Page 22 of Gemini Queen
A ripple of shock darts through my brain and rivets my feet to the floor.
“Dead?What do you mean? Not, like, dead dead?” I latch onto the certainty this has to be either some crazy mix-up or a figure of speech. I hate the little shit who calls himself my brother and I always will, but he’s way too powerful a warlock to kill.
If he wasn’t, I would have killed him myself.Thanks for the fucked-up childhood, bro.
“Someone among the arcane races wanted them dead. There were several attempts, though neither Damien nor Cybelle took the danger seriously. Despite the Academy’s formidable protections, that individual finally succeeded.” The shifter’s words, soft and steady in my ear, shatter all my hopes about a mix-up. “Zarina Selene Gemini, you’ve just become the last purebred female of breeding age in all four of the arcane races with enough powerful witchcraft to take the throne. This reality makes you the witching world’s future queen. Our queen. The Gemini queen.”
I can’t seem to move, and I’m afraid if I try my legs might buckle. But thankfully I can still speak.
“I don’t want to be queen.” My words come out in a whisper, but I amp up the volume to make my meaning crystal effing clear. “I don’t want it! I’veneverwanted it.”
“I’m afraid your wishes in this particular matter are no longer relevant,” Lucius informs me gently. “If the witching world is to survive, if we’re to reverse our magical decline and bolster our dwindling numbers for the next generation, you’re the only option we have left. At the Icarus Academy, you’ll become the powerful witch and queen our world requires to flourish rather than merely endure. You’ll hone your power, embrace your heritage, and claim your mate.”
The blood’s pounding behind my eyes and roaring in my ears. My hair lifts all the way off my shoulders and swirls around my head like I’m underwater.
“I just told you, I don’t want to be queen. And I definitely don’t want a fucking mate! Didn’t you get that memo?” And now I’m shouting, all that power I hate and fear echoing in my voice like bronze bells tolling. “I rejected the one they wanted me to take. Just walked away and vanished in the wind and not one of you could find me for five whole years. First chance I get, I’ll do the same damn thing all over again.”
Ronin’s staring at me like he’s never seen anything like me, and I’m staring back, but the guy’s such a cipher I can’t tell whether he’s feeling sympathy or disgust. Or maybe he’s just startled by the lightning voice—that’s what they call it, that voice I’m using without having any ability to control it, because a Gemini can call lightning with that voice. Or else he’s freaked by the eerie violet glow that’s leaking through my clenched fists.
If I were any less furious, I’d be pretty alarmed myself. I’m an air sign, I’m on a damn airplane, and my power is rising. If I’m not careful, I’ll crash this plane. Right now, that feels like it could be a real option.
Either way, Ronin leaves it to Lucius to lower the boom.
“I fear that won’t be permitted,” the shifter says with finality. “We’ll teach you. We’ll protect you. We’ll worship you. But we’re your destiny, Zarina Gemini, and it’s a destiny we’ll never allow you to escape.”
My heart turns to stone in my chest. The bottom drops from my stomach with a sickening pitch.
Every unpalatable truth he’s telling me seeps through my skin like acid, burning as it eats through me, dissolving my life and my freedom. That hot purple glow creeps up my arms. A sudden wind blows a stack of papers off the desk and sends them whirling through the air. My whole body starts tingling like I just jacked into a live socket.
That’s the exact feeling of the world I’ve spent a whole quarter of my lifetime building…
Crumbling to rubble under my feet.
Chapter Ten
Vasili
By the time Lucius and Ronin land on the island airstrip and arrive at Villa Augustus with the Gemini queen, it’s nearly dawn.
And I’ve just finished plotting how I’m going to make this new queen suffer the way I did the last.
Despite the abysmal hour, my entire cohort’s still awake, scattered around the central living space in ourdomus. Frost rimes the sliding doors that open on the peristyle garden and the turquoise gleam of the heated swimming pool beyond. A brisk fire crackles in the round central hearth to ward off the winter chill.
Racetrack and Dez are cuddled up on the Renaissance sofa with its high back and scrolling arms, poring over the same textbook, painting each other’s toenails and cramming for their Genetics of Witchcraft midterm. Neo’s claimed the big desk in the study nook—no shocker there—and surrounded his obnoxious self as usual with piles of books and reams of paper. There he slaves away at some tiresome research project for another paper he’s invariably going to ace.
I’m sprawled on the VIP leather settee before the fire, taking full advantage of my status as the alpha in thisdomusto dominate the space and sharpening my knives.
Literally.
The Aquarius queen lived her short but hateful life in daily terror of the brace of knives I wear in hidden and not-so-hidden sheaths strapped to my body.
I fully intend that the Gemini queen do the same.
The tramp of footsteps in the atrium brings Neo to his feet like the rustic fool he is, betraying the hold the fugitive queen has over his stupid heart before she’s even arrived. He’s wearing his entire soul on his offensively gorgeous face, eyes green as poison wide and shining with anticipation behind his stylish dark-rimmed glasses, his sculpted visage all flushed and eager, that ridiculously buff body all but humming with excitement under the merlot cashmere sweater with the Academy crest stretched across his chest.
That shade of red ought to look absurd against the mane of violently magenta hair that grazes his broad shoulders. It positively ought to hurt my eyes to look at him.
The fact that it doesn’t, that he manages somehow to pull off these hideous colors, is one more offense I hold against him.
