I looked at Mona Sera then, really looked at her, and with that new sharpened vision, I sensed it, her secret, her fear. A little kernel within her that had blossomed and grown. And I realized this wasn't about me at all. This was to test and punish Amber, whose father had committed the ultimate taboo, not only raping but killing a Queen. Large, strong, massive Amber, whom Mona Sera secretly feared and hated in the way only a woman, weaker and smaller, could fear a man, even a Queen. Perhaps especially a Queen.
"Does not the desire run in your blood?" Mona Sera asked, her voice dripping with sweetness. "Come, come. We can all see that you want to take the little Queen. You cannot fool us."
He quivered, a mass of great strength and masculine control reduced to no better than that of a helpless trapped animal. Poor brute.
Satisfaction glinted hard like a diamond in Mona Sera's eyes. With my deeper insight into people, I could almost read her thoughts. If he raped me, a Queen, it would confirm all that Mona Sera had secretly feared all along, and it would be his own death sentence. If he didn't, he was refusing his Queen's direct orders. Amber was screwed either way and the realization of it was evident in the sea-blue turmoil of his eyes.
I wondered how many years Mona Sera had made Amber pay and pay for the sins of his father. How many times she had ordered him to rape someone before her and watch her worst fear reenacted over and over again, prodding at it like one would a sore tooth. How sick and twisted Mona Sera must be to test both of them so.
Gryphon had said that those here had nowhere else to go. Perhaps if Amber had been less tall, less strong—just less. But with his massive strength and height, no Queen would ever feel completely safe around him with the insanity of his father's history, and it was insane to kill off your life source, condemning not just you but all others to a shorter life.
"Amber, I ordered you to rape her. Didn't you hear me?" Mona Sera voice grew shriller, louder.
Amber slid off me. Crawling on his hands and knees, he prostrated himself before Mona Sera. "Please, my Queen. I beg of you… I do not wish to."
"You lie," she said, her voice pure melodic poison. "One clearly sees that you do wish to."
He shook his head, his face in the dirt.
"You dare disobey me?" Her voice was a deadly hiss of warning.
His hands stretched beseechingly up to her, then dropped, not daring to touch her.
"Well I, for one, would be most happy to carry out my Queen's command," said the man I had cut, youthful despite the whiteness of his hair, his cheerful voice breaking the spell and drawing all attention back to me as I was inching my way closer to Gryphon. Great. Just frigging great.
I started to struggle to my feet and the white-haired warrior did that fast-action leap-and-bound thing, his body on me in an instant, pinning me down before I even had a chance to rise. With a calculated deliberation, he tore open the front of my shirt, revealing my cross and laying bare more cleavage than I was comfortable with flashing.
Yup, no more waiting. I flexed, broke the short silver chain easily, slammed a manacle-clad wrist into the handsome, winsome face above me—rapists came in all kinds, I guess—and watched with satisfaction as he flew off me.
I tsked-tsked. "No one teaches you boys manners anymore."
Gasps of surprise flew around me. I ignored them and scrambled to Gryphon, ripping off his manacles quickly and easily, and pulling him to his feet as men ran toward us.
"Wait," came a woman's voice, clear and loud, not Mona Sera's. And for some reason, perhaps from nothing more than mere surprise, everyone halted, including Gryphon.
"Why do you interfere, Sonia?" Mona Sera snapped. Sonia—Gryphon's half sister.
"My Queen," Sonia said, her voice ringing with desperate certainty, "she is your daughter."
Chapter Five
The pronouncement stopped me short. My mother? I stopped yanking on Gryphon and swung back to stare at Mona Sera. Focusing my vision, I searched her face. Her eyes were cold and her lips were thin, cruel. But those cheekbones, the strong line of her jaw, that black hair…
Oh my God, there was a resemblance.
"Do not be ridiculous," Mona Sera said sharply, with what almost sounded like pain.
"Milady. She wears a silver cross against her skin and it does not weaken her," Sonia said. She was a gentle woman, with kind eyes and light brown hair the color of autumn leaves after they had fallen from the trees. "She is a Mixed Blood."
"She cannot be a Mixed Blood. She has our strength and speed, and she is a Queen," Mona Sera said. But she narrowed her eyes and looked with that extra sense beyond the five that humans possessed. "How interesting," she murmured. "When were you born?"
I arched my brow. "The day I was found in the orphanage was October 31, twenty-one years ago."
"Is that the date?" Mona Sera queried of Sonia. The other woman nodded.
My eyes narrowed. "You have to ask someone else when your daughter was born?"
"Why should I remember it?" was her arrogant reply.
"Bitch," was mine.
Gryphon squeezed my shoulder in warning as I processed the information that the cross I had cherished and worn against my heart all my life had not be given to me by my mother as I had thought. Mona Sera had not recognized the cross in any way.
With slow certainty I turned my eyes to the woman who must have given it to me, who must have named me. The woman who had remembered the day and year I had been born. Who had recognized that cross.
"Her palms," Sonia said quietly. "She should have the marks."
"Show us your palms, girl," Mona Sera commanded.
I curled my hands into fists, bristling against the order. Gryphon squeezed my shoulder gently, persuasively. But it was the quiet plea in Sonia's compassionate eyes that I could not resist.
Goddammit, why couldn't you have been my mother instead? I wailed inside as I uncurled my fists and held out my palms. Everyone gasped again. I was beginning to feel like a circus monkey, performing trick after trick.
"The Goddess's tears," Mona Sera said, looking at my pearly moles. "I remember thinking it such a waste on a Mixed Blood child."
I'd always wondered who my mother was. Looking at Mona Sera's proud icy face that reflected not one ounce of maternal warmth, I felt the truth of that old adage—Be careful what you wish for.
My eyes fell to Amber's quivering prostrate form and things shifted into better perspective.
Okay, so my mother was a sick, murdering bitch. At least she was sane.
I found myself locked in the dungeon for the rest of the day. A real honest-to-god dungeon. What else did one expect in the basement of a beautiful manor house masquerading as an ugly warehouse. The stone walls were damp and there was no light, but I didn't need any to see. If this was how she treated a daughter, I wondered how she treated an enemy.
The door was made out of silver, and no, that didn't stop me. The slow beating heart armed with my own knives behind the door did, however. That, and the fact that Mona Sera was taking and presenting me to the High Queens' Council the very next night. It was what Gryphon and I had wanted, after all.
I sank down onto the stone floor and felt the sun rise and worried about Gryphon. He had been taken away and I had forborne asking Mona Sera about him, instinctively knowing that any concern evidenced for him on my part would be seen as a weakness to be used and exploited by her. I wasn't a daughter to her. I was just an interesting tool, like a hammer she could swing, a novelty she could present to the court and claim credit for. None of it mattered, as long as she took us there.
I must have dozed. The sound of a key turning and door opening awakened me. The light from the stairwell fell on my guard's hair, showing its true color, a blond so light in color it appeared white at first glance, but upon closer look revealed that faint touch of yellow. His eyes were a striking green, not that brownish mix of green more commonly seen, but pure emerald green that made one think of the rich verdant jungles of the Amazon. He had the same cheerful smile that he had worn when he was about to rape me.