Page 39 of Queen Takes King
“You can’t even plant your own eyes and ears in a fledging queen’s nest. Oh, I’m sorry. She doesn’t even have a nest yet. Why should I put forward your name for the thirdseat?”
Marne. It had tobe.
I crept closer, using every bit of silence and stealth the ghostly wolf possessed. I wanted to see the greatest queen of the Triune. I wanted to have a picture of the woman who put a geas upon both my mothers: the one who birthed me, and her sister who raisedme.
So close. I could hear their heartbeats. I pulled the fog tighter around me, making sure I was as hidden as possible, except for my eyes. I wanted to see. I needed to see herface.
The fog thinned before my focus, revealing two women, but they weren’t together. Mist flowed between them and they didn’t look at each other. So how were they communicating? Maybe a bloodbond.
A staggering thought. A queen of Keisha’s status… with a blood bond to Marne. Did all the queens have a bond with her? Were they her sibs? Herpawns?
What chance did I have of escaping her net if all the queens were hers tocommand?
I wasn’t sure which one was Marne. They both reclined like an empress being carried on a litter. One was dark skinned, the other blonde, both classically beautiful with long model’s legs and Grecian goddess faces carved from marble without any sign of age. Keisha was at least a couple of hundred years old to have gained control of New York City, and my first two Blood were nearly one hundred. In her court, they’d been young. Marne was much older, but neither woman looked like a thousand-year-oldvampire.
“I’m the most powerful American queen,” the darker woman retorted, giving me my answer. Keisha. “We have no representative on theTriune.”
The blonde woman laughed. “You’re like the evil stepmother queen in Snow White declaring yourself the most powerful of all, ignoring the message in the magicmirror.”
“Are you saying she’s more powerful thanme?”
The amusement wiped from Marne’s face, replaced with a grim tightness that sent a surge of glee through me.Yes, be afraid of me. Maybe she’ll leave me alone.“I haven’t felt her power directly, but Isador was always strong. Even her mother. Though why Selena ever loved that human I’ll neverunderstand.”
My heart thudded painfully and my ribcage banded tight, making it difficult tobreathe.
They didn’t know that Selena wasn’t mymother.
It didn’t makesense.
Maybe I made some soft gasp. I wasn’t sure. But Marne suddenly looked straight at me. I froze, sure that she couldn’t see me, though she must have sensed someonewatching.
“Even a half-human queen of Isador is athreat.”
I closed my eyes and willed myself away. Cool, wet mist enveloped me and I drifted in silence, my mindracing.
If Marne hadn’t put the geas upon everyone that prevented the living from saying my mother’s name… Then the only person who could have done such a thing was Esetta herself. But why? It didn’t make sense. Why would she want to beforgotten?
“To protect you. To hide you.”The voice rolled through my head, a soft whisper carried to me on a ghostly breeze. A voice I knew deep inside. It rang like the tinkling chime of the goddess. My mother must have whispered to me often when I was a baby, though I didn’t remember it.“To lose you in the world so you would have time to grow and develop as you wished. Not in a court of Aima so unable to change and adapt that they die and do nothing to savethemselves.”
I was afraid to say anything aloud, for fear that Marne might have followed me, or would hear. But I whispered the words in my head, sure that Esetta would hear.“What am I supposed todo?”
“Be true to who you are. That is all. You are controlled chaos. You are She, Goddess incarnate. Live, love, and make magic in the world. Embrace your nature your father and I died to create. Loose the wild hunt. Revel in the blood of your enemies. Some will worship you. Others will fear you. And no one will be able to stopyou.”
My father and she both died to create me? Guilt and dread settled in my stomach like cold lead. I shivered, hugging myself. The wolf was gone, leaving me alone huddled in the cold mist.“Was heLeviathan?”
“No. Your father was a dying god. I was his last love. And you are our onlyhope.”
Then why had Greyson told me he was my father? My head ached and I was suddenly exhausted. Tired of trying to untangle half-truths and guess at political strategy that was alien to me. I was glad I wasn’t raised in a nest, but on the other hand, it handicapped me. I didn’t understand courtpolitics.
“Take your king before it’s too late. Soon he’ll pass and be only a whisper on the wind likeme.”
Something howled in the distance, a faint sound of crazed agony. The snake-monster thing I’d dreamed before. I had no idea where he was. And honestly… I didn’t know if I wanted to find him or not. All that rage, all that pain. How did you soothe someone who’d been tortured and trapped for so long that he didn’t even remember who or what he was anylonger?
“He’s yourdestiny.”
Something tugged on me deep inside, a razor wire that tightened and burned like molten steel. With a sigh, I stood in the fog. Xin’s wolf flowed back over me. Nose tipped into the breeze, I took in all the smells of the world and filtered them out one by one until I found the scent I needed. Snake. Serpent. Dragon. Pain. Rage.“I’mcoming.”
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