Unable to contain my joy at this confirmation, I defused the smile with a soft chuckle meant to enrage him. It worked, for the hideous gills in his neck flared.
“I suppose, if the legends are true, there must be three more living royal descendants on Alera.” All of this he already knew. “One of them is probably parading around in the royal gemstones and being crowned the new queen as we speak.”
If this were true, I would not be held here. I’d be dead.
“Your cousins, the only other royal family members, never had a spire light for them. Not one. And they tried many times.”
“Then the Goddess deemed them unworthy,” I clarified. Again, the history of the spires was something he knew. “Perhaps She changed Her mind?”
Not possible, but this male didn’t believe in the strength of a female. He didn’t understand the divine wisdom—and power—of the Goddess. The idiot.
“The spires would not light for them after all these years,” he countered. “Not while you live.”
My smile turned malicious and I shrugged once again, as if this conversation, as if he, were boring. “It’s been a long time. A very long time. Your master waited too long to take over the throne. With the additional spires lit, he’s too late.”
I hoped he would slip, tell me his master’s name, give me some way to track and eliminate my enemies, the threat to my daughters. But I was becoming accustomed to disappointment.
“Bitch queen.” He stood and I braced for impact. Even knowing the blow was coming wasn’t enough. That monstrous hand struck the side of my head and everything went black.
1
Captain Leoron Turaya of Alera, Mate to Princess Trinity, Cleric Building, Interrogation
Room, Sub-Level Three
The punches and kicks that rained down had ceased to hurt hours ago. I was numb. I felt no pain, could only hear the sound of flesh on flesh, a hard boot against my already broken ribs, the hiss of air as I struggled to breathe through what had to be a punctured lung.
“Where are the females? Where are the queen’s daughters?” The voice did not belong to my tormentor, but to one of Alera’s highest-ranking clerics. “Three females entered. None of them exited the building. Where are they?”
“Still inside, I guess.” I had no idea where they were, was still reeling with the revelation that the female whose Ardor I soothed, The One, my mate, was the future queen.
“The citadel is empty. The sanctum was searched by the royal family.”
“There is no royal family on Alera.” That was the truth as far as I was concerned. Or, at least it had been until Trinity and her sisters arrived. Queen Celene’s cousins, those deemed unworthy by the citadel and unable to light a spire, had not earned the right to call themselves royal. Most people on the planet agreed. If they did not, we would have had a new queen years ago.
“The royal family searched the citadel. It was empty. Where did the females go? How did they escape?”
Trinity and her sisters weren’t found inside the citadel? Where were they?
The large male doing the dirty work was a man I’d never seen before, but the inked markings covering his body indicated he belonged to the clerics’ private army.
An army they had systematically denied creating the past few years as they jostled for power after the queen’s disappearance. No one had claimed the throne in the twenty-seven long years since. And now, no other would, except my mate. Three decades of plotting and scheming brought to an abrupt end by the light of a few spires.
I tried to laugh, but the sound came out as a wheeze. “Worried that your evil… plans to take over Alera… are ruined?”
The cleric was not amused and he nodded at the brute beating me to continue. Still smiling when the first blow landed over my already broken ribs, I clenched my teeth and endured, focused on the hem of the long, elaborate cape wrapped around the body of the cleric sitting a few steps away. The cell was cold, but I knew the soft, black shell and even softer silver lining would keep him warm in much worse conditions.
Beneath, he was dressed as all the clerics were, in a fighter’s uniform with a ceremonial dagger at his hip. I knew he had been trained to wield the blade better than any standard Coalition fighter. The uniform cloth was an array of sharp angles in silver and black while an expanse of white crossed his chest and shimmering silver graced his arms. The silver was tradition, a token of their eternal service to and respect for the royal bloodline.
And apparently, a complete lie. At least where this male was concerned. He was a master-level cleric, an expert in hand-to-hand combat—yet he refused to get his hands dirty with me—and I’d seen the links of silver chain around his neck proclaiming his status to the world.
Despite his youthful frame, I estimated he was near sixty years old with deep lines around his eyes and mouth, not from laughing, but scowling… as he was doing now.
More of me was broken than whole. The taste of blood filled my mouth and I had to wonder if I were spitting it up due to internal bleeding, or if my mouth filled with the dark liquid because my lips and cheeks were flayed open.
I didn’t focus on any of that, nor the questions they asked. All that filled my mind was her voice. Her scent. Her taste. The feel of her pussy as it had clenched and milked my cock. The soft feel of her hair as it brushed over my chest when she’d kissed her way up from pleasuring my cock with her mouth. That had been an experience I’d been waiting a lifetime to have fulfilled.
I thought only of Trinity. My mate. The One.