He frowned, taking my hand and examining it. “You should get this looked at.”
“It’s just a couple fingers,” I said, pulling away. “Whether I take the throne is a matter of life and death.”
Our eyes met, and he swallowed and dropped his gaze. “You don’t have to pardon me, Your Grace.”
“I absolutely would be within my rights to pardon you,” I said. “You were protecting the queen from an assault. I don’t think you even need a pardon for that. You need a fucking medal.”
He didn’t speak, so I went on, growing agitated as I worked it out.
“Okay, so, it doesn’t matter that she’s older. But it does matter that she’s a real shifter, and my ocelot was killed. That’s a big deal. And that she has royal blood. I have a title, though. I’m a princess because of my mother, even if my father wasn’t the king. That situation is unprecedented, though. How do we find out if I have enough claim to challenge Camila?”
“There have been a few kings who had illegitimate children and no heir from his marriage to the queen. In those instances, his children still had royal blood, and they took over the throne because there was no other heir.”
“But I don’t have royal blood,” I said. “And there is another heir.”
We stared at each other for a long moment, not speaking. My heart was thudding in my chest. Could we do this? The odds were stacked so high against us. I’d said I was going to keep Camila from the throne, but I’d never really committed myself to this. I’d never honestly thought it through and considered what it would be like to take the throne from her. I’m not sure I’d ever thought I deserved to rule. But that’s because I’d always thought I was human, and how could a human deserve an ocelot throne? I wasn’t only human, though. I was human, but I had shifter blood. In some ways, that probably made me uniquely fit to rule in a way no other queen had been. After all, I represented both humans and shifters.
“Let’s get out of here and talk about it somewhere else,” Gabor said, wrapping his jacket around me and lifting me into his arms as if I weighed no more than a feather.
No one knew the king was dead, I realized. That’s why they hadn’t come for us and killed us both when they found us fucking in his blood and painting each other with it like gleeful psychopaths. I wasn’t ashamed of what we’d done. My experiences had made me what I was, and Gabor’s had shaped him. I liked that he was a warrior, that as the victor, he’d seen fit to use the blood of the vanquished for lube while he fucked that man’s daughter in a pool of his still-warm blood, while his body lay almost within arm’s reach. I liked that he was dirty and twisted and maybe a little bit sick in the head.
How else he could handle me?
“They must think he’s enjoying his new plaything, and you’re guarding him,” I murmured into Gabor’s neck as he carried me through the darkness of an underground passage. “That’s why they never came looking. They think he’s still alive.”
Gabor stopped and reached into his pocket. I heard his keys rattling and then he pushed open a door, and a light went on. Though we were still in the underground system of escape tunnels and hidden rooms below the castle, this couldn’t have been further from the cell I’d spent the last month in. The floor was smooth marble tile of different shades and patterns. A giant four-poster bed with luxurious quilts sat at one end of the large, one-room apartment. A small kitchenette area was set up at the other end of the place, while a sitting room with overstuffed sofas and chairs took up another corner. There were even potted plants, paintings on the walls, and a TV, which the king didn’t allow in the rooms upstairs, where we were supposed to pretend we lived in centuries past.
An eerie feeling climbed up my spine, and I turned to Gabor. “Is this… Is this where he kept my mother?”
“I don’t know,” he said, sounding confused. His brows drew together in a frown. “Do you want to go somewhere else?”
“No,” I said, swallowing hard. “This is fine.”
I could feel her presence in the air somehow, even after all these years. He may not know the answer to that, since he hadn’t been a palace guard then, but I knew.
“There’s a shower,” Gabor said, pointing to a small bathroom off the main room. When I stepped inside, I could see my mother in everything. She hadn’t just stayed here. She’d chosen everything for this room, decorated it, never knowing she’d be held captive within its walls.
The white tile floor was cool beneath my feet when Gabor set me down. I hesitated, not wanting to close the door between us. I was scared he’d be gone when I emerged, that he’d decide to turn himself in like a martyr so they wouldn’t come after me. I remembered another time I’d stepped from the shower when he’d been there. I’d asked him to stay, asked him to love me, but he’d refused.
“Will you shower with me?” I asked, my voice timid.
He didn’t hesitate. We cleaned ourselves and each other, but it wasn’t charged with eroticism like my shower with Jetsun. I pushed away that thought. It hurt too much to think of my mates right now.
“How did you find me?” I asked, my back to Gabor as I soaped blood off my arms under the spray of warm water. “In the throne room. No one uses that room.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “The other guards attacked me, but as soon as I got away, I knew I had to find you. And I healed like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Almost instantly, even though I hadn’t shifted. I think somehow you gave me some of your magic.”
Magic elixir. That’s what my father had called my slick. And Gabor had gotten a whole fuck-ton of it. I wasn’t exactly surprised, but I filed that knowledge away with all the other things I was learning about my magic. My magic could be used to heal someone, even when I wasn’t around.
“And that led you to me?”
“Yes,” he said as we stepped around each other in the shower, trading places. “I didn’t think about it. I followed my instinct, and it led me to you.”
“Your ocelot instincts?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I think it was your magic.”
“So, you had some of my magic, and it called you back to me.”
“Yes.”
I longed to reach out and touch his magnificent body, but I held myself back. This was the time for a different kind of action.
I wondered who else would be called to me. Would the other guards be able to find me as easily? What about all the people in the arena who had been blasted with magic? Camila?
And my mates. They had been there. I’d tried not to think of them too much, knowing it could break me. My heart couldn’t take the pain of losing them all over again every day, every time I thought of them.
But I was done trying to avoid reality. I was ready for the truth. If they’d never love me again, it would crush me, but I was ready to know that for sure. And I didn’t believe that. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t let myself give up on them. I was going to get them back. Camila could take the throne, but she wasn’t going to get away with taking my men.
That’s when the truth of what Gabor had done sank into me. My father was dead. Camila was acting queen by default. She’d rush the coronation now, probably have it this very day. I’d run out of time to stop her.
It was now or never.
Fifteen
Gabor kissed me goodbye inside the apartment, in case one or both of us didn’t make it out alive. I was betting that if one of us went down, we’d both go, probably in spectacular fashion if Camila was anything like our father.
Our father was dead. I kept telling myself because it didn’t seem real. There was no more King Ocelot to rule the nation, to dole out punishments and terror.
There was only my sister and me. If she took over, the country would go on as it had. Nothing much would change. She would execute Gabor as a traitor and choose a man either from among my mates or find one of her own if the amulets came together and showed her someone else. They had indicated that I would been queen, so I wasn’t sure what they would sho
w her. But I knew she’d have me killed so they couldn’t show her anything she didn’t want to see.
If I had anything to say about it, they wouldn’t show her anything at all.
During the day, we’d hidden out in the room, watching the TV on mute so we could hear the news but also hear if anyone came in search of us. Luckily, the palace was huge and filled with hiding spots. Gabor had been insistent about turning himself in at first, but I’d convinced him there was a chance. In the end, he agreed to wait out the day with me in the hope that if someone came, he could protect me. I also worked on healing my hand with magic, and after a while, though it was still sore and swollen, I could tell that I’d stitched the bones back together with the healing properties I summoned.
The news came on around noon. Camila appeared wearing a black, high-necked blouse and a matching lace bonnet. She solemnly announced that King Ocelot had died, and she would be ascending the throne in a ceremony this evening. The king’s death was still under investigation, she said, but there was no reason to suggest he’d died of anything but natural causes.
That made me sputter. Was she only trying to control what narrative left the palace, the way my father had done when he’d killed my mother? She must be. There was no way the murder looked like anything other than what it was.
My sister went on, managing to look completely cold and detached in a way I knew the people of our country would find heartless. She’d never been good at reading the room. I knew she could sniffle and tremble and fill her pretty blue eyes with tears at will. She’d been doing it all our lives. She’d manipulated me, our father, and even our mother with her helpless little girl act. But when it was the time to perform in front of anyone else, she froze up like she was doing now. A good show of mourning would have gone at least somewhere with the people she intended to rule.
Not to mention, she probably really was devastated by our father’s death—at least as much as she had been by his betrayal the night before. She’d idolized our father, groveled at his feet to please him, needing his approval even more than I did. In his death, instead of portraying herself as the grieving daughter by showing true feeling, she came across as someone playing the part. She’d dressed for mourning, the black washing out her pale complexion to make her look austere, but she spoke in a flat monotone, as if she felt nothing under the pretext.
Well, at least I knew where to go for the coronation. I wasn’t keen on returning to the throne room so soon, but I’d known that’s where she’d be. By now, she knew our father had been murdered, and she’d certainly think I was to blame for that. She wouldn’t be sure about Gabor yet. The moment she found out he was alive, she’d consider him an accomplice, though. Until then, she might think I’d killed him, too. And she probably thought I’d fled into the city where I had loyalists.
The safest thing to do would be to stay put and wait it out, then go to the coronation tonight when some of the public had been let in to witness and all the ocelots in the nation were in attendance. But I’d lost too much time in the dungeon prison. I was done waiting. I had a score to settle with Camila first. She had taken my men, and I was taking them back.
Which meant kissing Gabor one last time at the door. I lingered in the kiss, feeling a tingle of excitement shimmer down my body to my core, then past that and all the way to my toes. I wished we could do more, that I could have more time with him. I didn’t know if he’d want to be with me after I got my lovers back. I knew he felt slighted by my magic, that it hadn’t marked him, and unworthy. But he loved me enough to help me find the other pieces of my heart, even if it meant losing me for himself.
We both knew this was practically a suicide mission, but I couldn’t let my sister control anyone’s mind and heart longer than she had. Plus, as much as they needed me to free them, I needed them. I needed them to hold me again, to fill my heart and my body, to control the chaotic magic I could feel rising in me slowly after being utterly spent the night before. After the orgasm Gabor had given me in arena, I’d felt depleted, like I’d been completely stripped of my power. But the orgasms he’d given me in the throne room somehow rekindled the magic, building it higher. I didn’t understand how both things could be true, but maybe I didn’t have to understand magic completely. I just had to control it, and Lilith herself had told me that having so many mates was a good way to do that.
“I love you,” I whispered against Gabor’s lips. “You may not be my True Mate, but you’re my true love.”
His hands tightened on my waist, and he pressed his forehead to mine and sighed, as if he’d been waiting to hear me say those words.
“Let’s go find the others,” he said quietly.
My heart filled with love for him, and with the love he had for me. He knew what I needed, and he’d give it to me, no matter what it meant for us. I swallowed hard and nodded, giving him one more soft kiss. “Thank you.”
Together, we stepped into the hall. We didn’t touch again. That part of our relationship was over for now. I wouldn’t think it was over for good.
Good fortune smiled on us for once, and we made it all the way up from the underground level before we encountered anyone. Even though we stuck to a back staircase, we still ran into a maid on the first-floor landing. Her eyes rounded like dinner plates, and she stifled a shriek, dropping an armload of fancy linens and jumping back.
So, palace gossip had started already. Even if the country at large didn’t know my father had been murdered, this girl clearly thought I was dangerous, so she must have heard something about his grisly remains. Considering what I knew about palace gossip, whatever she’d heard was probably even worse than the reality. Yes, we’d beheaded the king, but we hadn’t dismembered him or done anything at all to the body afterwards. But by now the rumor mill probably said we’d strung him up by his entrails and carved his flesh from his bones while he was still alive.
At least they didn’t know about our grisly fuck-fest in his blood.
“Atziti,” I said, leveling her with a stare. “I’m not going to hurt you. You’ve known me since we were toddlers.”
“Y-yes, Your—Princess—Itzel.” She started snatching up the linens she’d dropped, and I stopped to grab a handful and tuck them into her arms.
I shook my head and give her a little smile. “Don’t tell anyone you saw us for at least ten minutes, okay?”
She nodded like a puppet, and we passed her and continued on. Halfway to the second floor, the doors above burst open. My first thought was that Atziti had run and told some guards, but then I saw a handful of servants maneuvering through the doors. Two carried a long, rolled up rug that would be laid in front of the dais in the throne room for Camila to walk down in her procession to the throne. Three others wrestled with heavy reems of tapestries and curtains for the throne room decorations.
The one in front gave a little shriek and dropped her end of the rug when she saw us, flattening her back against the wall and covering her heart with her hand. The rug escaped the clutches of the guy holding the other end and began to slide down the stairs. Gabor caught it and frowned at the woman who had dropped it.
“Get yourself together,” he snapped. “You could have injured Her Grace, the Princess.”
“Oh, yes, I’m sorry,” she said, rushing down to grab the front end of the rug, her face turning pink. I couldn’t tell if it was because he’d scolded her and filled her with fear or because, well, look at the man. He was fucking beautiful. He was also a guard, and all humans knew that guards were the king’s most lethal weapons. Under his reign, this woman could very easily be dragged out and beaten or murdered for what she’d just done.
“It’s okay,” I said, laying a hand on her arm and one on Gabor’s. “No one was hurt. Just be careful.”
Gabor scowled at me, but he didn’t contradict me. I didn’t think he ever would, even if he wasn’t a guard. Serving the throne was so deeply ingrained in the guards that it wasn’t even second nature—it was first nature.
&nb
sp; “Come on,” I said, nodding to the top of the steps. I smiled at the other servants as we passed. They all stared at us, their gazes ranging from scared to curious to sympathetic.
The palace knew we were here. It would be a matter of minutes before word spread through the kitchens and the hallways bustling with activity for the coronation. So far, the guards hadn’t been alerted, which meant the royals and other advisors wouldn’t know for a few more minutes.
We made it to the top of the stairs and stepped out into the hallway where the royal chambers lay. That’s where the guards were. Half a dozen of them turned to see us step into the hall. It took them all of about three seconds to have their guns trained on us.
I raised my hands where they could see them. “We’re not armed,” I said. “We’re not here to hurt anyone. I just want to talk to my sister.”
“Her Majesty is not seeing anyone until the coronation,” one of the guards said.
“Princess Camila is not the queen yet,” Gabor said coldly. “It’s Her Grace until she’s taken the throne.”
Funny, since he’d called me Your Majesty and my queen while he was inside me. I wasn’t sure if that was his vote of confidence or a term of endearment from him.
The older guard shifted, looking uncomfortable. My cheeks warmed when I remembered the greedy, glazed look in his eyes as he tongued my pussy hole, but I didn’t flinch or drop his gaze.
“I think she’d make an exception to see me,” I said. “You heard the late king’s wishes regarding the matter of who takes the throne after him.”
Now a few more of them looked uncomfortable. My father’s death complicated things that had already been a mess. He’d muddied the waters with his last acts, ordering my coronation instead of Camila’s. The guards would have to choose where their loyalties lay—with my deceased father, the king who had hired them and trained them and ruled their lives, or with my sister, who instead of honoring his last wishes was pushing forward with her own coronation. She was technically not the queen, but she’d stepped in quickly to claim that spot and probably to threaten to execute any who didn’t transfer their loyalty to her immediately.
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