to come, never ever mentioning that it had ever happened, not even to herself.
“Why are you back here in a palace where you don’t belong?”
“I am back home to finish off what I didn’t start, my dear.” Lucinda murmured cynically.
“What did you run away from that you never ended?”
“I come back to mend the fact that I didn’t kill your father,” she spat. “If I had, you would’ve never been born. Believe me when I say that I am going to make your death slow and painful.”
Emotions stirred up inside Belinda at the sound of those words. There were cataclysmic feelings thundering and they were all screaming at the top of their lungs. Tears bottled up she wished to explode, kick her, beat her and call her names. Instead of doing that, she swallowed her pride and let that one tear roll down her cheek onto the floor before whispered:
”If you want to kill me, then you better be ready for to fight. I don’t give in easily. Ask anyone here. Ask my husband. He’ll tell you how well I can put up a fight.”
“I know you do.” Lucinda grinned. “I love to fight. I am looking forward to a good catfight.”
Belinda looked down at her hound. “What is that?”
“My pet.”
“Strange pet,” Belinda sneered in a whisper. “A hound fitting for a cat.”
“How so?” Lucinda spat. “Cats can’t scratch mutts?”
“Your weapons have never been as good as mine, bitch.”
“What magic powers do you possess that could equal mine?”
“The greatest magic of all,” Belinda mused. “The love of a family.”
Lucinda cackled amused and cynical.
“Belinda Winsletenna will die an old, happy woman.” Belinda said of herself. “Who will remember you? Who will stand at your grave and weep? Check mate. Your turn.”
Belinda gave her aunt one patronizing look and slowly went back to her place to sit down.
When Belinda did sit down, taking her husband’s hand, Lucinda turned to her brother and gave him a very strange grin. She had just been disarmed, but now she was recollecting her weapons.
Her grin was a weirdly erotic grin, appealing maybe to wolves.
She rattled Reficule’s leash and ordered him to sit.
There was a dreamlike atmosphere in the room and everyone seemed to move slower.
Alexander saw everything heightened in a way that he never had before. He heard Reland’s magical clock ticking although the clock was in a different part of the castle. He saw his family stunned, he saw Mormidar fall over and he saw the guests and the court push each other around. He saw Igalfur the drummer and Bantrard drop their instruments. But the only thing that Alex really could notice was Lucinda.
Alex sat down as if numb, plopping down into his cushioned chair of red velvet, his arms resting on the decorated dark mahogany seat. Figurines of trees, leaves and angels were positioned along the chairs middle and an eagle accompanied the crown that filled the center top. Sweat drops ran along his forehead like small squirrels chased by a wolf. They dropped onto the wood carvings on the chair. The king felt the breeze on his neck from an open window. His mind spoke.
“See that woman in the middle? She is your sister.”
“How can this be?” he answered himself. “This person doesn’t seem to have anything in common with me.”
“My heart is aching, my knee is aching. I don’t want her here. I never ever wanted her here.”
Sieglinde sunk her head into her husband’s purple velvet clad, caped shoulder.
Lucinda paced the hall, meticulously studying every face before she finally decided to stop in front of