Page 44 of Queen Takes Sunfires 2
“Twenty-three.”
She let out a disgusted grunt. “Nowhere near the entire legion. Did she know any of them?”
“Aurelian.”
Her eyes flared and she nodded grudgingly. “Sol Invictus. Not bad, not bad at all. Did they have their sunfires with them?”
“No.”
She tipped her head toward the lake. “Exactly. They’re with Sepdet. That’s why she was able to handle Aurelian, then.”
“What do you know about Sepdet?” Shara asked.
Vivian didn’t answer immediately. Her face hardened, her mouth tight in a hard slant. “I suppose you could say he’s my half-brother. Out of all the nightmares in Heliopolis, he was the third worst.”
“Who were the other two?” Helayna asked.
“The vizier and Ra himself. My guess is that with Ra dead, Sepdet intends to set himself up as god of Heliopolis in our father’s place.”
“Wait a fucking minute,” I finally growled. “Are you telling me that you’re from Heliopolis? You actually saw Ra? What did he do to Karmen?”
She gave me a pitying look. “You care about her. I’m sorry. She was known as God’s Wife.”
Helayna laid a hand on my arm. Until that moment, I didn’t realize the wolf was snarling again. “What did he do?”
“You know exactly what he did to her, wolf boy.” Vivian turned around, slinging her braids over one shoulder to bare her back. “Didn’t you see marks like this on her? Maybe even worse? These are from Sepdet and his ilk, but they’re nothing like Ra. I was spared that because I was his fucking daughter. Even he had some limits.”
I’d known. Deep down. The way she’d reacted if I touched her. Absolutely terrified of everything, but especially daylight. Being in the car with me.
But I’d refused to even think about it. The horror she must have endured. Goddess.
I’d left her to die in an alley, and then abandoned her here to be dragged back by the very creatures she’d fled from in the first place. Jerking away from my sister, I strode away from the group, unwilling to let strangers see me fall apart.
Goddess help me. I had left her. Alone and unprotected. And why? Because I was fucking scared. Scared because she was a queen. Scared of facing the one thing I’d always dreaded.
I didn’t know where I was going until I looked up and found myself back in the basement that I’d hated all my life. The place my father had spent most of his days. I’d returned here when I felt Helayna disappear, only to find him sobbing on the floor beside my mother’s body.
I started to sit down at her desk and heard paper crinkle. The contract in my pocket. What the hell? Why would an Isador consiliarius think I needed to read a fucking piece of paper from the Triune?
Pulling it out, I smoothed it on the desk before me and flipped on a lamp so I could see. The seal looked like a tower of some sort, though it was hard to tell for sure since it’d been broken open.
On this day, the 23rdof December, 1879, Helle Ironheart has become a sibling queen to Keisha Skye. In exchange for House Skye’s benevolence in regard to a wild, untamed king of said House, Ironheart takes full and sole responsibility of Narve Angroboda and will take all prudent actions to contain him strictly to Ironheart’s island nest in Minnesota. If this king is ever released, or spawns similar kings of the rabid Fenrir line, House Ironheart will be forfeit to House Skye. So it is attested and sworn in blood by Helle Ironheart and witnessed by Sylvia Skye, consiliarius for House Skye.
I stared at the words until they blurred and I couldn’t read them any longer. I had no memory of Mother becoming any queen’s sibling. For all I knew, we’d always lived isolated here in the wilds of northern Minnesota. I’d never met any other queens, and I didn’t think Helayna had either, at least until Shara Isador.
The date of the agreement chilled my blood and made my stomach churn.
I had already been born. Mother had known that she and Narve had already bred another wolf king like him. Yet she’d signed and sworn to House Skye anyway.
It all started to make an awful kind of sense. No wonder Father had never left the island. He hadn’t dared. Fearing he might lose control of his wolf, he’d stayed mostly indoors. In chains. Deliberately weakening the beast that prowled inside him.
To protect us. To protect… me.
Not because he was weak, or because Mother had been an evil, dangerous queen who’d trapped him against his will. Fear of House Skye coming back and killing us all had put those chains on his neck. Not her.
I had fled House Ironheart as soon as I could survive on my own. I’d lived as a wild thing in the woods and only returned to see my sister. They’d let me go. They’d let me live as a free wolf king, even knowing the cost. If House Skye had ever discovered my existence…
We would have all died.
