Page 101 of Rise of the Queen

“That might work actually,” Ivan said. “We send everything to her, she sends it to Andrei, then Stephen uses him instead of her.”

Sephie had walked to my side when she felt my anger coming on, trying to help me remain calm. “That could work,” she said, chewing on her lip.

“What are you thinking, princess?”Ivan asked silently.“You’re not convinced.”

“I don’t know yet. Something doesn’t feel right about that. It doesn’t feel right about me helping Stephen either, for the record, so don’t yell at me for trying to find a way to make that happen. I’m not,”she responded. Ivan couldn’t keep the laugh in. Everyone knew he was having another conversation with Sephie that they weren’t privy to.

“She’s trying to figure it out. She said something feels off about Andrei helping, but she said it also feels off if she helps. She told us not to yell at her,” I said, kissing her temple.

Misha got his faraway look in his eye for a moment. He looked right at me when he came back to the present. “It needs to be you, Boss. I don’t think Sephie needs to help at all either. You’ve got enough ‘fuck you’ power when it comes to Armando that Stephen won’t need anyone else.” Sephie looked at Misha as he was talking. His wide smile stretched across his face. “Sephie agrees,” he said, pointing to her.

I turned her around so I could look at her. Her purple eyes were the first thing I saw. “That settles that then,” I said.

Stephen, who had been quiet for most of this conversation, stood up and walked over to Sephie. “When you helped me with my sisters, I gave you all of my memories of them so youcould give it back to them. Only I didn’t know it was me, but whatever. I’m going to need you to do that with your memories of Armando. I don’t have enough on my own to break him. I need your memories too.” He looked at her seriously. “I need everything, Seph, which means you’re going to have to uncover it one last time.”

I could feel her starting to worry, but she was so far keeping it under control. “How did you package it up for me? And whenever I give it to you is when you’re breaking Armando. You’re not walking around with all of that for any longer than you have to,” she said.

Stephen looked at me, raising an eyebrow. “We can do it now, if you want to. One less thing for me to worry about,” I said.

He looked back to Sephie. “Think about taking everything, the memories, the feelings, even the way your body shakes in response to being alone now, and putting all of that into a container to give to me. I especially want you to concentrate on the fear you still struggle with containing. He needs to feel that. He needs to know that feeling intimately for the rest of his days.” He was watching her as he was talking. I was fairly sure her eyes were swirling, as her emotions were all over the place and Stephen couldn’t look away.

I turned her to face me, pulling her completely in front of me. Her hands immediately began to fidget with the buttons on my shirt. “We can do it whenever you’re ready, love. It doesn’t have to be now,” I said softly. “Ivan and the Wonder Twins can stay with you up here and then I’ll be right back. Somehow I don’t think it’s going to take long.”

Her brow furrowed. I could feel her body literally disagreeing with me. “No, I give him everything outside the room. I’m telling you, he doesn’t need to hold on to this very long. They can stay with me outside the room, but I at least need to go that far. Ivancan put his bubble up and cut me off from hearing anything.” I glanced to Misha, who confirmed what she’d just said.

She glanced back at Stephen. “Do you want to do it now?”

“No time like the present to go fumbling through the dark,” Stephen said, grinning at her. She looked at everyone else, who were all in agreement to make it happen now.

“Do you want my hatred for Giana too? I mean, I want to make sure you have enough material,” Misha asked, grinning at Stephen.

Outside the room where we kept Armando, Ivan told the guards to take a very long break, then cut the cameras off once they were gone. Sephie still felt nervous, but also determined. On the elevator down, I caught her silently talking to Andrei. They had a signal they gave each other to indicate that the other should fish in their head. Once we were outside the room, she glanced at him, then looked at Stephen.

“Yoden, I’m really sorry for what I’m about to give you,” she said. She looked at me, then to Ivan. “If he falters in there, do what you did with me the other night with Ilya. He might not, because he can handle cold much easier than I can, but just in case, you need to send him everything right away.”

She then looked at Stephen, saying, “If you do falter, it’s going to come after you as a last-ditch effort. Let them protect you the same way they would me. It’s going to feel like you got hit with a wall of fire, but just remember to breathe.”

She stepped away from me, taking Stephen’s hand and pulling him with her. She dropped his hand and took in a deep breath. “Give me a second,” she said, closing her eyes.

I could feel everything she was going through as she relived everything with Armando. It was brief, but it was intense. All the fear, the betrayal, the heartbreak both for her and for Giana, the anger, she went through all of it, trying to contain it to give it to Stephen. “I’m sorry,” she said as she grabbed his hand.

Stephen doubled over like someone had just sucker punched him in the stomach, letting out something between a loud exhale and a groan. She didn’t let go of his hand, trying to help him stay upright. I could see tears streaming down her face as she watched him feel everything she had felt. He sucked in a sharp breath, standing up. His face was red and his eyes were somewhat wild. It almost looked like his bloodlust was coming to the surface. It took him a moment of holding onto Sephie before he finally gained some of his composure back. He looked to Misha, saying, “I’ve got plenty, dude. We’ll figure out what to do with your hatred for Giana later.”

Sephie tried to smile, but it only made more tears fall. He looked back at her, putting his hand on her cheek. “Don’t worry, Seph. I can handle it. You shouldn’t have to anymore,” he said, kissing her forehead. He glanced at me and motioned toward the room where Armando was being kept.

Ivan walked to Sephie, wrapping his massive arms around her. I watched her hide her face in his chest as we closed the door behind us. Once she was out of sight, I let my anger take over. Stephen needed it to break Armando and I wanted Armando’s last conscious moments to be nothing but terror as he looked at my black eyes.

Armando’s eyes got wider as he took in the sight before him. Stephen was intimidating in his own right when his bloodlusttook over. Then you add in me and I’m surprised Armando didn’t piss himself. I had been keeping him restrained, mostly just because I still had moments where I couldn’t get the image of Sephie with her wrists tied behind her out of my head and I wanted him to know that discomfort as long as possible.

I would give him periodic breaks from it. Just when he got used to not being restrained, that’s when I’d have him tied to the chair again for days on end. His memory had never been the best. I wanted to make sure he could easily remember the feeling.

Now, however, he was on a break. He was free to move away from us, but his fear kept him firmly in place. He was seemingly frozen in the chair, his eyes shifting nervously from me to Stephen and back again. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

Stephen was staying remarkably calm, despite struggling with everything Sephie had just given him. He walked closer to Armando. “Do you want to know what’s about to happen?” he asked. Any time Stephen would use psychology as a weapon, his voice got a certain tone to it. Almost like he was mocking the person, but in the most sinister way possible.

Armando kept looking between me and Stephen, which caused Stephen to glance back at me. “Oh, I know what you want to know first. You want to know why his eyes are black. Allow me to explain. You see, you made a deal with a demon. There’s a very slight chance you might not have known you did, as intelligence was never your strongest attribute, but it was ultimately because you’re so weak that you couldn’t fight off the evil. Either way, you have a demon that’s been riding you for years.” Armando kept looking at me while Stephen was talking. His eyes were pleading with me to save him as some part of him realized what was about to happen.

Stephen continued, “Now you shouldn’t feel too bad about being such weak sauce that a demon got in. Happens to lots of people. Happened to Boss, as a matter of fact. The only difference is, Boss made his demon work for him. Which makes him infinitely more powerful than you’ll ever be.” Stephen paused to let Armando comprehend what he’d just said. “See, your soul tried to take the easy way out of life. It tried to skip ahead quite a few levels, but it did so in the most evil way possible. It meant that innocent people had to die, which can’t go unpunished. That’s where I come in. My job is to make sure your soul spends the rest of your very long life learning to never, ever do that again. I’m going to make sure neither one of you leave that body until that body dies from very, very old age.”

---