Page 30 of Queen Takes Queen
“And Shara’s in the middle ofit.”
Ezra made a low sound, softer than his normal grunt of disgust. Almost a hum. I hid a grin. He already had a soft spot for Shara, and no shit, whowouldn’t?
“When you came after us, did you know she’d call you to beBlood?”
“Fuck, no. But as I got closer, I felt her more than you, and the urgency kept hammering through me like Rik was using my skull for ananvil.”
He’d come after me, not to be Blood, and he’d called mefamily.
Guilt churned in my stomach. I had pretty much turned my back on him when I came to Skye… and I hadn’t ever treated him like family either. Even after he’d fedme.
Fostering young Aima with other houses was a carryover tradition from the medieval period. It was supposed to assure that political alliances were upheld, but also to keep the blood and power fresh. If a house only ever fed on their own bloodlines, the magic got stale over time, or so the general thinking went. Some scholarly types even theorized that was why queens didn’t conceive very often any longer. The magic was too thin, the bloodlines too tired, weakened over the generations agesago.
But no one ever really acknowledged that you could have a seriously difficult time in a new court as a foster. Primarily, finding someone willing to feed you the first couple of times in order to give you the queen’s blood that made you part of her court. When I first moved to New York City, I’d never expected to be an important member of Skye’s court. My home court wasn’t extremely powerful, though old and respected, and my mother only one of our queen’s minor sibs. But I had displayed enough promise and worked hard enough at political etiquette, that our queen had made arrangements for me to join Ezra in HouseSkye.
She hadn’t wanted me to be alone. Looking back, I wondered why Ezra had been sent. Alone. How difficult a time he must havehad.
It’d shocked the hell out of me when no one cared whether I fed or not. Here I was in this new politically powerful court, eager to learn, ready to please, and not one single fucking person would even think about offering throat. Maybe new fosters weren’t looked upon with suspicion at other courts, but in House Skye, no one trusted anyone else. Relationships were slow to develop. WithoutRik…
Guilt twisted harder in my gut. Because once I had Rik, I’d never spared a second thought for Ezra. I’d never made sure he was well-fed, or had a place of safety if he’d neededit.
“Um—”
“Don’t,” Ezra bit off the word. “The past is thepast.”
“But—”
“Do you ever fucking listen to a word anyone says toyou?”
“Nope,” I said lightly, though my eyes burned. “You should know me better than that.” In fact, other than Rik, Ezra probably knew me better than anyone, which made my betrayal all theworse.
“It wasn’t a fucking betrayal, you imbecile,” he retorted gruffly as he bent down under a fallen log and dragged out a rucksack. “You did nothingwrong.”
“The fuck I did nothing wrong. I did everything wrong.” He stared up at the moon, avoiding my gaze. But he listened, and so I was going to have my say. “You took care of me when I came to Skye, and then I fucking forgot you the first chance Ihad.”
He shrugged, still not meeting my gaze. “You had a great opportunity. I would have gotten the fuck out too if Icould.”
“Then I should have taken you withus.”
He huffed out a laugh. “Yeah, right. Big and tough would have loved dragging my obstinate, grumpy ass around. I never faulted you for seeking out a promising young alpha to be your protector. Though the chances of any alpha surviving long in that court werenil.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, my chest aching. “I fuckedup.”
“Don’t be sorry on my account. You were smart. You did what you needed in order to survive. I could have been smarter. I could have been nicer to people. I could have tried to make friends. But that’s not mystyle.”
“Why did our queen send you to House Skye in the first place?” He started walking back toward the nest without answering, faster than we’d come out this way. I hurried to catch up. “Ezra?”
He jerked to a halt. “To get me away fromyou.”
I couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d pulled a shotgun out of the rucksack and blasted me with a full barrel right in the stomach. “What?”
“Our queen called our mothers together and decided it’d be best if I fostered sooner, rather than later, to give you time to develop on your own, without myinfluence.”
Bewildered, I searched the craggy lines of his face. “But we were best friends. We got into some trouble, yeah, but nothing bad enough to get you sent away. Why would they dothat?”
He jerked his head toward me, eyes blazing. “Because I fucking loved you, Daire. I was getting obsessed with you, and an obsessed Ursula without his queen to help control his urges is not a good thing. They were afraid I’d maul you accidentally if we didn’t get somedistance.”
I didn’t know what to say. It’d been so long ago. We’d been young. Friends. Roaming the mountains and woods, skipping out of the nest when we weren’t supposed to like wild hooligans. I’d been fifteen, maybe sixteen, when Ezra left. He would have been eighteen or twenty—I couldn’t remember our age difference exactly. For Aima, we’d beenbabies.
