Page 41 of The Fallen Fae King

Isis leans forward, resting her hand on her chin. “Many things.”

“I am already dying.”

“There are worse things than death.”

“As you shall discover if you do not return my Queen to me.”

Horus snorts. “You have always been so quick with threats. Useless with most social interactions, as innocent as one of the fanatically blind Harts who offer up the holes beneath their cute deer tails with such stupid devotion to their dark gods. But wicked when it comes to graphic descriptions of death.”

“So speaks the dead Blood.”

“Boys,” Isis chides, “how many times do I need to tell you not to quarrel?” She adjusts her crocodile badge thoughtfully. “Your mother gave this to me as a courting gift. I remember how special I felt. Singled out. I believed that it meant she loved me. I have never taken it off, not for a single moment since. I hoped that she would understand just how devoted I was, but I wonder now if there was something…missing…in her, as there is in you. Everyone can see it in your eyes, you know. I could as soon as I met you.”

“It’s why no one would be friends with you apart from your dirty animals.” Horus chuckles.

A low, rumbling growl arises in the crocodile’s chest in protest.

My stomach flips.

It’s not something I haven’t heard before.

I’m different.

Enough people have tried to beat that difference out of me.

Why can their words still hurt me?

“Perhaps I prefer the company of rats or reptiles to certain vampires,” I reply.

Horus’ gaze darkens in outrage. “Freak.”

I scan Freya.

Her chest is rising and falling too rapidly. Sweat is staining the neck of her dress, and her hair falls in damp strands.

Horus is holding her under the compulsion for too long. The toll is too much for her.

I wrap my wings around myself. “Tell me. Why have you kidnapped my Omega? I am already sacrificing myself. I know that it was you who staged that humiliation with my Blood Lover on the Night of the Shades. I warn you, if you don’t return my Queen now, then I won’t throw myself into the Void. I shall allow the Void Devils to devour the world.”

Isis pulls herself to sit up straighter; an imperious never-quite-queen on her crocodile throne. “You act like you alone know suffering. Do you believe that your good twin and you were the only ones who were banished by your mother? I loved KalaKant with the strength of a burning star, but as the Beta consort, I was sent to live in this subterranean palace beneath the city, far from her light. Her other children basked under the moonlight and glittering diamonds in the Lotus Palace, while my sons wallowed in the false night with our crocodiles. Yet my heritage, from a village in Crocodile Valley, is noble. I should have had a place in KalaKant’s royal nest, but she was obsessively devoted to her Omega. She could not bear to have a Beta in their royal nest. So, my sons had to become stronger, more powerful, better mages than any of their sons to gain a place at court. Our dynasty would have ruled this kingdom if only you had died with your brothers and sisters.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint.”

“You should be.” Isis’ gray eyes flash. “I earned this kingdom.”

Suddenly, a dizzying wave of rage hits me.

Earned?

I stalk toward Isis. The crocodile sways side by side with the swing of its powerful tail next to me. Her head is low, and her jaw hangs open to reveal crooked, wickedly sharp teeth.

She is as hungry to rend flesh as I am.

It must show on both our faces because Isis blanches, cringing back on the divan. “Stay back. I order you.”

“Actually, you don’t,” I hiss. “I am your King. When I was grieving for my lost family who had never claimed me as theirs, and you locked me in the punishment pits, I thought that I must deserve what you did to me. But I never understood why you hated me. By the Void, however, it was all because of petty ambition.”

Isis’ fangs lengthen.