Page 14 of Queen Takes More
She’d died at my birth and I’d never seen a picture of her, but I looked so much like her that I would know her image anywhere. Her long dark hair was piled on her head with curls hanging down around her cheeks. Her eyes glittered like dark sapphires on midnight velvet. Isis’s crown sat on her head.
But it was the smile on her face that made my eyes fill with tears. It was like she looked out of the picture and smiled with love. For me and me alone.
“Where did you find this?” I whispered, fighting back tears.
“I painted it,” Itztli replied.
Startled, I searched his face. “But how? Did you know her?”
He took my hand and kissed my knuckles. “I know her only through you, my queen, though Llewellyn shared images of her through our bond.”
“It’s a very good likeness,” Llewellyn said from the edge of the room, though he didn’t come any closer.
I felt like there was more to see, but it was hard to drag my gaze away from hers. Another portrait sat in a simple frame on the table. This one was more abstract with bold, heavy strokes of darkness and fire. Shadows pooled around the bottom of the painting, but I could make out snake heads and glittering red eyes. A man’s bare chest rose out of the darkness with harsh, regal features.
Typhon, father of monsters. My father.
“He was harder to paint, since no one has seen him but you, my queen,” Tlacel said. “I hope it’s a good likeness. I didn’t want to pry too deeply into your mind without your permission.”
“It’s gorgeous. I had no idea you both knew how to paint. Would you paint each of my Blood too, including each other?”
Itztli bowed over my hand and kissed my knuckles again. “It would be an honor, my queen.”
“What else is on the altar?”
Tlacel explained each item. “We bake this special bread called pan de muerto. Mayte was glad to send some up from Zaniyah, along with some of our traditional foods. Mole, tamales, and whatever foods the deceased enjoyed. Winston will also serve your mother’s favorite seafood for dinner tonight. The yellow flowers are cempoalxochitl, or Aztec marigolds. We often plant them in cemeteries and their petals are used to mark the pathway to the deceased’s altar.”
I touched Mayte’s bond and silently said,:thank you.:“Xochitl? Did her name come from the marigolds?”
“Cempoalxochitl means twenty flower, because of its many petals,” Itztli replied. “When his daughter was born, Tepeyollotl declared her as beautiful as a flower, and so her name was decided.”
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered as I slipped an arm around each man’s waist to draw them closer. They hugged me between them, smearing my sweater with paint, but I didn’t mind. “Thank you. Thank you for sharing your heritage with me.”
“Always,” Itztli said, while Tlacel added, “Our pleasure.”
I slipped my hand up Itztli’s back, enjoying the play of muscle beneath my fingers. He was built more solidly and thickly than his brother. “Will you share something else with me?”
“Without question.”
Tipping my head back so I could look into his eyes, I waited until he bent down to me, offering his throat. I fluttered my lips across his skin, breathing in his scent. Spicy cocoa laced with cayenne pepper. His blood called to me. “Would it be disrespectful to your traditions if I fucked you and Tlacel while you feed me?”
A low, rumbling chuckle escaped from his throat. “Why else would we come to you naked, my queen?”
ITZTLI
Anticipation coiled in my stomach, a live hot wire of tension. But this night wasn’t about me.
Shara understood my needs and had already helped fulfill that dark hunger several times. She didn’t mind that I was descended from the Flayed God, who reveled in pain and blood. From the beginning, she hadn’t flinched away. She’d used my obsidian blade to sacrifice me, pulling my still-beating heart from my chest, only to give it back, along with all her love.
Tlacel hadn’t yet embraced his full need.
His bond was drawn up tight inside my head, a shivering knot of worry and fear. He didn’t fear our queen, not at all. He feared that she would find him lacking. That his need… would somehow disqualify him as her Blood. That she would carve him out of her life as easily as she’d cut my heart from my chest.
He didn’t yet understand the depths to which our queen cared for us. Not fully. But he had me to help him.
“My queen,” I whispered. “May we make a request?”
She lifted her head and met my gaze at once. “Of course.”
