Page 18 of Queen Takes Checkmate
:Virginia Athos:Llewellyn whispered in my head. The other queen he’d warned me about.
“Not yet,” Alessandra replied. “She sees something lurking deep in the background that Keisha doesn’t want anyone to know. She needs us to find out what it is first. But then, House Skye will be mine.”
She turned toward Llewelyn and gasped, her eyes flaring with shock. “What are you doing here? Where the fuck is that hood? Your handler?”
“I was told to wait here until she returned,” he replied.
Someone approached from behind him. “Fucking nuisance,” a woman retorted and jammed something down over his head. Darkness replaced the image on the ceiling.
I glanced down at his face, but he didn’t move. He continued staring up at the ceiling with his glowing eyes, so I looked back, waiting for the memory to continue. His past emotions still flickered through me. His gift was extraordinary. I could feel his rage bubbling through him. He hated the hood. He hated the handler. He hated every single person in Skye Tower. He raged silently, eager to kill and feast and kill some more. Yet he had a purpose. He was to wait, and watch, and be ready.
For me.
He was sent to capture every single thing he could with his gift, so I would have the background information I needed when the time came. Keisha must have known about his gift, though, so I wasn’t sure how many memories he would have captured if they’d kept him hooded.
I wasn’t sure how much time passed. It was long enough that I started to get a crick in my neck from staring up at the ceiling. I heard shuffling and the quiet whisper of clothing. I glanced over at Alessandra. She’d tried to slink away, but Guillaume and the twins had blocked her path.
Voices played from above, drawing my attention back to it, though the image was still black.
Alessandra’s voice echoed down from the ceiling. “I’m surprised that you’ve been willing to keep him around so long, given his dangerous ability to spy on you.”
The blackness was replaced with Keisha Skye sitting on her throne. Llewelyn must have been on his knees in front of the dais, looking up at her. The image shook briefly, and I felt a surge of fury roar through him so viciously that he trembled. He hated her. He wanted to kill her. His mouth watered at the thought of tearing her throat out. Yet he said nothing.
“He has his uses,” Keisha replied with a shrug. Her lips curled with a hint of smug amusement. “Tormenting him pleases me greatly, though he responds so little nowadays. Besides, his beloved queen is dead. Who would he report to now?”
The woman behind him muttered loudly enough for her queen to hear. “He doesn’t even scream anymore.”
“Then you don’t have any imagination,” Alessandra said.
Keisha narrowed a hard look on her. “Do you have any suggestions?”
Alessandra thought a moment, tapping one elegantly tapered fingernail against her chin. “Oh. I know. You could take his eyes.”
The handler let out a grunt of disgust. “Her Majesty said no permanent physical damage, or trust me, I would have taken those cursed eyes out a decade ago and saved myself the trouble of this fucking hood.”
Llewellyn didn’t move, but his fear tasted sour on my tongue. I could feel his heart pounding as if trying to escape his ribcage. He didn’t want them to know how much the thought of losing his sight, and especially, his gift, upset him. He had a purpose. He needed his eyes to complete it.
“No…” Keisha replied, drawing the word out on a long sigh.
Llewellyn didn’t relax. He watched her intently, blinking again so his camera-focus narrowed in on her face. The glint of cruelty in her eyes.
“Iwon’t take his eyes.Youwill. And you, Wasinga, will still use the fucking hood every moment of every fucking day and night.”
His camera vision flickered again, zeroing in on Alessandra’s face. He watched her swallow, her delicate throat tensing, though her face didn’t betray her. She walked toward him, and with each step, his vision clicked and snapped, adjusting to keep his focus on her face. Even as she raised her hands, the jewels on her lacquered nails reflecting the light. Approaching his eyes. Snap. Closer. Tension coiled in him, and in me, as I watched. I couldn’t breathe. Fire exploded in my eyeballs and the shrill scream echoed through the room, resounding in my head. His scream. Mine.
Rik’s hands held me steady as I swayed. I clamped my mouth shut, and the wailing scream of pain shut off. I panted, clutching Llewellyn’s face. Even with Rik’s heat and strength at my back, I still wanted to frantically touch my own eyes and make sure they were still there. That she hadn’t takenmyeyes.
Goddess. It was awful. His memory still ached inside me like a nest of inflamed, raw nerves.
“You lied,” I rasped out in Alessandra’s general direction.
“No, no, Your Majesty,” she babbled. “Not exactly. I said I’d never participated in torturing Keisha’s alphas. Which is true. I never touched them.”
“Shut the fuck up!” I roared, wincing at my own volume. I finally managed to convince my eyes to open. I blinked away tears and winced again at the tenderness in my eyes. They remembered being ripped out by this woman. I still clutched Llewellyn’s face so hard that my nails had broken his skin. I dragged his face against my chest and wrapped my arms around his head, holding him over my heart.
Still panting. His pain raw inside me.
I looked at her and I wanted to sprout my own nails and claw her eyes out. Instead, I said one word. Or rather, one name.
