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“I thought dragons enjoyed slime.”
:Shut your fucking mouth.:
“Or what?” Sekh asked mildly.
:Our queen looks like she needs to watch another hatefuck.:
“Enough,” I said, shaking my head. Torn between laughing—and shuddering at the thought of Sekh chowing down on the Dauphine’s ravaged body—I held my hand out over her corpse and dripped blood from her feet, up her body, to her face.
Still blurred and oddly blank, as if she didn’t have cheekbones, chin, or barely even a nose to help me identify her. Even though she was finally dead, I had no idea what her true face looked like.
Not that I fucking cared.
“You were never a fraction of the fucking epic queen my mother was.”
Turning away, I willed my blood to light with all the heat of my rage.
Justice. For Mom. For Thierry.
Burn until not even ash remains.
54
SHARA
All I wanted to do was go home and collapse into bed for a fucking week.
But watching the way Gina’s eyes widened and her mouth fell open, her phone pressed to her ear, I had a feeling the giant ass stack of folders we’d gone through the last time we sat down to handle Triskeles business was only the tip of the fucking iceberg.
I’d killed the Dauphine, one of the longest living and most powerful—not to mention the most secretive—Aima queens. I had no fucking clue how much shit I’d just inherited with her legacy. Surely there were sibs. Properties. Treaties to figure out. I wasn’t sure of the legal complexities. If House Isador absorbed House Viennois, what did that mean for House Valois, Jeanne’s daughter?
What about House Gorgos? Where was the real Basilia? Undina and Nuri had both sat at the Skolos table with her hundreds of years ago. Sekh had Seen her. The real queen.
Somewhere, somehow, she’d fallen to the Dauphine. And nobody had noticed a fucking thing.
Had Leonie Delafosse ever been real? Or just a persona the Dauphine created to get close to me?
I needed to go with Xin back to the swamp and see if those… things… had died with the Dauphine or if they still needed to be freed. I’d probably have to go to Mykonos and check there too. See if there were any clues to what had happened to the real Basilia.
Wincing, Gina held the phone away from her ear.
“Is somebody yelling at you?” I asked incredulously.
She nodded and mouthed, “the queen of Rome.”
I marched over and took the phone from her hand. “This is Shara Isador. Don’t fucking call us back until you can be civil. Good day.”
And I hung up.
Kevin’s phone started ringing. Eyes wide, he pulled it out of his pocket, glanced at the screen, and looked up at me, his face pale. “It’s Granddad.”
“Put him on speaker.” I held my hand out. He accepted the call and placed the phone in my hand. “This is Shara Isador.” Barely, I managed to bite back, “What the fuck do you want?”
“Oh. Since when does the queen answer her consiliarius’ phone?”
Byrnes must be rattled to speak so informally. It’d be like Winston slipping up and calling me Shara. “Whenever I want. Was that you or your queen yelling at Gina?”
He harrumphed and cleared his throat. “Her Majesty is… uh… indisposed.”
