Page 96 of Queen Takes Triune
“This is one of three Triunes,” Marne continued, her voice reverent. “Each court was given a symbol of the Great Mother imbued with Her power. The Skolos Triune has their symbol much like ours, though I believe it has a few other unique features indicative of their line. There was also a third…”
“Triskeles,” I whispered the word I’d heard in the vision.
Marne nodded. “Another Great Mother statue, though slightly different. We lost Her many centuries ago when Desideria Modron began her campaign against the other courts.”
“She wiped them out first,” Guillaume whispered, his voice raw with a thousand regrets.
My Templar knight had been her executioner. He must have killed many queens at her direction.
:Hundreds of lives met their end on my sword.:His hell horse whined a miserable whicker of grief that broke my heart.:Goddess forgive me.:
“Since the dawn of time, three Aima queens would come together here, around our Triune, and conduct the Mother’s will in the world. Until Desideria Modron wasn’t content with her title as High Queen of our Triune. She wanted to be the Highest of them all. The Supreme. We didn’t even have such a title, but she was determined to create it.”
Pausing, Marne released my arm and walked a slow circle around the statue so it was between us. Not halfway around the circle—but one third. I glanced to my right and saw a slightly darker spot on the floor where the Dauphine would stand, if she was here.
“Naturally, the other queens objected strenuously to Desideria’s plans. If the Great Mother had intended for us to be ruled by one queen, then She wouldn’t have given us a Triune of Triunes. Suspicious of Desideria’s intentions, Jeanne Dauphine withdrew from the world, refusing to sit at the Mother’s court, though she also refused to relinquish her seat so another queen could fulfill her duties.
“As a result, our power and status weakened. We lost one court entirely, and Skolos withdrew to the furthest reaches of their realms, determined to preserve their bloodlines despite Desideria’s reckless disregard for the Mother’s blood that flowed in the courts she decimated. We lost the ability to sire new queens, and courts were failing left and right. Our days were numbered.
“And then Desideria mysteriously died.” Marne smiled, a slow, deadly curve of her lips that made chills slither down my spine. “When a Triune queen summons another queen to her court, a record of that visit is submitted to our shared records. So I knew that House Isador had paid a visit to House Modron as summoned. I had no proof of any foul doings. Indeed, for all intents and purposes, I found that Desideria had simply gone mad, driven insane by her insatiable lust for power. House Isador had left weeks before without incident.
“And yet…” Marne strode back toward Guillaume and paused over him, where he still knelt. “How, exactly, did Desideria, arguably the most powerful queen alive, die? How was it that her own executioner managed to survive the extermination of her entire nest?”
Staring straight ahead, my Templar knight didn’t move a muscle. He’d endured untold torture at his former queen’s hands, and countless years in a French prison before that. I didn’t think anything would ever scare or break him.
:Losing you would break me into a thousand pieces, my queen.:
I swallowed the lump in my throat.:And so would I if anything happened to my beloved knight.:
“Conjecture. Suspicion. That’s all I had to go on. House Isador had long been rumored to be much more powerful than they publicly displayed, and though they’d never tried for the Triune before, maybe their queen had decided to play the game after all. She was rumored to have a queen cobra in her arsenal of gifts, with a venom so vile that even the High Queen of the Triune would not be able to heal herself.”
Marne trailed a single fingertip around Guillaume’s neck. She couldn’t see the scar beneath his suit coat and shirt, but she knew his history. “You were rumored to be dead, but I searched for you anyway. You were the key, Guillaume de Payne. Only you would have been able to execute everyone in that nest, and only the headless knight would have been able to walk away. Am I close?”
“Close enough,” he replied evenly.
“As soon as word reached me of Desideria’s death, I began a new game. Someone had made a play for the now-empty Triune seat. The moves were careful, thoughtful, and seemingly insignificant. But taken together, with that single visit to House Modron, I knew what it must mean. House Isador wanted a seat at the table. But they had no queen powerful enough to even think about it. Yet.”
She cupped Guillaume’s cheek, and my jealousy reared its ugly head. I didn’t like her touching my Blood. Not one bit.
Even knowing that she only did it to bait me, I still didn’t like it. But if G could endure her touch… Then I could endure watching it.
“My game was ever so much more interesting now,” Marne continued, still stroking his cheek. “Assuming House Isador was not only successful in breeding, which alone would be a magnificent feat, but also managed to sire a queen powerful enough to take a seat on the Triune… Surely impossible. Yet the impossible had been done with Desideria’s death.
“So I had to ask myself which Triune did Isador want? Your mother was widely known for her love of monsters. I watched and gleaned information from sources all over the globe. How would she do it? How would she conceive you? Her alpha…”
Marne paused and gave a pitying look at Llewellyn. “As much as she loved you, gryphon, you weren’t able to sire her heir. So she had to go elsewhere. When I read that Mount Vesuvius had an unusual moderate eruption at Halloween in 1994, I knew who she’d gone to. With a father like Typhon, perhaps the new Isador queen would be more interested in taking a Skolos seat.” She hummed softly, her brow creased as if deep in thought. “But the Skolos court was full and had been full for over a thousand years. Whatever could I do to open a seat up, without openly killing a queen as Desideria had done?”
“My mother,” Okeanos ground out. “That was the bargain you made.”
“Indeed. I captured the mighty king kraken, the only one of his kind. I promised Undina that I would take excellent care of you. You would live, no matter how much you tried to escape me. As long as she stepped down from her seat if and when the time came.”
My head ached. This was some crazy long-game shit that I couldn’t even wrap my mind around. It was like cutting off your hand hundreds of years before you could even think about picking up the sword in the first place. “But… Okeanos said he’d been imprisoned a hundred years. I’m only twenty-two.”
She shrugged. “Blackmailing the Skolos queen was only one contingency of many alternatives. Once I knew Typhon was your father, I could eliminate the others. I had the lure to free the seat. Of course, I had no idea he would end up being your Blood. Even I can’t see or plan foreverything.”
I couldn’t even. The fucking arrogance and complete disregard for life.
She’d locked a man up for a hundred years… Just. In. Case.
