by Holly Gunn
“Oh, I noticed.”
I narrow my eyes at her tone.
The guys drag us back to the conversation.
Namely Grizz. “You’re a queen?”
“Of the Dabbler witches, yes,” Ryn answers formally.
“No,” Snake says, shaking his head, “we mean, you’ve got a crown-shaped birthmark?”
Ryn looks uncomfortable.
“How is that possible?” Heavy asks. “You have your own kingdom to rule.”
“Yes, well, be that as it may,” she says, sounding perturbed. “It appears the fates wanted to have a bit of fun. I’m to be queen of the Dabbler witches, and I’m also meant to be queen to some shifter tribe somewhere.”
She seems to blow it off, but I know the truth. Ryn’s not at all casual about her future mate. Being queen of the Dabbler witches and being queen of this future tribe are all she’s ever talked about. She knows her path. She is very much the opposite of me who, although I have a mark, I’ve lived my life largely without any sort of plan.
“Righteous,” Snake says. “In that case, would you like to accompany me, my lady?”
She smiles. “I’d be delighted.”
I roll my eyes.
Heavy takes my arm.
Grizz walks between us four, watchful, his back sort of hunched as though he’s waiting for a blow. I notice all three of them seem tense. I’m not sure why except maybe they’re like me, and they don’t feel comfortable with the rich and famous in a house that’s beautiful but is cold and lifeless.
“What did you mean by ‘yours’?” Heavy asks again, then clarifies, “I’m just wondering because Nashville’s thirty days aren’t up yet. And the only way for a king to know his queen—and vice versa—is when his tattoo is dark during the search for his queen. She has to touch him willingly and then their couple tattoo forms of her symbol and his animal. So, how would she know if he’s hers or not?”
My cousin glances back at us. “I know the way the system works, Heavy, but I’m a Dabbler … and I have a gift for knowing things,” she says with an air of mystery, and I duck my head and smile.
“You think you’ll know your king just by, what, being in the same fucking room as him?” This is Grizz, who’s standing straighter now and looking toward her curiously.
“I know I will,” she states firmly.
“Don’t be so sure,” he grunts and then says, “I need a drink.” He breaks off from the group to apparently do as he says.
The night isn’t terrible.
There are a few hiccups.
Mostly, I think I make my cousin, if not proud, at least not disappointed in her choice of guest. I do have to wonder why she invited me. Esly would have been a better choice.
That being said, the night goes off mostly without hitches.
That is, it goes off until the end.
At the end of the evening, I’m sure Heavy wonders exactly what he wondered earlier: if my magic is stable.
I’ll be honest, I’m wondering the same thing myself as I stand covered in blood.
5
Eagle
I smell her before I see her.
I know what comes after dinner tonight. My father is nothing if not exacting and consistent in his punishments.
At first, I think the smell of her is wishful thinking, a fantasy like the dreams from the night before.
A memory from earlier in my office.
Then, there’s a vision in red standing in the doorway to my childhood home.
Elizabeth, Heavy called her later on when he tried to pry out of me why I was so cold with her.
Elizabeth.
The name of a queen to be sure.
I’ve never liked my father’s mansion with its gleaming floors and ostentatiously large rooms and high ceilings. It screams money, and while I enjoy money and the opportunities it offers, I know life is more than how much gold I might accumulate.
Life is about soaring far above creation on eagle’s wings.
Life is about moments of freedom with good friends who understand you when you’re at your worst.
Life is about a pretty girl named Elizabeth stepping into the foyer you always hated, but that now is the only place you want to be.
Her gaze wanders the room, and she looks how I’ve always felt. A fish thrown onto land and trying to breathe, but finding she lacks the necessary parts.
What she doesn’t understand is that most feel this way.
It’s how we deal with that feeling that makes us the people we want to be.
I don’t deal with her presence at all in the way that makes me the man I want to be. I don’t because of Vera’s arm attached to mine. Knowing Vera will be my queen, but wanting nothing to do with her … and her, the only woman who’s ever caught my eye, who’s made me want, standing a few feet away.
I’m rude.
Disrespectfully so.
I desire to do more than offer a nod and then walk away as though I have no care about her wellbeing.
I desire to offer her my arm.
I desire to offer her a kingdom.
I desire to run my fingers along her jaw and see if her pale skin is as soft as it looks.
I desire to fill my hands with those small, perky breasts that have just enough cleavage revealed by her red dress to make me long for a taste.
I desire to firmly grasp onto her full hips and feel Elizabeth’s thick thighs surround me. My cock pounding so deep inside her, her red lips would be crying my name.
I desire Elizabeth with a passion I’ve never felt.
And she’s here … of all nights, she is here.
The night I’m to be made a spectacle of.
I can only hope she and Ryn become so bored they leave early.
As the night progresses, I catch glimpses of her conversing with the guys and Ryn. Long glances, glances I know Vera doesn’t miss because my future queen purposely puts her body in my line of sight at one point. She asks an asinine question I don’t hear.
I answer how I usually do, “Whatever you wish, my dear,” but I don’t mean it. She’s shown me time and again that her wishes are often sinister and cruel toward others, and I have no desire to partake in her idea of fun.
When I feel her tense and know a tantrum is forthcoming, in order to not draw a scene and gain further punishment, I focus on her and apologetically say, “I’m sorry, dear. I’m distracted. It won’t happen again.”
Her green eyes narrow and brighten. “She’s not your people, darling. I’m your people, and you would do well to remember that where your eyes wander, your father’s will as well.”
I don’t let my thoughts show at her threats. I don’t even let them get beyond their subtle beginnings.
These thoughts being, the woman in red is exactly who I would choose as my people if I could choose my own fate.
The fates do not listen.
The fates never do.
The humans at the charity ball have left.
The supernaturals have not.
Those who are not eagles or friends of my father are in for a treat.
But maybe not one they’ll enjoy. At least, I like to think that we aren’t so inhumane that those within my tribe truly enjoy these intrigues.
It is what their king wishes, and so they follow. Blindly. Like sheep, rather than powerful birds of prey.
I don’t look her way once my shirt is removed and my head is bowed, my hands grasping onto the rings in the center of the dais.
I do feel her, however.
So acutely, I feel her.
I know she’s curious but wary because the sight is not a good one.
I know she’s seen my back revealed and hers is not the only gasp in the crowd, but it’s the first and only one that matters.
I have been shamed often in view of my people, but never in front of someone such as her.
It is doubly shaming that her eyes are on my marred back.
Shifters rarely scar. Whether injured as a human or animal, in or
der to heal, we shift between forms. Just as our clothes disappear when we become animal and our fur disappears when we become human, both reappearing by magic when we shift back, so too, do our injuries heal while in the uninjured form.
My father doesn’t let me shift after a punishment.
And this means, scars that should have healed, remain.
I close off my senses to her; otherwise, I won’t be able to endure what is to come.
The lash is tough leather and sharp, sometimes jagged, bits of metal.
I’m familiar with this lash. It is my father’s favorite.
His toy tears through the flesh of my back, creating new scars, forming new wounds. Wounds that once scored my mind; I’ve learned to close my mind to such things. That in itself, is a wound of the mind, a permanent one, but one I can live with. I won’t give him more power.
My father, at my back, tearing into my flesh, taking more parts of me, that is all he gets—my flesh and my blood, but never my spirit.
And I’m too close to ruling to risk him killing me with one of his punishments.
The lash stops.
I don’t count any longer. The point is to survive. But I know this has not been the one hundred lashings he’s informed me are my punishment. I know what it feels like to get one hundred. It has been some years, but I do know what twenty feels like just within the last couple years and this has not even been twenty.
He’s testing me. I know it.
Then I hear a howl of rage come from him, and I glance behind me. He’s not looking at my back, at the bloody rivulets he likes to claim are his art and his gift to me so that I might become a better king.
He’s looking furiously into the crowd.
That’s when I see her, face pale, eyes wide, hands outstretched.
More than seeing, I feel her.
Like the beat of her drum, her rhythm overpowers the room, drawing everyone there into her thrall. Her eyes are not on me. They are on my father. And they’re furious, enraged even.
For me.
Her cousin tries to stop her, whispering something in her ear, but the look she gives her cousin is so quelling, even I would not cross her in that moment. Not that this is saying much. I’m holding onto the rings, submitting to my father who is at the end of his reign, and a woman I desire but can never have is the only one in the room standing up for me. Literally. Everyone else remains in their respective seats for the show.
I stand slowly, feeling the wounds in my back ripple with the movement. Sometimes, it is better to have more lashings. At least then, everything hurts and the pain is less sharp.
“Father,” I call out, my voice rough with pain. “My king,” I repeat but he doesn’t even glance my way, and I see him shift closer to Elizabeth.
I do what I’ve never done.
I pull on my power as the future king and partially shift, letting the feathers and the wings of my eagle form slide along my still human back.
My wings expand, all 135 inches.
My father’s wings don’t come close to matching my own.
In most cases, I wouldn’t compare, but as I’ve said, with him, I’ll measure.
In this moment, his eyes moving to me as the room goes quiet, I also know why.
His eyes speak the truth he has never shared aloud, but is true nonetheless. He never intended to step down. He has always wanted to do this like the generals of old.
He loves nothing in his life but power and ruling. And like the old ways, he intends to fight me for the throne. What he doesn’t realize is that I’ve never truly submitted to him. I’ve always been biding my time.
“Elizabeth,” I command her gently, “this is not your fight.”
Her expressive face says it all. She still replies, “You know my name but I don’t know yours.”
“Eagle,” I share and use the bending of my head to bow slightly to her.
“Figures. Kings, kings, everywhere.” She smirks and takes a step back. “Proceed.”
There’s laughter in the crowd. It’s not light. It’s fraught with caution as many know my father and his ways.
Ryn, as I knew she would, steps forward. “You can’t do this. There are rules.”
I use my eyes to make my point. I look first to the lash that was ripped from my father’s hand by magic, then to the dais. Kings are not allowed violence toward their people unless it is a fitting punishment for a crime they’ve committed, and even then, our natures are not violent except when there is a purpose, and many only use it as a last resort.
My father is not one for rules.
I have been, and look where that has gotten me.
Ryn seems unsure. I know, if she was wearing her glasses, she’d be pushing them up her nose.
“I really don’t think—”
“Oh, do shut up,” my father interrupts.
His eagle bursts forth with a screech, and in a matter of ten seconds, he’s a bird in flight.
I remain in my half form but my talons extend.
When he dives from above, his own talons aim for my face. I manage to block the swipe from the right but not the left, as he faints right and catches me with a deep gash to the cheek.
The benefit of my large wings is that normally, even a king in half form can’t fly using a human body and eagle wings—I can.
My wings effortlessly lift my two hundred and twenty pounds, and I meet my father head-on.
He might be in his animal form, but those below are not the only ones shocked.
I’ve kept this secret for years from everyone but Heavy, Snake, and Grizz.
And though I didn’t know it, or maybe I didn’t acknowledge it, I think a part of me knew I was saving it for just this moment. When I would be done submitting and I would have to challenge him.
It only took a beautiful woman being the only one willing to have my back for me to finally stand on my own two feet.
His claws dig deep into my belly, and the searing pain has me crying out and flapping my wings furiously. If there is one thing my father has taught me, however, it’s control.
Pain—whether emotional or physical—means nothing if one can control it.
I control the pain.
I control my mind and my body’s reaction to it.
I lash out with my talons, slicing first at his throat, then at his belly. My claws don’t go very deep with his feathers in the way.
But for each swipe he lands against me, I send my talons to the same spots. Within moments, blood flows from each. I’m covered in it.
Everyone below us, I am sure, is covered in our blood as well.
“Enough!” a deep voice calls from the crowd. It’s a female voice, powerful and strange, and I find myself turning toward it.
My father takes this as his opportunity.
His talons swipe me across the throat.
And then my world goes black.
6
Elizabeth
Aunt Hyacinth isn’t just a Fire witch. She’s the former queen of the Fire witches.
What she’s not, is a fan of anyone doing any harm near her three daughters. Ironically, Ryn, Vy, and Fee—who all have different fathers which is why they aren’t all Fire witches like their mother—are all queens. Vy and Fee having ruled for three and five years, respectively. Aunt Hyacinth didn’t mess around. Queens might not be allowed to have kings, and might technically not be allowed to have consorts either, but my aunt was never one for rules. And she always says, “I wanted to raise queens.” That she did.
“Mom, seriously?”
Ryn, who’s normally calm, collected, and the grown-up does what we all do around our parents. She reverts to her childish insecurities.
“Ryn,” Aunt Hyacinth argues, her voice dropping and mimicking her daughters when she says, “Seriously?”
Ryn’s eyes narrow. “You can’t just show up—”
“You’re in training, Ryn sweetie. I can show up whenever I damn well please as one of your trainers.”
�
�Not when the kings are fighting and Eagle almost won!” Ryn shouts at her mother.
My eyes go to where healers are tending to Eagle.
His father is worse for wear but standing, which is more than I can say for Eagle.
“I won.”
The man keeps repeating these words, somewhat insanely.
I don’t care about him.
I care about Eagle.
I rush toward him, skirting my aunt’s hand trying to grab me.
I’m kneeling by him in the only free spot there is.
The healer to my left starts to speak, “Miss, we’re trying to do our work, if you could just …” His voice trails. I know he feels it. I don’t use my healing gifts often, but I’ve got a little in me. Even unconscious, with Eagle this close, I’ve got a tattoo playing in my chest that is all for this man.
I use that and close my eyes tightly, something most witches say is a no-no. I find it necessary. My gifts come from my soul. Not from touch, like a Siphon. Not from the water like a Sea witch. From the very depths of my soul.
All the energy I’ve got, I pour into healing him, this man I barely know and still don’t know if I like.
And it feels good. So good. This is what Mama and Papi mean. When you don’t use your gifts, they seek other outlets. Tonight, they’re used for healing.
In my mind’s eye, I can see his flesh knitting together. Not my cup of tea, but while it grosses me out, I also have the urge to cry.
I feel tracks slide down my cheeks and taste the salt on my tongue.
I also feel a hand glide along the soft skin of my jaw, a gentle hand that causes me to gasp and shudder.
That hand.
It has a rhythm, a tone, a beat of its own. I want it to play its tattoo along my skin, to touch me everywhere, to become one with me.
My eyes open slowly, knowing what I’ll find.
Onyx.
Pure black beauty stares back at me.
“Good to have you back,” I comment casually.
He smiles and his hand at my jaw doesn’t drop, but he sits up slowly and puts out his other hand.