Page 64 of Queen Takes Rook
But she knew that Selena wasn’t my mother.
“Oh, yes.” Still chuckling, Keisha stepped over the burned remains of some of her Blood without a second glance and sat gracefully on her throne. “My very good friend and Triune queen, Marne Ceresa, was only too kind to warn me that you were not quite what we first thought. I’m sure I would have recognized the truth as soon as I saw you, but I’m grateful she passed along that little tidbit. Now that we have crossed swords and tested each other’s strength, let me lay the truth bare between us.
“Your mother,” she said each word like a curse, because she couldn’t say her name, “was my closest friend and ally at one time. Until she stabbed me in the back and crawled into the depths of hell to spawn you.”
I took a deep breath but didn’t dare blink or move. I didn’t want to betray my surprise. Esetta and Keisha Skye had been friends. That…
That didn’t compute.
I was only twenty-two. Keisha’s daughter had died decades before that. She’d have been torturing people. When my mother knew her. When they’d been friends.
Keisha had laid the geas on Zaniyah’s nest almost fifty years ago.
Had my mother known about that too? And done nothing?
Or, more likely, these were all the reasons my mother had taken the drastic step of wiping herself from Aima memory. So she could have me—and no one would know. In the vision I’d seen her hand me to her sister and say, “let her fly.”
Let me fly free. Away from an Aima court, where I could be twisted and corrupted like her friend.
The clang of metal drew my attention to a dark corner to my right. Chains clattered. Something rose from the shadows. Something large, that shuffled toward me, dragging chains across the marble.
Rik started to slide in front of me, but I stopped him with a quick shake of my head. I needed to see what… who… this was. My power vibrated with sudden intensity, tightening around us. Drawing us together.
Pulling him to me quicker.
He staggered out of the shadows, a broad-shouldered giant of a man even taller than Rik, though he was stooped by the weight of massive chains looped around his body. A leather hood was buckled over his head. He couldn’t see and could barely move, but he kept coming.
To me.
His head cocked, very bird-like, and he suddenly reminded me of a hooded, bound raptor.
“Isador?” He whispered, breathing so deeply I could hear it despite the hood that covered his entire face. “It is. My queen. You’ve come for me.”
He fell on his knees before me, bent forward, and touched the leather hood to my feet.
“Aw, how sweet.” Keisha’s voice sharpened to a cutting edge despite her words. “He recognizes you.”
I laid my fingers on his back and he straightened. “Who are you?”
He shuddered beneath my hand. “Llewellyn. Isador.”
“LlewellynSkye,” Keisha said with a vicious smile. “You see, when your dear mother decided to abandon everything to sire you, she left her Blood behind. I took pity on them and called them to my side. Most of them chose to follow your mother in death, but Llewellyn hung on all these years. I guess that’s why he was alpha.”
Tears spilled down my cheeks. My mother’s alpha? Chained and hooded and trapped in Keisha’s control my entire life? I fumbled the buckles open, loosened the straps, and pulled the hood off his head.
I gasped, covering my mouth with horror. His eyes. She’d taken his eyes. Only pink, wrinkled pits remained. His skin was pale and scarred, though his dark curly beard and hair were well trimmed. Someone was taking care of him at least occasionally. But why the fuck would they put this hood on him if they’d already blinded him? What was the point?
:To remind him of his place,:Rik said.:The same reason falconers use the hood and jesses. To control the raptor and break it to their hand.:
Llewellyn tipped his head forward and breathed deeply. “I don’t need eyes to know my queen’s blood.”
With power swirling around me, I focused on him. He glowed in the tapestry of my mind, the same as my Blood, only like flame rather than streams of lava. He still carried Isador blood. I could sense it winding through him. I heard weeping from a distance. Soft and mournful like a winter wind howling through the trees.
Esetta. For a moment, I could see her, a thin, wispy spirit of moonlight and shadow, laying her pale hands on Llewellyn’s cheeks as she pressed a kiss to his forehead.“I’m so sorry, Lew. So sorry. Forgive me.”
She looked at me, her black eyes suddenly blazing even as her form dissipated.“Heal him, daughter. Give him back his sight as you give him back his heart.”
I pressed my wrist to his mouth and he sank fangs into me so quickly that Keisha couldn’t stop us. She started to rise up from her throne, her eyes blazing with fury, but it was too late. He sucked me down like a man dying of thirst. Actually, he probably hadn’t fed in twenty years. Keisha had given him enough blood to bind his will to hers, and then locked him up.
