“The rest of them,” she muses. “Not Rabenfrost, though. Did you hear their lord’s eldest daughter is personally waiting on Killian? He really has them eating out of his hand. Alpha Tormun is waiting for the right moment to strike, but he’ll be taken care of soon enough.”
Her voice is detached, assessing. She delicately sips her tea, then places the cup back on its saucer.
If she’s disturbed by the idea of Lord Rabenfrost’s twelve-year-old daughter waiting on the new Siphon host of Alistair Brightbane, who’s had a penchant for young girls over the years, she doesn’t show signs of it.
It takes some focus for me to keep my anger off my face, so her next comment catches me off guard.
“Stark, before you go, there’s something else. I’ve decided you will marry the queen.”
For a second, the room is so silent we can hear the slow drip of water as last night’s icicles on her windowsill slowly melt in the sun.
“Excuse me?” My voice comes out low and deadly.
She makes eye contact with me, challenging. “You heard me. You are to marry the queen.”
I barely have to call my strength, it comes so freely. With a swipe of my hand, I unleash an impelling blast—directed toward her but not at her so that it tips over her table. Her breakfast plate smashes across the floor, shards scattering in all directions.
Anyone else would cower in fear at the violence I have living inside me, so close to the surface at any time.
Siegrid merely looks bored.
“I thought I made my position on this perfectly fucking clear the last time you brought this up,” I snarl. “I’m not interested.”
Liar, slithers a dark voice in my mind.You lie.
With a flick of Siegrid’s fingers, shadows descend on the room, righting the table. It’s a clear message: However strong I might be, the Sovereign Alpha is stronger, with a type of magic I won’t know until we’ve performed her funeral rites.
“Yes,” she says mildly. “I was disappointed in your reaction. Now that I’ve had more time to work with the queen myself, I’ve formed my own opinion. She’s impossibly powerful and entirely unpolished. She will not rule well without a firm hand guiding her. If you are her husband, we can proxy-rule the throne.”
Disgust and horror rise in me so strongly that I’m nearly shaking. She doesn’t want to forcefully shape Meryn into her own image. She wants to take over the queen’s throne entirely.
“You misjudge her,” I say through clenched teeth. She will rule impeccably if I can keep Siegrid’s “firm hand” off her. If I can keep my distance enough that Meryn’s own violence stays at bay.
Siegrid narrows her eyes. “Perhaps. But as the stewards of Nocturna, we cannot take that chance. We can convince her by showing her historicalrecords, pointing out that the ancient Sturmfrost Queens always married the mated rider. She may protest initially, but she will come around.”
“And me?” I growl.
Siegrid might have forgotten this in her hurry to seize Meryn’s throne, but she’s spent nearly thirty years forging me into a waking nightmare.
A villain has no place next to a queen.
“Youneed to stop being obstinate,” she says crisply. “This isn’t about your feelings on the matter. We’ve been presented with an opportunity we can’t pass up. We’ll organize a fast wedding, and you should get Meryn with child as quickly as possible.”
Her skin under my tongue. Her soft noises of pleasure.
Fuck.
Reeling in my self-control, I remind myself that Meryn is in no place to be married to anyone, least of all to someone she hates.
Someone who enjoys calling forth the darkness in her, who would nudge her toward the worst version of herself.
Siegrid pauses and looks out the window, considering her next words. “A child born with the powers of both the Therion and the Sturmfrost lines…”
The expression on her face turns my stomach. Like she’s starving and has just been presented with an opulent feast.
I know, then, everything she’s planning. Once a child is born—her grandchild, a baby she can have entire control over and mold to her image—she’ll do exactly what she threatened in the first place.
She’ll get rid of the queen.
