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. You 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.”