The gold settled into a shape—the shape of a jaguar. And even though I didn’t have shifter instincts, I somehow knew that it was showing us Lord Balam’s jaguar.
“It—it’s not supposed to show him until they’re all together,” Camila said, her blue eyes wide with panic as she stared at the man who had so disgusted her when he’d become my lover. He didn’t look much happier than she did.
“Extraordinary,” said the old councilman. “I wonder what it means.”
“Put in the next one,” said another Council member.
Camila nodded mutely, her face pale. She reached into the bag eagerly, as if she hoped for a different outcome. Next, she drew out the crystal that Shadow had worn around his neck when we seduced him with the jaguar potion. She laid that beside the first one, fitting it into a curve in the jaguar’s stone body that formed the first amulet. This time, the magic that had shown Lord Balam swayed to one side, and new magic rose, forming into the shape of a panther.
My heart began to pound faster, and I reached for Shadow’s hand again, gripping it in mine. I hadn’t needed confirmation that he was my mate—we both wore the mark. I didn’t even need him to be my True Mate. But somehow, seeing it up there, seeing it written in magic for all the world to see, made it more real somehow, made the bond somehow carry more weight.
Licking her lips, Camila darted a glance at me before plunging her hand into the little velvet pouch again. This time, she felt around before drawing out the third amulet, the enormous ruby Sir Kenosi had given me as a gift when we let him use the panther amulet to see his True Mate. He’d seen me, but he hadn’t believed it. He hadn’t told me. Until he gave his life for me, I hadn’t known he was my True Mate at all.
Again, the magic swirled, and a cheetah appeared with the other figures. I gasped, feeling the squeeze in my chest where it had resided within me for a time. Recognizing it as Sir Kenosi’s cheetah, my cheetah, made a stab of pain go through me. I couldn’t reach for his hand as I’d done Shadow’s. He still stood by Camila, looking so beautiful I wanted to cry.
With trembling fingers, she placed the colorful glass bead that Prince Kwame’s mother had given me when she’d realized I was her son’s True Mate, that I had brought him back from the Spirit World for her. I already knew what the magic would show, and judging from the slightly green hue that had taken over Camila’s pallid complexion, she knew, too.
“See,” Camila said, her voice trembling and weak. “I told you they’re my mates now. You don’t get all the love, Itzel. They’re mine. The amulets are telling us right now.”
“Are you sure that’s what they’re telling us?” I asked, itching to step forward and rip the bag from her hands, reveal my own mates. But they’d already been revealed through our marks. We already knew. Only Camila seemed determined to hold onto the fallacy.
As she laid the tiger eye stone from the shah into the plate, setting it along the narrow end of the crystal, I wondered what she would do if she had this many True Mates. But that would never happen. Shifters had one True Mate. I only had more because I was the High Priestess, because I needed them to help me handle, contain, and rebuild my magic.
“Well, damn,” Tadeu said behind me. “Guess it’s really true.”
His tiger had appeared with the other big cats in the dancing, sparkling gold light filling the air. So, there was no escaping it. He was my mate, brutal tendencies and all. I knew there was a reason for it, for all of them. He had things to teach me about myself and about him and about life, just like the others.
Next, Jetsun’s beautiful, majestic snow leopard appeared, and he slipped his hand into my free one. I was curious about the next one, but as Camila fit the lynx amulet into the puzzle, adjusting the other pieces to fit it snugly beside the cheetah’s ruby, nothing happened.
No lynx mate. I wondered if he’d died, and I felt a sadness like the one I felt for my ocelot, a hollow feeling from missing something you never knew you’d had.
At last, Camila drew out the ocelot amulet, the one I despised to my bones for what it had done at her behest. That potion had taken my mates from me, had turned their hearts to my cruel sister. Instead of fitting it into the last small circle at the center of the plate, Camila gripped the compass-like object in her hand and turned to me, fury written in harsh lines across her face.
“I won’t do it,” she swore. “I won’t let you become queen. I’ll die first. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. You wanted to get married, to have babies, to be a simple farm girl. So go and be one! I am destined to be queen. Me! Not you, me! This is my dream. You can’t have this, too.”
To my surprise, tears filled her eyes—real tears. Her nose turned red, her neck splotchy, and tears trickled down her cheeks.
“I would have let you help me,” I said. “I offered to let you be my top advisor, but you said no.”
“I’m sorry,” she wailed. “I just wanted this so bad, Itzel! You don’t understand what it’s like to want something so bad you can’t even name it, to live your whole life with this hole inside you, knowing that one day you’ll sit on the throne and it will be filled at last, and you can finally be happy! I just want to be happy. Please let me have this.”
“I don’t think it’s up to me,” I said. “You have to put the last amulet in.”
“No,” she cried, clutching it to her chest. “I won’t do it. You’ll never know for sure because I’ll never put it in. And you can’t touch it, so you can’t do it, either.”
“Your Grace,” snapped my father’s advisor. “Finish the puzzle.”
“No,” Camila shrieked pulling her hand back and flinging the amulet as hard as she could.
I heard it zip over my head so fast I knew it would have cracked my skull if it had been a few inches lower. I couldn’t help but wonder if that’s what she’d meant to do.
A gasp went up from the crowd, and Camila’s eyes widened with horror.
“Not you, too,” she wailed, her eyes fixed behind me.
I turned to see Gabor standing there, his hand still raised, his fingers closed in a fist.
“Give it to me,” Camila shrieked, scrambling to reach him but stepping on her dress and tripping instead.
Gabor’s dark eyes met mine. “You may have only your human body left,” he said slowly, bending in a deep bow, “but you have the blood of an ocelot, the unbreakable spirit of an ocelot, the fierce warrior heart of an ocelot. You are worthy of the ocelot throne, my queen.”
Straightening, he stepped forward and dropped the amulet into the opening in the puzzle.
Instantly, the magic leapt higher, the gold particles sparkling with their own light, swirling around each other, darting in and out like playful cubs as my magic mates frolicked and slid between one another, the apparition rising high above the crowd, who gaped up at the spectacle of all the beautiful big cats dancing in shimmering magic.
I searched among them for Gabor, somehow still holding an impossible hope that he’d appear. Not for me. I didn’t care whether he was my True Mate or even a shifter at all. But I wanted him to appear with the others for his sake, to make him feel like he belonged. When I looked back at him, he was gazing up in pure wonder, his eyes as innocent and loving as a baby’s.
Suddenly, a shriek tore through the hall, and I spun back. Camila had fallen to her knees, clutching her chest as she pointed up at the magic still forming and reforming the images of my six mates. When I looked again, I saw it. A seventh figure—an ocelot.
My heart swelled, and for one fraction of a second, I thought it was Gabor. But no sooner had the thought crossed my mind, it disappeared. This wasn’t Gabor. I knew it the same way I knew the other felines in the magic were my mates. The ocelot, though…
It leapt over them, then pounced on the cheetah, who rolled over on its back, letting the ocelot take it down even though the smaller cat couldn’t have overpowered it. They weren’t fighting, anyway. They were playing, frolicking. The cavernous ache in my chest grew stronger, and t
ears sprang to my eyes, pouring down my cheeks at the immensity of the simultaneous joy and sadness flooding through me.
I’d never seen that ocelot before, but I knew who it was. It wasn’t a seventh mate, one who had died and I’d never get to know. But this cat spirit had died, and just like losing a mate, it tore a piece of my soul away.
It wasn’t Gabor or another mate.
It was me.
Nineteen
“It’s not fair,” Camila screamed, tears streaming down her face, too. “You get everything! I just wanted to be queen! Just one thing!”
“You stole my mates,” I said, my voice almost disbelieving, as if I’d just realized the severity of what she’d done. I didn’t want to look away from the magic, spirit version of my ocelot, but I couldn’t stare at it forever, aching for something that was long gone, something that could never be.
“I don’t care about your fucking mates,” she snarled. “You can have them all back! Just let me have the throne.”
“I don’t think I can do that,” I said quietly. “I really am sorry.”
“Then let me be an advisor,” she sobbed. “Please, Itzel. It’s all I have! I’ve spent every day of my life preparing for this moment, and now it’s gone. I have nothing left. No mate, no title, no father. No sister. What am I going to do if I’m not queen? Where will I go? Who am I if I’m not Queen Ocelot?”
“You had a sister,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
“You could never forgive me,” she said, looking up at me with tearstained cheeks and desperation in her bloodshot eyes that even my battered heart responded to. “Could you?”
Her voice trembled as she whispered the question, as if she didn’t dare hope for the answer she wanted. She clutched the folds of her skirt that billowed up around her in heaps of purple frills, making her look small, like a little girl playing dress up in her mother’s clothes.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “But if you’ll work to better this country for everyone in it, not just the ocelots… The shifters know and love and trust you, Camila. It would be wrong of me to throw that away over hurt feelings. If you can promise that you’ll try every day to be the kind of person this country deserves, and if you’ll give me back my mates, I’ll let you earn a spot beside me in the throne room.”
“Really?” she whispered, her voice choked.
“I’m not promising anything except to give you a chance,” I said.
“And what about being your sister again?” she asked. “Will you give me a chance to do that, too?”
I swallowed hard. That was a harder promise to make. I’d only spoken the truth about her reputation with the ocelots in the country. They were loyal to her, and they might not like the idea of a human ruling them, even one with ocelot blood. They had all the money and power in the country, and it would be stupid to piss them off by snubbing the person they wanted as queen. Having her as an advisor was a good political move, no matter what I felt about her.
But this… I didn’t know if I’d ever forgive her for the way she’d treated me on the tour. She’d been more than cruel or cold. She’d tried to leave me, to marry me off to Kwame so I would be out of the way. When that hadn’t worked, she’d stolen first the amulets and then my mates.
She was still my sister, though. She was the only blood relative I had left in this world—at least the only one I could acknowledge as such. We had grown up together in the same court, the same family. She understood me in a way no one else could, not even Gabor or Tadeu. And she was my sister. The girl who had slept beside me every night after our mother died. The girl I had comforted when she cried, the girl who had laughed at my antics and blushed scarlet when I told her about seeing a cock for the first time—and then asked me to tell her about it again. She’d covered for me when I snuck out to see Tadeu, made excuses to our father when I didn’t want to come to breakfast or meet with our tutors.
“I can’t promise anything right now,” I admitted. “That will take time and a lot of work, too. But we can try, if you can treat me like an equal.”
“You’ll be the queen,” she said, laughing through her tears. “You’ll be more than my equal.”
I shrugged. “I don’t need you to bow to me.”
“Are you sure you don’t hate me?” she asked, wiping her splotchy face with her new white glove.
“Not entirely,” I said, managing a half smile back at her.
“I’m so glad,” she said, choking on another sob. She held out her arms to me, and I bent to give her a quick hug. She clung to me, her body feeling small and frail against mine.
Pain blossomed in my chest, and for a second, I thought it was the pain of knowing we’d never be the way we had been, of knowing we could never be the kind of sisters we used to be. But then I felt her tense as she thrust the blade deeper, sliding it between my ribs. I tried to break her hold, to pull away, but I could only stumble back as she clung to me with one arm, driving the knife deeper with her other hand. Her teeth were clenched in a feral snarl, her eyes wild and fierce, full of malice and desperation.
“I’ll never submit to the rule of a commoner,” she growled in my face, her arm around my neck and her shifter strength squeezing until I felt the world swaying dangerously underfoot. I collapsed to my knees, doubling over the knife. She stood, stepping back from me, leaving me kneeling at her feet like I was bowing at the feet of my queen.
All I could hear was a rushing in my ears. I could see the hem of her dress, though, could see a single drop of blood clinging to the hem.
Blackness threatened to swallow me, but I forced my mind to focus. I stared at the red bead of blood. She’d stabbed me in the chest, when no one else could see the knife. They’d figure it out soon enough, and while they rushed to save me, the council would place the crown on my sister’s head. It would be too late for me to take the throne—if I lived at all.
“Put the crown on my head,” Camila ordered, her voice cold and commanding. “Or every single one of you will be forced to beat your own family members to death one by one.”
I drew a breath, even though it felt like I was breathing a saw blade into my lungs. I had no weapon but the one in my chest, and I knew if I pulled it out, the blood would rush out with it.
“What’s happening?” Prince Kwame asked, trying to step around a Councilman. The row of men, the King’s Council, stepped in front of my men, blocking them from me. The advisor stood with the crown in his hands, looking uncertain.
I gripped the handle, willing myself not to faint from pain. I thought of my ocelot, that tiny cub that had been killed by the evil of this family. I thought of my mates, of Gabor, of Magda and Abigail and all the others like all of them. And I thought of Lord Balam, Sir Kenosi, and Prince Kwame still loving Camila, bewitched for the rest of their lives because I gave up instead of fighting to my last breath for them.
“Do it,” Camila hissed at the advisor as I heard a commotion behind me, heard Tadeu call my name before a giant thud sounded. I heard it as if from far away. I had already freed Tadeu and Shadow and Jetsun. They were fighting the guards, trying to get to me. They loved me.
If it killed me, if it was the last thing I ever did with my last breath, I’d set them all free. I would. If they couldn’t have their True Mate, at least they’d be free of emotional enslavement. They could love again on their own timeline, of their own accord. That thought sent me staggering to my feet. There was only one way to free them if I was wounded too badly to live, too badly to break the curse with magic.
The advisor lifted the crown above Camila’s head.
“I pronounce you Queen Camila Ocelot, ruler of the Ocelot Nation, guardian of the Ocelot Throne,” he said.
He lowered the crown toward her head just as I ripped the knife from my chest and, with the last ounce of strength I possessed, plunged it into my sister’s heart.
Twenty
Six Months Later
“Get your hands back on the rail,” Sir Kenosi s
aid, picking up the riding crop Tadeu had nicked from the stables. “In here, we make the calls. You’re not the queen when my cock’s inside you. You’re just a dirty little street urchin I brought home to teach the ways of life.”
He brought the instrument down, the strips of leather singing through the air before biting into the soft flesh of my ass cheek. I whimpered around Prince Kwame’s girth and gripped the railing on the bottom of the giant bed that ran along one wall of my innermost chamber, the one I’d shared with my mates since coming home from the hospital a month after Camila’s blade had nicked a one of the chambers of my heart and nearly killed me.
While I’d bled out on the floor in front of the throne where, ironically, I’d rolled around in my father’s blood just that morning, Gabor had placed the crown on my head and pronounced me queen. Of course he was the one who thought to make sure that if I died, I wouldn’t die a traitor’s death and be remembered that way. He’d made sure I would die with honor.
Obviously, I hadn’t died that day. Instead, I’d killed my sister. Although that act had freed my last three lovers from her clutches, I still had nightmares about it—both being stabbed and stabbing her. I had nightmares about the king, too, about being his wife, about being his daughter, about him raping me, and about Gabor killing him. The mind was a funny thing like that. It didn’t just remember the bad things, didn’t paint either my sister or my father in simple shades of good and evil. I missed them both at times.
I stumbled through meetings with advisors and negotiations with other nations, trying to find my way. Although I was still a year from my twentieth birthday, the King’s Council had agreed to let me take the throne since I’d gotten all the amulets and no one else had anywhere near the claim that I did. Plus, it would probably take someone else a year or more to gain them all over again, and Gabor had already declared me queen in front of hundreds of people. He was a noble, so technically, he was just as suitable to crown me as any of the Councilmen.
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