The Queen Is Dead (The Immortal Empire) (29 page)

We entered the great hall, where there was still music and dancing going on. Humans reclined in clouds of sweet smoke that burned my lungs and muddied my brain. I felt as though the weight of my life had been pulled from my shoulders with every intake of breath. That was the beauty of opium, I supposed.

There was a long banqueting table against the far wall. We had to walk past all the goblins gathered in that room to get to it. They watched me closely, some of them drinking, some chewing on chucks of meat.

Was that a hand I saw one of them gnawing on?

I couldn’t tell what the carcass on the table used to be, thank God. Only pieces of it remained, one of which was the heart.

The prince picked up the bloody organ and offered it to me, just as he had with Church’s heart that fateful night a couple of months ago.

“Best part,” he said. “Symbol of respect that it was left for our lady.”

Swallowing hard, I took it from him. It was warm and sticky, but at least it had stopped beating. Hunger gripped hard at my insides as the smell of blood and succulent meat filled my head, more intoxicating than the opium. I needed this.

My goblin rose to the surface, lengthening tooth and jaw,
altering the bones of my face so that I became a more efficient predator. Saliva dripped from my fangs. The watching goblins began to chatter and ch
eer, and I realised that they’d never seen me fully change before. They didn’t know this side of me.
I
barely knew this side of me.

The prince had been right to do this. He’d known exactly how I would react to the meat and how the tribe would react to me when I gave in. He was much more intelligent than I gave him credit for, and it shamed me.

But stronger than thronhe tribat shame was my hunger. I opened my jaws wide and bit down on the heart. Meat split between my teeth. Blood flowed over my tongue.

This was not the vengeance it had been when I took Church’s heart into my mouth. This was not the justice I’d felt when I ended him as coldly as he had ended Dede. This was hunger. This was base and primal.

It was right.

I closed my eyes in bliss. Around me the goblins cheered, celebrating what I would forever remember as the moment I became one of them.

My point of no return.

My father was surprised to see me sitting in his private chambers in the dark. Or perhaps it was the blood on my face and hands that I hadn’t been able to lick clean that surprised him in particular.

“Xandra.” He straightened his shoulders. “My dear girl, how did you get in here, and what have you done?”

“I had to see you,” I replied, rising from the chair I’d been in for the last thirty-three minutes. “I came from the plague den.”

That seemed to be all the explanation he required, but then I would think the blood smeared around my mouth told enough of the story of what I’d done at the den. My father left me to go into his bathroom. I heard water running in the basin, and when he returned, it was with a warm, wet cloth that he used to wipe the blood from my face and fingers. It was a surprisingly sweet gesture, one that unsettled me.

He glanced at me as he wiped my palms. “You’ve taken your place as their queen then?”

“Pretty much.” I watched the traces of rust disappear from my skin. “Does that bother you?”

“I suppose it ought to, but no. I always knew you were destined to be something extraordinary.”

“And Churchill had the test results to prove it.”

He hesitated, but continued cleaning. “Yes.”

“What about Dede? Did you think she’d pop out a pure-blood? Are you monitoring the kid too, just in case?”

My father lifted his head. His green eyes flashed as they met mine. “I can never lay claim to my grandchild; do you think that makes me happy? Do you believe for one moment that knowing one of my children is forever lost to me is a pleasant thought? That I don’t pray and hope every day that Val will be returned safely? I have called in every favour I am owed; no one has heard where he is, or if they have, someone much more powerful than I has purchased their silence.”

My jaw sagged. I’d never heard such emotion in Vardan’s voice–ever. “You’re a fucking duke.”

“I’m a fucking eunuch!” I’d never heard him swear before, or raise his voice either. “Yes, I have some power, but there are schemes and secrets to which even I am not privy.”

“Are you saying Victoria is behind this?”

“I’m saying I don’t know.” His shoulders slumped beneath the impeccable cut of his coat. “My involvement only runs so far as to unusual births, special children. Valentine has never exhibited any traits that would lead me to believe he is different.ronhe

“I’d wager Dede hadn’t either until she gave birth.”

He nodded, casting me a glum glance. “That is true. Both
your brother and Avery may have some sort of abnormalities that haven’t shown up on any tests, and I am sick over it.”

My eyebrows tugged together. “You blame yourself.” I hadn’t expected that.

“What father wouldn’t?” He waved his hand when I opened my mouth to be a bitch. “I know I haven’t been much of a father, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about the four… three of you. I care very much, and the fact that people want to poke and prod you because my offspring seem to exhibit fantastic abnormalities both shames and frightens me.”

“Your offspring?” I tilted my head and studied him. “Have there been others?”

Vardan jerked his head. “There was a courtesan about a year prior to your birth who died while carrying my child. Another miscarried because there was something… wrong. And my wife, the duchess, gave birth to a stillborn goblin.”

As if I didn’t know his wife’s title, I thought wryly. “The courtesan that died, what happened?”

He turned his back and went to a small bar in the corner of the room. I watched as he lifted the hose-like tap of an oxygenating carafe–a device specially made to circulate human blood to keep it fresh and at host temperature. He poured a couple of ounces into a glass. “Would you like one?”

“No thank you.” I was still feeling the effects of the heart I’d ingested. I felt like I could run a thousand miles, leap over buildings. Shag for hours. And that last one was not a feeling a girl wanted when in the company of her papa. I had to find Vex when I was done here. “Tell me what happened to the courtesan.”

Vardan sighed. He looked old. Normally he appeared to be
a man in his late thirties, but tonight he wore the full length of his life in his eyes. “Whatever it was she was carrying ate its way out of her at seven months.”

Fang me. I grimaced at the thought, my stomach and its contents rolling uncomfortably. “And yet you decided to give it another go with three more.”

“Yes, well it was expected of me. And there was no reason to believe it would happen again.”

And that was his opinion of human life. I would call him an arse if I hadn’t shared that opinion for the lion’s share of my own existence. I continued to share it, on occasion. I harboured no love for humans, but I didn’t think of them as disposable either.

“You must have had a shit haemorrhage when that wolf attacked my mother.”

He took a sip from his glass. “That she even survived it was a miracle. The fact that she changed, even more of one. That you also survived was something I could not ignore, let alone allow her to abort. I didn’t know what you were, but I knew I did not want to lose you.”

My throat tightened. I might shed a tear if I thought he wanted me to live because he loved me. “No, because the more buggered-up kids you have, the more Victoria thinks you’re useful, right?”

Vardan made a face as he stared into his glass. “Yes, well that was an unfortunate side effect. I thought my children would be regarded as royalty, not freaks or lab rats.”

“How about freak royalty? ’Cause I’ve got that one almost perfected.”

He drize>
wanted to see any of you hurt. I would never knowingly do anything to injure any of you.”

“But you did. You let them take Dede’s baby–that destroyed her. You treated her like she was hatters and lied to her. If you hadn’t done that, she’d still be alive. She’d be happy. You locked up my mother so she wouldn’t tell me the truth about what you’d done. About me. You let me think she was mad. You would have encouraged me to marry Church in the hope I’d pop out fully plagued gets, and never would have warned me that they might be goblin. If I had known why I was so important to him, maybe he wouldn’t have lost his fucking mind, and then I wouldn’t have had to—”

He jumped on that like a cat on a mouse. “Wouldn’t have had to do what, Alexandra?”

Oh, I’d almost walked into it. I blinked. “I wouldn’t have had to discover that the man I held above all was no better than my father.”

He winced, and I congratulated myself on the barb. I refused to feel for this man. Refused to have any pity or sympathy for him when he had done so much harm for his own gain.

And above all else, I would
not
trust him.

“I suppose I deserve that,” he said softly.

Cry me a fucking ocean. “You honestly don’t know where Val is?”

A shake of his dark hair. “No.”

I moved closer, so that we were within striking distance. He was taller than me, but he’d lived a soft and privileged life. Unlike Church, he had no idea how to defend himself. “You’d better not be lying to me about this, Your Grace. If I find out you played any part in my brother’s disappearance, I will make certain you suffer for it, I promise you.”

“Alexandra.” His tone was placating. Patronising.”Dearest…”

I grabbed him by the throat and lifted him off the ground. My reach and his height wouldn’t allow for more than a few inches, but it was enough to drive the point home. “I am not your dearest. I am the monster you hoped for when you forced my mother to carry me, but I am not
your
monster. Don’t ever fool yourself into thinking otherwise. You lost me the moment you gave Ainsley Dede’s child.”

“It… couldn’t… get… out…” His words were strangled by my grip.

I squeezed harder. If he could speak, I wasn’t holding him tight enough. “I don’t want your excuses or your lies. From now on, you stay the fuck away from me.” I tossed him aside. He landed on his feet, but it was far from graceful. He clutched at his throat, gasping for air, staring at me with wide eyes filled with surprise and fear. Lots of fear. And disgust.

“I see now that we understand one another,” I said before turning my back on him and making for the French doors that would provide my escape route.

“You won’t find Valentine if they don’t want you to,” Vardan rasped after me. “He’ll be lost for ever.”

I hesitated, my hand on the door handle. I should just walk out, but I couldn’t give him the last word. I looked at him over my shoulder. “Oh, I’ll find him,” I promised. “Even if I have to bring my goblins cobbleside and tear every inch of Mayfair apart looking for the truth. And I promise you–if I do have to resort to tearing the neighbourhood apart, I’m going to start with you.”

I should have gone straight home after confronting my father, but I was too brassed off to simply toddle off and be by myself. Not to mention that my blood was still humming from my little snack in the plague den.

Thoughts of Church and his delicious heart flitted through my brain. Terrible as the old man had turned out to be, I couldn’t think of him without a wealth of emotion washing over me. Sometimes it was anger or hatred. Other times, like tonight, it was loss. I missed him, even though he’d sought to control me and killed my sister. How ruddy pathetic was that?

So I risked remaining cobbleside, knowing full well there was a chance that the security cameras positioned all around Mayfair would spot me. I didn’t care. I’d rather be outside in the dark, listening to the sounds of the night, catching the scents of horses and flowers, than stumbling about underside. I would be safer in the catacombs and more comfortable, but I didn’t want to hide, and I didn’t like the fact that part of me
wanted
to be below ground.

Vex lived on South Street, in a big red-brick mansion with white trim that had aged to a light grey. There were lights on inside, and one shining over the front door as though it was expecting me. It wasn’t, of course, and neither was Vex.