I looked back at Mehen and grinned. “I take Blood because I want to fuck them. So I probably fuck. A lot. And it gets messy, bloody, and yeah, dangerous.”
He leaned in and inhaled deeply, his mouth on my throat. “You’re obsessed with fucking monsters, aren’t you, my queen?”
I laughed and looped one arm around his neck and the other around Rik, who was never far from my side. “That’ll be an easy thing to sell to Marne Ceresa. Because it’s true.”
Mehen sank his fangs in my throat, making me arch against him. :Because Shara fucking Isador never lies.:
17
Shara
Daire was right. Once I knew how I wanted Marne to perceive me, setting up for our first face-to-face via mirror magic was easy.
I let Rik pick out a sexy negligee and a long, elegant black silk robe. I deliberately tied the belt loosely, letting the robe gape open and flow with my movements. The hint of lace beneath the robe was provocative without revealing anything. We left the bed rumpled with blood-stained sheets and all.
So much blood.
A clear indication of how, and how much, I fed. How much power I wielded as a result. Without making a single demonstration or statement.
As I’d done during the final Zaniyah procession, I used Rik as my seat and support and leaned back against his chest, cradled by his massive thighs. Daire shifted into his warcat and laid across my thighs, his head in my lap. His purr was a thunderous roar. I wasn’t sure how much she’d see through the mirror—if she truly had to see our reflection in the glass, or if her power extended to the rest of the room. To be safe, I sent everyone out of the immediate vicinity except for Gina, Guillaume, and Mehen, my two oldest Blood who knew Triune politics inside and out.
Guillaume wore black jeans and a simple white long-sleeved shirt. Anyone who knew him would know that he wore a dozen blades beneath his clothes.
:Fifteen today, my queen.:
Someday, I was going to have to strip him slowly and count every single blade.
:It will be my great pleasure, my queen.:
My dragon lay on the floor around the bed, so big that he provided a perfect back rest for Rik. For now, Leviathan kept his head low. Hopefully he’d be mostly hidden and out of sight—until I wanted her to see him.
Tlacel knelt on the bed before me, holding the mirror so I could see my face reflected on its surface, within easy reach. “Ready, my queen?”
I looked over at Gina, poised with pen and paper. “I’m ready. I’ll write down every word that she says.”
I took a deep, centering breath and cleared my mind. “Let’s do this.” I punctured the tip of my index finger on my fang, waited for the blood well up, and pressed my fingertip to my reflection.
My image blurred and stretched like I was looking at myself on a funhouse mirror. Then it went gray and fuzzy, smoky like Tepeyollotl had said. I didn’t hear anything like a chime, or even a warning when the great queen herself attended me.
One minute, the surface was fogged over like I’d taken a really hot shower, and the next, I was looking at a very striking woman’s face. Platinum blonde hair was artfully piled on her head in a glorious up-do. Her face was classically beautiful with high cheekbones, a small, pert nose, gorgeous blue eyes, and perfect skin that gleamed like she dusted herself with crushed pearls and diamond dust. She might be over a thousand years old, but she looked like an incredibly rich, beautiful woman, thirty or forty years old.
:Age before beauty,: Guillaume whispered in my head. :Allow her to speak first.:
“Shara, I’m so pleased to meet you at last.”
Her tone said she was truly delighted to meet me—light and eager and warm. But her eyes remained untouched, cold, assessing, and all-seeing. Her pupils weren’t slitted, but she reminded me of my cobra.
:She didn’t use your House name. So match her casualness. Don’t give her respect if she doesn’t give you any.:
“Marne, I presume? Thank you for your beautiful gift.”
She inclined her head slightly, enough to be barely polite. “Are you settling into your new home?”
I didn’t need Guillaume to tell me that was a deliberate message that she knew where I lived and that I had established a new nest. I kept my voice light, as if her snooping didn’t bother me. “Oh, yes. We’re doing some wonderful renovations. I can’t wait until the whole manor house has been completed.”
“I hear you have Timothy Winston to attend to your household affairs.” Her voice was a smug, purring know-it-all, and I hated it. “Gaining his services was quite the coup.”
:Sorry, I don’t know much about him prior to him coming to your service,: Guillaume said. :You’ll have to ask Gina.:
Since I didn’t know Winston’s backstory, I let myself appear ignorant, because I was. “Really? I didn’t realize his services were in such demand, though I completely agree that he’s a fabulous addition to my staff. We’re keeping him quite busy, I’m afraid.”
Marne smiled. “We? How many Blood have you managed to call?”
She said “managed” with a polite lilt that made my hackles rise, implying whatever number I said would be sneered at. I refused to be baited. “Nine.”
Her eyes flared, but it didn’t seem genuine. If she knew exactly when to deliver the package to the house, then she would have seen how many Blood were with me at the airport. Her surprise had to be that I came right out and told her without trying to cover it up. “So many? Already? My, you’ve been a busy girl.”
“Not as many as you, Your Majesty.” For the first time I acknowledged her power and her position of authority. “You have, what, a hundred Blood? That’s what I was told, at least.”
“Oh? By whom?”
“Guillaume de Payne.” I said his name as if I had no idea who he’d been before he came to me. As if I didn’t know she’d ordered that no queen feed him, so he’d be forced to come to her.
She laughed softly. “That old hell horse is still alive? Miracles do happen.”
I felt Guillaume’s rage in our bond, but he remained silent and out of sight.
I smiled. “Yes, they do. But you already know that, because I’m sure you saw footage of the Christmas Eve Miracle in Venezuela.”
She lifted one shoulder in an elegant shrug. “So they say. It was probably faked footage anyway.”
I made my eyes wider and kept my voice light and almost childlike. “Oh? That’s odd. Because I have Leviathan right here.”
Her eyes tightened slightly. “You have Leviathan, king of the depths? In your Blood?”
Leviathan lifted his head, curled his long, sinuous neck around Rik, and put his muzzle against my thigh. He let out a rumbling hiss with a plume of smoke, his eyes blazing with hatred and malice.
Staring at him, her face smoothed to a blank, unmoving mask, without even a single wrinkle about her eyes. Such a perfect visage told me more than anything that she was concealing her true reaction. She didn’t have a tell, other than a perfectly blank response.
:Tell her that Clarissant Avalon tasted delightful,: Leviathan said in my mind. :One of her closest cronies, who had designs on bringing me to heel and making me her slave. I made her last a long time while I tried to break free of my prison.:
:Did you actually eat her?:
:Damn straight. She wasn’t strong enough to free me. None of them were.:
I’d known other queens had tried to free him and failed, but the reality of how close I’d come to dying… I made myself smile slightly at the other queen as I stroked his spiny head. “I’m afraid my king was very destructive before I managed to tame him. He says that he ate Clarissant Avalon and enjoyed her very much.”
Marne met my gaze and the tiniest glimmer of emotion flickered in her blue eyes, though it was gone before I could be sure what it meant. “A headless knight who’s killed more Blood and queens than any other living Aima. A murdering dragon. A warcat. Whatever your alpha is. Given his Hyrrokkin heritage, I’m guessing some kind of giant. Yo
u have a penchant for monsters, don’t you, dear?”
She meant to insult me, but I smiled widely and nodded. “Yes, I do. I can’t seem to help myself. They’re so…” I let my eyelashes flutter down over my eyes and I bit my lip enough to hint at the size of my fangs. “Sexy.”
“Then you and Keisha Skye may get along much better than I anticipated.”
:Give her some resting bitch face,: Rik suggested. :She insulted you. Greatly. There is no comparison between you and Skye.:
I met Marne’s gaze and leaned forward slightly, letting her see the way my face hardened. The promise in my eyes. “The thought of what she would have done to my alpha if he hadn’t come to me first makes me want to order Leviathan to crunch on every single bone in her body, one by one, while she screams—exactly as she’s tortured alphas for years.”
“Decades.” Marne smiled, one delicate brow arching in a subtle reply that said, “as if anyone cares.” “What’s the difference between you and her again?”
“I gleefully fuck my monsters. I don’t torture and kill them. What I’m going to do to Keisha Skye is called retribution. Here’s my fair warning to you and the Triune: I fully intend to exact justice on Keisha Skye.”
Marne let her head fall back on a trill of laughter. “You think that you, a half-human child of an outcast queen, is going to take on the most powerful queen in the Americas and deliver retribution?”
Stroking Daire’s fur, I waited for her laughter to subside. He rumbled louder and rolled over slightly, his tail tapping back and forth along my legs. Not to be outdone, Leviathan slithered closer. He hooked his front leg over my thigh and tugged on me, trying to open my thighs wider.
Despite his care, his claws pierced my skin. Blood trickled down my thigh, which Daire was all too happy to lap up, even though the dragon snarled at him.
Marne quieted as she took in our tableau. A dragon and a warcat fighting over my blood, which I let them have without a care. When she met my gaze again, I smiled, letting the rising heat shine in my eyes as my Blood tasted me. “What makes you think my father was human? Or that my mother was Selena Isador?”
:Now,: I told Daire. :Wipe the mirror clean.:
He whipped around and lunged at the mirror, and yeah, the way she jumped back, even though he couldn’t touch her, amused me to no end. With a quick swipe of his tongue, my blood was wiped from the mirror and the clouded surface cleared to reveal my face.
“Well, fuck,” Guillaume said mildly, his blue eyes dancing with amusement. “You just kicked the lantern over in a barn full of last year’s hay.”
Closing my eyes, I lounged back in Rik’s arms and opened my thighs. :Shift back first,: I told the guys. “That was my plan. Let’s see if it works.”
18
Rik
At long last, we were able to give our queen the restorative rest that she needed so badly. As the days passed, we kept everything quiet, easy, and as low-key as possible. She slept for hours at a time, only to wake up, enjoy a good fuck and a deep feeding with whoever was in her bed, and go right back to sleep while Mehen droned on and on in French. We brought every imaginable food to her so she could feast without even getting up. As when we were in Kansas City, we had picnics in her massive bed, only instead of takeout pizzas, we devoured aged cheeses, delicate fruits from all over the world, the finest wines, fresh bread, antipasto platters, muffins, cakes, bagels…
Nevarre even made her Scottish scones with clotted cream, which she loved so much her eyes rolled back in head and she came. Though Daire was busy between her thighs at the same time.
When she finally caught up on her sleep and restored her reserves, we switched to watching movies. Winston had a stadium-sized television screen installed in the bedroom, and instead of movie-theater seating, she lounged on us. The bed finally arrived, and it was even bigger than the two kings pushed together. Bonus—it didn’t slide apart when we got too energetic.
Most importantly, we made her laugh, and we never once talked politics. She didn’t even ask to see the legacy, as if she wanted no part of new powers. Yet.
Marne’s mirror never chimed, or if it did, we didn’t hear it, since Shara had buried it in both salt and ground coffee. She’d also surrounded it by an extra salt circle to be safe. Mayte’s bond remained quiet for the most part as she hunted for a new consiliarius. Ra didn’t attack us. Keisha Skye was a distant memory.
I held Shara’s bond in the forefront of my mind constantly. I was in her mind and body and spirit. While she definitely healed and restored her energy, she was preparing, both mentally and spiritually, for war.
My queen was planning something, but it was so deeply buried and convoluted that even I didn’t fully understand what she had put in motion. We sat on planet Earth whirling at thousands of feet per second, but couldn’t feel a fucking thing.
Until we screeched to a crashing halt with a few simple words.
“I would like to go to New York City.”
Without batting an eye, Gina pulled out her phone. “When, my queen?”
“Next week. Could we go to Broadway? I’ve always wanted to see a live musical or play. Anything is fine.”
“If you wait until February, you could also go to New York Fashion Week. That would be a fantastic way for you to meet some designers…”
“No. I need to go next week. Any day after Sunday should be fine.”
Gina slowly lowered the phone, realization dawning on her face.
Sunday…? I tried to do calendar math in my head, but my skull felt like it’d been stuffed with cotton.
“Holy fucking shit,” Daire breathed, his eyes flying wide.
“What?” Mehen retorted.
I could only stare and hope my tongue wasn’t lolling like a dog’s. My brain shut off out of necessity. All the blood in my body had raced south. Already, I felt the surge of hormones in answer to the promise of her need for me. My nostrils flared, seeking her scent, eager to detect the slightest change in her body temperature or readiness.
“Her period,” Daire choked out. “She’ll be breeding.”
Eight Bloods’ heads swung my direction.
“You’re shitting me,” Mehen replied. “Next week? And you’re going to travel into Skye’s territory, rather than holing up in your nest to fuck your alpha’s brains out?”
She huffed out a soft laugh. “Don’t I always fuck all your brains out? I don’t need to stay in my nest to do so, either. But yes, next week I should start bleeding, and I must be in New York City at the height of my period.”
Gina got up and hurried out. “I’ll be right back. Let me get my tablet. It’ll be easier to plan on.”
I cleared my throat so roughly that it felt like I’d swallowed razor blades. Yet I could only manage a garbled, “Why?”
“The power, surely,” Guillaume said with a grimace. “Though I’d rather you not expose yourself when you’re vulnerable like that. Rik won’t be at his best.”
“No,” she whispered, shaking her head. “Rik will be at his absolute best. He’ll be obsessed with me. Wholly focused on me and pumped with alpha power. I will be stronger, but that’s not why I’m waiting to challenge Keisha Skye until next week.”
“It’s a message,” Daire said.
Even though she only wore one of my old soft cotton T-shirts and a pair of panties, she tipped her head up, her shoulders back and proud, and I could see the fucking crown on her head. “Yes. I can breed. I don’t need to resort to dark magic or torture to try and have a child. I care so little about having an heir that I’m not even staying home in my nest, but traveling to my enemy’s territory for some R&R.”
Gina came back in and sat down beside the bed. Typing rapidly, she was quiet for a few moments and then looked up at Shara. Her eyes flashed, her mouth a hard line of determination. If our queen was going into battle, so was she. “I’ve got my immediate staff online and ready to implement your plans immediately.”
“Thank you. Can they hear me?”
Gina nodded and turned the tablet around to show Marissa and Angela pressed closely to the camera, waiting for their orders.
“We’re going to New York City because I want to see a musical or play. Hamilton would be great, but if we can’t get tickets…”
Angela looked away, typing rapidly. “I can get them. No problem. How many?”
“Fourteen.”
“Done. Best in the house.”
Gina whistled softly, and the other woman stared at her with her mouth hanging open, shocked that she’d gotten Hamilton tickets so quickly. Angela chuckled at their reactions. “I have a friend who owed me. Big time.”
“I would say so,” Gina drawled, shaking her head.
“Great. We’re going to see Hamilton, and as a courtesy, we’ll notify Keisha Skye, right?”
Gina nodded. “Yes. Typically, you would notify any queen in the home region if you wished to visit.”
“This is going to sound like a really weird and unconnected question, but what’s Winston’s story? Marne Ceresa said it was quite a coup that I’d managed to get him to come work for me.”
“Winston worked for your mother…” Gina paused, her face going blank.
Which told me she meant Shara’s real mother. The woman who’d raised her had been her aunt, but no living Aima could say Shara’s mother’s name aloud.
“Yes,” Shara said gently, prodding her to continue. “He worked for my mother.”
“In London, before you were born. We were all there. Winston could work for the Queen of England if he wanted. That’s how good his pedigree is. Instead, he chose to stay with House Isador, even when Selena left the nest. Other queens tried to hire him away from Isador, since there wasn’t any queen left, but he refused. You’d have to ask him why yourself, but I can only assume that he had decided to work for Isador, or no one.”
“Was Keisha one of the queens who tried to hire him?”
“Every queen tried to hire him, so yes, she did. He refused, as politely as he refused Marne Ceresa.”
Queen Takes Rook (Their Vampire Queen Book 4) Page 13