Page 2 of Her Feral Beasts

She takes my hand in her red-nailed ones and frowns with delicate brows. “What is your anima, my dear?”

My voice is rough from a night spent smothering my sobs. “I am forbidden to say.”

Her eyes flick to the door, behind which my father waits. The phoenix then closes her eyes and everything about her changes.

The halogen lights flicker, a burning wind sweeps through the room and my vision narrows down to this one woman who holds my fate in her red nailed hands.

Her husky voice chants in a whisper, as if it’s a psalm for the Wild Mother herself, and I find myself swaying a little, enamoured by its dark cadence:

“Five devils are approaching.

Five black hearts are wanting.

It is five who cry a dark and lonely song, calling for their queen.

Lion, shark, dragon, wolf and…shadow.”

My stomach lurches into my throat. “Fivemates?” I croak. “Are you sure?”

She opens her eyes, and they are aflame with some kind of immortal power unique to her order. Her hand is a vise around mine. “Congratulations Aurelia, you are a regina to five animus’ beasts.” Her eyes bore into mine and her voice becomes light with wonder. “Dear girl, I wish you luck. Two are already in prison…but somehow that is the least of your worries.”

I leave her office feeling like I’m at sea, with my stomach turning, my legs shaking, clutching my stomach as if I can command it not to hurl.

“What did she say?” my father asks sharply, and I know I will never get used to this new, cold tone.

“F-five?” What am I even saying? But I know I heard her right because her prophecy is seared into my eardrums. Seared into my soul. “She said I have five black hearts calling for me.”

His eyes flash dangerously, and I know the oracle is in trouble now. My father abruptly turns on his heel and storms into her office.

“I want their names!” he roars. “All of them!”

Her reply is calm and cool. “I cannot give them to you, Your Majesty.”

My father kicks the office door shut and I can hear no more.

I shiver anxiously, touching the skin of my neck where my mating mark warms my skin in a way that should be comforting and full of golden hope.

Regina to five mates of different orders. Dear Goddess, it will give my new secret away. For the millionth time, I wish my mother was in the world of the living. She would know what to do.

Instead, all I have is my father, who returns fuming; dangerous and unable to speak.

I hope the Lady Phoenix is still whole.

When we return home, the maids take off my diamond earrings and necklace and put them away in a box that isn’t mine.

Rosalina whispers to me, her eyes flashing into slits and back to round again with the force of her emotion. “You are no longer princess of the Serpent Court, sweet child. You are no longer a member of the Naga household. You will live the rest of your life as an eagle, like your mother before you.”

“But other families keep children of different orders in their houses!” I exclaim. “Why can’t—”

“We arenotother families,” she hisses, pointing to the family crest above my fireplace. Two rearing cobras on a field of black, a crown between them, right above a cursive ‘N’. I know what she means. My father is a serpent purist; all other beasts are beneath him. And nowIam beneath him.

Rosalina hands me a dusty black duffle bag. “I am so sorry, sweetheart.”

I won’t find out that my father executed her until many years later. Both, she and the house staff who were there the day my anima was revealed.

That very same day, my father and his retinue drive me to Aunt Charlotte’s house, a smart double story house in a neat serpentine neighbourhood.

But they don’t take meintoher house. Instead, they drive around the side and far back into the compound where, under tall and scraggly trees, a tiny house sits like a weathered toad in the dark.

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