Page 84 of Queen Takes Triune
:Fucking nasty gazpacho,:Ezra muttered.:Tastes like slimy slick cucumbers.:
:It’s not bad. I think it has some avocado in it.:
“Tell me about yourself, Shara,” Marne said. “Beyond the obvious. I know your house and your goddess, but not how you came to be.”
“I was raised in Kansas City, Missouri,” Shara began cautiously. Truth only, as she’d decreed, but she also didn’t want to give too much away to the Triune queen before she knew why we’d been summoned to court. “My aunt raised me, but I didn’t know she was my aunt until only a few months ago.”
“I remember Selena Isador. Not because of her power, which was unremarkable. No, she claimed to have fallen in love with a human and asked permission to leave her nest and house behind. It’s so strange that this love story’s timing occurred shortly before you must have been conceived.”
Shara took another bite of the soup before responding. “His name was Alan Dalton. He helped raise me until his death.”
“Remarkable.”
Through her bond, I felt Shara look up at the other queen’s face, trying to judge her sincerity and read between the lines.
“So you were raised as a human? You truly didn’t know what you are?”
Shara set the spoon down and went back to her tea. “I had no idea until right before Christmas.”
Marne tsked softly. “Oh, my. That must have been so shocking for you.”
“It was.” Shara smiled sweetly and sipped her tea without offering any additional information.
“Before her demise, Keisha Skye contacted me about you.”
Shara widened her eyes, feigning surprise. “Oh?”
Shortly after calling her first several Blood, Shara had dreamed of a conversation between Keisha and Marne. The dream had proven to be real, not just prophetic. She had overheard the entire conversation without either queen knowing she’d been there.
“She claimed that you had a very unique parentage.”
Marne waited, possibly trying to bait Shara into revealing that she’d overheard that conversation. Or perhaps she just wanted to see if Shara would admit the truth of her secret birth herself.
Shara wasn’t falling for any such trap, but merely gazed back at the queen over her cup.
Sweat trickled down my back. The air weighed heavier, the heat quickly growing uncomfortable. What had seemed like a pleasant summer day had become the miserable, baking afternoon heat of a desert.
While two formidable queens sat staring at each other over cups of tea in the deadliest game of all.
“I don’t know that I quite believed her. Not after what she’d done to conceive her own unfortunate child.” Marne lifted her hand and the servants quickly returned to clear away the first course. “Just because she sold her soul to the god of light, that certainly didn’t mean your true mother did the same with the god of monsters.”
25
Shara
Iwaited in silence while the servants switched out the dishes. This course was a lovely salad with mixed greens, mandarin orange slices, and something red that bled all over the plate.
Chopped beets? Maybe? But it had a meaty-looking texture.
Raw meat. On a salad?
I was a badass vampire queen. I craved blood. Just thinking about tearing into Rik’s throat made me drench my panties and my fangs throbbed.
But I didn’t crave blood that wasn’t mine. And for goddess’s sake, what kind of meat was it? Beef? Human? A hapless queen who’d pissed Marne off? Who the fuck knew?
She wanted me off balance. She wanted me to leap to Esetta’s defense and retort that nothing my mother had done was anything like the torture and depravity that Keisha had committed.
She hadn’t conceived her daughter when she fucked Ra, but not for lack of trying. I’d seen his massive baseball-bat-sized dick and that was not a sexual act I even wanted to try and picture. He’d used Keisha and lied to her when he couldn’t impregnate her.
