Page 2 of Psycho Beasts

But it didn’t really matter anyway.

Nothing did.

My nails scraped with increased fervor.

“Are you okay?” Lucinda asked softly, her brow furrowed with concern.

I gave her my practiced court smile and pumped my voice with sunshine and rainbows. “I’m fine.”

My face hurt from the weight of pretending.

I’d learned how to appear happy, long before I’d learned how to actually be happy.

I gave Lucinda the smile I gave the elite fae when they told me I was a powerless scum. When they asked my mother how much it cost to breed me. When my mother set me on fire for the billionth time.

The fake smile that had fallen from my face when the woman who’d birthed me had done the unthinkable.

What had happened was too fucked up to process, but I’d somehow relived it a thousand times in two days.

Blue flames.

Everywhere.

Writhing facedown on the marble palace floor as my mother ordered the guards to hold me there.

This part was normal. Expected. It was practically our routine. They held me down while she set me on fire, and I screamed.

What came next was anything but.

Mother’s voice dripped with the condescension she only reserved for me. “You dirty little whore. You really think I’d just let you sully our name one more time? After you ran away like a coward?”

Gone was the ruthless fae queen.

In her place was a terrifying creature—an angry mother.

A woman who had everything to lose and nothing to gain. Who’d been forged into a deadly weapon in the five centuries she’d ruled over the fae realm from the seat of death.

She was the longest ruler in fae history.

There was always someone younger, brighter, more powerful, ready to usurp a monarch.

Except they couldn’t best her.

She didn’t maintain her position through luck or sheer power.

No.

Every single move Mother made was calculated to keep maximum control over her massive kingdom, including her daughter.

With hushed whispers and stolen glances, they called her the mad queen.

She liked the name.

The worst part was she wasn’t wrong about me. I had run from the realm, and I had gone to the sex clinic, knowing “purity” was prized above all else in the realm.

I hadn’t even lost my virginity, and still the half warriors had dragged me to her.

Back to my reckoning.

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